| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 11/26 |
| 2010/6/29-7/20 [Reference/BayArea] UID:53870 Activity:nil |
6/25 I'm a newbie trying to learn SF neighborhoods, which seem to be
a colloqial concept not written down anywhere. Is there a map like
the following (but higher res) that looks like this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SF_Noe_Valley.png
\_ http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22san+francisco+neighborhoods%22
\_ http://www.sfarmls.com/docs/areamaps.htm
the only non pretensious map.
\_ And hence totally useless for learning the traditional names
\_ would it be pretentious to point out your spelling error?
\_ enjoy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhoods_in_San_Francisco |
| 2010/3/22-4/14 [Reference/BayArea, Recreation/Food] UID:53757 Activity:nil |
3/20 Happy New Year.
\- Where to get exciting new years food? Or is it too late?
\_ Bongo Burger or the place next to it on Center St. In SF, there
is Al Borz and in the South Bay there are many (Faz, Chelokababi,
etc) |
| 2010/1/13-19 [Reference/BayArea] UID:53631 Activity:low |
1/12 Wanted to let all you bay area folks know that we'll be playing
our first show of this year this weekend. Here are the details..
Friday, January 15th @Slim's ( 333 11th Street SF )
Thanks!
\_ do you have a myspace for your music paolo?
\_ What is the name of your band? Who are you?
\_ WHO ARE YOU?
\_ WHAT IS THE NAME OF YOUR BAND?
\_ WHAT TIME ARE YOU PLAYING? jfc |
| 2009/10/8-21 [Reference/BayArea, Politics/Domestic/President/Reagan] UID:53437 Activity:nil |
10/7 danh@soda is heavily featured in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143113801
\_ This guys articles are probably more relevant:
http://larrylivermore.com/?p=185&cpage=1 - danh
\_ Is this book worth owning? -ausman
\_ are you implying i know the guy referenced in this url:
http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-10-07/music/new-bay-area-punk-oral-history-unearths-dead-babies-stinky-roadies-and-strong-community-networks |
| 2009/10/5-12 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley] UID:53429 Activity:high |
10/2 This first one is for you tom:
http://curiousphotos.blogspot.com/2009/10/complete-idiots-guide-to-how-to-behave.html
\_ Dude I was just reading in the East Bay Express that tom beat
a whole bunch of mountain bikers up a mountain, ON HIS UNICYCLE.
come back when you are that insane^^^^^^^^^awesome.
\_ how many unicycle groupies does tom have?
\_ at least one. -tom
\_ urlP?
\_http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/PrintFriendly?oid=1194808
"Like Hertlein, Berkeley Revolution team member Sowers is more\
interested in the athletic side of unicycling. Last year he rode a unicycle 10.\
8 miles to the peak of Mount Diablo for the annual Mount Diablo Challenge. It to\
ok him an hour and 45 minutes . third place among the three unicyclists who trie\
d (first place went to Berkeley team cofounder Tom Holub at 1:20), but well ahea\
d of more than eighty bicyclists. "When people see how athletic we are, we get s\
ome embarrassed respect," he said.
"Like Hertlein, Berkeley Revolution team member
Sowers is more interested in the athletic side of
unicycling. Last year he rode a unicycle 10.8 miles
to the peak of Mount Diablo for the annual Mount
Diablo Challenge. It took him an hour and 45 minutes
. third place among the three unicyclists who tried
(first place went to Berkeley team cofounder Tom
Holub at 1:20), but well ahead of more than eighty
bicyclists. "When people see how athletic we are, we
get some embarrassed respect," he said.
\_ can't find that quote at that url.
\_ http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/circus_act_or_extreme_sport_/Content?oid=1194820
\_ If you're really interested, the results are up on
http://active.com. This year I finished at 1:21, 626/896
among finishers. Last year I was 576/888. -tom
\_ 514 columns, Gee. |
| 2009/9/2-9 [Reference/BayArea] UID:53320 Activity:nil |
9/2 San Francisco:gay people :: Antioch:child molestors
\_ Must be the water or the air.
\_ by law, sex offendors need to live far away from schools,
antioch is a great place for that
SF:Childish immature people :: Everywhere else: grownups
\_ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6HFuH9rx_o |
| 2009/8/13-9/1 [Reference/BayArea, Transportation/PublicTransit] UID:53269 Activity:nil |
8/13 One greedy BART union going on strike next Monday:
http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2009/news20090813a.aspx
\_ No, not really. It is just a negotiating tactic.
\_ You know what, BART's troubles do have a little to do with union pay,
but its mostly BARTs expansion mission instead of dealing with
the stations its has. The airport extension is not as popular as
they said it would be, and they're going forward with San Jose
and Oakland airport connector extensions |
| 2009/5/20-26 [Reference/BayArea] UID:53022 Activity:moderate |
5/20 So SF passed 1B but not 1A. I can only conclude that at least 5% of SF
are idiots.
\_ where can I find statistics of yay/nays broken down into
different counties and cities?
\_ I guess they could be saying "I don't want A, but if A passes
I'd rather A+B than just A."
\_ Why are people so sloppy? 1B did not pass. SF did not pass 1B.
\_ SF county voted Yes on 1B, but No on 1A. I think 2nd !op's
interpretation is correct.
\_ SF country voed Yes on 1B overall, but No on 1A. I think 2nd !op's
assessment is correct.
http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/props/38.htm
\_ Yes, this is correct. Voting on 1B != Passing 1B. Sloppy.
\_ Except that 1B did pass in SF. Not sure what you are
alluding to. In SF, 1B passed and 1A failed.
\_ Your an idiot [sic]. 1B does not apply in SF bc it did
pass, in SF or in CA. A majority of SF voters voted to
pass 1B, but it did not pass. Yes, this is semantics.
\_ You are arguing semantics.
\_ *I* am not arguing semantics. The person who said
"Voting on 1B != Passing 1B" is.
\_ *I* am not arguing, the *other* guy is!
\_ This was true statewide, you know. Voters statewide voted for
1B by a 3.4% margin over 1B.
1B by a 3.4% margin over 1A.
\_ Yes: 37.4%
No: 62.6%
\_ Is this the 1A results or the 1B results? |
| 2009/4/10-20 [Reference/BayArea, Recreation/Food] UID:52840 Activity:moderate |
4/10 Is there a good soup noodle place (like Din Tai Fun) in the Bay Area?
I went to HC Dumpling today, which had pretty good soup noodles, but
it paled in comparison to the SGV.
\_ Corrected: I meant to ask for a soup dumpling (XLB) place! -op
\- yes, i have modeled you brain.
some what amusingly, i went from San Francisco to a famous
XLB place in the middle of chinatown in singapore, and when
i got there, it turned out they were closed (on Wednesday?!).
\- yes, i have modelled you brain.
\_ what do you mean by 'good soup noodle' ? Theres a good vietnamese
noodle place in milpitas area -- Pho Kim Long. -ERic
\_ Vietnamese place in the ranch 99 area in El Cerrito
\_ That place is called Saigon II and its is pretty good.
\_ Heheheh hehehe, he said fuk-him-long. -Beavis
\_ I've seen a chain called Pho King too.
\_ Hy Kai Mi Gia in the TL.
\_ Pho Tan Hoa in SF is good. The various TK noodle Houses are good
too.
\_ Did you know that TK Noodles is now different than TK Noodle
House? The brothers got into a fight and split their chains
both with the word TK Noodle in them. Also, TK Noodle is so
dot-com-ish, as retro as Boba Tea. Din Tai Fun is hip today,
kind of how Boba Tea was back in the 90s.
\_ http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/11.14.96/noodles-9646.html
\_ Tung Kee vs. New Tung Kee: http://www.csua.org/u/nyv
\_ I did, but I also knew the son who lived above the place
on Williams -!pp
\- If you are talking about thin skin XLB, YANK SING is the standard
for SF, but it is really quite expensive for DEEM SUM. For cheeper
there are a couple of options but not totally a stardard ...
Shanghai Dumpling King isnt bad. I thought a DTF branch was
going to open up in the Bay Area ... maybe in South Bay?
[assume you mean soup *dumpling* ... that is what DTF is known for]
There is also a decent shen jian bao place in a south bay
strip mall near the lawrence Fry's Costco etc.
\_ Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about. Yank Sing is
exactly what I was looking for, but maybe somewhere a little less
pricey. SDK (dumpling king) is on my list of places to try. Do
you know the name of the place near Costco? I'll check it out...
\- The place near Costco is something like SHANGHAI FLAVOR SHOP.
There special item there is the SHEN JIAN BAO. There is also
FU LAM MUM near the Mtn View train station ... not top flight
DEEM SUM but ok. Are you really looking in "the bay area" or
are you really looking in the south bay. There are also
supposed to be some good Sichian and other Chinese sub-genre
places in Milpetas/Fleemont but I havent been to them.
\_ SF would be preferable but I work in the South Bay so that
can work too. I'll see if I can check out Fu Lam Mum. How
does Ton Kiang compare to Yank Sing?
\- for XLB, YANK SING is the standard. for other DEEM SUM,
there are other options ... TON KIANG, the places in
\- for XLB, Yank Sing is the standard. for other DEEM SUM,
there are other options ... ton kiang, the places in
milbrae etc. BTW TPNTTK [aka "The Place Next To Ton
Kiang"] has some good stuff at good prices and there
are fewer WHITE PEOPLE waiting in line. However I think
are fewer White People waiting in line. However I think
they may have had an ownership or chef change so some
of the items like GIANT 60CENT FRIED OYSTERS may no
of the items like Giant 60cent Fried Oysters may no
longer be available. if you are in the sunset, here are
my greater china recommendations: TPNTTK, SHAGHAI
DUMPLING KING, SUPER PANDA KITCHEN, SPICES, ultra cheep
DA CAFE late night menu, possibly CREATIONS DESSERT.
my greater china recommendations: TPNTTK, Shaghai
Dumpling King, Super Panda Kitchen, Spices, ultra cheep
DA Cafe late night menu, possibly Creations Dessert.
TK is controversial ... i wouldnt veto it, but i wouldnt
pick it. you might also try the GIANT $1 PORK BUN at
CITY BAKERY at 20th and Noriega. if you commute down
the penisula, you can also analyze EVERYDAY BEIJING
FISH DUMPLINGS and SUNNY SHANGHAI XLB.
does Tom Kiang compare to Yank Sing?
pick it. you might also try the Giant $1 Pork Bun at
CITY BAKERY at 20th and Noriega.
\_ Awesome thanks! --psb #1 fan
\_ TPNTTK is called Golden River.
\_ Went to DTF on Saturday. Showed up at 10:30 and didn't have to
wait in line at all. Craziness. Someone mentioned that they opened
up another shop down the street. It was as good as I remember it...
-op |
| 2009/4/9-13 [Reference/BayArea, Recreation/Food] UID:52828 Activity:high |
4/9 Do they motd foodies have a SF/Berkeley/South Bay Food Guide?
Like... where to get a great grilled cheese sandwich, Dim Sum, or
where to take a stuck up date?
\_ yelp, jatbar
\_ Jatbar's ratings are insane.
\_ Jatbar's ratings are insane, yelp's are inane.
\_ yelp prefers large quantities of cheap food over quality,
in general.
\_ yelp is a microcosm of the Internet circa '99: self-selecting,
trying to be cool/hip, generally more noise than signal.
\- i get the sense yelp is a combination of younger people
with limited incomes looking for cheap food and drink
as you suggest and sex and the city types who are
interested in "scenes". and there are some READ_ONLY
users who use it for factual data.
\_ yelp totally sucks. in particular, i really hate yelpers. jatbar
is ok, but i'm specifically asking for rec's from those (eg psb)
who post on the motd. --psb #1 fan
\_ You should definitely get food recommendations from "my wife
cooks as well as fancy $30 restaurants" guy.
\- yelp has become a social web site, not a review site.
i think sites which are "space centric" [as in people have
the "yelp home page/space" rather than thread centric
invariably become about the people rather than the topics. |
| 2009/4/2-10 [Reference/BayArea] UID:52787 Activity:moderate |
4/2 http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/03/23/91-san-francisco \_ this guy started out boring and got more dull from there. \_ Yes it's true. LA is a great place to visit, but not so great to live in. I've been living here all my life (minus the best 5 years of my life in Northern Cal). I don't have a choice to leave LA thanks to my lame family that I need to watch over and take care of. Drivers are rude and traffic sucks. Weather east of 405 really blows, and traffic west of 405 blows even more. No me gusta Los An-Hay-Less. \_ How about Riverside to Long Beach? I know a few people who live in Riverside but commute to Long Beach for work. \_ I feel the opposite. I love to visit SF, but not live there. LA would suck to visit, but I love to live here. As a tourist I'd far prefer scenic SF, but there's a lot more to do and a lot more variety in LA. \_ What are these things you like to do that there is more of? Besides the beach, I guess. \_ Go to museums, concerts, art galleries, theater, sporting events, botanical gardens, and such. \_ variety, yes. Better food, yes. More to do, yes. But to do all that, you need to drive... far distances, and a lot of time in the car. YUCK YUCK YUCK. LA is a wonderful place to live if you don't have to drive. I can go from the tip of SF to the bottom of San Jose in one hour. How long does it take to drive from Pasadena to Irvine? San Fernando to Diamond Bar? I guess you have a great tolerance and and lot of spare time. I don't. a lot of time in the car. LA is a wonderful place to live if you don't have to drive. How ironic! Look, I can go from the \_ Very true. tip of SF to the bottom of San Jose in one hour plus 30min max. How long does it take to drive from Pasadena to Irvine? San Fernando to Diamond Bar? Just look at Google Maps + Traffic on a typical day, and look at all the red indicators in LA. N Cal rarely has red spots, and at worst yellow spots. People in LA seem to have a lot of traffic tolerances and lot of spare time. I don't. \_ I think driving is a lot faster than public transit most of the time (exception: rush hour and sometimes not even then). However, public transit exists if you wish to take it. Lots of people who commute long distance commute successfully by MetroRail. It's not any faster, but they can do other things while they ride. For the most part, the only time you need to worry about traffic is during your work commute and hopefully it's not from San Fernando to Irvine. You are right that traffic on Westside always sucks and that's why I hate the Westside. The only time I \_ I find the Westside the only tolerable part of LA. Santa Monica is sort of like a rich man's Berkeley. If you live in Santa Monica and can work at a startup there (or Yahoo/Google or someplace like Universal), life is pretty good. Mexican Food in LA >> Mission. \_ Westside has some advantages, but like I said the traffic is ALWAYS bad, petty theft is bad, and the crowd that hangs out on the Westside is the sort of gross plastic shallow rat race set that people condemn LA as being full of. Santa Monica is like Berkeley in that it's dirty and full of homeless people. Those are not the best things about Berkeley, which has its own "rich man's" areas just like SM does. Overall, I like to visit the Westside to get what I need and then get out. I wouldn't live there. My gf lived in Westwood and worked in Venice and I spent a lot of time there. People who live in that area think life doesn't exist east of the 405 and are guilty of the same yuppie-flavored provincialism that SF residents are but with the added twist that looks are everything because everyone hopes to be a model or actress and sleep around to achieve that goal. Yuck. be a model or actress and sleeps around to achieve that goal before returning to Peoria after getting dumped by their married producer boyfriend when they turn 30. Yuck. \_ Stop stomping my changes idiot. Figure out what \_ I'd agree with 70% of what you're saying. I lived in Culver City, which is "gentrified" as opposed to mostly white people and didn't have crazy traffic problems. About a year ago LA douchebags started invading. But CC was great... good food, close to the 10 and 405, close to the beach, affordable, lots of young, poor people (this is generally a good thing), with rich people starting to move in. But Palms/CC is pretty ugly bc of all the monolithic apartment buildings. Very walkable, even when compared to SF/Berkeley. \_ Stop stomping my changes dude. Figure out what you want to say then post it once, instead of stomping the motd every minute or two. \_ Sorry. \_ Santa Monica also has great food, awesome beaches, interesting shopping and is reasonably walkable, which when combined with the great weather, makes it a good vacation spot. All the fabulous looking people don't hurt either. Where else in LA would you want to stay as a vacationer? Even 10 miles inland, the weather gets much worse, at least in the summertime. \_ I used to live in San Fernando. Please take pity on me. Now I live in Pasadena. It's actually way nicer than "the valley" pity on me. Now I live in Pasadena. It's actually way nicer than "the valley" \_ I think you have confused the meaning of the word "elitism" with "provincialism." Don't feel bad, it is a common mistake. \_ provincialism: a partiality for some particular place elitism: the attitude that society should be governed by an elite group I don't have them confused, but you could say SF residents are both. \_ That is not the correct definition of the word "provincialism." The correct definition is: 3 a: a person of local or restricted interests or outlook b: a person lacking urban polish or refinement You have to be more than just partial to a particular place to be provincial, you have to be ignorant about other places. \_ That's nice. I got my definition from WordNet whereas you are an anonymous MOTD poser. Dictionaries are not MOTD poster. Dictionaries are not infallible, but it's a little much for you to say it's "not the correct definition". \_ I got mine from Merriam-Webster. I notice you only included defn. #2 while ignoring defn #1. \_ Because I used it according to definition #2 when I used it. \_ When words have more than one meaning, usage of it implies a certain overlap. Especially when you are using the #2 defn. These rules aren't hard and fast though, so hard to pin down exactly. But "provincialism" definitely implies an ignorance about regions other than ones own. drive to far flung places is on the weekend and the traffic isn't bad then. The key is to live near where you work. You will be a lot happier then, whether you live in LA, NYC, Tokyo, or SF. Commuting to work sucks no matter where you do it. \_ Not as bad when you have a Google/Genentech shuttle. |
| 2009/3/30-4/3 [Reference/BayArea, Recreation/Dating] UID:52770 Activity:nil |
3/30 Orgasmic SF Yoga (sorry guys, you can only lend a hand)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/fashion/15commune.html |
| 2009/3/22 [Reference/BayArea] UID:52741 Activity:nil |
3/21 Oakland PD has 4 new positions open:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/ci_11967257 |
| 2009/3/14-23 [Reference/BayArea] UID:52712 Activity:kinda low |
3/14 Is it just me, or are people definitely going out less in SF ...
based on a couple of weeks of noticing how much easier it is to
park in the Sunset, the 'mond, the Mission, the 'loin etc on
Friday/Sat nights. --psb
\_ Ecomony. Tax season.
\- Before we get to "why", how about deciding "if" this is
true. I drove from Cesar Chavez up 101 into downtown at
8pm on Sat nite and was ale to drive 60-70 rather than 15mph.
\_ The Haight is still pretty popular. I went to Zam Zam on Friday
and it all the seats were taken but there was still standing space.
And this without the awesome martini guy. Popular places are still
quite crowded (Magnolia has 45 minute waits on a Wednesday night
and Pork Store Cafe always has people in it, even at 7AM... today
it looked like longer than an hour wait), the mediocre places seem
to be suffering a little. I wish there were more recession-friendly
offerings out there. Conduit in the Mission is always dead but I
think they have the best bartender in town... and they now have a
set of $6 cocktails that are pretty fantastic.
\_ I have not noticed any drop off in the number of people going to
the mostly cheap places I frequent. -ausman
\_ Dunno about SF but I went to Santa Barbara for the first time in
a year or so and it was grim. Lots of businesses gone. I went
to a sushi place and the owner told me a dozen restaurants have
closed since the New Year. A wine store that had been there for
decades closed and so did the Fatburger, which really surprised
me. Lots of empty storefronts. The owner told me that the locals
are wealthy enough to still contribute to the economy, but
tourism is almost nonexistent and a lot of businesses are affected.
So for SF I'd wonder what it's like at places like Ghiradelli
and Pier 39. I know that the Ferry Building was bustling when I
went in November but, again, that's a lot of locals. |
| 2009/1/9-14 [Reference/BayArea] UID:52349 Activity:nil |
1/9 more links than you can possibly want about recent oakland riots
http://www.abetteroakland.com/downtown-oakland-riot-link-round-up/2009-01-08 |
| 2009/1/8-12 [Reference/BayArea, Politics/Foreign/Europe] UID:52344 Activity:low |
1/8 Macy's closing 11 stores:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/9f6576 [newsday]
\_ I wish I had saved this graph that compared retail space per
capita between Britain, Sweden and the United States. We had
something like 20x-30x more retail space per capita which suggests
there are a lot more store closings coming up.
\_ Not necessarily. The US has a lot more land and our cities
are spread far apart so there are a lot more locations per
capita than in a more dense nation.
\_ 20X? That seems unbelievable to me. -skeptic
\_ Found the chart:
http://www.oftwominds.com/photos07/retail-sq-ft.png
US: 20.2 sf/person
Sweden: 3.3 sf/person (Sweden has more land per person than the
US).
\_ Yes, but the population is not spread out much.
UK: 2.5
France: 2.3
Italy: 1.1
Note that according to http://tinyurl.com/6j2gtq US sf/person
grew to 38 sf/person in 2005, but that same article claims
European countries have 10 sf/person. So the gap is anywhere
from 4x to almost 20x depending on the source.
-pp
from 4x to almost 20x depending on the source. -pp
\_ Where's the source data?
\_ From the looks of that graph it is somewhere on
http://www.icsc.org/sct/index.php |
| 2009/1/8-12 [Reference/BayArea] UID:52343 Activity:moderate |
1/8 "Protests over BART shooting turn violent"
http://www.csua.org/u/n80 (http://www.sfgate.com
"Yet the demonstrators were often indiscriminate, frequently targeting
the businesses and prized possessions of people of color."
"The mob smashed the windows at Creative African Braids on 14th
Street, and a woman walked out of the shop holding a baby in her arms."
\_ It's the same idiots who set fire to the city when the Raiders
win big: out of town troublemakers.
\_ Apparently from SF: "I feel like the night is going great," said
Nia Sykes, 24, of San Francisco, one of the demonstrators.
\- The person who had her Toyota Corilla smashed is a former
aquaitance of mine. Ironically, she's one of those pro-agitation,
make some noise, fight the power types.
\_ I don't know the person you speak of, but you can be a
"make some noise" type without supporting vandalism.
\- trust me on this: knowing this person, her getting
her getting her car bashed up at an oakland street
riot is ironic.
\_ At least 37 of those arrested were found to be from Oakland.
Five were from Berkeley, and another five were from San Francisco.
Others came from cities all over the map: Fremont, Kensington,
Pinole, Hayward, San Leandro, Fairfax, Santa Cruz and even as
far away as Santa Clarita in Southern California. One man told
police he was from Indianapolis, officials said.
Five were from Berkeley, and another five were from San
Francisco. Others came from cities all over the map: Fremont,
Kensington, Pinole, Hayward, San Leandro, Fairfax, Santa Cruz
and even as far away as Santa Clarita in Southern California.
One man told police he was from Indianapolis, officials said.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_11405848
\_ 37+ out of 120 arrests breaks down to 1 in 4 being from
Oakland. I stand by my earlier statement about out of town
hooliganism.
\_ Indiana Anarchists.
I hate Indiana Anarchists. |
| 2008/11/17 [Reference/BayArea, Reference/RealEstate] UID:52008 Activity:nil |
11/18 I wish SF housing values went down to the same when this was made
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mY2JR2_0QI |
| 11/26 |
| 2008/11/3-4 [Reference/BayArea] UID:51807 Activity:nil |
11/4 People of the Bay Area, where is the Barack celebration on Tue night?
ok tnx.
\- the parking lot of the Oakland Coliseum
\_ How's that racism treating you?
\_ http://gotv.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gptj57 |
| 2008/11/3-4 [Reference/BayArea] UID:51784 Activity:moderate |
11/3 Sodans with families, do not cross the Bay Bridge today or tomorrow,
just in case. You have a lot to lose. I am staying home in a safe
suburban area where my parents live.
