Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday, is celebrated by people of Mexican and non-Mexican origin in California. Many people do so by driving around their town sporting Mexican flags on the hoods of their vehicles, and many more do so by imbibing large quantities of Corona and tequila. San Jose is a town renowned for a vigilant police department who crack down on public drunkenness without ever having to prove any one is intoxicated, and during this holiday these men and women in blue blockade certain freeway off-ramps and street intersections so that the merriment (or chaos) will be confined to a small area of downtown. This also has the effect of creating more traffic, especially since many people who may have legitimate business trying to get from point A to point B don't know the alternate route of A-Q-J-C-Z-B. When these people try to say anything to the "San Ho Po Po" they are merely directed back onto the 280 interstate, and then they usually end up in the same traffic mess as before. One side benefit of this mess is the added overtime hours for the police -- but at least they keep old San Jose in the top 10 of "safest cities in the US"!!! God bless beaurocracy!
