San Jose's Latest Claim to Greatness: 1 Million Residents

Maybe I'm buying into something that's not quite real, but San Jose, the big city that sprawls south from the shallows of San Francisco Bay, has always seemed to have a little bit of an inferiority complex.

One for-instance: In his inaugural speech earlier this year, the city's new mayor, Sam Liccardo, took as his theme the question, "What is San Jose's identity?"

Yeah, it's tough to be just down the road from San Francisco, a city that's been convinced since its ferocious, flea-infested Gold Rush beginnings that it is, and by right ought to be, the center of the universe.

San Francisco's motto is, "Gold in peace. Iron in war." Rendered in Spanish: "Oro en paz. Fierro en guerra." That has a fine, classy ring to it. San Jose's "motto" is something about being the capital of Silicon Valley, which many have noted is only sort of true.

The city of St. Joseph has also toyed with the slogan, "San Jose. Small Town Heart. Big City Soul." If the soul of a city is measured by its freeway density, sure, I'll buy that.

San Jose does have some major league cred. It's the home of the Sharks, a fine but somehow perennially disappointing National Hockey League franchise (ask to see the team's collection of Stanley Cup championships). And home of the Earthquakes, an entertaining Major League Soccer unit playing in a nifty new stadium that may divert attention from its mostly non-winning ways. It's the would-be home of the Oakland A's, if only the stars and the rich guys who run Major League Baseball would align.

Some, including the lawyers representing the city in its quest to convince the federal courts that San Jose should have the A's, have argued the city deserves the team because of its size. San Jose big, Oakland small, they observe.

Well, maybe, though most of the cities that have been found worthy of major league franchises -- Kansas City, St. Louis, Seattle, St. Petersburg (Florida), Miami, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver, Phoenix and yes, San Francisco -- are smaller than San Jose.

And, well, this is where I back into our news. The U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday confirmed the city is kind of a big deal, anointing San Jose as one of 10 U.S. cities with 1 million people or more.

For a city that didn't even have 100,000 residents in 1950, that's saying something.

One thing it may say is, "Relax, San Jose -- you matter. Look, you're No. 10!"

And that whole thing about city character? Well, you grew up in a different era than other big cities. When you came of age, it was no longer cool to openly indulge in every brand of greed, graft and grotesque behavior that gave those other places, from vice-filled Gotham to big-shouldered Chicago to Barbary Coast San Francisco, their reps.

San Jose may be more in sync with the age -- an era in which we're all encouraged to ask, "Who am I?" -- than any of those other towns. Part of that answer now is "1 million strong."