\_ I don't have a family, does that mean it's ok to cross the bridge?
\_ you're a moron.
\_ Why?
\_ Why do you think Rich Sodans live in SF? Maybe they are getting
more value for their dollar in Oakland.
\_ Did you read that funny story about how Oakland PD are putting
together riot squds, in the Washington Times? You should forward
that to the Oakland PD.
\_ You've been trolled. |
| 2008/10/28-30 [Reference/BayArea] UID:51709 Activity:nil |
10/28 Dear poor pissed off socialist guy who missed out on the boom,
this is good news for you. I told you the free market would
fix the problem by itself!:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/28/real_estate/August_Case_Shiller
What surprised me was SF = 27% decline. I thought SF was immune
to housing bust. What's up?
\_ That's not SF, that is the Bay Area. The declines are mostly in
places like Vallejo and San Ramon. SF proper is only down about
10%, and most of that is in the BayView/Excelsior area. My
neighborhood has not seen any decline, unfortunately. Why do
you think that SF is immune btw? Did someone tell you that?
http://www.dqnews.com/News/California/Bay-Area/RRBay081021.aspx
\_ http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2008/10/august_spcaseshiller_san_francisco_msa_decline_accelera.html |
| 2008/10/22-27 [Reference/BayArea, Transportation/Bicycle, Transportation/PublicTransit] UID:51640 Activity:nil |
10/22 RIDE BIKES! Meet Thursday 6:30pm in SF, between Embarcadero BART and
the Ferry building.
Last night's ride was teh hott. Thursday's ride will be hottest. -ali |
| 2008/10/22-27 [Reference/BayArea, Recreation/Dating] UID:51631 Activity:moderate |
10/22 So, anyone here live in SF? How are you voting on Measure K?
\_ I'm going to a YES TO PROP 8 rally in SF this week.
\_ When/Where is that? THAT should be interesting.
\_ However interesting it gets, it'll still be safer
than NO TO PROP 8 rally in Chico.
\_ You've never been to Chico, have you.
\_ Yeah try Redding or Bakersfield
\_ No I've never been there though I'm sure there
are a lot more CCW permits in Chico than SF.
\_ What, do you think that you would get shot or
something? You really don't know Chico very well...
\_ If you ask your average Chican for a shotgun, odds
are that you're going to get a beer with two holes.
\_ Which phone booth is that being held in?
\_ yeah where is it? i'll show.
\_ Looking forward to some legal hookin, eh?
\_ Nah, I'd vote no, but I don't live in SF. I was curious if
anyone had anything interesting to say. -op
\_ totally misguided.There is always the weird SF crowd who seem to
think that most of the women in the underground prostitution
economy are there of their own free will. All of those foreign
women in lab coats at the massage parlors have an imaginary
500k debt to pay off to a smuggler or the smugglers have
threatened to kill their entire family back in the old country.
They should focus their efforts in getting the women to join
the real economy, off of drugs and off of the street.
\_ What's with your spaceing?
\_ i think my .emacs is out of control.
\_ I personally know at least three sex workers who are doing if
\_ I personally know at least three sex workers who are doing it
of their own free will. Go to http://kink.com and you will find dozens.
Legalizing it is a better way of regulating it than what we have
now. Compare Amsterdam vs. SF. In which one is there less
exploitive sex trade? Oh, I am an SF resident voting Yes on K.
\_ So, this is my problem with it. Legalizing and regulating
ala Nevada might be reasonable. Simply having the police
not prosecute it seems like it would just make things worse.
\_ I doubt it, though I agree with you on the legalize angle.
\_ My thinking is basically this, decrimializing it does
not make it a legitimate business. It does not
regulate it. It simply allows criminals to work
unmolested. That really just means all the pimps and
thugs will go to SF to do their business.
\_ I don't think that decriminalizing marijuana
distribution increased the amount of violent crime
in SF, so I don't think this will either. You forget
that "sex tourism" is a pretty big, if often
unappreciated, part of the economy here. Did you
know that massage parlors have to get a license
a special fee, that goes straight to the Public Health
Dept ? It is already half-decrminalized as it is.
Dept ? It is already half-decriminalized as it is.
a special fee, that goes straight to the Public
Health Dept ? It is already half-decriminalized
as it is.
\_ Excuse me? This is in SF? Are you SURE?
\_ What part are you asking me to restate here?
\_ In Sweden they made it legal to sell sex, but not buy it:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/15/news/Sweden-Prostitution.php |
| 2008/10/15-17 [Reference/BayArea, Recreation/Dating] UID:51533 Activity:moderate |
10/14 Has anyone raised chickens in an urban environment? My friend's HOA
in SF is vague enough to allow chickens in his backyard (2 units),
and we've been doing some reading and talking to people who have done
this in suburban areas, but was wondering if anyone had any specific
advice.
\_ Each city has it's own ordinance. For example, Oakland doesn't
allow cocks anywhere...but hens are fine. Also I beleive your hen
house is suppose to be 50 ft away from your house and your neighbor's\
fence...which is a bit difficult to do. Check out chicken tractors
or moveable pens. Also, chickens don't make good housepets, no
matter what people tell you.
house is suppose to be 50 ft away from your house and your
neighbor's fence...which is a bit difficult to do. Check out
chicken tractors or moveable pens. Also, chickens don't make good
housepets, no matter what people tell you.
\_ Oakland doesn't allow cocks anywhere? How do all those horny
H07 4ZN CH1X in Oakland survive the loneliness?
H07 4ZN CH1X in Oakland survive the emptiness?
\_ I heard that chicken tractors are pretty good for weed control.
Just move the chickens around and they eat the small weeds.
\_ In SF? Where the fuck do you have a place with a backyard
big enough to waste on a chicken tractor?
\_ SF? Sorry, I got off on a tangent and was back in suburbia.
\_ They are ornery little fuckers and your neighbors will hate you.
Then again fresh eggs are pretty damn amazing.
\_ Not only will your neighbors hate you, but YOU will hate you
after being henpecked for the 20th time. That said, the eggs
are out of this world. Watch out that you don't end up with
two roosters, as they can get quite violent with each other.
\_ I would recommend never getting roosters. Our neighbor
had a rooster for a little while. Stupid thing would wake
up our daughter at 3am every day. 3AM!
\_ Yeah, if you raise a rooster in an urban or suburban
area you totally deserve to be beaten.
\_ My neighbor has a rooster and I enjoy hearing it crow.
Injects some normalcy into the urban jungle. It
doesn't crow loudly enough for me to hear it unless
the windows are open. I know some neighbors are
pissed, but I also know others enjoy it, too. Depends
on how far the stick is up your ass.
\_ Yeah, seriously. What's his problem with waking his
kids up at 3AM anyway? Get that stick outta your ass!
\_ Unless people are paying to watch!
\_ I was looking at http://www.mypetchicken.com
I plan on getting hens only. I need to read more about different
varietals. I wasn't clear in my original post, but the intent is
to have 2 (maybe 3) chickens and get about a dozen eggs a week.
\_ If you've never had chickens before, they really do suck as pets.
\_ You know, if it's a shared backyard for a 2 unit HOA you really
should have the blessing of your condo-mate.
\_ Not shared backyard and the upstairs unit is rented out to
3 guys, but yes, before going forward, I need to talk to my
HOA (the other guy).
\_ Highly recommended that you do your research before getting your
chickens. Some varieties thrive in a small environment; others
will kill each other if not given plenty of space to roam around
in. |
| 2008/9/30-10/6 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:51341 Activity:nil |
9/30 Escape From Berkeley Road Rally:
http://www.escapefromberkeley.com/?page_id=6 |
| 2008/8/20-26 [Reference/BayArea] UID:50915 Activity:nil |
8/20 this is pretty screwed up. who do i blame?
berkeley? oakland?
http://google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=jahton
\_ A little more information:
http://lupoleboucher.livejournal.com/80660.html
\_ They had no evidence. It's how our justice system works.
It sucks in this case, but on the whole we are better for it.
-knew one of the victims
\_ oh did you know the 90 year cosmic ray researcher?
\_ oh did you know the 900 year old guy?
anyway didnt the berkeley cops catch the dude paying his
bills with the credit card of the people who were beaten?
that sounds like some evidence to me
\_ It's evidence he had stolen property. It wasn't
evidence he did the beating. I bet he did time served
for the credit card thing. (Oh and yeah, he lived in
my building.)
\_ Blame GWB.
\_ What about the old guys testimony? Not accepted
because he died first? Please.
\_ Harry Callahan is not pleased. Punks.
\_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/8/1-8 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley] UID:50752 Activity:nil |
8/1 do the various people on the various Berkeley city committees
make a salary? rent board? peace and justice ?
\_ My GF is on a Berkeley committee and gets no compensation. There
is a bit of expense (the city supplies a secratary, the meeting
area "costs" the city (but in their case it is one city budget
paying another city budget) and they have some minimal amount of
cash to spend on a once a year event, mostly food and flyers I
think. That being said Berkeley has been culling a bunch of
random comittees, mostly because of the secretarial costs.
\_ There's a peace and justice board in Berkeley? How come there was
so little of either?
\_ I wonder that every day as I lay down suppresive fire in
preperation for the mad dash to my car. One of these days
I know I'm not going to make it, but until then you've just
got to pretend.
\_ You drive a car? Well, there's your problem.
\_ I'm not sure why everyone thinks Berkeley is car unfriendly.
What they are is student parking unfriendly. Which makes
sense because there are far too many students to be
otherwise. Berkeley isn't the suburb you grew up in.
Get over it already.
\_ What about all those crazy barricades, that make
it impossible to use side streets?
\_ As I said, Berkeley isn't the suburb you grew up
in. |
| 2008/7/29-8/3 [Politics/Domestic/California, Reference/BayArea] UID:50720 Activity:nil 90%like:50716 |
7/29 Swami! Your prediction is off by 6 months!!! You SUCK
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6opb7h [cnn]
\_ Wow San Francisco went UP by 22%. How about San Jose, Sunnyvale,
Mountain View, Santa Clara, etc?
\_ Fuck SF. Let them pay for their own stupid bridges.
\_ Based on the for sale flyers I see, prices in the parts of
SJ near Cupertino/Saratoga have gone up slightly from January.
\_ This is a typo. "SF" for Case Shiller means SF MSA, which is
SF, CoCo and Alameda counties.
SF, Marin, San Mateo, Alameda and CoCo counties.
\_ What is the peak of this graph?
http://bubblemeter.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html -GS |
| 2008/7/29 [Reference/BayArea, Reference/RealEstate] UID:50716 Activity:high 90%like:50720 |
7/29 Swami! Your prediction is off by 6 months!!! You SUCK
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/28/real_estate/another_home_price_dip/index.htm?cnn=yes
\_ Wow San Francisco went UP by 22%. How about San Jose, Sunnyvale,
Mountain View, Santa Clara, etc?
\_ Fuck SF. Let them pay for their own stupid bridges. |
| 2008/7/29 [Reference/BayArea, Politics/Domestic/Crime] UID:50714 Activity:nil |
7/29 I guess this is a good argument for CCW in church:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6nl6nr (SF Gate) |
| 2008/7/25-28 [Reference/BayArea] UID:50684 Activity:nil |
7/24 health inspector scores of SF restaurants http://sfscores.com i ate at EL FARALITO two days ago and noticed the score was 68 ! TU LAN is somehow 92. \_ El Farolito got a 94 according to the SF DPH. Also note that this map does not reflect abatement of concerns. A buddy who's worked in SF/BA restaurants since the early 90s informs me that all SF retaurants have rodent issues; the health report is mostly about luck in that regard. \_ the rating sign for the 24th & mission location says "68" |
| 2008/7/21-23 [Reference/BayArea] UID:50643 Activity:nil |
7/21 San Francisco is a happy happy utopia sanctuary city!
[ad from the city]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ANSs04r9io |
| 2008/7/18-23 [Reference/BayArea] UID:50619 Activity:low |
7/18 San Francisco, America's most walkable city:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/64unjx (SF Gate)
\_ There's no way it's more walkable than Manhatten.
\_ Manhattan is not a city.
\_ You ever live there? Comparing SF to all the boroughs is
bullshit. Maybe if you want to include Alameda county and
south down to oh, maybe Sunnyvale?
\_ It may be bullshit, but that's how the definition works.
Argue with the authors, not the posters. -!op|pp
\_ If someone creates a bullshit stat you should ignore it.
SF is very walkable and is a great city, but using "city"
is broken if it doesn't let you count Manhatten without,
say, Staten Island. (Here's a hint, you address letters
to NYC residents and put the borough name where the city
goes. Each borough has a "Borough Hall" ala city hall.
Each borough is a seperate county, in CA that can't happen
in one city. They are pretty damn close to cities.)
\_ And yet not cities. New Yorkers want NYC to be a
single city when counting things like population
and separate cities when it is convenient to treat
it like so.
\_ I can address a letter to "Venice Beach" and it
gets there, but no one would think of VB as
anything but a neighborhood of LA.
\_ I actually think it is, if you include the effect of weather,
which the publishers did not. It is often too hot or too cold
to really walk in Manhattan, almost never true in SF.
\_ Good point about weather, but I've been in SF plenty of
times where it was too cold to walk. SF is a freezing
cold city with lots of wind, hence Mark Twain's quote.
Not as cold as NYC or Boston, but not exactly San Diego.
\_ Dude, you are a wuss. It never even gets below freezing
in San Francisco. Just wear a jacket. It can suck to
walk in the rain though, especially when the wind is
blowing, but that is 30 days or less out of the
year.
\_ Bone chilling wind is often worse than snow.
\_ The quote is misattributed to Twain.
\_ Once again, why would you want to walk with a bunch of smelly
homeless, drug dealers, and hippies?
\_ Once again, you don't know shit about San Francisco.
\_ I know enough that I'd rather live in a nice suburb than
in the city.
\_ You live in a nice walkable suburb? Which one? How
many times have you even been in San Francisco?
\_ Why do you have to walk to enjoy life? -op
\_ I'd say Berkeley is a nice walkable suburb. Well,
a walkable suburb anyway.
\_ The bottom 5 cities still score higher than the most walkable
cities in Orange County. Irvine, for example.
\_ They didn't take hills into account. Or crime or panhandling.
\_ Crime is pretty damn low in SF, and panhandling is pretty
ignorable. I'll give you that if you have to walk through
someplace like nob hill that the hills really do suck.
\_ Crime in SF is low compared to come cities, but in terms of
crimes committed per 100,000 people it is higher than the
national average for murder, robbery, assault, burglary,
theft, and auto theft. It is lower in number of rapes.
Comparing directly to Los Angeles, SF has a lot more
robberies, burglaries, and thefts. It has fewer assaults
and rapes. Murder rate is almost the same. That's got to
burst your bubble of viewing SF as being "safe" because I live
in LA and I would never call it "safe". For fun, I compared
SF to NYC:
http://tinyurl.com/6lf6n3
Surprisingly (?), NYC is far more safe than SF.
\_ If you lived here, you would know that the overwhelming
majority of crime in SF happens south of 280, which is
an area most people avoid, if they even know it exits
at all. Most of the rest happens in the Mission and the
Tenderloin, so it is very easy to avoid the small high
crime neighborhoods, if you are so inclinded. Auto theft
happens everywhere, but this does not effect walking.
\_ Crime only happens in the bad areas. Well, duh. "Safe"
cities don't *HAVE* those really bad areas. That's
why they are "safe" - unlike San Francisco, which has
some really bad areas that are still considered part
of San Francisco even though I'm sure you think no
one from those areas ever leaves them for any reason.
You don't think NYC has bad areas, too? And yet it's
much safer than SF.
\_ Every city in the US has some high crime areas.
\_ Every big city in the US has some high crime areas.
Currently, NYC is doing a great job of combatting
crime, and I have to give them credit for that.
This is a relatively new phenomenea.
This is a relatively new phenomena.
\_ It is. However, SF is still above the national
average in terms of crime and you can't
cherrypick the nice areas to say otherwise. We
could cherrypick the nice areas of every city
if it worked that way. |
| 2008/7/14-17 [Reference/BayArea] UID:50565 Activity:nil 92%like:50558 |
7/14 Mythbusters need people in the bay area to help out in September
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5gewgv [makezine]
\_ "Dear Mythbuster Friends,
Thank you very much for your interests in participating in our
upcoming episode. At this time, we will continue to collect your
contact information and will contact you soon for the next step
in the registration process. Due to the overwhelming response, we
cannot guarantee everyone a volunteer spot. However, we will do
our best. We appreciate your support and thank you for helping us
make a great show."
Still, thank you for posting the opportunity. |
| 2008/7/14 [Politics/Domestic/California, Reference/BayArea] UID:50558 Activity:nil 92%like:50565 |
7/14 Mythbusters need people in the bay area to help out in September http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/07/help_mythbusters_recreate.html |
| 2008/7/2-6 [Reference/BayArea] UID:50451 Activity:nil |
7/2 i love oakland
\_ http://www.oaklandish.org
\_ Next season of The Wire will be in Oakland.
\_ sure looks that way! I like how the 'city administrator'
told everyone she was going to postpone her retirement
at the end of this month to clear her name.
\_ It will be called "The Probe". Brother Mouzone will
be coming west. |
| 2008/6/27-30 [Academia/Berkeley/Classes, Reference/BayArea] UID:50395 Activity:nil |
6/27 would banning guns helped or hindered this guy?
http://tinyurl.com/5cfshf
http://cnnsi.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&am
p;title=TO+ESCAPE+GANGS+AND+VIOLENCE%2C+KIDS+OFTEN+TURN+TO+S
PORTS.+-+06.30.08+-+SI+Vault&expire=&urlID=29366801&
amp;fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvault.sportsillustrated.cnn.co
m%2Fvault%2Farticle%2Fmagazine%2FMAG1141120%2Findex.htm&
partnerID=289881
\_ tinyurl is your friend
\_ I did! |
| 2008/6/21-23 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley] UID:50325 Activity:nil |
6/20 i knew it wouldn't last. Codys in Berkeley to close completely
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/blogs/cody_s_books_closes_permanently/Content?oid=775168
\_ It lasted for more than 15yrs as far as I remember.
\_ i meant 'the shattuck store' |
| 2008/6/18-24 [Reference/BayArea, Reference/RealEstate] UID:50290 Activity:nil |
6/18 Slowest May in 20 years for Bay Area housing
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/18/BUBP11B99U.DTL
"The median price paid was $517,000, down 21.7 percent from a year
ago."
"Sales of all home types in San Francisco dipped 3.7 percent, as prices
declined 5.4 percent to $790,000."
Ok this is good, but I need MORE!
\_
_ _ _ _ ____ _ ___ ____ ____ __ _____ _____ _ _
| | / \ | \ | | _ \| | / _ \| _ \| _ \ \ \ / /_ _|_ _| | | |
| | / _ \ | \| | | | | | | | | | |_) | | | | \ \ /\ / / | | | | | |_| |
| |___ / ___ \| |\ | |_| | |__| |_| | _ <| |_| | \ V V / | | | | | _ |
|_____/_/ \_\_| \_|____/|_____\___/|_| \_\____/ \_/\_/ |___| |_| |_| |_|
_ __ __ _ ____ _ _ _____
/ \ \ \ / // \ / ___| | | |_ _|
/ _ \ \ V // _ \| | | |_| | | |
/ ___ \ | |/ ___ \ |___| _ | | |
/_/ \_\ |_/_/ \_\____|_| |_| |_|
\_ Your a fag.
\_ And you're (== you are) an embarrassment to all English speakers.
\_ Housing prices go up and down but if they go down enough there will
be a huge ripple effect through the rest of the economy. You may
find you don't have a job after housing drops another x% |
| 2008/5/5-9 [Reference/BayArea] UID:49887 Activity:high |
5/5 LA, #9 worst city for commuters.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/24/cities-commute-fuel-forbeslife-cx_mw_0424realestate3_slide_3.html?thisSpeed=15000
http://promo.realestate.yahoo.com/best-and-worst-cities-for-commuters.html
\_ What you should have noted is that SF came in at #10 for all of
the talk about how SF does things right and LA doesn't.
\_ *LAUGH*. You can escape SF by going to San Mateo, Sunnyvale,
San Jose. But with LA, you never really arrive or leave
LA, it is just a big blob of land that never cease to
end. LA is everything and anything. Santa Monica, Culver City,
San Dimas, Pasadena, Walnut, Chino, etc. That's all LA.
You never get to LA, nor do you ever leave LA.
\_ WTF?
\_ No shit. If you want a real taste of LA, drive some street
like Foothill or Rosemead from end to end. It is amazing
how you can drive and see 20 miles of strip malls.
\_ And this is just so totally unlike the Bay Area. Not.
\_ I have never seen anything like it anywhere else.
What do we have like that? East 14th Street?
\_ Have you never driven south out of San Francisco
into Silicon Valley or east to Livermore?!
\_ Weak comparisons. Sorry.
\_ You know, I will accept Camino Real as a pretty
good comparison.
\_ That is not really SF, that is Bay Area they are talking about.
No one already in SF needs to cross a bridge to get to SF.
\_ The topic is "worst cities for __commuters__". No one in
downtown LA needs to commute to get to downtown LA either.
\_ You do if you live in The Valley and work downtown.
\_ Are you dense? Reread what I wrote.
\_ You're the dumb fuck. It's not clear what
LA means in the URL. !op !pp
\_ What does this mean:
"No one in downtown LA needs to commute to get to
downtown LA either." ?
Where does The Valley factor into that?
\_ not the op but The Valley is an unincorporated
city of LA, and therefore, it is LA.
\_ BUT IT'S NOT DOWNTOWN
\_ Not even unincorporated. Most of the Valley
is in LA proper. So plenty of people who
actually live in LA have hour long commutes
downtown. No one who actually lives in the
city of SF does.
\_ That's just because SF is tiny, not
because it's somehow better. Think
of SF as "downtown Bay Area" which
it is functionally. Besides, it
doesn't take an hour to get from
Studio City or Encino to downtown.
\_ Google maps says "up to 1 hour
and 20 minutes in traffic" from
Encino to Downtown. 1 hr and 30
minutes from Encino. The whole
minutes from Northridge. The whole
point is that SF is built to human
scale and LA is not.
\_ So "human scale" involves
commuting from Pleasanton to
your job in downtown SF? Please.
The Bay Area is just as sprawling.
Don't focus on political
boundaries to make a point
about how SF is so much
better. I mean, hey, we might
as well compare SF County to
LA County but that ignores
all of the people who work in
SF but don't live there which
people seem to want to count
to prove SF is a 'big city'
but exclude when it makes SF
the 10th worst city for commuters.
Still better than LA, but not
as much as SF residents make
it out to be. I think it's
interesting that:
1. 8 cities were worse than LA
2. SF was only one place below
BTW, LA is so sprawling
because of the street cars.
Without public transit it
would probably be much more
compact. Public transit
screwed up LA.
\_ don't let the facts get in
your way:
http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/lary.htm#map
-tom
\_ I knew you would come
running. However, you
don't know much about LA.
That's obvious from all
the discussions we've
had on MOTD. Look at
this map:
link:tinyurl.com/6dlgk4
According to Wikipedia
the Red Car system
extended all the way to
Riverside and San Bernardino.
LARy or the Yellow Cars
(your map) were just
the trolleys that made
up a small part of the
system (the most dense
part). Google "Red Car" or
"Pacific Electric Railway".
I know a lot about the
railway system and as
you would expect
development happened
along the PER routes,
which is exactly what
Mr. Huntington wanted
as he bought up the
land around the routes
in advance. People
would have never
developed so much so
far away from the city
center in those days
(~1925) without the
existence of the PER.
