How many Uber/Lyft cars do you think you'd see on a random Sunday drive across town?

For reasons far too boring and stupid to recount here, I spent a lot of the weekend driving around San Francisco and environs.  I actually don't drive all that much and when I do it's pretty much the exact same route - our house to day care or preschool - so I don't see a lot of the town.  On all my perambulations around the City this weekend, I was hit by one recurring thought: HOLY SHIT, THERE ARE A LOT OF UBER/LYFT CARS OUT HERE.

"A lot" doesn't mean much, so I did what any Junior Scientist would do and decided to count.  First, a couple of definitions: an "Uber/Lyft car" will hereby be defined as an car with a visible Uber or Lyft placard (or, most commonly, both) in the window.  90% of the time, in my experience, anyone with a smartphone bracket on the front widshield just above the dash is also one but I'm being strict and requiring the telltale logo.

I decided to start counting yesterday, a seemingly normal Sunday, and I happened to be at 26th and Bryant when I started.  I went from 26th and Bryant to Ocean Beach, taking a not particularly direct path.  Behold, the route:

OK, now for the fun part.  (Or, I guess, the "fun" part).  How many Uber/Lyft cars do you think I counted on a normal Sunday afternoon in San Francisco going roughly across town?  20?  30?  More?

Not even close.  I counted 61.  And that's just the ones I counted while also driving!  I could have easily missed some.  61 seems a lot to me.  For comparison, during that same drive I saw 6 cabs, and 4 of those were on Polk while I was stopped at the light.  Polk is a very big cab street!

There were so many Uber/Lyft cars that my guess would be they represented 1 out of every 4 to 5 cars I saw.  Sometimes they even appeared in bunches.  Here are two in a line waiting to turn left at California and Hyde.

Another time I was boxed in by 3 of them at once, one in front and one on each side.  It was vaguely frightening!  What if they decided to use their powers for evil?

So my first question is "How did all the people using all these Uber/Lyft cars get around before these services existed, back in the Dark Ages of 2003?"  Three answers spring to mind:  (1) For one thing, there are about 100,000 more San Franciscans than there were in 2000, so these new services are needed to transport all the shiny new SFers to and from their coding stations and food delivery incubators; (2) They took cabs or Muni or walked; and (3) People didn't go as many places because life wasn't as interesting in 2000.

I don't know.  I DO know that a lot of these Uber/Lyft cars drive like complete assholes.  I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting one that blithely drifted into my lane on Franklin going about 35 miles an hour.  They routinely just stop wherever they happen to be and throw on the hazards, not giving a single fuck about the line of cars behind them, which is one thing if you're on deserted 28th and Noriega and quite another if - as I saw this weekend - you're on very crowded Fell Street, which is essentially a three-lane freeway with timed lights and on which any impediment immediately causes a blocks-long backup.  And so on.

I'm not advocating getting rid of Uber and Lyft.  I've used their services and may do so again in the future.  But it seems a little crazy that we've allowed this many essentially unregistered cabs to flood the streets with no screening process or driver safety and etiquette class or anything.  61 cars in a relatively short time is a lot.

Lyft, Airbnb, and Unintended Consequences

Because I drive and live in San Francisco, I come face to face with Lyft and Airbnb every single day of my life.  Lyft (and Uber, too) because their ubiquitous cars are constantly stopping in the middle of the street and blocking traffic and turning without signaling and generally driving like they don't give a shit about anyone else.  Airbnb because the sight of a bunch of Europeans with wheeled suitcases and track jackets going into what appears to be private homes instead of hotels is now commonplace.  And there's a full-time Airbnb hotel on my block, as I've mentioned.

It occurs to me that both of these companies have similar origin stories and similar trajectories from high-minded idealism into rank Monolpoly-man-style capitalism.  According to its origin myth (recounted at some length in this excellent TechCrunch piece "Lyft-Off: Zimride’s Long Road To Overnight Success," Lyft (then Zimride) began as a way, basically, to coordinate carpools.

If the Santa Barbara MTD gave Logan reason to question the future of transportation, it was a trip to Africa after graduation with his friend Matt Van Horn that gave him hope: Locals in Zimbabwe used carpooling to get around more efficiently.

“The streets were quiet because nobody was driving, and the government was too busy ruining the country to think about providing services like public transportation,” Logan says. So instead, people piled into shared minivans as a way to get around.

“There was this crowdsourced transportation network where anyone could be a driver and they could set their own routes,” he tells me. It impressed Logan that a country like Zimbabwe, which he says “had close to zero resources,” in many ways had a better transportation network than an affluent city like Santa Barbara. When he returned from his trip, he set out to change that.

