ANTHONY WETTERSTROM was punk in San Jose when punk wasn’t cool. Or even lukewarm.
“Back in those days, if you had dyed hair and wore black, they didn’t know to call you a punk,” he says, eagerly flashing to the mists of l979. “They would scream, ‘Space alien!’ Accidents would almost happen on the street – people would get out of their cars and scream at you. You weren’t cool unless you had eggs or something thrown at you from a car.”
In 1981, with cropped yellow hair sprouting two antenna-like wings, he hit the first big San Jo’ punk show – the Dead Kennedys – at the Hotel Sainte Claire, the vaunted landmark where his grandparents got hitched and he now hustles in guests as a doorman. “I remember leaving the hotel, covered in mayonnaise, bruised from head to toe and in complete euphoria,” the 28-year-old grins mischievously.
These days the self-crowned “Mr. San Jose” is more likely to dress as a 1932 prune picker – like his parents and grandparents – and soak up history by standing in one of the few remaining San Jose orchards. You see, he thinks this isn’t his first lifetime in the Valley of Hearts’ Delight.
“Sometimes it’s freaky,” he says, eyes narrowing as he peers into the distance. “I can look down a street in the old part of San Jose and I can actually see – because of the photos and all the things I’ve read – the carriages and the costumes.”
So in a succulent twist of irony, this former vanguard of the new and shocking now sports a tie and nice-boy hair and indulges in the past. A bit of a prude – he won’t sit through a film with sex, violence or cursin’ – he amasses stacks of MGM soundtracks instead of the latest techno CDs. And he lives for Judy Garland.
Wetterstrom, raised by his late Italian grandma, morphed into “Mr. San Jose” when he realized the city was undergoing an historical transformation through redevelopment.
With a repertoire of Lucille Ball-like facial expressions, the renovated hotel’s first employee of the year regales guests with San Jose tales and quirky stories, like the one about the monkey that lived at the Sainte Claire in the ’50s and unscrewed light bulbs to flush them down the toilets. But some of those memories put a grimace on his face – like when, in the name of modernization, ’60s designers put orange shag in the Sainte Claire’s elegant ballroom. Eeeeuuu.