You are welcome.
\_ I bet LA wishes it had
that railway system now.
\_ Well, yeah, since
the city was built
around it and then it
was dismantled.
However, it would've
been better had it
never existed at all.
\_ yeah, like Phoenix!
\_ I don't want to
get into
defending
Phoenix, but I
will note it was
not on this list
and SF was.
\_ Pleasanton is the exception
in the Bay Area while The Valley
in the Bay Area while The
Valley
is the standard in the LA area.
It is quite hard to find decent
places to live near work in LA,
though they do exist (Silverlake
though they do exist
(Silverlake
Hancock Park, Santa Monica) but
it is easy in the Bay Area. They
it is easy in the Bay Area.
They
both have sucky sprawl, it is
just worse in LA.
\_ Actually, San Francisco
proper seems to be the
exception. Nowhere else
in the Bay Area is similar
and geography plays a big
part in why that is so.
\_ Oakland, Albany, Berkeley
are all very much like the
and Daly City are all
very much like the
residential parts of SF.
\_ Not really. They
are just from the
same era and so
the architecture
is similar. I
don't think anyone
would confuse Albany
with SF.
\_ Look, dimwit already told you that
\_ You haven't been to
the Westwood Park
neighborhood in SF.
The important thing
is the density and
land use patterns,
not the architecture
\_ I don't think I
have. So you're
telling me that
there's some
atypical
neighborhood in
SF which then
typifies what?
/
It is not that atypical. There are many more similar
It is not that atypical. There are dozens more simlar
to it. The truth is, you don't know much about SF, so
you say all kinds of silly things like "SF is similar
to downtown LA" Do 824k people live in Downtown LA?
\_ SF is similar to downtown LA. There are suburban areas close
to downtown also. Sure, downtown LA is only 40K people but
it is still apt to say:
SF:Bay Area::Downtown LA:Greater Los Angeles
There are a lot of reasons this doesn't hold (main one being
that downtown LA is not really the hub of jobs that SF is)
but you also have to realize that LA is bigger than SF, too.
I could say: "Do 3M people live in SF?" or "Is SF 470 square
miles?" It is reasonable to view SF at the center of the
larger Bay Area. The Bay Area is considered to be 7000 square
miles. LA is considered to be 5000 square miles (actually
34000, but lots of that is boonies). I think in terms of size
the regions are comparable and so it is not fair to single out
SF for better or worse when discussing the Bay Area. Direct SF
(city) versus Los Angeles (city) comparisons do not make sense,
which is why it makes more sense to compare the dense parts of
the Bay Area (SF) to the dense parts of LA (downtown to Santa
Monica) or to compare the sprawling parts of the Bay Area (East
and South Bay) to the Greater LA Area.
and South Bay) to the Greater LA Area. I know SF pretty well
given that I went to school at UCB and spent a lot of time
there. I won't claim to have been to every single area in SF,
but I went to enough to know that low density single story SFR
housing is not that common in SF and is very common in, say, Albany.
No. It is not just SF that has land use patterns that
enable a walkable neighborhood with good transit. I
agree that some, maybe even most of the Bay Area is
as spread out as LA, but not all of the Bay Area
outside The City is. I am kind of curious, are you
starting to come around to the idea that planning
is a good idea, or are you just arguing for the
sake of it?
\_ Where did I ever allude to planning being a bad idea other than
the ridiculousness of "master planned communities"? Without
zoning you get Texas.
\_ Look, dimwit already told you that
his work/living arrangement is unique
in LA and that he's better off than
90% of the Angelenos, hence LA is a
good place to live. Stop trolling ,
asshole. -dimwit #1 fan
\_ Actually, it does sound like dim has
a pretty good arrangement. If everyone
a pretty good arrangement.
If everyone
in LA lived like him, it wouldn't
have the problems that it has.
\_ I would live in LA in a second
over the crappy Silicon Valley
area, which is why I moved.
Silicon Valley is like SF's
Orange County except it doesn't
have any beaches. Yuck. Does
anyone really like San Jose?
I think people in the Bay
Area like to pretend San Jose
is not part of SF Bay Area because
they are so ashamed of it.
\_ San Jose isn't very different
from Irvine. One does have a much
higher HOA and restrictions though
from Irvine. One does have a
much higher HOA and
restrictions though.
\_ I wouldn't live in Irvine
either, but Irvine is
much nicer than San Jose.
\_ Commuting from the Richmond to downtown could easily take 1 hour
on the 38 Geary. Even from North Beach which is only 2.5 miles, I
on the 38 Geary. Even from North Beach which is only 2 miles, I
have waited 40 min for an F Castro trolley.
\_ Funny, I commute from Richmond (the city) to downtown SF, and it
typically takes an hour, most of that on BART. -ERic
\_ Hey, if you walked, it might take even longer. How long would
it take if you crawled on your hands and knees?
it take if you crawled on your hands and knees? From end to
end on the 38L takes 33 minutes. Only a tourist or a moron
would try to commute on the F.
\_ I lived a block from the F, dimwit. And 33 minutes to travel
4 miles. Yeah, that's really reasonable. How crowded do the
38L's get again?
\_ You cannot speak badly about glorious San Francisco,
comrade. The BART is always on time and never full
when it arrives and the citizenry smells like roses.
\_ Whether 33 minutes is reasonable or not is tangential
to the fact that it is considerably less than 1 hour.
I would rather stand for 1/2 hr on a crowded, swaying
bus, than sit for 1 1/2 hrs on a hellish freeway, but
each to their own, I guess. You should have walked to
the 10 and taken it instead of the F, by the way.
\_ I prefer 2 hours in my comfy Honda Accord Hybrid
to/from Pasadena than 1/2 hour smelling a bunch of
hippies and communists. Oak Grove Dr is a heaven
compared to say, BART.
\_ I prefer a half hour walk along tree lined
streets to riding in a vehicle at all. |
| 2008/4/27-5/4 [Reference/BayArea] UID:49841 Activity:low |
4/27 Are the followings good comparisons?
N Cal S Cal
----- -----
East Oakland Compton?
\_ Oakland as a whole is pretty comparable to
Long Beach
Gilroy San Dimas
Livermore Riverside
San Jose Irvine?
\_ Cerritos?
Atherton Malibu?
Half Moon Bay Morro Bay?
Stanford Pasadena/San Marino
\_ Berkeley Venice
\_ Santa Monica - ppl in SoCal call it
"Peoples Republic of..." just like Berkeley
\_ Good one. Both dumpy as shit.
San Francisco There can only be one
\_ #t
\_ West Hollywood (it's a gay little party town)
\_ West Hollywood is excellent, cool clubs/bars |
| 2008/3/23-27 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley] UID:49545 Activity:nil |
3/23 When The Daily Show went to Berkeley:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=163653 |
| 2008/2/19-22 [Reference/BayArea] UID:49183 Activity:nil |
2/19 I'm looking for a sweater I saw recently on someone...
it had a logo that looked like the AT-ATs from starwars,
but over a picture of the Oakland docks. Any idea?
Where I can find this?
\_ Are you talking about "The Town" shirts like the ones here
http://www.cafepress.com/buy/oakland
or here
http://www.likemindedpeople.us/his.html
\_ The artist sells there wares at the Temescal farmer's market on
\_ The artist sells their wares at the Temescal farmer's market on
Sundays. -scottyg
\_ I bought a t-shirt from the maker at the Telegraph street fair
near campus in Berkeley in December. The word "girl" appears
in his business title. I have a sticker for his website at home,
and I'll look for it tonight. --peterl |
| 2008/2/15-18 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley/CSUA/Troll] UID:49154 Activity:kinda low |
2/15 Pictures from the Berkeley Marine protest:
http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_marines_2-12-2008
\_ Isn't this the same guy that told us that all San Franciscans
are terrorists?
\_ URL?
\_ San Francisco style terrorism is not MAINSTREAM
terrorism.
\_ I don't know, does it matter?
\_ Yeah, it matters. I don't watch Ann Coulter for similar
reasons. But I guess I can just look at the pictures and
ignore his idiotic commentary.
\_ Pictures are pictures unless you think he photoshopped
extra missile trails and smoke in there or placed a
teddy bear on top of the rubble before taking the photo.
\_ Or you could do some BS trick with camera like this:
http://www.zombietime.com/how_berkeley_can_you_be
Scroll down to the third and fourth photos
NSFW
\_ What trick? It's a naked dude and ZT put their
typical 'quote' on it. Are you saying the pic is
a fake? Maybe I was fooled by this trick. Please
help me out.
\_ Considering that "trick" wouldn't fool anyone...
I think zombie was just trying to get them both
in the same frame at a good angle. |
| 2008/1/16-18 [Reference/BayArea] UID:48959 Activity:moderate |
1/16 http://eastbayhousingbubble.blogspot.com/2008/01/sfh-2007-data.html Housing Bubble in 2008! Watch it go down! \_ good thing I bought my East Bay house for $265K in 1999. \_ $297K in 2000 and $460K in 2003. Both in Fremont. \_ Where can I find similar info about The City and Peninsula? \_ It's interesting that the average prices per sqft are high for some places because they are good neighborhood (e.g. Fremont), while they are high for other places because they are densely populated (e.g. Berkeley). |
| 2008/1/7-11 [Reference/BayArea] UID:48903 Activity:high |
1/7 So I don't get it. San Francisco is listed as a major world city,
but San Jose is not even listed! What is wrong with these idiots,
don't they realize that San Francisco is just a suburb to the mighty,
much more important metropolis of San Jose???
http://www.csua.org/u/ken
\_ http://appleorangescale.com/?wd0=san%20francisco&wd1=san%20jose
Indisputable Google proof that San Francisco >>>>> San Jose.
Accept this as fact! -urbanite
\_ San Jose is a dump! Los Angeles is a world class city and is
way better than San Jose. -suburb lover w an Accord hybrid
\_ ObSanFranciscoSucksLess
\_ I know this is a troll, but ... Let's compare the number of truly
exceptional restaurants, buildings, museums, schools, etc., in
San Francisco vs. San Jose.
\_ Plus size of downtown, GG bridge. And the San Jose
\_ Plus size of downtown, GG Bridge. And the San Jose
Int'l Airport didn't actually have international flights until a
few years ago.
\_ What does the GG bridge have to do with anything?
\_ GG Bridge is a tourist attraction. People usually
associate it with SF not SJ.
\_ So what? Mount Rushmore is associated with South
Dakota. Disnleyland is associated with Anaheim. I don't
Dakota. Disneyland is associated with Anaheim. I don't
follow here.
\_ I don't know about Mount Rushmore. Yes Disneyland is
in Anaheim, but to the international tourists it is
associated with LA instead of some place called
in Anaheim not LA, but to the international tourists
it is associated with LA instead of some place called
Anaheim.
\_ Point is that landmarks are landmarks and can
be in a major city, a suburb, or the boonies.
\_ Point is that it's not about where the
landmarks are, but about what their perceived
associations are. Disneyland is mistakenly
associated with LA, which, among other ways,
boosted LA's status.
Number of Google search results:
"Disneyland LA": 667000
"Disneyland Los Angeles": 557000
"Disneyland Anaheim": 211000
\_ Just because people are uninformed
doesn't mean anything. You missed my
point entirely, which is that the
presence of absence of a landmark makes
presence or absence of a landmark makes
no commentary on the surrounding area.
As an example consider Mt. Rushmore.
\_ Ancient history. SF was the most important city in CA in the
late 1800s. It's hard for people to let go. It won't happen
overnight. SF is living on reputation, but the reality is that
over the last 30 years San Jose has contributed as much or more
to SF's reputation as SF itself. The number of people who fly
into SJ for business who never even see SF is growing. SF will
of course always be a tourist destination because it's scenic.
\_ San Jose has no view. It's far more entertaining to drive
your relatives around in San Francisco than it is in San
Jose. You get the Golden Gate Bridge, the bay, pier 39,
etc. What do you get in San Jose? Office buildings.
Enlighten me, really, because if there's something
interesting besides night life, I am all ears. Me and my
wife could use some local sight seeing.
\_ We're not talking about the place with the best view or best
tourist spot. I love driving around San Simeon for the
views, but that doesn't mean anything.
\_ San Jose has night life?
\_ What, you've never heard of a LAN party? -!pp
\_ Lots of hiphop clubs. Los Gatos has a good bar scene.
\_ Sure. There are plenty of liquor stores with porn, and
lots of places to rent video games. It's paradise. |
| 2007/12/19-29 [Reference/BayArea, Politics/Domestic/911] UID:48840 Activity:kinda low |
12/19 An inconvenient truth for SF http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/18/BA24U044B.DTL \_ I thought this was going to be about the high murder rate. "Between March 2004 and August 2005, a relatively small group of people - just 362 individuals - accounted for 3,869 ambulance trips to the hospital." Jeebus! \_ Yes, when Regan threw the mentally ill out on the street they clogged up the medical system. Unfotunetly people refuse to actually treat the mentally insane and instead they tie up emergency services because crazy homeless people are generally a fucking mess and need assistance. Think of it as yet another reason we need a reasonable health care system. \_ I think we just need to eliminate the mentally ill like the Spartans used to. No need to have that in the gene pool. It's a tough stance, sure, but those people are never going to get well and they are probably miserable being alive anyway. \_ Why is this inconvenient? It sounds like a good place for some improved public policy, though. \_ He's trying to link people who love al gore and his global warming movie with homeless street bums in SF. a bit of a reach \_ At what point would you tell your emergency crews 'this person has had too many calls, leave them lying there in the street' ? \_ So I know doctors swear the Hippocratic Oath, do nurses or paramedics take a similar oath? If so, to tell emergency crews to leave someone would put them in a pretty unreasonable and untenable ethical position. -dans \_ I would probably never do that, but I think The City should start enforcing some of its "drunk in public" laws and get these guys locked up, sobered up and in rehab. -SF liberal \_ My point being, you can't be telling your emergency responders to ignore calls. ever. The best you can do is find a way to punish those abusing the system. \_ You can't rehab someone who doesn't want to be hab'd. (Or, doesn't care enough to put in the effort.) \_ No, but you can lock those people up. I say bring back the psych hospitals. -SF (maybe not so) liberal \_ Why not just make "chronic ambulance abuse" a crime and eventually jail them? I dunno, is there a solution? \_ Huh, this explains a lot of what happened to be about 6mo ago. I got woken up at about 3am by some dude moaning in the park across the street. When I finally figured out what it was, I thought about going back to sleep, but eventually called the non-emergency cop line instead. They came and said, "Is that you Jesse?" Then they radioed in an ambulance. I kinda figured they just called the ambulance because they didn't want to have to haul his fat butt into a patrol car, and didn't want him puking in there anyway. This was in Livermore. |
| 2007/12/10-14 [Reference/BayArea, Industry/Jobs] UID:48776 Activity:kinda low |
12/10 For people in the LA area, what city has the most/best tech
startup companies? Pasadena? Santa Monica? Burbank?
\_ Yes. OC, too.
\_ MySpace is in Beverly Hills. Though they're also opening a San
Francisco office RSN. -dans
\_ Hello there, the 'myspace san francisco office' is ONLY
sales dudes. No tech guys. I mean it. None. Unless
you are a sales dude! I really doubt sales dudes post to
the motd.
\_ You probably have better information than I do. My,
entirely pulled out of my ass, speculation is that they're
using the SF office to house the MySpace platform team.
Also, if they're just sales, why are they hiring engineers
from LookSmart? -dans
\_ Because they're taking over the looksmart space and it
came with the engineers? |
| 2007/8/3-6 [Reference/BayArea] UID:47528 Activity:low |
8/3 more oakland fun [ black muslim bakery troubles ]
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/ci_6533089
\_ Berkeley/Oakland residents read this article! Heard of
Black Muslim Bakery? See also:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/03/bakery.raid/index.html
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/03/BAGVJRCCPR7.DTL
\_ how did that guy get on the bus with a shotgun?
\_ It's unclear that the shotgun-wielder actually got on the bus.
\_ Yeah i think shotgun-wielding-man may not be related. also
i dont think 19 year old shotgun wielding man decided
all by himself to kill the reporter from a newspaper
that i have never heard of |
| 2007/7/31-8/3 [Reference/BayArea] UID:47484 Activity:nil |
7/31 where can i get a khafiyah in San Francisco?
\_ kafiyah?
\_ Find. Kafiyah. Where?
\_ % find /sf -name Kafiyah |
| 2007/7/30-8/2 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley] UID:47470 Activity:nil |
7/30 Berkeley Breahted on Thompson:
http://comics.com/wash/opus/archive/opus-20070708.html |
| 2007/7/7-8 [Reference/BayArea] UID:47218 Activity:low 93%like:47185 |
7/6 SF fireworks mayhem:
http://urltea.com/xge (sfgate.com)
http://sfist.com/2007/07/05/there_was_indee.php
http://www.yelp.com/topic/YmTe4zuKvbsJ249bHhu0Sw
and then there's this guy
http://sfist.com/2007/07/05/there_was_indee.php#comment-1141222
\_ sfist is racist? huh?
\_ The girl who lost a finger is in this photo:
http://urltea.com/xgg (sfgate.com)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/01/18/NSGMKLNB6H1.DTL&o=0 |
| 2007/7/6-7 [Reference/BayArea] UID:47185 Activity:low 93%like:47218 |
7/6 SF fireworks mayhem:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/05/BAGHNQRD8841.DTL
http://sfist.com/2007/07/05/there_was_indee.php
http://www.yelp.com/topic/YmTe4zuKvbsJ249bHhu0Sw
and then there's this guy
http://sfist.com/2007/07/05/there_was_indee.php#comment-1141222
\_ sfist is racist? huh?
\_ The girl who lost a finger is in this photo:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/01/18/NSGMKLNB6H1.DTL&o=0 |
| 2007/7/5 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley] UID:47182 Activity:nil |
7/5 i love berkeley
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1295/731161065_95e5fcdd74_o.jpg
\_ I thought DMV requires one to explain the meaning of the custom
license plate number when one is requested. (Unless DMV thinks one
'k' and two 'k's are different enough.)
\_ If you can't make up something you don't deserve a plate like
that. |
| 2007/7/3-5 [Reference/BayArea] UID:47155 Activity:nil |
7/3 In country names, do "union" and "united" have different meanings?
Could the USA and USSR have been named "Union of American States" and
"United Republics of Soviet Socialists" which would still properly
describe the two countries?
\_ Why do you think we call it "State of the Union"? |
| 2007/6/24-28 [Reference/BayArea] UID:47051 Activity:high |
6/24 So here is something that puzzles me. I think we have conclusively
proven that the suburban lifestyle, with its wide streets, plentiful
parking and large back yards is clearly superior to the crowded,
rat-infested warrens in the cities. But why are home prices dropping
in the suburbs, while still going up in San Francisco? Antioch, Vallejo,
Santa Rose, Hayward, Vacaville all nice places with plenty of free
parking, are plummeting in price, while the zip codes in San Francisco
that most people live in, 94117, 94114, 94116, 92131, are all going up.
What is going on here?
http://www.dqnews.com/ZIPSFC.shtm
\_ Hi troll. Prices are drpping in the places you mention because
they suck and have always sucked. Some suburbs are slummy. Shock!
\_ So much for conclusive proof! What's the percentage of Americans
that believe in a literal Hell, or that the world was created in
7 days? Americans == stupid.
\_ Suburbs are usually the last to rise and the first to fall. The
reason: supply and demand. Supply is restricted in the cities.
In the suburbs, not so much.
\_ you mean, demand is higher in the cities.
\_ No, I think it is more a case of supply affecting prices.
\- the issue is probably more of an issue of substiution
effects. if you are a white collar couple taking a
job in sf and want to buy a house in a "nice" suburb,
to some extent palo alto, mill valley, danville, moraga
may all be candidates. if you want to live an urban
lifestyle, you might not even want to live below
cortland or beyond 19th ave ... so maybe you are
considering only say 40% of SF. oakland or downtown
sj are not likely to be substitutes.
\_ I agree with this. The supply of <suitable suburban
housing> is greater than the supply of <parts of
SF I'd like to raise kids in>.
\_ Or to flip it around; suburban housing is
a commodity (Concord =~ Fremont) while urban
housing has intrinsic value. -tom
\_ I wouldn't say it has intrinsic value. Demand
can always fall. See: Detroit. It's just that
supply is limited as compared to the suburbs,
almost by definition. I don't see where SF
has intrinsic value and, say, Black Hawk does
not. Neither of them do, really, except maybe
for their agricultural value and in that case
I would argue a 1/2 acre suburban lot has
more intrinsic value than a condo on the 30th
floor of a building in SF or NYC.
\_ If you think SF or NYC is anything like Detroit
you are a moron.
\_ What makes them different? Detroit was
a major US city and a good place to
live. It still (arguably) is. However,
what happened in Detroit is that all
the wealthy people fled to the suburbs.
This proves that an 'urban lifestyle'
is not necessarily more intrinsically
valuable than a suburban lifestyle.
\_ No, it proves that Detroit and
San Francisco are different, in a
way that Concord and Fremont are
not. -tom
\_ You can't get much more urban
than Detroit. So perhaps the
allure of SF is not that it is
urban?
\_ Does Detroit have a higher
density than San Francisco or
NYC? In what way is it more urban?
\_ It's a lot larger, for one.
\_ Larger in area or population?
A large spread out city is
not "urban" is is suburban.
\_ Are you going to claim
that Detroit is suburban?!
\_ No, I just dispute the
claim that it is "more
urban" than NYC and SF.
Since you can't even
define a value that
makes Detroit more
urban, I think you
should admit that you
are wrong. LA is even
denser than Detroit
and huge swaths of LA
are unarguably
suburban.
\_ What's more urban:
Somerville, MA
or SF? Population
density doesn't
tell the story.
You even say
that you concede
Detroit is urban, so
what's your point?
I said "you
can't get much
more urban than
Detroit" not
"Detroit is more
urban than NYC".
Can you read?
You forget, urban is a racist code word for Black. _/
\_ What point are you trying to make?
There are great cities and
shitholes. People want to live
in great cities and they don't
want to live in shitholes. -tom
\_ The point is that urban is
not necessarily more desirable,
which seems to be your thesis.
\_ No, my thesis is that cities
like San Francisco have
inherent value, not that
all cities do. Or at least,
not all cities have
inherent value > 0. -tom
\_ What's unique about
San Francisco? Would
you say most cities
are "like SF"? I see
weasel words here.
\_ SF has a beautiful
location, a vibrant
culture, neighborhoods
with great services.
I would say some
U.S. cities and more
European cities are
like SF in those
ways. -tom
\_ If you are buying a house for where to live
when civilization collapses, then yes, you
are correct. But giant planned developments
don't have character. Easy as that. The fact
is that good urban areas are high demand low
supply. Suburban areas are a dime a dozen in
this country. Land out in the middle of
nowhere is cheap. If you have the money to
front it you could create a new development
area in a few years. You can't make a world
class city no matter how much you try.
\_ "Urban cityscapes with character" and "giant
planned suburban developments" are not
the only two choices. I could argue
that there are only 3 "world class
cities" in the US: New York, Chicago, and
LA (Alpha world cities). If you include
beta world cities then you get SF, too.
So where does that leave, say, Seattle?
What about Santa Barbara? Can you
create another Honolulu? It's not so
easy to create a Blackhawk or a Danville.
If a developer could, he'd do it.
\- washington dc is a special case.
there are alpha people there because
they need to be there at a certain
point in their life. not sure about the
status of chicago now.
\_ Demand can fall, but a house in San Francisco
will always be something different than a
house in Blackhawk, whereas there are
dozens of isomorphic Blackhawk-like
communitites. -tom
\_ I wonder if you've ever been to Blackhawk?
