Alexander, San Jose, CA

Alexander is a quiet residential pocket of East San Jose just north of the Alum Rock Avenue corridor, anchored by the neighborhood's Goss campus. It is flat, older single-family fabric on calm interior streets, an affordable, central part of the city that sits close to the cultural energy of Little Portugal and the Alum Rock retail without being right on top of it. Homes in Alexander are older, modest single-family houses, most with a driveway and a patch of front yard. Plenty have been updated or added onto over the years. The streets are level, so an evening loop around the grid is easy, even if the scenery stays plain. Most meals out start on Alum Rock Avenue. Window Cafe, a small coffee and tea counter on the avenue, runs an afternoon happy hour on drinks during the week. A short drive west in Little Portugal, Adega cooks the Portuguese food that earned it a Michelin star, and it is open again under new owners. Farther east, Tacos Monarca is a taco counter that local diners rate among the best in the city. The Mexican Heritage Plaza on Alum Rock Avenue, where School of Arts and Culture programs run, has a theater with a steady calendar of mariachi and ballet folklorico. Plata Arroyo Park on North King Road has basketball courts, playgrounds and a skate park, and the Penitencia Creek Trail picks up at King Road for a creekside walk on paved and gravel path. Cardenas Markets on Story Road handles the bigger grocery runs. The Alum Rock Transit Center on South Capitol Avenue is the end of the VTA Orange Line and a stop for Rapid 522, which heads west through downtown, with on-ramps to US-101 and I-680 close by. The honest tradeoffs are the busy Alum Rock corridor to the south, the older housing stock, and a streetscape that is practical rather than scenic. For a buyer who wants a settled, affordable East Side street a short hop from downtown and the freeways, Alexander is easy to overlook and sensible to consider, especially if the coming transit improvements pan out.