A Look Back at the San Jose Jazz Break Room’s Past

The San Jose Jazz Break Room looked quite a bit different in 1930. Today, the escalators are long gone.

This weekend, the San Jose Jazz Summer Fest explodes all over the urban landscape, celebrating 35 years of this particular festival and all its incarnations. As every year goes by, various clubs and spaces either move or simply go out of business. Then when Covid-19 hit, decimating live audiences, the folks at San Jose Jazz decided to convert a portion of their office into a venue for live streaming shows. Thus, the SJZ Break Room was born.

The Break Room, as it’s often called, now showcases amazing gigs. During Summer Fest, the Break Room serves as one of the urban hangouts, a gathering place where late-nighters—you know, like most jazz people—can lurk in the shadows. It’s not a huge