Each house there is unique. I don't see
how you can honestly claim BH is cloneville
while apartment complexes are somehow
unique and artful or something. You have
that backwards.
\_ In Blackhawk, the houses may be
individual, but the community is not.
-tom
\_ Blackhawk can be replicated on any
place you can get a bit of land. Things
like natural ports cannot be.
\_ Which would matter if I was a
shipping company. If Blackhawk
could be replicated anywhere then
it would happen and the values
in Blackhawk would fall, so there
must be something unique about it.
Why aren't Emeryville or Albany
priced like Blackhawk even though
they are on the Bay?
\_ The ability to move goods is an
intrinsic and rare value in a way
that a golf course is not. I am
amazed you cannot see that.
\_ Which benefits me as a
resident how?
\_ If you don't see how being
near jobs and commerce is
valuable, then there is no
way that it could be
explained to you.
\_ So SF is near jobs
and commerce, but
Walnut Creek is not?
\_ Blackhawk could be replicated
and it will. It costs a shitload
of money to start up however, and
there is significant risk that
it will be a failure, so there
aren't 1000's of wanna be
Blackhawks popping up.
\_ Why would it fail? It's so
easy to replicate.
\_ What is unique or interstng
about this home?
http://www.csua.org/u/j0m
Developers are in fact
building little gated
golf course communities
similar to Blackhawk everywhere.
The only reason that Blackhawk
is worth more is because it is
near San Francisco.
\_ I guess my answer is,
thanks to tom, "It is in
Blackhawk."
\_ That's no answer.
There's nothing in
Blackhawk except houses
and golf. -tom
\_ What is unique or interesting
about any random new condo
development in SF?
\_ Most places selling in
SF are not new condo
developments. Personally
I think people buying
in China Basin are crazy.
\_ It is in SF. -tom
\_ Emeryville and Albany don't
have huge houses and they're
not gated communities. The total
real estate value per acre is
almost certainly much higher
in those cities than in
Blackhawk. -tom
\_ The point here is that
well-heeled citizens who
have choices have voted with
their dollars and not in
favor of SF. That must
imply that there is some
benefit to living in a
place like Marin or
Blackhawk or Pebble Beach
over living in Nob Hill, at
least for many people.
\_ Funny, the million+ dollar
sf market is still going
strong. There's a serious
lack of supply for the insane
places (2m+?)but those still
sell fast fast fast.
\_ The market in Texas
is hot, too. So what?
\_ For $2M homes?
\_ Wrong. The top end market
in San Francisco is much
stronger than Blackhawk.
Marin is comparable perhaps.
Why did home prices in the
Blackhawk zip code drop 6.5%
and go up in The City?
\_ How many billionaires live
in Blackhawk? The City has
at least 20.
http://www.csua.org/u/j0n
\_ http://tinyurl.com/3cgruz
I am not sure why this
is relevant. Many
millionaires maintain
many homes. I can be
a lot less selective
when I own 5 houses
than if I own 1. Is
The Hamptons a better
place to live than
Manhattan? What if I own
places in both?
You don't see how this is a response to the-/
comment "The point here is that well-heeled
citizens who have choices have voted with
their dollars and not in favor of SF."
The billionaires, who are the most well
heeled and have the most choices, have
voted with thier dollars (and feet) and
it has been for Pac and Presidio Heights,
not Blackhawk.
\_ One person (or 13) does not create a market. If I'm a
billionaire I might own places in SF, London, NYC, Montana,
Hawaii, and Nebraska. What does that really mean? The fact is
that there are a lot of people who can afford to spend $4-5M+
for a house in SF, that live/work near SF, that also choose
not to be in SF proper.
\_ Forbes clearly has 20 SF billionaires on this list. I think
wiki is wrong, btw.
http://www.forbes.com/static/bill2005/state_California.html
And yes, not every rich person in the world chooses to live
in San Francisco, or even a city at all. Many Bay Area
billionaires live in Atherton or Palo Alto. Maybe you
should talk about Atherton being a unique and desirable
suburb, instead of Blackhawk.
\_ We can talk about Atherton if you want. Blackhawk was
just an example. If it makes you feel better to say Atherton
or The Hamptons then go for it.
\-I dont know where in the thread to put this, but you cannot
look at the ultra wealthy because they dont need to make
any tradeoffs. Usually you are trading of things like
square footage, close to work, swimming pool, back yard,
view, culture etc. If you are a billionaire, you can have
a swimming pool + view + yard + close to work + 2 car
garage (dunno about tenis court) in pac heights. But if
you budget is "only" say $1.5m then you are going to have to
order your priorities as you pick between Moraga and SF.
I remember looking at a place that was like $850k and didnt
have parking ... can you imagine spending 15min looking for
parking coming backto your $1m house? If they super wealthy
are constrained by physical issue and legal ones, not money.
So if you want a to live on a lake or high on a hill, then
SF doesnt work, or if you wnt to do something architec-
are constrained by physical issues and legal ones, not money,
which is the overwhelming "limiting reagent" for the rest
of us. So if you want a to live on a lake or high on a hill,
then SF doesnt work, or if you wnt to do something architec-
turally SF wont let you, or you dont want SF weather etc.
\_ This is the point I was trying to make. Also that when
Larry Ellison tires of SF fog he goes down to his Malibu
house. Does that mean he prefers an urban SF
lifestyle to life on a Montana ranch? No, it just
means he has enough money to go where the mood
strikes him. Aspen is a great place to own a house
when you want to ski and pick up snow bunnies before
jetting off to the Maui house. It's a crappy place to
live full-time for most of us. Is quality of life better
in Aspen than anywhere else? Not for most of us, but
prices don't reflect that. That is another example
of a city that is (to some extent) constrained by supply
rather than demand. Aspen isn't so expensive because
1,000,000 people want to live there. It's expensive
because 1,000 people that have the money want to own
a vacation house there and there are only, say, 500
such houses.
\- hello, you may enjoy reading about PECUNIARY
EXTERNALITIES ... a word everyone is going to
learn as the Plutocratization of Society continues.
Actually you may not enjoy reading about it.
\_ Translation: "Hello, I read XYZ and you didn't
so I know more than you. Actually, you're
too dense to read XYZ, so why don't you take
my word for it because I'm snooty and I know
better. See E GLAESER paper if you're this tall."
\- gee you really have a bug up your ass.
it's not an enjoyable read because it is a
depressing thought, not because it's hard
like say the theory of chromatic abberations.
EGLAESER not hard to read, however you may
be E_TOOSHORT.
\_ Translation: "Fuck you asshole. Shit,
I've been trolled!"
BTW, the quanlity of life probably is better in
Aspen because it is highly likely that people in
Aspen say dont have to worry about health care,
retirement, being outsourced, paying for kids educ,
they have autonomy in how they live their lives etc.
BTW, you can make places artificially expensive
by having things like minimum lot sizes ... so Aspen
probably has artificially kept down supply. This
may also apply to house prices all over. See E GLAESER
paper on this. |
| 2007/6/20-24 [Recreation/Travel, Reference/BayArea] UID:47022 Activity:kinda low |
6/20 I am on travel for work in Santa Clara from LA. I haven't actually
spent time down here (as opposed to Berkeley/SF) in about 12 years.
I have some questions and observations:
1. Why do people drive so slow here? The freeway is wide open and
people still go 65 in general.
\_ It's the cultural thing. In other countries, you can get
onto a freeway and take your sweet time to get to the cruising
speed in 20 seconds and no one is going to complain.
\_ On average people in LA drive a lot longer per commute than
people in N Cal. LA is much bigger with much more suburbs and
the highways are much more congested, so people tend to drive
in a way that minimized their time in traffic (as fast as
possible). Secondly LA has a Hummer/SUV/49er/I-love-foot-ball/my
bling bling is bigger/better/faster than you culture and people
have a tendency to drive a bit above speed limit (80-85 over the
70mph limit) vs. N Cal where they're driving at the speed limit.
In the end, time is money, and people will do what they can to
save time.
\_ Like none of this is true in the bay area? Riiiiiight.
\_ Sometimes a Prius ends up in the fast lane.
\_ Probably because it's not rush hour, and those that need to rush
to work usually drive during rush hour.
\_ I moved recently from SF to LA. I think it's more that people
in LA drive so fast and aggressively and have no patience.
This is the West Coast - we're all supposed to be laid back
I thought.
\_ Maybe, but if the lanes are open then why not go 80-85?
\_ If your average commute is only 15-25min a day (typical
Bay Area commute), the time savings between 65 and 85 is
minimal (with local traffic dominating your commute time).
So people just don't rush the way they do in LA. On the
other hand if you live in shitty suburbs like Riverside,
Azusa, Ontario, and the rest of the Inland Empire where
you need to spend 2-4 hours a day on shitty highways like
605 210 110 5 101 405 while you inhale dirty LA smog, then
yes, there is a lot more incentive to buy a nice comfy
luxurious car and try to go 80-85 when it is possible to
do so.
\_ They *do* go 85 here. Which freeways have you been
driving where they drive slower when there's open
road?
\_ 101 and 280 so far.
\_ People driving slow on 280? Damn last time
I was on 280 I was driving 85 and I was
the slowest car on the road.
\_ Dunno what to tell you. I have yet to be
passed by anyone the entire time I have
been here on any road.
\_ and I'm sure you have a large penis
\_ Not that I drive crazy fast. Everyone
else is just stuck at the speed limit.
Unheard of.
\_ Lots of cops.
\_ People here have a higher interest in perserving their
lives.
\_ Just because somebody *can* do something, it doesn't mean
they will or should do it. I'm finding the mentality of LA
drivers annoying.
\_ I have no idea where you're all getting the idea that LA
drivers are one iota different than SF Bay Area drivers.
\_ oh, I dont know, maybe it has something to do with the SPEED
LIMIT?
\_ What's that? It's annoying. Today everyone was doing 40
on the expressway. I looked at the sign. Yep. 40 was the
speed limit. WTF is wrong with people here? Does going
45 scare you?
2. What is that nasty smell? I thought it was my hotel, but I figured
out it's the air. Is it the Bay? It smells like warm, stale,
salty air. If it's the Bay, then why doesn't say, Marin smell
like this? Is there some sort of plant nearby? I can't stand it.
\_ Millions of unshowered people.
\_ No, seriously. There is a foul stench in the air. Surely
I am not the only one to notice this.
\_ Where? There are garbage dumps, salt ponds, and a couple
sewage facilities along the bay. Some parts of Milpitas
smell really bad.
\_ salt flats, they can smell really nasty if you're downwind of
them.
\_ It is pretty amusing that someone from the Inland Empire is
complaining about Bay Area air quality.
\_ 1. I'm not from the IE.
2. Nowhere in LA smells bad like this unless there's
some sort of industry nearby. It permeates everything.
3. Where is everyone? With about 100 Fortune 1000 companies nearby,
I expected to see a lot of hustle and bustle in the mornings.
It's like a ghost town. This is true for Mountain View, San
Jose, and so on. Not just Santa Clara. Lots of massive office
parks and not a person to be seen. Even the highways are
relatively empty.
\_ Everyone got laid off in 2001. Anyone who didn't now does the
work of 4 people.
\_ Which freeway were you on? There are tons of people on 85.
101 also clogs up beginning in the afternoon. There are tons
of people at certain hotspots... like Valley Fair/Santana Row
or Mtn View Castro St. There are a lot of dumpy areas that
nobody wants to hang around in.
\_ You should be used to this, coming from LA. Everyone gets
in their cars, drives to their destination, which is behind
a wall or smokey glass, then drives to their next destination.
There is no public space. If you want to see people, go to
the mall. This is just like LA, btw, except for the beach.
Welcome to the suburbs, where you don't have to interact
with anyone who is not exactly like you!
4. One more: Why does Live105 play almost exactly the same music
they did 12 years ago? I've listened to a few hours' worth at
various times of day and it's not that the music is bad, but
I'd say that only about 1/8 songs is actually newer than 5
years old. The DJs are hideous, BTW.
\_ Does LA have good radio stations? They have always been
shit and always play the same limited genres ad nauseum.
\_ No, LA has bad radio statons except for KKJZ. However,
they do play music from year 2006 and 2007. I appreciate
LA radio a lot more now.
\_ BTW, today's big ticket giveaways were Bob Saget
and NASCAR. On Live105. That is very scary.
\_ Bob Saget is actually pretty hilarious when he's not on
some family show like AFV or Full House. His bit in
The Aristocrats was the best.
\_ Yeah, yeah. He's foul-mouthed. How about tickets
to, I dunno, a show?
\_ Live 105 is owned by CBS, thus is incapable of innovation. -tom
\_ Zombies. They took over the radio stations years ago but no one
noticed. |
| 2007/6/3-5 [Reference/BayArea, Reference/History/WW2/Japan, Politics/Foreign/Asia/Japan] UID:46843 Activity:nil |
6/2 Ever since having okonomiyaki in Japan, I've been trying to find
a place in the Bay Area that serves it. Does anyone know of any
in the Silicon Valley?
\- i dont really like that stuff, on the other hand it isnt
very standarized, but you can look here for advisories in your
area: http://tinyurl.com/2u2soc sounds like japantown/sf isnt
what you are looking for.
\_ There used to be a place in SV, but they closed. Benihana's
stuff is fine for tourists but crap for anyone who's actually
eaten okonomiyaki in Japan. Sorry, no luck. --erikred
\_ I've frequented a okonomiyaki place for locals next to an NEC plant
in Yokohamai a decade ago. Very good. |
| 2007/5/21-24 [Academia/Berkeley/CSUA/Motd, Recreation/Dating, Reference/BayArea] UID:46712 Activity:kinda low |
5/19 Any other SF residents on the motd? My gf and I have both independently
pooing along the sewage around the city of late in random places.
I've heard the city has an antiquated sewage system in need of repair,
and I'm wondering if our poo smell has reached everyone. Anyone else
notice these smells? And yes, our poo is smellier than homeless
people. I know the smell of my own poo & Homeless (tm) quite well.
\_ You're smelling the decay of Western Society, is all.
\_ Yet one more reason why I don't live in the city.
\_ Yet one more useless response from the motd.
\_ Uh oh, Bitter Renting City Dweller strikes again!
\_ I haven't noticed anything, but I've been told that the Embarcadero
area south of market is built on top of huge holding ponds.
\_ The City is slowly tearing out all the old sewer pipes and
replacing them with new ones. They did my neighborhood last year.
I have noticed sewage smells near the North Point sewage plant
on the North Waterfront, near Fisherman's Wharf, but that has
been true for years. I don't think it is possible to make
a sewage plant that does not smell. If you happen to end
up by the big plant near India Basin, you will smell it too.
Sometimes it overflows into the streets of Hunter's Point on a
really rainy day, but I kind of doubt that you were hanging out in
the hood.
-ausman
\_ Thanks for a thoughtful response. This has been mostly in and
around Duboce Triangle, the Mission District, and parts of
Downtown. All of those are low-lying areas, which may make
a big difference in this case. -op
\_ There is no reason that I know of that you might smell
sewage in those places. Are you sure you just aren't
smelling unwashed bodies? -ausman
\_ when IT emerges from the sewers and proceeds to eat half
the city you'll know why. |
| 2007/5/15-17 [Reference/BayArea, Computer/HW/Printer] UID:46647 Activity:nil |
5/15 Does anyone know of a printer recycling place in the south bay?
\_ Have you ever watched Office Space?
\_ No.
\_ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQzIg0CPW5Q
\_ In Fremont (not South Bay): http://www.recycle1234.com They accepted my
9-pin printer and other stuff. They even paid me $2 for my old CRT
monitor, which is not advertised on the web site.
\_ You can drop stuff at the Sunnyvale Smart Station (google it)
\_ watch newspaper and such for ewaste recycling drives, usually at
schools |
| 2007/5/14-16 [Reference/BayArea] UID:46627 Activity:low |
5/14 vid of Critical Mass vs minivan in Berkeley.
I assume jnat took this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUoUF1JrS98
\_ The voice sounds like him. -tom
\_ And what an idiot. It's clear that the van is trying to escape
from the mob at this point, while the video labels it as "the
attack". Lesson learned. Carry a gun while riding through SF or
Berkeley so you can defend yourself against these nutjobs.
-emarkp
\- eping: i encourage you to drive around SF and
\- epong: i encourage you to drive around SF and
especially Berkeley armed. if it is not illegal
for me to do so, i will make a donation to the mormon
church for every critical mass person you beat down.--psb
\_ It's "emarkp", and I plan to if I ever go there again.
Though they're both such driver-hostile towns I hate
driving there. -emarkp
\- oh somebody else told me to call you eping, so
\- oh somebody else told me to call you epong, so
you have been "converted"
\_ I don't know who told you that, but I never asked to
be called that. -emarkp
\_ You can carry a gun legally in your car in CA as long as it
is not loaded or concealed. If you have a CCW, you can
carry legally, concealed and loaded. -emarkp
\- yes i know but frankly i'm not really interested in
your legal exposure. just how much it will cost me
based on your volume of beatdowns. --psb
\_ Ah, I misread your post. -emarkp
\_ Yeah that video was pretty lame... these idiots stuff their
bikes all around his car and... what, put little kids in front
of his bumper? I don't understand the crying kids. They were
probably just upset about the bikers yelling and swearing. So
of course the cameraman gratuitously films them... lol
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5301410
\_ Why carry a gun, emarkp, why not just run someone over, like
you car drivers do every single day in San Francisco? How many
people have cyclists killed or injured in the last decade? How
many have cyclists? If you are planning on assaulting someone,
please stay in your own town and commit crimes. We don't
want you here. -ausman
\_ USE LINUX! RIDE BIKE! SMASH KIDS! |
| 2007/4/16-18 [Reference/BayArea] UID:46309 Activity:nil |
4/16 Is "Oakeley" a new term referring to the Oakland/Berkeley area? I've
never heard of this term before, but I heard it three times this
morning in traffic news on KCBS AM 740.
\_ Oakley is a city out past pittsburgh that poor damned souls commute
\_ Pittsburg
from, to the bay area, maybe that's what they are referring to. |
| 2007/4/10-12 [Reference/BayArea] UID:46249 Activity:nil |
4/10 Looks like I am getting a phone screen with Riverbed in SF.
Anyone work there or know anything on them ?
\- there are plenty of berkeley people there, including sloda people.
\_ Two questions for Riverbed anyone who is reading:
I seemed to have passed the phone screen. And now they want
me to take some sort of quiz. What's the deal with that?
Also; the recruiter said " Please don't accept another job
until you follow through with our process here" -- does this
mean that they take forever to decide? Thanks |
| 2007/3/11-12 [Reference/BayArea] UID:45930 Activity:nil |
3/11 The Bedouins of SF:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/11/BEDOUINS.TMP
\- i dont think the bedouin metaphor really works. |
| 2007/3/8-11 [Recreation/Travel/LasVegas, Reference/BayArea] UID:45906 Activity:nil 88%like:45903 |
3/7 The Myth of "Superstar Cities"
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3xclv5 (joelkotkin.com)
\_ Well, it certainly is true that families seem to be getting out of
Livermore. (Not that it's a "superstar city") -jrleek
\_ We gotta get out of this place
If it's the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
Girl, there's a better life for me and you
Somewhere baby, somehow I know it
\_ When it comes down to it, people who have the means don't
generally want to live in Riverside or Charlotte. He addresses
this in his article. It's not like Charlotte is suddenly going
to grow to 10 million people and NYC will fall to 5 million.
All else being equal, people prefer NYC. Sometimes there are
inflows and sometimes there are outflows, but I think that
the 'superstar' cities are such for good a reason - mainly that
people like living there. That doesn't mean Miami, Las Vegas,
or Phoenix can't grow, but it's like saying that Riverside
has more to offer than London, Paris, or Tokyo because the growth
rate there is higher. As those smaller cities mature the rate
will slow and they won't have siphoned much from LA, SF,
Boston, or NYC. Can you imagine if SF cost the same as Houston?
How many people would move there in that scenario and drive
up prices again? Supply and demand. |
| 2006/12/16-17 [Reference/BayArea] UID:45456 Activity:nil |
12/16 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16225210 America's smartest cities (SF) \_ From observation, it seems better to be a big fish in a small pond. BTW, they really should have excluded 'college towns' from the list and looked at cities with populations of something like 500,000+. Seattle makes that list, for sure. Wow. Ithaca, NY. Corvallis, OR. Ann Arbor, MI. What big surprises. |
| 2006/11/2-4 [Reference/BayArea, Industry/Jobs] UID:45116 Activity:moderate |
10/2 Anybody ever used the "cost-of-living" salary calculators on the web?
I'm using the one on http://bestplaces.net and also on http://salary.com. They're
giving me vastly different numbers. Putting in a round number of
100,000 as salary in San Jose, CA, if I move to Houston, TX, the
http://salary.com web site shows that I would have to earn 64K. But the
http://bestplaces.net site shows that I'd have to earn 45K. Which site
to trust? And what is the source of these numbers? Neither site
says how they calculate these things. Thanks.
\_ Even accounting for all the excellent "life is about living" advice
given below, the calculators still do a very poor job of translating
from one city to another. Your rent in Houston may be lower but
other living expenses are static. A new car, computer, your next
vacation, utilities, clothing, and a ton of other things don't
change that much in price by location. The 45K number is garbage.
the 64K 'feels' very low. I wouldn't leave this area for 64k in
Texas even though the people there are nicer and living is easier.
I might think about 80k if it was a great job with great people I
knew and lots of upside. 90k would be more like it as a minimum
to go from here at 100k to there into random job. For me. Whatever
you do, you should definitely fly out there for a few days, drive
around, see what the city is like, talk to realtors, chat with the
locals, etc, before making any big decisions.
\- people have convex perferences generally but with something
like this people trade offs are wildly different. it may not
be hard to compare rent/mortgage for same square footage
of living space, but other factors are hard to compare both
for hard to capture intanglible reasons [i would much prefer to
drive bumper to bumper on the bay bridge for 45 or drive fast on
280 for 45 min than to drive medium speed on ugly 101 for 45min].
and even if some study could some how capture these factors,
you know your preferences better than other people. some people
would rather have a 2400sq ft house and a giant tv and swimming
\_ Are you talking about dim, aka the average American with
the typical big American dream of owning big SUVs, 4 children,
2 dogs, and a BBQ grills in the backyard?
\_ I hate dogs, kids, and SUVs. BBQ is fine. --dim
\_ I hate dogs, kids, and SUVs. BBQ is fine. --gay dim
\_ This is so
hilarious.
Don't quit
your day job.
pool in freeemont, others would rather live in 900ft space in sf
\_ Only Eurotrash aka I-Hate-America German John and Socialist
\_ Only Eurotrash aka I-Hate-America German John and anarchist
lafe like urban living. The average American hates urban living.
\_ Which is precisely why we urbanites love it. -dans
\_ Jawohl. And as to below, ditto here, but I can always
get out of the city. And when I do, I want to visit
nature, not Fresno. -John
\- i dont like "urban living" because it keeps me away
from suburbanites. i just like living a lot of my life
outside the house. i generally meet friends at a bar
or a restaurant or a cafe. rather than going
over to people's houses or having them over.
i think if you live in some place like danville
or the almaden valley you probably spend more
time at home with your "stuff" rather than going
out. i also eat out a lot. i'm not being judgemental
here, just suggesting the preferences here are
radically different. i dont get milage out of having
my car broken into or none of the movie theaters
having "plenty of free parking", but that's ok
with me. it's still worth it .. but might not
be for somebody who likes spending time at home
with the wife and kids and working in his garage
woodshop. note also, before peet's/starbucks, ranch99,
good standard bakeries, the current ubiquity of indian
and thair restaurants, amazon [for books] there was a
and thai restaurants, amazon [for books] there was a
lot of "diversity" not really available easily in
not lot of "diversity" easily available in
the 'burbs. obviously this has changed a lot in
berkeley/walnut creek/palo alto/freemont etc.
if you were going to do the exact same job, how much
would they have to pay you to move to stockon? bakesrfield?
fresno? would you move to fresno for a year for $50k
in "hazard" pay? [no offense slouie] .. i'd reject that
instantly. 50k wouldnt really change my life at all
but i think i'd be hating that year.
but i think i'd be hating that year. [althought i'd
be willing to spend 2 days there for $250].
and spend money on cocktails not plasma tv. so people living
in huston and manhattan are probably looking for different things,
so you cant take a static bundle and just price it in different
markets. i think what makes the most sense is to compare specific
places [say SF vs Manhattan or Chicago ... where you would be
holding "lifestyle" reasonably constant] or decide if your
priorities have changed and you want to change lifestyle ...
for example a house-owning mech eng i know in san jose has
decided to become an optometrist because she wants to live in
the sierra foothills. in some cases you can bite the bullet and
live a livestyle you dont want to live for a few years in return
for big dollars, but usually that involves moving to dubai or
iraq, not BF nowhere, USA. to move to houston i'd have to be paid
more cash, not be able to live better at my current salary ...
because you could not buy anything to compensate for living in
houston vs SF ... it would be a matter of saving the money for
future consumption. |
| 2006/10/27-29 [Reference/BayArea] UID:45008 Activity:kinda low |
10/27 http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/newrules_bubbleproof CNN says San Francisco is a bubble proof city. So if you have a home near SF you have reasons to celebrate. If you don't have one, you missed out. Oh well too bad! Tee hee hee -homeowner \_ You know what the difference is between you and me? If you're right or wrong, I'll be financially solvent either way--but if you're wrong, you'll be ruined and have to declare bankruptcy. Tee hee hee indeed. \_ Huh? \_ The Pascal's Wager of home ownership? Both rest on the assumption that you lose nothing by taking the "safe" course. \_ No, the motd Bay Area Housing Koolaid Brigaide are full of shit for the same reason Pascal was: Pascal assumes that there is either a Christian god or no god at all, and you assume that you either buy a house in the bay area or don't own a home and take no risks. Fuck the Bay Area, fuck Christianity, fuck Blaise Pascal, and fuck you. \_ How's capitalism treating you lafe? \_ If the argument is "The Bay Area, like a few isolated places in the US is bubble proof" then buying in a non bubble proof area is worse, so if not buying is better than buying in SF then not buying is much better than buying in a non bubble proof area. You may not agree with that concept, but it isn't the same situation as "there might be a non christian god" \_ It's much simpler that that. 1) design circuit, build circuit, test circuit 2) goddamn fucking circuit does not work as designed 3) unleash free-floating rage on the motd \_ My Bay Area home is up by $1/2M since I bought it five years ago. You reek of sour grapes. \_ dang, you bought a $2 million house five years ago? (50% appreciation =~ $1M). \- Maybe he meant $0.5M or $500K. \_ I've been looking in SF recently, prices in SF and Oakland have softened. \_ SF is affected by interest rates like everywhere else. |
| 2006/10/5-7 [Reference/BayArea, Consumer/CellPhone, Consumer/PDA] UID:44699 Activity:nil |
10/5 The World Can't Wait protest is outside the Federal Building in SF
right now. Pictures taken on treo through binocs here:
/csua/tmp/worldcantwait/
http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~erikred/worldcantwait.html |
| 2006/10/4-6 [Reference/BayArea] UID:44661 Activity:nil |
10/4 Pot dealing in SF really lucrative:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/04/BAGEULHUPK1.DTL
\_ with just a few occupational hazards. |
| 2006/9/29-10/1 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley] UID:44599 Activity:nil |
9/29 The Berkeley Juggling and Unicycle Festival starts today.
http://berkeleyjuggling.org/festival2006
Free workshops and open gym all weekend (5PM Friday to 5PM Sunday),
variety show (hosted by Frank Olivier) Saturday 7:30 ($10 admission,
$5 kids). King Middle School, 1781 Rose Street, north Berkeley. -tom |
| 2006/9/16-19 [Reference/BayArea] UID:44405 Activity:nil |
9/16 Same job, different cities, different pay. SF wins. Yay!
http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/14/pf/mercer_pay_differences |
| 2006/8/10-14 [Reference/BayArea] UID:43964 Activity:kinda low |
8/10 I have a friend who is a male CS grad student looking for a sublet
from 08/17-09/14 in Berkeley, Oakland, or San Francisco. Let me
know if you know of anything. Thanks. --srgordon
\_ Try this new, funky site called http://craigslist.org. --computer genius
\_ cthis person may be looking on CL ... this is
\_ This person may be looking on CL ... this is
quite reasonable to ask on sloda. You have been
classified as: sub-genius
\_ Here is your pipe. Hail, Bob!
\_ Huh huh. He said "pipe." Huh huh. -beavis |
| 2006/7/27-28 [Reference/BayArea, Computer] UID:43816 Activity:nil |
7/27 http://csua.org/u/gjr Is this a good deal for deep-frying occasionally for a dinner for two? Has anyone used this type of "safe" fryer before? Is 2.4L too small? \_ we have and use one of those T-FAL deep fryers. Note that the cost of the oil is significant over time, and the cleanup is a chore afterward. Still, for home deep frying its great! -ERic |
| 2006/7/26-27 [Reference/BayArea] UID:43809 Activity:nil |
7/26 i'm looking for a 'avenging unicorn' toy, you can order
it online from Archie McPhee, but I want to just go buy it
somewhere in sf/oakland/berkeley. any ideas where?
\_ My Little Pony: Apocalypse Ponies!
\_ Try Dr. Comics & Mr. Games in Oakland. |
| 2006/7/25-26 [Reference/BayArea] UID:43802 Activity:nil |
7/25 Hey I want to buy one of these in the SF
Bay area, not mail order:
http://www.wishingfish.com/avgunicorn.html
suggestions? |
| 2006/7/5-7 [Reference/BayArea] UID:43576 Activity:nil |
7/5 I've had really bad experiences with Kaiser and I'm no longer going
to select any HMOs from now on. I have two remaining choices--
Blue Shield PPO or or Cigna Open Access Plus Plan. What are the
pros and cons of each choice?
\_ I've had both, but your individual plan may vary. I prefer
Blue Shield, because it is accepted just about everywhere.
However, they are picky sometimes about needing to approve
services before they are rendered. CIGNA was okay, but I've
heard bad things.
\_ Do you mind sharing your experience with Kaiser? I've had
them for a long time and have had no complaints thus far.
\- BTW, which Kaiser was your leem experience at? I think
I can now say at a statistically significant level the
OAK Kaiser is consderably inferior to South Bay Kaiser
and possibly SF as well [still collecting SF data].
[note: this doesnt include any serious procedures requiring
hospitalization ... mostly internal medicine or getting
stichted up].
\_ If you have the right PCP, Blue Shield HMO works well.
\_ Dude, I didn't know you liked to get wet.
\_ White people love Wayne Brady because
he makes Bryant Gumbel look like
Malcolm X.
\_ What white people? What race are
you? Would you mind if some
mindlessly racist and stereotyped
posts are made about your skin
color? Thanks, just checking.
\_ Google: dave chapelle
\_ Reasons I hate Dave Chapelle:
1) People look at me strange
when I sing the theme song
to "The Niggar Family"
2) The previous poster.
\_ Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ, even
Wayne Brady jokes about this
and has been in skits about it.
\_ Kaiser is great as long as you're not sick. |
| 2006/6/30-7/3 [Reference/BayArea] UID:43535 Activity:nil |
6/29 Interesting US cultural maps:
This one illustrates regional divisions based on what cities
people consider their cultural and economic center. I guess the SF bay
area is confused because you have strong pulls from different
directions (SF versus San Jose or "silicon valley")
http://www.commoncensus.org/maps.php
Kind of related: soda vs. pop vs. coke
http://www.popvssoda.com/countystats/total-county.html |
| 2006/6/29-7/3 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley, Recreation/Sports] UID:43522 Activity:nil |
6/29 Anyone know of a place around berkeley to buy Replica Soccer Jerseys? |
| 2006/6/12-15 [Reference/BayArea, Transportation/Bicycle, Recreation/Stripclub] UID:43368 Activity:nil |
6/12 SF naked bike ride. My eyes...the goggles do nothing!
http://www.zombietime.com/world_naked_bike_ride_2006
\_ Interestingly enough you have posted a link that does not
appear on the main page of the zombie time site at
http://www.zombietime.com . How did you do that? - danh
\_ Got it off a blog.
\_ I was really hoping zombietime dude had a soda account. - danh |
| 2006/6/12-15 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/OtherSchools] UID:43367 Activity:nil |
6/12 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13278190 Seattle is smarter than San Francisco. \_ These comparisons are idiotic. Where does Cambridge (home to MIT and Harvard both) rate? Is it more important to have 100 MIT grads people or 200 U of Florida grads in your community? What if the U of F people also have Master's and the MIT people do not? What difference does it make if the community in question is 1000 individuals versus 2000? In short, there is no way to quantify "best educated" let alone what it might mean in terms of impact to a community. \_ hey, it's All Surveys Are Worthless Guy! \_ who? \_ emarkp's follower \_ Wha? The trolls are becoming more nonsensical! \_ Dunno, but he's making himself happy doing it so whatever. It's harmless. |
| 2006/6/7-9 [Reference/BayArea, Recreation/Dating] UID:43307 Activity:nil |
6/7 I'm a noob to theater, but I have a GF that likes it, and will
be coming to the bat area to spend some time with me next month.
Any recommendations of something that will be good, but could
be appreciated by someone without much exposure to this sort
of thing.
\- I think theater means different things to different people ...
althought some have broad interests. First there is "literary"
theater vs popular theater [Hamlet vs. Pajama Game]. Next, are
you looking for high quality, evening on the town, expensive
productions [ACT, +$30tix] or cheep stuff in small theaters
[cost of the movie, sometimes version of well known plays, other
times you're picking based on plot/reviews]. You could try one of
the (free) shakespeare in the parks or shakespeare at stinson
[although hamlet may not be the best choice ... taming of the
shrew is pretty user friendly]. I'm exlcuding Opera, symphony but
including musicals. Given your parameters, do not under any
circumstances see the Oresteia.
\_ Taming of the Shrew, with a GF, is a bad choice. A lot of
'modern' women don't like it because the whole point of the
\- oh jesus. and part of the idea is making a
day out of it going out to stinson etc. is anybody
around here putting on 'Ado or 12N?
play is how Petruchio de-shrewifies Katarina... which women
will claim is misognyist. Though it's arguable, just beware.
Instead, go for Much Ado About Nothing or Twelfth Night;
both are some of the better comedies, and will please
everyone --michener
\_ The Exit theatre (http://www.sffringe.org tends to have
interesting productions for a small theatre. I tend not to like
ACT because the productions aren't worth the price of admission.
The SF Opera is actually pretty good, and you can get either
student or standing room tickets for really cheap if you're
willing to stand in line at 10 in the morning the day of.
\_ The Berkeley Rep has reliably good productions. See what its
current crop of plays is at the moment. -dans
\- i am actually interested in seeing moliere: miser. anybody seen
in and have a review? i dont think berkeley rep is that great.
the best thing i've seen on this side of the bay was probably
the shotgun player's version of Shaw's Man and Superman which
was quite good.
\_ The Shotgun Players aren't in the same league as the Berkeley
Rep. -dans |
| 2006/5/4-7 [Reference/BayArea] UID:42941 Activity:nil |
5/4 Anyone know where to watch Pride Final Conflict in the Bay Area?
\_ 920 Keeler Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94720. Call 510-527-2588
for more information.
\_ I have a friend who used to live in that house. Weird. |
| 2006/4/26-27 [Reference/BayArea, Recreation/Stripclub, Health] UID:42842 Activity:nil |
4/26 Naked man in chimney in Hayward
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/14406818.htm
\_ I believe consenting adults have the right to be naked in their own
chimeneys.
\_ So a side note in there is "booked at the (jail) on suspicion of
being under the influence of drugs" So if possessing or using
illegal drugs is, well, illegal, how do celebrities officially get
away with "and now I'm in cocaine rehab at Betty Ford" w/out ever
being charged w/ a crime for drug use? Is the official answer
"they're too important for that"?
\_ When celebrities get fucked out of their minds and find
themselves naked, stuck somewhere they can't get out of, they
don't call the fire department/police/what-have-you.
\_ Better lawyers. Short of a chemical test of some sort, which a
a better lawyer will advise you not to consent to, it's kind of
hard to prove you, um, inhaled.
\_ Being in rehab for drug X isn't admission of guilt?
\_ Nope. More to the point, it's not enough evidence to
warrant charges.
\_ I don't think people who voluntarily go to rehab generally
get arrested. |
| 2006/4/4 [Reference/BayArea] UID:42654 Activity:moderate |
4/4 Hey City Utopia guy, let's say you've matured and have outgrown your
needs to socialize with your friends and have PS2 LAN parties. Let's
say you get a real job, settle down, get married, have kids, and
buy a minivan. Are you still going to live in the city? Where
are your kids gonna play? Where are you gonna park your minivan?
Where would you go when your baby cries 12x7? Where would you
\_ Hit the baby in the head with a shovel
hide when your wife start nagging 24x7?
\_ Go fuck yourself.
\_ The issues you're describing are not unique to cities, and
suburbs are not immune to them.
\_ Plenty of people raise kids in cities. It's not that hard.
\_ Yes but city kids tend to do drugs or become gay.
\_ Do you have any evidence of this?
\_ The best evidence possible: word of God through Falwell's
lips...
\_ Berkeley is a suburb of SF, right?
\_ so Oakland is chopped liver?
\_ Do more Berkeley residents work in Oakland or SF? Either
way, Berkeley is a suburb. I wonder if Berkeley would be
acceptable to City Utopia guy.
\_ "There's no 'there' there" |
| 2006/3/25-26 [Reference/BayArea] UID:42428 Activity:nil |
3/25 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060325/ap_on_re_us/life_on_the_fault Anyone live on the Hayward fault line? \_ Yup. |
| 2006/3/24-25 [Reference/BayArea, Health/Men] UID:42405 Activity:nil |
3/23 "Game Of Shadows"... I didn't learn much more than what I read
in the ESPN and SF Chronicle articles, except for
details of Vince Conte's life (He was in Tower Of Power?)
and the grand jury questioning Barry Bonds' 'bay area girlfriend'
about the size of his testicles (they heard heavy steroid
use could shrink them). She testified they were normal
sized. I thought Barry Bonds was a giant ass before all
the steroid testimony came out, and the book did not change
my opinion. |
| 2006/3/22-25 [Reference/BayArea] UID:42385 Activity:nil |
3/22 What's a good place to buy tire chains in or near Berkeley?
\_ any auto store
\_ Update: I called about 6 places. Only Berkeley Firestone and Autozone
in Oakland have them for $50 and $60 respectively. |
| 2006/3/10-13 [Politics/Domestic/California, Reference/BayArea] UID:42178 Activity:nil |
3/10 Looking for data that supports the claim from the 10/13 motd that
Bay Area prostitution is decreasing. I can't find anything that
supports this claim.
For reference: http://csua.org/u/f70
\_ Look at http://www.dof.ca.gov/HTML/DEMOGRAP/E-5text2.htm . That'll
have the raw numbers. I'm too lazy to do the math myself, but I
like to see the answer after you've figured it out.
\_ You're going to have a hard time finding hard data since there
really isn't any. The census is once per 10 years, it's self
reporting and then they further manually munge the data to fit
their idea of who they think should be there. There are other
methods that take place on a local level but they're not that
accurate either. Until everyone gets RFID'd, processed, scanned,
enumerated, and entered in the computer, these numbers will always
just be guesstimations at best. IMO, it's better that way.
\_ http://tinyurl.com/l4j5n (was declining)
http://tinyurl.com/m4sf3 (now rising a bit)
\_ http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-07-10-topstrip-usat_x.htm |
| 2006/3/8-9 [Reference/BayArea, Reference/History/WW2/Japan] UID:42144 Activity:high |
3/8 Boom!
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html
\_ Man, ground-level really zuuls the range on those puppies.
I actually feel much safer now re: the oakland docks nuke-in-a-crate
scenario. The fallout would still be a bitch, of course.
\_ No wonder the US/Russia made so many nukes. The 15psi radius
doesn't destroy enough land.
\_ The default is for a 100KT blast (similar to Hiroshima). Try
changing that to 5 megatons. -tom
\_ hiroshima was only 14kT. Most strategic nukes are around
200kt, with the big 5MT+ ones for 'bunker busting'. 200kt
is really all most military targets justfiy anyway.
\_ Great. When I switch the city to SF, it's centered about two
blocks from my house. -sax
\_ You won't suffer.
\_ Ooh, there's an interesting one. If you knew something bad
was going to happen, and you could choose between a 100%
chance of instant, painless, you'd never-know-when death
or a 90% chance of painful, horrible, lingering death (10%
chance of decent survival), which would you choose?
\_ You should read Dr. Bloodmoney.
\_ I would definitely choose the 10% survival. After all,
I could kill myself if it sucked too much. Besides, I
would get to be on all sorts of wacky narcotics. And,
just maybe, I would turn into a MUTANT! \m/ fuck yeah! \m/
\_ Maybe you would get x-ray vision and be able to fly.
\_ the FURIOUS's ability will increase x10 |
| 2006/3/1-4 [Reference/BayArea] UID:42046 Activity:nil |
3/1 Because I'm insane, I took on another project. I'll be singing
a minor role in Tosca with SF Lyric Opera this weekend and next
at the theatre in the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. It should
be a pretty good show. http://sflyricopera.org/season.html
--scotsman
\_ wow, how long did you need to practice/rehearse for this role?
\_ About 2 weeks... Italian's easy to memorize, though. |
| 2006/2/20-23 [Reference/BayArea] UID:41931 Activity:nil |
2/20 Ride Bike!
http://csua.berkeley.edu/~tom/tourofca.jpg
Tomorrow is Martinez to San Jose, including Bear Creek Road (Mama
Bear only), Happy Valley, Pinehurst (south fork), Redwood, Palomares,
Calaveras. Lots of great viewing places along there. -tom
\_ Today 2/22, 17-mile time trial in San Jose. -tom |
| 2006/2/16-17 [Reference/BayArea] UID:41886 Activity:nil |
2/16 San Francisco...in Jello:
http://www.lizhickok.com/assets/portfolio/pages/01city.html -John
\_ I think I heard about this on Forum. Is this the Exploratorium
exhibit? --scotsman
\_ Upcoming shows/exhibits by the artist:
http://www.lizhickok.com/upcoming.html
It's definitely showing at the Exploratorium on April 1. -dans |
| 2006/2/10-13 [Reference/BayArea] UID:41790 Activity:nil |
2/10 history of the SF BURRITO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Burrito - danh
\_ From a linked page:
Even the legendary taquerias are changing. "In '79 and '80, Anglo
families were chased out of taquerias. There was no way there was
gonna be any gentrification back then," says Felipe Velez, an
assistant teacher at Real Alternatives Program high school. But now
even the taquerias are changing. "At El Castillito, they're wearing
uniforms now," Velez says. "They're charging for chips and salsa. I
will shoot my son and daughter if they ever order a green burrito."
OK, seriously, this reminds me of "I remember back when women weren't
allowed out of the house. I'd beat my wife if she ever asked for
anything" And this is a teacher!
Even the legendary taquerias are changing. "In '79 and '80,
Anglo families were chased out of taquerias. There was no way
there was gonna be any gentrification back then," says Felipe
Velez, an assistant teacher at Real Alternatives Program high
school. But now even the taquerias are changing. "At El
Castillito, they're wearing uniforms now," Velez says. "They're
charging for chips and salsa. I will shoot my son and daughter
if they ever order a green burrito." OK, seriously, this reminds
me of "I remember back when women weren't allowed out of the
house. I'd beat my wife if she ever asked for anything"
And this is a teacher!
\_ http://www.sfbg.com/37/11/x_cheap_eats.html
"El Castillito charges for chips now too, 75 cents,
just like El Farolito, only at least El Farolito gives
you a fairly generous amount. El Castillito gave me a
handful or so, wedged into the same basket as the
burrito. Fuck that shit. If I'm paying separately for a
burrito and chips, I want a basket for the burrito and a
basket for a whole basketful of chips.
Add it up: $3.48, 75c, 75c, $1.15, that's $6.13. (Same
exact meal used to add up to $4.20 in the not-so-distant
glory days.) Then the guy behind the cash register
rolled his eyes when I handed him a twenty, asked all
aggravatedly if I had anything smaller.
Yeah, man. I did. I had a five." -tom |
| 2006/2/1-3 [Reference/BayArea] UID:41631 Activity:nil |
2/1 Western Union finally discontinues Telegram services.
http://www.westernunion.com/info/osTelegram.asp
\_ Re: telegraph jokes (stop)
Please (stop) |
| 2006/1/22-24 [Reference/BayArea] UID:41476 Activity:moderate |
1/21 SF schools better than San Jose or even Berkeley:
http://csua.org/u/eqe
\_ Who said SJ or "even" Berkeley had great schools? Anyway, the
other problem with SF that compounds the distribution problem
mentioned below is that you don't have a choice which school your
kid goes to. You could easily end up with your child having an
hour+ commute each way to HS every day to a shitty school.
\_ What the FUCK? Could you provide either and explanation or
a link to an explanation for those of us who've never lived
in SF please? Is this random selection at all merit based?
\_ I think the pp is talking about http://csua.org/u/eqo .
I notice that geographical proximity to the school is not
part of the Diversity Index Lottery calculation. Worse,
the academic preformance of the sending school is. So if
you get screwed once on the school you're assigned to, the
screwing will tend to continue as you continue to make your
way through the school system.
\_ Wow. I'm speechless at the level of stupidity here. Isn't
this what they tried in Boston in the late 60's which led
to a parent revolt? Wasn't this the wedge issue that helped
Nixon win the 72 election?
\_ Remember this thread started with a claim that parents
are leaving SF partly for educational reasons. Would
you put your kids in the SFUSD?
\_ I didn't really pay attention to how the thread
started. And hell no. If I had kids, I wouldn't
even consider taking part in what ammounts to a
communist/fascist approach to education, just on
principle, even if my kids were allowed to go
to the best school. I didn't realize just how
far off the deep end of communist ideology the fucks
who ran SF were.
\_ Seconded. I have a friend who has a 2 year old daughter; they
live in Noe Valley across the street from an elementary school.
If SF lets her go to that school, she's a public school kid.
If not, it's private school. Driving her to Bayview every day ...
not going to happen.
\_ There's some quote about lies and statistics, I think. The problem
with SF high schools is the distribution, not the average. Out of
15 SF high schools, 5 have a ranking of 2 or 1 (out of a possible
max of 10). http://csua.org/u/eqf
\_ Although, to be fair, the top 5 enrollment high schools in SF
had rankings (in enrollment order) of 9, 10, 9, 6, and 5. The
low-scoring schools are generally smaller. You can't punish SF
for the performance of Newcomer High.
\_ Well, it does matter, insofar as Lincoln and Washington
(the 2 9's in your list of large schools) are highly impacted
and Lowell (the 10) has a separate application process. Many
students are therefore shunted to mediocre or worse schools.
\_ Isn't that common knowledge? Since when were San Jose or Berkeley
known for having top high schools? |
| 2006/1/12-17 [Reference/BayArea] UID:41362 Activity:nil |
1/12 Anyone has one of those old-style mailboxes at home that are made of
thin sheet metal and has a lock? How likely is my mail going to get
stolen? Is it worthwhile replacing it with aluminum ones, like the $60
Mailsafe made by http://www.thesolargroup.com
\_ I've never even heard of mail getting stolen outside of Berkeley.
\_ There are many other bad neighborhoods in the Bay Area: East
Oakland, East Palo Alto, San Leandro, ... |
| 2005/12/29-30 [Reference/BayArea, Computer/SW/OS/Windows] UID:41172 Activity:nil 65%like:41180 |
12/29 Any recommendations for data recovery software for FAT/NTFS
for restoring deleted files or corrupted filesystems?
Any recommendations for hard disk data recovery services in
the bay area around berkeley? |
| 2005/12/21-23 [Reference/BayArea, Politics/Domestic/Crime] UID:41109 Activity:low |
12/21 I understand that the transit strike is causing huge headaches in
NYC, but I don't get how a Judge can impose fines on the strikers
if the strike itself is legal. Help?
http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/ap/2005/12/21/ap2408180.html
\_ "for the illegal strike" Umm.. it's not legal.
\_ http://www.goer.state.ny.us/cna/bucenter/taylor.html
http://csua.org/u/eee (cornell.edu)
\_ eee!
The Taylor Law, passed in 1967, prohibits public employees in the
state of New York from going on strike, instead requiring management
and the union to ultimately settle their differences via binding
arbitration conducted by a neutral third party.
\_ Thank you, that's very informative. -op
\_ I lived in NYC and have little sympathy for the MTA workers.
Having said that, If you remove the power of strike from Union,
you are essentially remove the only teeth Union has, no?
\_ Fuck 'em.
\_ Are they allowed to quit? Is slavery legal again?
\_ in the good old days, we have no minimum wage,
no minimum age, and labor union was illegal.
Are you saying that we should go back to those days
and let iron hand of wages to do its work?
\_ Union members are allowed to terminate the employment,
while the employers aren't. Is that fair?
\_ Misrepresentation of facts. Employers are allowed to
terminate employment; they are simply required to
follow strict guidelines to ensure that they do so
in a socially just manner (i.e., not just because
you wouldn't sleep with them).
\_ isn't it fair if both sides go to binding arbitration? |
| 2005/12/12-14 [Reference/BayArea] UID:40966 Activity:nil |
12/12 12:12
\_ It's now 1:01 1/1/11111 in the Antoxyphon calendar.
\_ Your search - Antoxyphon - did not match any documents. |
| 2005/11/11-14 [Reference/BayArea] UID:40545 Activity:nil |
11/11 Article in this month's California about a book about the
1906 SF quake and how the death of the SF fire chief
died, so the Army showed up and started mortaring
and burning buildings in SF in a misguided effort to
save it.
http://tinyurl.com/9qe7h
\_ That strategy survived and was used in Fallujah many years later |
| 2005/11/9-11 [Reference/BayArea] UID:40519 Activity:nil |
11/9 I was thinking of getting a job in the berkeley area and finishing
my degree at UCB. What are some good tech companies in the area that
maybe have IT positions?
\_ In Berkeley, San Jose, or the bay area in general?
\_ Berkeley, Emeryville. Close enough to easily get to campus for
classes.
\_ There are some tech companies in Alameda like Wind River, RGB
Spectrum.
\_ what kind of IT?
\_ what will your degree be in?
\_ http://hotjobs.com
\_ What skills do you have (and don't say crossbow)? |
| 2005/10/31-11/2 [Reference/BayArea, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:40360 Activity:low |
10/31 Mass graves uncovered in San Francisco:
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=3589212
\_ dead people don't deserve rights! taking up valuable real estate
anyway.
\_ must be work of Saddam Hussin
\_ nice design, God!
\_ must be work of Saddam Hussin
\_ News Flash: UN Inspectors ordered in to investigate mass graves in
SF. Bush administration denounces Newsom's stuuborn refusal to
produce evidence of destruction of chemical weapons. |
| 2005/10/25-26 [Reference/BayArea, Transportation/Airplane] UID:40255 Activity:low |
10/25 I'm going to be singing at Carnegie Hall and Wintergarden in November.
The preview shows are this weekend in SF and Berkeley. Come check it
out.
http://www.pacificmozart.org/calendar
Also, this will be my first trip to NYC. Is there anything I must not
miss? I'll be there a little over a week, so I should have time to fit
in some good wandering. --scotsman
\_ Will you be doing any performances in the SFBA around the end of
December? I'm dead curious :-) -John
\_ NYC sucks. All cities suck. All that traffic, pollution,
and rude people. Stay in the suburbs, it's better for you.
\_ Funny, there's no Carnegie hall in the suburbs...
\_ Does anyone else feel the quality of trolls has gone down since
the amckee apocalypse?
\_ What happened? I read in the minutes that amckee resigned,
but there was no explanation from either him or the
secretary why.
\_ Because he made a very public ass of himself.
http://home.lbl.gov/~psb/Articles/CSUA
http://home.lbl.gov:8080/~psb/Articles/CSUA
\- lobster bisque at the soup nazi. and maybe a few egg cremes.
my associates liked Ave Q.
\_ I was just there (first trip) last week. I really liked the
Lower East Side and Chelsea/Hell's Kitchen. Soho was nice too.
\- you really should grab a NYker and look at the front
to see what is going on "about town". it's hard to give
advice without knowing if you are interested in seeing
a band, a photo exhibit, illuminated manuscripts etc.
see what special exhibits are going on at the gug, icp,
the big museusm etc. oh i also sort of like the cloisters.
\_ We were going to try to book the cloisters as a 4th venue,
but they couldn't fit us.
\_ The Village is the place to hang. Late night jazz in basement
clubs. John's Pizza on Bleeker. A trip up to Central Park
and either the Guggenheim or the MOMA (the Guggenheim is worth
it just for the building). Some sort of theater, on or off
Broadway. Theater and musems are the areas where NYC really
kicks the Bay Area's ass.
Side note: When I was a kid, my family once had to ask someone on
the street, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?", but the guy didn't
take the straight line.
Congratulations! -tom
\_ We were going to try to book the cloisters as a 4th venue,
but they couldn't fit us.
\_ Pick up a Time Out New York for listings of
concerts/museums/etc. If you are a foodie, it may be worth
your while to buy/borrow a Zagat's Guide.
\_ Was just there for the first time a couple weeks ago.
Don't see The Producers (not as good as you think).
Central Park is nice if you're with a girl.
I really liked Menchanko-Tei's (43-45 W 55th St) basic lunch
ramen -- better than any I've had in West L.A. or Little Tokyo L.A.,
also about $7-10, and comfy atmosphere.
\_ last i checked [3 weeks ago], menchanko-tei is on 45th,
east of lexington, on the north side
\_ i also liked sapporo, 49th st between 6th and 7th aves
\_ The Tasting Room is awesome. -John
\_ Congratulations! |
| 2005/10/14 [Reference/BayArea] UID:40083 Activity:nil |
10/14 SF deyoung opening back up in SF this weekend, it's
open for free this weekend for 31 hours continuously
from 10AM sat to 5pm sunday,
which I think is a pretty cool gimmick.
http://www.thinker.org/deyoung/visiting/index.asp - danh |
| 2005/10/1-3 [Reference/BayArea] UID:39941 Activity:nil |
9/30 Union City to refund money for red-light tickets:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/localnews/ci_3058409 |
| 2005/8/19-22 [Reference/BayArea] UID:39186 Activity:nil |
8/19 Explosion on Post and Kearney in SF; probably a transformer:
http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_231131708.html
\_ autobot or decepticon?
\_ Okay, I laughed. |
| 2005/8/18-22 [Reference/Tax, Reference/BayArea] UID:39157 Activity:low |
8/17 I went to Seattle for the first time in my life, and I have to say
it really blows. The city traffic sucks as badly as SF, and the
freeways are almost as congested as Los Angeles. The freeway signs
are really fucked up and curves too much to be newbie friendly.
The mass transit doesn't take you anywhere. The $1.75 ticket for a 1
mile stretch on the famous Seattle Monorail is utterly pointless.
What's up with the Space Needle? It is expensive, the queue is over
1 hour, and it's really stuffy & crowded. When you leave the city,
1/2 of the roads have huge pot-holes and many don't even have
signs, or have old signs that you can barely read. It's near
impossible to drive and read the map at the same time, since
the roads curve a lot and the signs suck. It's funny my flawless
GPS failed ***three times*** to take me to the right places
in downtown Seattle; it gets confused. One of the bridges
closed down so I had to fucking drive 5 hours around the bay
from Port Angeles to the city. And the weather? It is fucking
90 degrees. Food is mediocre. Bay Area is so much better.
Sleepless in Seattle? That's right. Fucking lame city.
\_ Everyone I know who loves Seattle, happens to be hiking and
camping fanatics. They can never stop talking about how close
they are to great camp-sites and all that crap. I am somewhat
disabled so I don't really give a shit about hiking, or
Seattle for that matter. Bay Area is still beats Seattle
in terms of food, traffic, weather, and career opportunity.
\_ You are correct. You should stay away from Seattle. That much is
absolutely clear. In fact, you should consider not even visiting.
-- ulysses
\_ Good riddance.
\_ Good riddance. There's nothing native seattles like more than to
see Californians go home.
\_ the proximity to mt. ranier, olympia nat'l park, etc. are nice
but otherwise it is just another crowded city.
\_ Still want to visit Seattle. Where is a good yet cheap place to
stay? Ideally within walking distance of shops, cafe's, etc.
\_ I did exactly that, I tried to get something cheap and close
to the Market. The only thing I got was a $120 hotel with
a $12 parking fee/day, the garage was a HUGE 45 degree hill
\- have you ever
been on a 45deg
"hill"? it was
probably not more
than 12deg.
\_ For reference,
the steepest
streets in SF
are about 32%
[18 degrees]_/
(Lombard is
closer to 40,
[22 degrees]_/
but uses the
switchbacks)
And according
to wikipedia,
the steepest
hill in SEA
is 21%, E. Roy
[12 degrees]_/
Street.
from the hotel, and the Market was 10 blocks aways. It turned
out to be 10 HUGE blocks, with 30 degree hills all the way.
The place is called The Virginia Mason Inn. According to
Google Map and my GPS it's right by the ocean. It's not.
It's pretty hard to find anything under $150, within 10 blocks,
and is good. In fact Virginia Mason smells like a hospital. I
think they converted it to an Inn a few years ago. Anyways,
I booked 3 days with them, and I totally regret it. The city
is small and you'll pretty much see everything in one day.
There's no need to torture yourself by living closer to it.
\_ We ended up booking the Crowne Seattle in downtown. $129
per night. But something like 15% hotel tax will be added.
\_ Hey, no state income tax. I visited in 1998, and there were trees
everywhere and home prices were lower than that in the BA back then.
\_ No state income tax = no money for mass transit or basic
infrastructures.
\_ I don't have any facts, but maybe Microsoft generates enough
tax income like Vegas is with the Casinos?
\_ I visited in July. Don't forget the stench of coffee everywhere.
You can't swing a cat by its tail without hitting two Starbucks.
\_ I have been many times to Seattle. It's okay. The weather sucks.
The 90 degree days aren't bad, but the cold, wet, and dark (short
days) winters are unbearable. It's kind of a manufacturing town
and I don't find it beautiful. It is odd to see so many
redheaded people, though. There are worse places to be, but I
don't like it too much, especially now that it is expensive to
boot. You could buy a big, brand new house there for $150K 12
years ago and it seemed almost worth it then. Same house is
$500K+ now and not worth it at all. I'm a California snob,
though. Whether it's San Diego, Santa Barbara, LA, SF, or
wherever I find I like CA better than anywhere else.
\_ Yeah, I'd love to stay in SF, but the housing is too $$$.
We need a one bread-winner mortgage and a decent quality of
life.
\_ follow-up: what neighborhoods near Seattle have decent
housing prices, and walking neighborhoods (shops, cafes,
etc)? I would like to avoid suburban sprawl, Wal-Marts,
and so forth, and prefer independent establishments.
Basically your good old-fashioned main street. |
| 2005/7/30-8/2 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley/CSUA/Troll/Jblack] UID:38888 Activity:moderate |
7/30 Almost without fail, whenever I tell people outside of the Bay
Area that I graduated from Berkeley I get a brunt of hippie/
tree-hugger jokes. Has Berkeley always been known for this or is
this a result from the 60's/ 70's movements? Was it always liberal
or did it lack a theme before? (i.e. UCI)
\_ I think you meant e.g.
\_ I think they're singling you out for hassling on this subject for
some other reason. I still find that the Berkeley name is equated
with top-notch hard science in the minds of most people. What's
really annoying is all the fuckers on the east coast who'll assume
you went to Berkeley school of music in New York.
you whent to Berkeley school of music in New York.
\_ ^Berkeley^Berklee.
\_ and ^New York^Boston
\_ Maybe you need a haircut.
\_ I got a lot of this in SoCal and the mid-west, but I've been
working w/ the same community so long that it turned into more
of a ritual tease than anything. Just as I acted surprised if they
ever had a pleasant day weather-wise or knew anything about
culture. :-) Oh, and it might've been my various combinations
of sandals, beard, or ponytail.
\_ Went to Texas on business last week, and a colleague from West
Virginia actually asked, "Are you one of them liberals?"
\_ HA HA HA. So what's your response, and what's a good response?
\_ I think the normal response is, "No! Please don't hurt
me!"
\_ When I read things like that, a little part of me dies and
I realize someone like Bush will be President for a long long
time.
\_ jblack is from Virginia. Justin, wanna say something? I didn't
think so. |
| 2005/7/27-29 [Reference/BayArea] UID:38848 Activity:nil |
7/27 Looking to buy/rent a ponytailed(long-hair) garden gnome.
I figure someplace in the Bay Area (Berkeley?) or online
would have it? Any ideas? |
| 2005/7/8-12 [Reference/BayArea] UID:38477 Activity:nil |
7/8 Friend and I (late 20's guys) looking for some nice billiards/pool
places in the South Bay to hangout. Best if the places are not filled
with gangsters and have a good guys-girls ratio of the early 20's to
mid 30's crowd. Got any recommendations?
\_ If there's is only one activity that is associated with
high society, that would be golf. If there is only one activity
that is associated with low society, that would be billiard.
\_ I would say that your generalization is rather ignorant. Try
again, kid.
\_ I think your second sentence pretty much rules them all out.
\_ Pool hall with good ratio? AND in the South Bay? You'd be lucky
to have either.
\_ I like Shoreline Billiards in Mountain View. You see mostly
professionals there instead of high school gangster-wannabe
kids. And decent looking girls. Plenty of girls shoot pools
there before and after their work out in the Gold's Gym next
door.
\_ Not South Bay, but Bay Billiards in Fremont isn't bad. |
| 2005/7/5-7 [Recreation/Activities, Reference/BayArea] UID:38413 Activity:kinda low Cat_by:auto |
7/5 Anyone know of any good spots to run in the southbay near 280/Lawrence?
\_ Head north on 280 and take the first exit past the 85. I hear that
\_ Head north on 280 and take the first exit past 85. I hear that
there are lots of good trails there, but I haven't been there yet.
Planning to check it out this week.
\- you can see if there are any running clubs down there.
i know there is in palo alto but no sure about s'vale/
santa clara. dont have to join but can see their routes.
\_ Rancho San Antonio has some good trails. Go left on Foothill (exit
right after 85), then right at first light, and go all the way up
til you see entrance on your left. There's one particular trail I
like (Rogue Valley -> Wildcat Loop -> Upper High Meadow -> PG&E)
that's about 600' vertical, or about 35-40 minutes of uphill.
\_ Steven's Creek Reservoir has several nice trails:
http://www.parkhere.org/channel/0,4770,chid=16510&sid=12761,00.html
I usually "run" there on Saturday mornings.
Rancho is also supposed to have decent trails. A colleague from
work runs there a couple of times a week. --ranga
I usually "run" there on Saturday mornings ~ 8:30 AM. Rancho is
also supposed to have decent trails. One of my co-worker's runs
there a couple of times a week. --ranga
\_ on a related note, what is good, off the street bike route for
road bike? thanks!
\_ I'm not much of a cyclist, but I like the Stevens Creek trail
from 85@237 to Shoreline Park and the Bay Loop trails north of
there. Mostly flat, not too crowded, pretty pleasant. -gm
\_ Seconded. I used to ride Stevens Creek trail everyday when
I worked on Ellis St in Mt. View. It is very nice and not
that crowded even at lunch time.
\_ What kind of riding are you interested in? -tom
\_ paved roads with notraffic.
\_ that's not very descriptive. Old La Honda to Skyline
to Highway 9 is a popular route. Kings Mountain is
another good one. If you get over to the coast,
Tunitas Creek is one of the best roads in the Bay Area,
and it dumps out on Kings Mountain.
But if you're talking about bike paths designed for
non-cyclists, I'm not the guy to ask. -tom
\_ thanks. i am somewhat new to road bike and i am
not up for challenge of riding next to cars along
highway. the route i usually take are canada
road by 280 or redwood shore by oracle.
\_ There are fairly few cars on highway 9, and if
you're going downhill you'll be going faster than
they are anyway. There is almost no traffic on
Old La Honda. You can pick up Old La Honda and
Kings Mountain at the southern end of Canada
Road--turn right in Woodside.
They are quite significant climbs, but ideal
biking roads. -tom |
| 2005/7/2-6 [Politics/Domestic/California, Reference/BayArea] UID:38397 Activity:high |
7/1 Economy's good in Republican states: http://tinyurl.com/9o829 \_ Fuck God, fuck Texas, and fuck you. \_ How about your Buddy Jesus? Come on, you can't be mad at your good ole Buddy Jesus? His old man is just upset because some of the uppity kids at work won't listen to him. He'll get over it. Hey who's yer pal? Who's your friend? Your Buddy Jesus! \_ War profiteering is good business, too. \_ No to mention all those homeland security dollars going to red states with nothing for terrorists to target. \_ Red states tend to have lower taxes and lower costs of living. I'd be better off working in Texas with a 10% pay cut than in Cali. \_ That's because California living costs have lost all touch with reality. You could take a 10% pay cut and have a higher standard of living by moving to any other blue state as well (excluding New York City, but there you salary would go way up anyway.) \_ Not sure about that. Places like Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, and Hawaii are very expensive. Pretty much anywhere with a big city that isn't in The South. I was in Denver on business and was surprised to see houses are costing $500K there, too, and they make less $$$. You might get more for your money there, but California seems like a bargain given all the other advantages of living here. \_ And what are all these advantages you speak of? \_ Weather, people, geography, culture (museums, shows, etc.), educational institutions, restaurants, and so on. You can get almost anything you want here locally. This is true in, say, NYC, but not in most places. A place like Phoenix or Idaho is cheap, but totally blows. \_ But then you'd have to hang out with all those damn Texans... \_ Who are *far* nicer on average than the people in the SF area. \_ http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4127&n=3 \_ Ugh, I hate LA so much. You couldn't pay me to settle down here. People and culture indeed. -- ilyas \_ Seconded. If I could take a job in a decent place for salary X or in LA for salary 2X, I'd take the X. \_ You are experiencing the idiocy that is Westwood/Santa Monica. Lots of people went to Berkeley and thus think the Bay Area is a shithole, too, based on Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose and limited experiences in SF. \_ Third that. I lived in LA and orange county. \_ LACMA, The Huntington, The Guggenheim, The Getty, MOCA, The Norton Simon... Have you ever left campus? \_ Have you been to the greater LA area? It's full of diversity nowadays, Little Taipei, Little Saigon, Little Bombai, not to mention Japantown, Koreatown, etc. Also, there's quite a bit of counter-culture as well. Maybe not as much as Berkeley, but it's not lacking. LA's main prob., imo, is the lack of a real "city-climate." That's something that SF & NY have in spades. LA is too "sprawling," with cultural pockets spread between vast wastelands of suburbia. \_ SF is a tiny city that feels big. LA is a massive city that feels small. This is because LA has no real center. I sometimes take out-of-town guests around and they say 'Is that downtown?' when we pass Glendale, Century City, Universal City, Westwood, and so on. Each of those enclaves is a city unto itself by the standards of most Americans. \_ SF is a tiny city that feels big. LA is a massive city that feels small. This is because LA has no real center. I sometimes take out-of-town guests around and they say 'Is that downtown?' when we pass Glendale, Century City, Universal City, Westwood, and so on. Each of those enclaves is a city unto itself by the standards of most Americans. \_ agreed. There's downtown. But there's not much there worth seeing. Nothing else is really centered around it, either. \_ Downtown has Chinatown and Little Tokyo. There's also Exposition Park and MOCA. The Jewelry District often appeals to women. The Biltmore is pretty historic and there are some good restaurants. \_ Sure, but none of these is high on the list of things people want to see: For general interest, Monterey Park, San Gabriel, etc. >> Chinatown; Rodeo, Melrose >> Jewelry District; Getty, LACMA, Huntington >> MOCA. I'm speaking in general terms, obviously, as all the places you mention have great qualities that make them worth visiting. Just most of them get out-shone by other things elsewhere in the greater LA area, which is the general trend I was pointing out. cf. what's avail. near SF or NY downtown. \_ Northern Californians like to rag on LA, but LA is a lot closer to SF/NY than it is to, well, just about every other city in the country. Certainly by any cultural measure it's in the top 5 even if you're being hard on it; it's ahead of the Bay Area in theater and visual arts. -tom \_ Given the huge density of actors, writers, and almost every other Hollywood-related profession in the Los Angeles area, it isn't exactly a surprise that LA is ahead in theater. The visual arts is likely because there are so many more affordable places to rent gallery space. \_ It's not a surprise, but it's a reality. It's cheap to rent gallery space in Des Moines but that hasn't made Iowa a cultural powerhouse. -tom \_ There may also be some synergy betw. acting and other creative arts. \_ Of course there is. Also, a lot goes into making a film other than acting. Set design, storyboard artists, and others have lots of artistic talent. \_ The creative arts seems to be flourishing in LA much better than in the Bay Area, except for the acapella scene. But I think the reason for that is that in LA, anyone with enough talent to do good acapella can actually work in the music industry and actually get paid. \_ Speaking as a huge fan of The Bobs, the rest of the "a capella scene" can bite me. Most a capella groups are basically karaoke with better singers, and singers are a dime a dozen. -tom \_ Out of curiousity, I wonder if you've come across my friends, Clockwork. they opened for the Bob's last F&S show (iirc). Nearly all original charts, some original songs, and I think they're pretty damn tight. --scotsman \_ Haven't heard them, no; I was out of town for the last Bobs show. -tom \_ Ignoring CoL for the moment, wouldn't be you better off with that 10% cut somewhere w/ higher taxes? Then you'd drop into a lower tax bracket, pay (proportionally) less in taxes than you would in the low-tax region, and thus have lost less than 10%. \_ Unless you run into AMT territory because of the higher state tax deduction, and end up getting screwed twice \_ Having lived in DC and LA, I would have to agree that traffic in DC is indeed worse than LA. \_ Regardless of the posts above, LA traffic sucks. If you have to go through 405 or other parts of LA that you must go through, you'll be happy to move at 5MPH. Want to go to LACMA or Getty or whatever you think is cool? Try to get there first. You may have to leave 2-3 hours in advance. \_ what about taking the rtd a.k.a. mta... or metro ??? j/k.. being a minority (asian), being in l.a. or the bay area is so much better than most places... i heard that in the south, minorities get ignored (as if the minority was non-human) in stores and shops.. \_ Having lived in DC and LA, I would have to agree that traffic in DC is indeed worse than LA. \_ Sure, LA traffic sucks. Got any other newsflashes? Traffic in every big city sucks. I think LA's freeway system is better than most. I shudder to think what many other large cities will be like when they reach 13 million people. LA is designed around the automobile unlike, say, DC. \_ Having lived in DC and LA, I would have to agree that traffic in DC is indeed worse than LA. \_ this reminds me of a stat I heard once. Some people complain that LA is just one big network of freeways. However, if you calculate miles of freeway lanes per resident, LA ranks 45th in the nation or something. \_ Cruisin' down the street(s) in my 6-fo' Jackin' the bitches, slappin' the ho's Went to the park to get the scoop Knuckle-heads out there cold shootin' some hoo's A car pulls up, who can it be? A fresh elkomino rolly Kilo G He rolls down his window and he started to say It's all about makin' that GT A Cuz the boyz in de hood are alwayz hard You come talkin' that trash we'll bull your car Knowin' nothin' in life but to be legit' Don't quote me boy, cuz I ain't sayin' shit ... |
| 2005/6/30-7/1 [Reference/BayArea, Politics/Foreign/Asia/Korea] UID:38371 Activity:high |
6/30 My wife is a naturalized US citizen who came here from Korea so
young that she doesn't know the language. Something I hear from her
frequently though is her conviction that white people (other than an
enlightened few) think way deep down that only they belong here and
they think they are being good for "tolerating" her being in the
US. This usually comes up after some random homeless person or
deadbeat (usually on or waiting for buses) singles her out for
slander out of a crowd of non-Asians. So, with the power of the
quasi-anonymous motd behind you, let's hear it white boys. In your
heart of hearts, are you just tolerating the brown and yellow
people? She says she thinks this is a particular problem in Berkeley
because the high Asian fraction makes them more threatening to white
people. -- ulysses
\_ Asian = White to me, as far as I can tell. But I grew up with
an adopted chinese sister. I do have some personal preferences
that could be considered cultural prejudices (i.e. I hate loud,
confrontational and overbearing people) but really those
characteristics are not specific to races, even if there are
cultural predispositions toward or away from such behaviors.
\_ Ummm... I would expect anything you glean here would be
considered from the "enlightened few." Futhermore, before this
I mostly heard this about black bums in SF. I don't think race
has much to do with the fact that Bums are usually kinda nuts.
That said, she's probably right about a lot of people, but
that's hardly an unusual sentiment. Ask her how she thinks
other races are treated Korea.
\_ I suspect she wouldn't really have much of an idea
how other races are treated in Korea, since she grew
up here and doesn't speak Korean. It's certainly not
racist, but there is often the (mis-?)conception among
people in the US that people with non-white/black ancestors
are more closely connected to the lands of their ancestry.
\_ That's why I said he should ask what she thinks. It's a
thought problem. I could've said Japan or China, but I
thought Korea at least made a little more sense.
\_ interesting observations but I think the analysis is all wrong
\_ I used to feel like your wife does, but then I left the Bay Area
and met some regular white people (republicans even!) and found
that mostly they don't care where you (or your parents) are from
and what color your skin is.
What I did notice is that most "white" people whose ancestors
were immigrants (Irish, Scottish, Italian) are a bit more open
to Asians (at least Indians) than are other "white" people.
were quasi-recent immigrants (Irish, Scottish, Italian, Polish,
Russian, &c.) are other "white" people.
\_ This sounds a little like what someone said a few days ago on the
motd about United Airlines' service. It turns out that United
treats everyone like shit, without regard to skin color, and that
a lot of people in the Bay area tend to seem like assholes,
regardless of your skin color. It also seemed to me that a lot
of people of many many different ethnic backgrounds, including
white people had a huge chip on their shoulder in the Bay Area.
\_ Which white people don't have immigrant ancestors?
\_ I was refering to people who immigrated to the US rather
than the colonies.
\_ My wife is Japanese, and she started living here in the Bay Area
from 1999. She notes that white people (here and elsewhere in the
States) have a hard time looking her in the eyes. I thought she was
imagining it until I started looking for it, and sure enough, most
whites will direct 90% of their conversation toward me, even though
she's definitely the more attractive of the two of us. Asians,
Asian-Americans, and African-Americans seem to pay us equal
attention. Weird. --erikred
\_ I'm an Asian man and I'll give you my observations and
behavioral interpretations. Most of the white men I've met in
the Bay Area are much nicer than white men from other places.
I suspect it has something to do with their relatively higher
education, that they're much more used to seeing yellow faces,
or that they think I have a cute sister or cute female Asian
friends. Even a lot of smart white men on motd have a
preference for Asian women (jrleek, ulysses, ax, erikred, etc).
\_ I've never stated a preference for Asian women. I love all
women. And how did I become a smart white man? Most people
on the motd think I'm a friggan idiot! Maybe you have me
confused for someone else? Thanks for the compliment though.
My wife is Italian, if it matters. I find I have some kind of weird
genetic attraction towards white trash Irish women and Latinas,
presumably since I am both Irish and Spanish. -ax
All powers to friendly and tolerant white men in the Bay Area.
However, I've had a much tougher time with white women in
general. Although I've met a few friendly ones (heck I even
went to prom with a white girl), IN GENERAL I find it hard to
approach them. I can easily demonstrate this phenomenon when my
white buddies and I go to the mall and we separately try small
talks with cute blond clerks. You can easily tell that they're
usually friendlier and more flirty with someone who's more blond
and/or whiter, and they don't even make any effort to hide it.
In general I don't have good impressions with white women-- many
are shallow or bitchy. Maybe this is one of the many reasons why
smart white men in the Bay Area prefer my kind, I don't know.
To address the original post, let me just say that I haven't
really experienced discrimination in my life. However I suspect
racism still happens a lot in the backdoors of managements,
especially for jobs that are predominantly white. My parents used
\_ Preferentialism is everywhere. That's why there's the Indian
Mafia, the Persian Highway, the Sisterhood, etc. If anything,
white males are *less* obvious about their preferences, though
Mario and his Italians are the most infamous exception.
\_ What about Luigi?
\_ ^Luigi^Luca. Mario begot Luca.
to tell me that when they came to the US in the early 80s (not
in the Bay Area) to rent and later to buy a house, they'd often
get ignored or get rude white folks who don't seem to want to
help them. A lot has changed in the past few decades.
\_ Well, as a white guy, random white people tend to tell me
things they wouldn't say outright to people of other races
because they feel more comfortable. I find that lots of
white people are racist against blacks and Mexicans (not
Hispanics, but specifically Mexicans). They tend to think
that Middle-Eastern, Jewish, and Indian people are weird.
As for Asians, I have to say I don't hear much about them
except how they are smart, wealthy, and build big, ugly
houses. That stereotype is just as offensive to me as if
they were considered poor and stupid. FWIW, I have had lots
of people (even Asians themselves) tell me to never work
for a Korean or a Chinese. Where do Filipinos fit into
this? I think they get the short end of the stick.
\_ Are you an Italian?
\_ Anytime you try to generalize to such a large group as
"white people" you are going to be off the mark. I am sure
there are racists everywhere, but my experience is that
white/asian relations are very good in San Francisco. If
anything, they are the ones tolarating us, since they
anything, they are the ones tolerating us, since they
are in the majority now.
\_ Hot asian women are always welcome!
\_ Hot women of any race are welcome.
\_ Um. I think everybody is racist. Living with other types for
long enough usually forces people to accept that they're human
too. Stereotypes remain. I think it's possible to not be racist
as such but it's easy to resent immigrants because they do
change the character of the places they come to. In the bay area,
so many of the Asians are not very Americanized and often have
traits that I might find annoying. I don't really fit in with
"standard" American culture either though. When I was in school in
the bay area, the largest group of people with similar culture
was the Chinese/TW immigrants. The other kids put together were
a sizable group but they were of various types. So my
perception was that of the Asian kids being a bigger group than
the white kids. When the population is composed of various groups
that tend to stick together it's halfway like living in a foreign
country. Not that long ago, the Bay Area character was completely
different. So obviously this is "threatening" but at least from
my perspective I don't have a family legacy here and have no real
basis to complain. |
| 2005/6/20-22 [Reference/BayArea, Transportation/Car] UID:38212 Activity:low |
6/20 My friend's having a wedding in Seattle. Hotels there are about
$30-40 more than other places like Renton, which is 12 miles
aways. Since I'm renting a car, I don't think 12 miles will
really matter. However, is there anything I'm really missing
by not living closer to Seattle, Kirkland, Lynwood, and Shoreline?
\_ Bellevue's usually fairly reasonably priced. Try the Days Inn.
\_ Are you a student or unemployed? Think staying in Berkeley instead
of SF, or Oakland instead of Berkeley. You can definitely do it,
but there's something to be said of being "in the city", whether
the city in question is SF, Berkeley, or Seattle.
\_ I'm both, the most pathetic kind :( -op
\- I think with weddings there is often milage to be had
by staying where other people are staying. If there is
no central location or you are going to be haning out
with other people, i suppose that may be another matter.
\_ http://www.biddingfortravel.com
\_ or http://www.betterbidding.com This one contains possible
pricing for http://hotwire.com (in case you don't want to do the
usual priceline bidding). |
| 2005/6/16-20 [Reference/BayArea, Recreation/Sports] UID:38162 Activity:nil |
6/16 Recommendations for skydiving in the Bay Area? We live in Oakalnd.
\_ Right above OAK.
\_ Hollister.
\_ Byron, east of Livermore. |
| 2005/6/15-17 [Reference/BayArea] UID:38142 Activity:low |
6/15 How's traffic going from 280/Saratoga Ave to Hayward in the
mornings? How about the reverse in the evening?
\_ Where in Hayward? It's a reverse commute on peninsula side, but
Hayward has pretty fucked up traffic in a lot of directions.
\_ moved? Job change?
\_ almost in escrow
\_ Congrats!
\_ Thanks! I'm hoping closing goes smoothly!
\_ That's great! How big is the house and how much?
\_ It's a 3/1.5/1 1300sqft 2-story TH in West SJ 95129
for $528k. Potential to add a master bath.
\_ Expect lots of traffic if taking 880, especially around 280/880 &
101/880
\_ What?
\_ 880N through north Fremont, Union City, and south Hayward is bad in
the morning. It becomes very good from before the 92 interchange to
A Street. After that I don't know.
\_ I guess I can take 680N and cut back over to 880N through Auto
Mall.
\_ ObHousingBubble talk.
\_ When you notice yourself thinking, simply label it "thinking,"
and go back to your breath. He likens it to a "feather touching
a bubble." |
| 2005/6/3-5 [Reference/BayArea, Transportation/Car] UID:37968 Activity:low |
6/3 Going to Mendocino tomorrow. Recommendations on roads to take and
traffic tips? I'm thinking of biiting the bullet and just taking
1 all the way up. Leaving from Oakland. Is there ever a good time to
try to cut through SF/GG Bridge? TIA. --erikred
\_ Why not the san rafael bridge and up 101->128->1? It'd be a lot
faster, and still very pretty.
\_ I grew up in Mendocino. I highly recommend the 101->128->1
route. Highway 1 all the way up is not worth the length of
the drive or the near death experiences involving Winnebagos.
--lye
\_ Is tomorrow a holiday or is there something going on in Mendocino
that would alter normal traffic patterns? I don't normally find
midday traffic to/from SF to be bad. If you want to get to the GG
bridge from the East Bay, may I recommend the Fell roll?
Basically, grab 80 across the Bay Bridge, exit Civic Center. Take
a right on 9th St, change to the leftmost lane. This drops you
onto Hayes once you cross Market, stay in the left lane, turn left
on Gough, right on Fell immediately thereafter. The lights on Fell
are timed, and this will take you all the way down to GG Park.
Follow Fell past the panhandle and it cuves and drops you on to
Lincoln. Take Lincoln to 19th Ave, and turn right. 19th Ave turns
into Park Presidio, which drops you on to the GG bridge. -dans
\- if you are leaving from oakland, take richmond bridge ...
clearly. i also think franklin to lombard is viable if you are
going through SF for some reason. traffic at fell & jfk can get
weird on weekends. and with no exit directly on to fell this
is not that ideal any more. fulton on northside of park can
also be faster than lincoln. [the advice above has 3 bits of
backtracking: go south from hayes to fell, go south again
to lincoln, go out to 19th to cross park on south when fulton
will get you to park presideo around 14th]. --SF Route Optimizer
\_ I agree that Franklin to Lombard is viable, but Lombard is
a total clusterfuck at all times both wrt bad timing of
lights and quantity of traffic. The ``backtracking'' from
Hayes to Fell is literally one block. Probably the worst
part of the route is getting from the 9th St./Civic Center
exit to Market and Hayes. I agree, Fulton >> Lincoln, but it
requires an additional tricky turn (Stanyan northbound) from
Fell. -dans |
| 2005/5/27-31 [Reference/BayArea] UID:37860 Activity:moderate |
5/27 To the poster who suggested on using less energy or move closer,
it is not possible in the United States. Take San Francisco for
example. Pretty much over 90% of the people who work there live
outside of SF, most of whom would live closer if rent and properties
were cheaper. The fact of the matter is, most people simply can't
afford to buy a 500 sq. ft. property in SF. In fact I know some
people who live in Pittsburg or somewhere ridiculously far just
so they can buy a place. It's not that people don't want to live
closer, but that most convenient places are not affordable, unless
you're an FOB immigrant (who usually bring in a lot of money), did
pretty well during the dot-coms, or inherited wealth. I say that
living closer is impossible in the US because the government does
not plan a city, at all. Look at Scandinavian countries. City
planners actually plan out how, where, & when to add or modify
commercial and residential areas, which meet stringent criteria such
as growth demand, commute time, convenience, distance from the
National highway, etc. They are way ahead of everyone else in terms
of city planning and housing development. In the US, no planning.
Let private enterprizes do it all. Fuck United States.
\_ So go live in Scandinavia then and pay 50% of your income in
taxes.
\_ So you're saying op's not not allowed to criticize aspects
of US urban planning? If you don't like it get out? "Fuck
United States" isn't really constructive, but do you believe
that there's no room for improvement or to look to a good
example of a place that does traffic planning right? I don't
like a lot of aspects of Scandinavian "central planning", but
looking at traffic in the Bay Area, it might certainly be a
good idea to think about alternatives... -John
\_ No John, I'm telling the OP to move to Scandinavia if he
doesn't like the U.S. WTF is your problem? If you're going
to say "Fuck the U.S." then move. Stop reading more into
posts than what there is and leave your preconceived
notions at home.
\_ Doesn't look like I'm the one with the problem. Your
comment sure sounds like "either accept what's wrong with
here, or go elsewhere with all their problems." Relax.
\_ The "Fuck US" op has no intention of staying in the US
for the sake of retirement. By the way I want to ask you
if you've personally LIVED and EXPERIENCED places other
than the US. If you haven't, perhaps you're a bit
quick to the tong. What I observe typically with Americans
is that they've only eaten certain types of food (hot dogs
and burgers) and are quick to judge what is good and
what is not, and very unreceptive to criticisms. That
goes the same for what they believe is good or not without
having extensive exposure to the things they judge.
And yes when the time is right I'll go back to the place
I love, while you're stuck with a broken country -the op
\_ Just out of curiosity, where is this place that you
love? -mice
\_ This is not really true. First of all, there are only 1.5M jobs in
SF and 750M residents, so far more than 10% of the people who work
\_ I think you mean 750k
\_ Obviously. Thanks for the correction.
here live here. I ride the J Church to work everyday into the
financial district and it is full of commuters. And you can
afford to live in SF, no matter how poor you are, you just
have to reset your expectations of how much space you deserve.
have to reset your expectations of how much space you need.
\- yes, and some people choose to trade drive time for sq footage.
There are even 70k subsidized housing units here for people
who are low income. I lived like a college student for 10 years
and saved up my down payment for a house. Sure it is small,
but if you went to Scandanavia, you would find that people
live in small houses there, too. Sure, not every single person
who works here can live here, but if you want to, you can too,
you just have to be willing to make the sacrifice. And if nothing
else, you can live near a BART station. -ausman
\_ "it is not possible in the United States"? You're a moron. It may
mean moving to a different city and getting a different job.
\_ Know shit. Now if OP had said "Fuck the Bay Area" instead of
"Fuck the USA", I would agree wholeheartedly. America has many
many medium sized cities, towns, and a even a few big cities where
reasonable commutes, homeownership, a good job and a reasonable
cost of living are all compatible. The Bay Area just isn't one
of them. What amazes me about the Bay Area is that for all its
money and all its over-educated citizens, it has the worst
traffic, the shittiest public transit, the worst layout, the most
bike-unfriendly streets, the biggest rippoff rentals, the biggest
ripoff homes to buy, and some of the worst pollution of anyplace
I've seen in the U.S. And still Bay Areans blather on about the
superiority of the Bay Area. Fuck the Bay Area.
\_ The worst traffic? What? Have you been to Los Angeles?
Driven on 405 at 4PM while going 2MPH? Every single day?
\_ Ok, fuck LA as well. I take it for granted that LA sucks.
\_ Shittiest public transit? Not even close by a country mile.
\_ Business doesn't need to concentrate in one place. There's no
reason a lot of those companies in SF couldn't be in, say,
Stockton. The main reason they are there now, I think, is that
people *want* to work in SF and so companies move there to
attract quality employees. Would you rather work on the 50th
floor with a view of the Golden Gate or in an industrial
building in Fresno?
\_ Well, Fresno is kinda a hell-hole, but I think I _might_
take it over SF. I can think of other cheap places I might
actually like to live though, like Chico.
\_ Four of my uncles and their families immigrated to SF 16yrs ago with
only a few hunderd dollars in the pocket. They worked non-tech
jobs (restaurant cook, driver at senior home, hairdresser, janitor,
...), some with two jobs. Now they own three homes and one 4-apt
complex (with mortgages, of course) in Sunset District, two small
restaurants, and have eight kids in high schools and colleges. Now
tell me again about the impossibility. It just comes down to
spending level. If one "needs to" eat out everyday, go to movies
every weekend, refresh the wardrobe every season, go on a trip every
year, and drive a Beamer, well ...
\_ Yeah. Well, man, life isn't that long. 16 years of your prime
adult life working really hard etc.... I think it's admirable
and all but on the other hand I don't look down on people who
don't choose to go through such crap just to live in an expensive
place when they can live pretty nice without doing all that.
\_ Agreed. I don't look down on those people either, as long as
they admit that "it is possible but I choose not to do that"
instead of whining about how impossible it is. -- PP |
| 2005/5/16-17 [Reference/BayArea] UID:37708 Activity:low |
5/16 Explanation please: why were people throwing so many tortillas
at Bay to Breakers? I mean, it was cool and all, but wtf?
\_ They're cheaper than frisbees. That's it, really. -gm
\_ Uh... It's the tortilla toss. duh.
\_ Is this some new addition? I was in the Bay to Breaker in 1998 but
I didn't see any totilla throwing.
\_ I've only ran the past 3, but each year they've done it.
\_ Uh... It's the tortilla tossing contest. duh.
\_ I don't know where you were standing, but I know they had it in
98. My first one was either 94 or 95, and they've had it
everytime I've gone. |
| 2005/5/7-9 [Reference/BayArea, Reference/History, Academia/OtherSchools] UID:37566 Activity:high |
5/6 MIT Time Travel Conference:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/national/06time.html
\_ You should go/have gone. We will have/had a great time. Even HG
Wells will make/made an appearance.
\_ well you can always travel back in time to make it.
\_ Well, see you in the past, folks!
\_ Well, see you guys in the past!
\_ I showed up, but they weren't letting any more people into
the conference hall. Got to see the countdown at the (much to
small) landing pad though. The smoke machine was a little hokie,
but the milk and cookies that someone had left was a nice touch.
--darin
\_ Nobody from the future came because they already knew the party
sucked.
\_ I predict that in the future MIT will not be a place of choice for
parties.
\_ We should try this again, but at CSU Chico instead. -tom
\_ Yeah, SF is the place of choice for parties. Why else
would they build Starfleet Academy there?
\_ If I had to bet money on the Bay Area of the distant future,
I'd put my money on the Philip K. Dick square, not the
Gene Rodenbery square. |
| 2005/4/19-21 [Reference/BayArea] UID:37264 Activity:nil |
4/19 I'm looking into joining a credit union in the south bay area.
I know about TechCU. What others are out there? I want to do
some comparison shopping. If you are in a credit union, which
one and what do you like about it? Thanks.
\_ off the top of my head, there's Valley CU , silicon valley CU.
I'm a member of addisonavenue (formerly HPCU, formerly HPEFCU).
Back during the boom the rates were really nice. I don't
utilize very many of their services.
\_ What's the difference between credit union and a bank? No this
is not a troll.
\_ A credit union is owned by the members. Any money the credit
union makes is paid back to the members in the form of
interest on deposits.
\_ A credit union is like a co-op, so expect a house manager that
sells MJ on the side and weekly parties with complimentary
nitrous oxide.
\_ What are the top deposit rates at credit unions for savings
or money market type accounts? Last I checked, they weren't
better than what you can get with an online money market.
\_ I have an account with Patelco CU. They had really good interest
rates 2-3 years ago, but it's not that great anymore. It seems
higher than TechCU, though.
\_ Credit Unions tend to be less evil, don't fuck you in the
ass for things like using foriegn ATMs, etc.
\_ instead, the other banks charge you for using their atms
wamu does not. wamu = good. |
| 2005/4/4-5 [Reference/BayArea] UID:37064 Activity:kinda low |
4/4 any good bay area rock-climbing or hiking clubs?
\_ http://www.uc-hiking-club.berkeley.ca.us
\_ When I was in the Bay Area, this club was the most
fun ever. --PeterM
\_ The soda/Chaos overlap is significant. When I first
joined, psb was (supposedly) in charge of keeping the
membership list up-to-date. For all I know, he wrote
the perl scripts they still use. -- ulysses |
| 2005/3/30-31 [Reference/BayArea] UID:36974 Activity:kinda low |
3/30 Any know of a better crossover route than 85 to go from 280 to
101 in Mountain View? I take 280 S from Pacifica and I work off of
th 101 Ellis exit in Mountain View. Somes I do 85-237 using
Middlefield pr I just get off at Moffet on 85.
\_ 92?
\_ Page Mill/Oregon Expwy?
\_ Lawrence Expwy
\_ El Monte->San Antonio
\_ Foothill Expwy->Grant Rd->237
\_ Depends where you are at, but consider 280 to
lawrence to central to middlefield. |
| 2005/3/28-30 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley, Transportation/Bicycle] UID:36928 Activity:nil |
3/28 Worried about bike theft downtown? http://www.bikestation.org/berkeley |
| 2005/1/20 [Reference/BayArea] UID:35803 Activity:high |
1/19 Please suggest activities for a romantic date in Berkeley area
other than the usual dinner and movie. I don't have a car. Thanks.
\_ easy. Get the hell out of Bay Area. I was there for 10 years.
It really gets to your nerves. The women are lacking and/or ugly
and you can make 6 digits yet still have a hard time buying a
2 bdrm condo. Shithole. Get out.
\_ I'm sorry that your brain is so small. Perhaps you should find
some activites that don't exceed its capacity so much to keep it
busy.
\_ I love how this answer has nothing to do with this question.
\_ The nice part about the women is that you can bag them,
though. They look 10x nicer in LA, but unless you are a
sugar daddy, a plastic surgeon, or look and act like Brad
Pitt you won't get any play. Bay Area chicks aren't as hot,
but a bird in the hand and all that.
\_ Walk through the UC Botannical garden. Take the UC hill shuttle or
hike up the hill. Admission is cheap, or free for cal students.
\_ Stay inside and fuck. Strip club. Ballet, museum, play, opera.
Wine tasting. Stay inside, make dinner, then fuck. By the way,
you can rent a car if you have to.
\- what is cheeseboard.
\_ Berkeley Rose Garden. Free. Grab the bus that runs up Euclid.
Plus, once you're done wandering around the Rose Garden you can
wander the Berkeley Hills which is a pretty area, or head up to
wander the Berkeley Hills and burglarize heirloom silver
\_ burgle. And actually, you
burgle a location. You steal
an item.
\_ No nitwit, burglarize and
burgle are synonymous. Next
time you try to correct
someone's grammar actually
look it up, stupid.
\_ Doesn't speak to the second
point, and the proliferation
of "ize/ise" endings is dumb
and unnecessary.
\_ Moreover, they're equally
old (they both appeared in
the late 1800s) and equally
logical (they both come
from "burglar").
out of nice homes which is pretty easy, or head up to
Tilden Park. |
| 2004/12/29-30 [Reference/BayArea, Politics/Domestic] UID:35487 Activity:high |
12/29 Hey MOTD -- I was hoping to buy a bottle of fine cognac or armagnac
for a friend of wealth and taste. I have a pretty generous budget, but
I know next to nothing about either of these liquors. Can anybody
give me any recommendations, and/or point me toward a vendor of fine
wine/spirits in the SF/BA (preferably in Castro Valley or San Mateo)?
TIA. -mice
\_ Check out D&M Liquor in San Francisco. They specialize in
Cognac and Armagnac with an *excellent* selection.
\_ K&L Wine Merchants in SF or Redwood City
\_ Gracias. -mice
\_ As a brief followup, I spoke with the Distilled Spirits
Department manager Susan Purnell, and she was really quite
knowledgeable and very, very helpful. Thanks again for the
link. -mice
\_ Beverages and More also sells 'good stuff', but good luck finding a
reccomendation there.
\_ There are 3 grades of increasing price/quality, V.S., V.S.O.P., and
X.O. (aka 'Napoleon'). Each individual maker's grade can differ a
lot though. (You can find crap cognac calling itself X.O.)
The 3 biggest brands of Cognac, which you'll be 'safe' going with,
are in no particular order Henessey, Courvosier, and Martell.
\-i think one of the "high end" grand mariners is better than say
the Hennesey XO.
\_ It is hard to impress/please "a friend of wealth and taste" with
something that as commmon to him/her as distilled water. Why not
showing off your skill in troff and m4?
\_ This is true, which is why I opted to look for distilled
alcohol rather than water (which has a rather simple and naive
bouquet to even the most discerning palate). Thanks for
the suggestion, though. I'll perhaps look into some nweaver-
vintage lisp code as an alternative in case the alcohol thing
doesn't work out. -mice |
| 2004/12/22 [Reference/BayArea, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:35394 Activity:nil |
12/22 Just realize Bush's big political gamble. His State of Union address
is about a week after Iraqi election...
\_ What political gamble? It's his second and final term. He can
basically do whatever he wants without worrying about
repercussions. It's not like anyone can even recall him. |
| 2004/11/22 [Reference/BayArea] UID:35010 Activity:insanely high |
11/22 Soviet Union was developing laser space battle
station Skif from beginning of 80's.
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=30510
\- space station skiff? --psb |
| 2004/11/12 [Reference/BayArea] UID:34855 Activity:kinda low |
11/12 Can somehow explain why Bay Area is so messed up, with all
that suicide from famous Asian people? For example with
that tech Gene guy andb all...
\_ Please compare the suicide rate in east Asia with the suicide
rate among bay area residents of Asian descent. I predict that
the suicide rate is lower among, say, bay area residents of Japanese
descent than it is among residents of Japan.
\_ JAPANESE NINJAS KILLED HIM |
| 2004/11/9 [Recreation/House, Reference/BayArea, Computer/SW/Languages/C_Cplusplus] UID:34774 Activity:nil |
11/09 I need to find a storage place in south bay for lots of books and also
some furniture and electronics. To save money, I prefer a non-A/C
place. Should I worry about moisture damange? Does it matter
if it is ground floor or up? Thanks. |
| 2004/10/22-23 [Reference/BayArea] UID:34283 Activity:high |
10/22 Regarding whoever was saying that Nancy Pelosi is popular in SF
because she "took 97% of the SF vote", she certainly didn't get that
much when running for supervisor. Maybe it has something to do with
people being more likely to vote for someone from "their" town?
Think "pork"... -John
\_ That's what legislators are for - getting pork for your own town.
\_ Welcome to descriptive versus prescriptive politics: you're
describing what legislators do, not what they're for. Drop
the cynicism and concentrate that sharp wit on convincing them
to do what they're supposed to do: represent the people.
\_ Could I have somebody left of center explain to me what, in
particular, I'm not supposed to like about Nancy Pelosi? I'm no
bigger on her than any of the rest but she seems to be doing a
better job than Daschle did. -- ulysses
\_ I'm not familiar with what she's been up to since I moved out
of SF, but when she was on the board of supervisors, she and a
number of her colleagues formed what's best described as a
"bleeding-heart cabal of the stupid." -John
\_ Ooo, boy! Tell me more John!
\_ Or, as non-lunatics put it, a group of concerned officials.
\_ Ah, "lunatic". Well, you're a shit-eating cretin. Now,
anything of substance from your corner? -John
\_ I didn't realize "bleeding-heart cabal of the stupid"
had substance. -!pp
\_ Look, I don't feel like looking up the exact
issues again; suffice to say that when I was in
HS in SF there was a fair amount of pretty idiotic
activity from the supervisors, including Pelosi.
I have no clue what the woman's been up to since,
nor do I care, but a lot of what came out of SF
city government around 1990 did not remotely
translate into "common sense". I fail to see how
that translates into "lunatic". -John
\_ I was around then. It was lunatic. |
| 2004/10/14-15 [Reference/BayArea] UID:34135 Activity:nil |
10/14 http://economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3291632 Honouring nerd values (Craigslist) |
| 2004/10/12-13 [Reference/BayArea] UID:34074 Activity:moderate |
10/12 Need recommendations for a good contractor for home remodeling.
Email me. -tonytung
\_ Uh. Where?
\_ Bud Day probably knows one. Why don't you ask him?
\_ Bay Area
\_ Which part of bay area? A southbay contractor will not
do remodeling in the north bay.
\_ South bay.
\_ Does he need to be legal? I can recommend the guy
the guy thats doing work for me right now, but he
mainly speaks Cantonese. Works by himself most of
the time, so he's best for smaller jobs, but I'm
having him do both bathrooms, kitchen, and entrance. |
| 2004/8/24 [Reference/BayArea, Recreation/Travel/LasVegas] UID:33095 Activity:very high |
8/24 I have more than $100 in quarters. Is there a place in Berkeley where
I could exchange this for paper money?
\_ A Bank?
\_ Word to the wise is that banks will generally only do it for
their customers and then only if the coins are rolled.
\_ Find a coinstar yo!
\_ There are green machines at Albertson's stores. But they charge a
small percentage.
\_ It's a huge percentage. Buy a bunch of rolls from an office
supply place and roll 'em yourself while watching Enterprise.
Most banks will take the quarter rolls. Penny rolls they hate.
\_ It's irrelevant whether they "hate" it or not. It's legal
tender. -John
\_ Yeah, you go try that.
\_ I don't have to try anything. My bank accepts
legal tender. I've switched banks for less. -John
\_ I've found I can get rid of pennies by rolling them and
spending them at stores no more than 1 roll at a time.
\_ Huge percentage? I think coinstar machines take about 8%,
what's your time worth? It's convenient to dump a big bucket
of change in the machine and a minute or two later you get
get a check.
\_ since he's already got them separated out as quarters,
he's already done half the work. He should just roll them
up himself.
\_ 9.7% actually.
\_ Las Vegas. There is some chance that you can win big!!!
\_ That's only 10 rolls of quarters. It's easy to roll quarters--the
bank might even have sleeves for you, esp. if you have an account.
\_ someone should need quarters for laundry. my credit union never
has quarters. -quarterless_in_SF_with_dirty_clothes |
| 2004/8/1-2 [Reference/BayArea, Academia/Berkeley] UID:32620 Activity:high |
8/1 Outfoxed >> F911
\_ One day, everything in Berkeley named Hearst will be renamed
Murdoch. Murdoch Greek Theater, Murdoch Street, Murdoch Hall,
Murdoch Mining Circle. Even the Hearst Castle in will be
renamed Muroch Castle.
\_ Not hard to do.
\_ seen it yet?
\_ Well, I saw F911, but not outfoxed. That went straight to
video, right? |
| 2004/7/28 [Reference/BayArea] UID:32522 Activity:low |
7/28 Regarding a previous topic, this year's Free Shakespeare in the Park
(http://csua.com/?entry=32389 any
suggestions about best venue?
\_ All are nice. We're done in Pleasanton, and are starting in
Cupertino this weekend. That one's supposed to be very nice,
with an amphitheatre so there's less viewing obstruction.
It'll also probably stay warmer than Oakland or SF. I like
Oakland because it's across the street from my apartment and
walking distance from BART. I'd suggest a venue with a later
starting time. The set is less effective in daylight. --scotsman
\_ I'm planning to go to the Cupertino one. Memorial Park is
very nice and it usually stays warm till about 9:30 or so. |
| 2004/7/24-25 [Reference/BayArea] UID:32460 Activity:high |
7/24 Just got back from a club in San Francisco. A guy I'd just met told
me he had been convicted of Conspiracy to Sell MDMA, a felony, but
then said he wasn't dealing anymore and didn't try to sell me any;
some random woman grabbed my knee and asked if I knew where she could
buy coke; and a hyperkinetic Vietnamese guy kept clapping me on the
shoulder and telling me how awesome the DJ was. Is this typical for
a night out in the City?
\_ honestly, do you do pot or other recreational drug?
\_ Yeah, pretty much. It depends on the club of course, but that
sounds about right for the techno/dance scene. -retired clubber
\_ Huh. I've been clubbing for quite awhile, and I've never had a
night like that. Which clubs tended to give the most 'out there'
experiences for you?
\_ ?? Were you sitting on a bar stool when she grabbed your knee or
was she kneeling in front of you?
\_ I was sitting up on an empty stage, my legs dangling over the
side; she was walking by the stage and then grabbed my knee.
\_ :-) I just had this funny image of her walking by and
bending over or kneeling down to grab your knee. Thanks.
\_ name the club, then can tell you if it is typical.
\_ 1015 Folsom
\_ Ugh. That club hasn't been even halfway decent for years.
Its a crackden for south bay Asians on bad ecstacy. Please
don't take that as an indication of them all. Try some
smaller, more down to earth venues.
\_ Like what? --never goes and thinks they're all this way
\_ I could list dozens of examples, but it really depends
on what sort of music you want to hear. Off the top
of my head, here's some places to investigate:
Pink (formerly known as Liquid), 16th and Capp St.
The Top, lower Haight St. between Webster and Fillmore
Club Six, 60 6th St between Market and Mission.
Note that these are all in pretty bad neighborhoods
so be prepared for that. There's tons more, try
http://www.sfstation.com for a pretty broad selection.
And if you must do the big scary club thing, try
Mezzanine at 5th and Jessie St - at least it doesn't
have the dreary vibe of 1015 described by the OP.
Just don't go there on Saturday unless you are hella
gay, like like to dance around with other ripped guys
with your shirt off gay.
\_ thanks for the warning. looks like sat is the night
for me. |
| 2004/7/20-21 [Reference/BayArea] UID:32389 Activity:nil |
7/20 SF Shakespeare Festival's Free Shakespeare in the Park has begun.
The show this summer is Twelfth Night. We're starting in Pleasanton,
then hitting Cupertino, Oakland, and San Francisco (up in the
Presidio). I'm music director for it, and it's really come out as
a great show. And (did I mention?), it's free!
http://www.sfshakes.org
Bring some wine, bring a blanket... --scotsman |
| 2004/7/14-15 [Reference/BayArea] UID:32286 Activity:high |
7/14 Can i buy fleshlight in berkeley/oakland?
\_ Try that really scary "comics" store on Telegraph, just south
of Dwight. Collectors Realm III. The area in front looks like
The Android's Dungeon, but in reality they make almost all of their
money by selling hardcore porn and associated crap. Just go through
the back into the second area. They'll probably have what you're
looking for. Sicko.
\_ their web site says that the interior lining is silky soft just
like the real thing, but the real thing has crevices and
ridges, so how can they make such a claim?
\_ What's "fleshlight"? --not cool enough to know
\_ http://www.fleshlight.com not work safe.
\_ there is always good vibrations
\_ Make sure to get the chocolate butt model. |
| 2004/7/9-11 [Reference/BayArea] UID:32204 Activity:high |
7/9 Is there a place in Berkeley/Oakland I can get Tshirts custom
printed? I knew a place ten years ago that did this but I have
completely forgotten it. Thanks for any recommendations. --chris
\_ Berkeley Steamworks
\_ haha. very funny. --chris
\_ I failed to see why this is funny...
\_ We find it funny because we're not gay like you.
\_ Check out cafepresse (cafepress?) .com |
| 2004/6/23 [Reference/BayArea, Transportation/Car] UID:30966 Activity:very high |
6/23 Does street sweeping actually serve a purpose, or is this just another
Big Government conspiracy to give sinecures to the well-connected?
\_ You think the well-connected are driving street sweepers and
parking control vehicles?
\_ It keeps things looking nice, and in many places generates extra
revenue from parking tickets. win win!
\_ It also prevents trash from accumulating inside storm drains
so when the rains come, you don't get clogged drains/sewers.
\_ At the west end of the Sunset district in SF, sand from the
beach is a bigger problem than trash, and the streets are
swept twice a week.
\_ It probably does not have to be done every week, but when you
see places where it's not done regularly, you will notice!
\_ Many places in oakland, it's every other night. Seems more like
a money grab to me.
\_ Many businesses hose down the area in front of their stores.
The trash that accumulates there ends up in the gutter.
Without street cleaning, all of that ends up in drains/sewers.
Flooding ensues.
\-in my neighborhood, weekly seems excessive [p'hill, SF].
i think it is a patronage system [more street sweeping
volume = more jobs to be handed out by the city, or larger
contract]. as well as a revenue system. i think the fines
are way to high [i think they are $40 in SF now]. --psb
\_ You are giving way too much credit for such low level
patronage. And if the fine were cheaper, they'd never
get some SF streets swept.
\- can you explain to me why the blocked fire hydrant
fine is lower than the street sweeping fine?
because the leaves in the gutters spontaneously
ignite? how about cracking down on illegitimate
handicapped permits. my understanding is there
are more of thise permits issued in SF than there
are parking meters. --psb
\- hmm according to a different source, the FH
may $50 vs $40. --psb
\_ Because if your car is in the way, the fire
department can destroy it to reach the hydrant.
Fines are meant to deter, not overly punish.
\_ Not quite. Fines are meant to be pesky. Low
enough that it doesn't deter, high enough
to be worth paying the issuer. I'll go back
to the Oakland example. You can't find
parking anywhere around Grand. It's 2
in the morning. You're exhausted. The
street sweeping time ends at 3. Is it
worth $30 to drive around for 1/2hr trying
to find a different spot, or to go to
Merritt Diner until 3? Sometimes yes,
sometimes no.
\_ lol. spoken like someone who's never tried to get
a low level job working for a big city or known anyone
who has.
know the right person -> city job -> sit on your ass
and get >50k/yr
This low level patronage system is what makes the
Democratic party power machine work in big cities...
how do you think that the corrupt Democratic mayors
keep their ironclad support from the Unions for
decades?
\_ Your tinfoil hat's crooked.
\_ Obviously someone who doesn't understand what true
patronage is. Street sweeping, while not overly
difficult. Hardly falls under patronage.
\_ You. Have. Some. Punctuation. Difficulties.
\_ Uhm...he has *one*.
\_ But it's a really stupid one.
\_ If you want to see sinecure in action, check out the guys who
clean up the parks; on any given morning, they spend 2-3 hours
sitting in their trucks reading newspapers.
\_ I cleaned up peoples park for a couple weeks. most of the
people cleaning the parks are doing community service because
they did something stupid and are carrying out some sort of
sentence.
\_ Just because municipal employees are overpaid and lazy doesn't
mean they got their jobs through patronage (at least the
low-level employees). It's hard to fire someone and there's not
too much pressure for good performance. |
| 2004/6/17 [Reference/BayArea, Politics/Foreign/Asia/China] UID:30861 Activity:high |
6/17 Good grief. Anita Mui has been dead how long and I find out through a
side reference in a Salon article. Was there any mention in the Bay
Area (English language) papers? -- ulysses
\_ Who is (was) she? Enlighten us please.
\_ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0611315 For the casual Western
fan, she was the store manager in Rumble in the Bronx, but
that's a lot like saying Charleton Heston's this guy who did
a bit part in that Wayne's World II movie.
\_ Not that I heard. If you are interested in the HK entertainment
circle and can't read Chinese, visit http://www.hkentreview.com If you
are a regular, please leave a donation as the Canadian who runs
the site is basically doing free translation for the rest of us.
--jeffwong. |
| 2004/6/11 [Reference/BayArea, Reference/RealEstate] UID:30747 Activity:high |
6/11 Is there still rent control in Berkeley and Oakland? Thanks.
\_ Yes and no. There's rent control as long as the unit is being
rented, but when the unit becomes vacant or the "original tennant"
leaves, they can reset the rent however they like.
\_ Yes in Berkeley and no in Oakland?
\_ The above rules apply to both places.
\_ In Oakland there is an exemption from rent control
for 3 unit buildings or smaller that are owner
occupied. There are probably some other exemptions,
like for new construction, as well.
\_ Berkeley has some similar exemptions too.
\_ Oakland Rent Board: http://csua.org/u/7pv
Berkeley Rent Board: http://csua.org/u/7pw |
| 2004/5/12 [Reference/BayArea] UID:30188 Activity:high |
5/12 What is the best gyro/shwerma in Berkeley?
\-i had a pretty decent GYRO at the mexican [?] place directly
south of SHK. truly med in SF is good so ostenisbly the berkeley
\_ Pollo?
one will be ok. --psb
\_ not as good, but still a lot better than most of the medit.
food in berkeley. of all i've had in the bay area, though
truly med in the mission is the best. |
| 2004/5/3-4 [Reference/BayArea, Reference/RealEstate] UID:29962 Activity:moderate |
5/3 I'll be working at the Powerbar building this summer and I need
housing from late June to late September. If you have a place to
sublet or have a room to rent near the Berkeley/Oakland/Walnut Creek
please email me, thanks -kchang
\_ wtf?
\_ and just to authenticate myself, here:
{soda}/home/apollo/kchang/bin> last kchang
kchang ttyAX 131.179.224.88 Mon May 3 11:15 still logged in
Name: http://Samoa.CS.UCLA.EDU
Address: 131.179.224.88
\_ Craisglist must be chock-full of summer sublets right about now... |
| 2004/3/18 [Reference/BayArea] UID:12738 Activity:very high |
3/18 Why do union leaders become so aggressive whenever employers or
contractors (specifically in construction jobs) choose non-union
employees? Don't those dumbasses realize that there might be a
reason the employer/contractor wants the non-union employees
(the same way a hiring manager hires one applicant over another)?
\_ is your entitled rich family still mad about the New Deal?
\_ LOL are you really this naive? It is commonplace for union
thugs to beat and threaten serious injury to any non-union workers
or any group that threatens their stranglehold on business.
There have been recent political rallies where union thugs beat
counter protestors. It's not a coincidence that the two largest
constituencies of the Dem. party are unions and trial lawyers.
\_ i hate trial lawyers and unions. -liberal
\_ me too. -another liberal
\_ What about union lawyers? The mind boggles.
\_ I hate trial lawyers too. Why can't the police just shoot
whoever they think is guilty? A fair trail is such a
stupid and outmoded concept. What were the founding
fathers thinking?
\_ Yea, and the largest republican constituency are the KKK
\_ OMG WTF LOL!
\_ hah! and you think he's naive?
\_ That's all you have to say?
\_ no, not really
\_ sure it is. you've said nothing else.
\_ Yea, and the largest republican constituencies are the KKK
and oil company executives. No, you are not naive, just
silly.
silly.
\_ Ok, then who *are* the largest donors to each party?
\_ Ok, then who *are* the largest donors to each party?
\_ for the 2004 election, top 2 republican contributors
seem to be wal-mart and sbc. top 2 democratic
contributors are the unions and the trial lawyers.
ref http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topcontribs.asp
\_ Wal-Mart and SBC vs. trial lawyers and unions...hmmm
Talk about Evil vs. Evil. Wal-Mart and SBC have more
money though, so I guess I'll go with the underdog...
\_ there are $420 billion in union pension funds.
(from 2002 data) who's richer here?
\_ PENSION FUNDS. Don't be a dumbass. What do you
think PENSION money goes to?
\_ who do you think *controls* the pension
funds? how much power does controlling
$420 billion give you?
\_ did you posed the question and then answered it
yourself? funny.
\_ Not a lot. All that money is owed back to
the people that paid into the system. You
can't just be giving it to political
candidates.
\_ you are either disingenuous or stupid.
\_ I'm neither. You're incredibly
stupid if you think that the entire
sum total of all union pension funds
is available for Democratic party
spending, which is what you're
implying.
\_ did you pose the question and then answered it
yourself when nobody took the bait? funny.
\_ God donated his only son for them both. Amen.
\_ ask around how unionization fucked over the Student Learning
Center tutoring program by forcing out volunteer tutors.
\_ So if eventually the SLC whittled down to almost no employees,
and then shut down, would that be a better alternative? At
least a union job puts food on the table and a roof over one's
head. Not everyone is privileged in life like most students
at Cal.
\_ better that than to give it to corrupt union employees
who whine and bitch at the slightest need for
energy exertion. the SLC is for students, by students.
worthless unions have absolutely no place in there.
\_ Cal's greatest export is whiny bitchy graduates who
think they are better than everyone else in the world
because mommy and daddy told them so - withholding their
love until you believed it. Then you went out onto the
world hating everyone that didn't fit your mold of what
the world should be like. Unions? they are for ppl in
socialist countries - not the good ol' USA where it's
all about me, and just me. |
| 2004/3/10-11 [Reference/BayArea, Transportation/Car] UID:12593 Activity:nil |
3/9 Now that summer has arrived early, can anyone recommend a good
place in the Bay Area (preferably south bay) that does automotive
window tinting? That black interior is burning my ass.
\_ don't worry, the fog will be back soon
\_ my cousin's wife's brother can do it. By the way make sure
they don't mess up your rear-window-defogger |
| 2004/2/27-28 [Reference/BayArea, Transportation/PublicTransit] UID:12435 Activity:nil |
2/27 What is the BART stop that is right under Union Square?
It's one of those cluster of 4 San Francisco BART stops.
\_ I haven't taken BART in years, but I think it is Powell.
\_ The only thing beneath Union Square is a parking garage. Powell
St station, however, is two blocks downhill.
\_ Powell is indeed the one. Drops you off right at SF Shopping Center
or BofA / Gap, depending on where you exit up the stairs
\_ I think he's asking about the Civic Center stop -- though
Powell and Civic Center are only a short walk apart.
\_ Civic Center BART is further away by a couple of blocks.
\_ Duh, yeah you're right. I ought to remember that, but,
uhm, last time I was at Union Square the evening ended...
well, actually I don't remember how it ended. Oh but the
stories.
\_ I usually avoid the gauntlet of people by getting off at montgomery
and then walking up post. It's a short walk and there is more
window shopping on the way. --gabriel
\_ Powell was perfect. Thanks. -op. |
| 11/26 |