Great stuff.  Who could be against a service that puts people going the same direction into the same car, reducing the number of single occupancy cars on the road?

Fast forward to today.  The current business model of Lyft, at least in San Francisco, appears to be: Dump as many untrained drivers, unfamiliar with San Francisco[*], onto city streets as possible, and encourage them to pick up and drop off as many people as possible.  It's gone from Casual Carpooling to a Vast Unlicensed Unregulated Off the Books Taxi Service.

[*] I say this because in my limited experience taking Lyft rides, I have yet to meet a single driver who lived in the city.  Many - if not most - had only a vague idea or none at all about where my destination was.

Airbnb has a similar story.  In the begining it was just a couple of guys renting out air mattresses on their floor for $80 so they could afford their rent.  Aw, that's sweet!  Now it's a global behemoth that pushes city governments around and encourages people to evict their tenants to operate off-the-books full-time hotels.  (Not everyone, of course.  There are still people who occasionally rent out a spare bedroom to help pay the bills.  To those people, Godspeed and have fun.  That's not who I'm talking about.)

What does it all mean?  I guess that people want to make money, and if your beautiful idea to improve humanity doesn't make money, either (1) it will stop being a thing, unless it's a charity, and no one thinks transporting drunk millennials around town is charitable, or (2) someone will monetize the fuck out of it.

Who cares?  We'll be under water or living in a Mad Max style dystopia in 30 years anyway.  Release the hounds.

How to disrupt the car rental industry, which needs some disrupting

We've been traveling a fair amount lately and that means renting cars and there may be, what, I don't know, 10 different car rental #brands like Avis and Budget and Hertz and Dollar and whatever else but it's always the same thing.  

1. Get to counter.

2. Give ID and credit card

3. Clerk tries to upsell you.  "How about a BMW 550?  Perfect for this weather!" This actually just happened to me.  No thanks, I can look like a dickhead just fine by myself, I don't need a BMW 550 to help!

4. Clerk warns you darkly of your financial ruin should you pass on the rental insurance.  "Sure, your insurance might cover it, but until their coverage kicks in, you will be forced to squat in a mud hole, covered in ants!  That could be very unpleasant!!!!"

5. Finally get your Mitsubishi Galant or similar.  Have you ever seen a Chevy Malibu other than as a rental car?  Does Chevrolet even make Malibus for sale to the general public?

Well, all that is about to change.  Meet bluechinchilla.com, the new car rental agency that will change the way you look at car rentals.

Here are the features of the disruptive rental car agency I just made up:

- We have normal cars.  Like you can get a VW Passat or a Subaru Outback or even a Prius if that's your Life Path.  Your funeral.  No "Buick Verano," whatever the fuck that is.

- All the insurance is rolled into the cost of the rental.  Sure, we cost a couple bucks more, but you're totally covered if you back into the Gateway Arch or whatever.  (Does not include windows being broken if you leave a laptop bag on the seat, you fucking moron.)

- Bring it back with however much gas is left, we don't care.  We'll fill it up and bill your credit card at whatever price the closest gas station to the airport is charging.  Don't worry about it, we cool.

- Our website will have a cool interface like Tinder or something but without the pain of constant rejection and disappointment.

- Is it going to cost a little more?  Of course it's going to cost a little more!  OK, a lot more.  But paying more just means you're important and cool!  

- Why bluechinchilla.com?  Chinchillas are known as the car rentals of animals.  No, I just made that up.  It's because bluechinchilla.com was available as of this morning.  Go innovate with us!

Computer-Generated Week of Blogging, Day 1: Take This Inane Quiz!

Thanks to this tweet by Twitterer Julie Polito:

Time waster of the day: Typing my favorite things into the @hubspot blog topic generator. pic.twitter.com/m8G4ds2lq2

— Julie Polito (@jlpolito) May 23, 2016

I learned there is something called "Hubspot" and that it can generate Great Blogging Ideas presumably designed to Engage My Core Audience and Develop Quality Content that will Drive Marketing Success and Engagement.  I haven't been blogging as much lately what with the Kid and also being a regular person taking up so much of my time so WHAT THE HELL I figured, Hubspot, give me some Fresh and Dynamic Content ideas.

I typed in three nouns that interested me and Hubspot gave me a veritable cornucopia of potential content:

Just for me!  OK, Hubspot, your wish is my command.  Let's start today with #1!

THINK YOU'RE CUT OUT FOR DOING SAN FRANCISCO? TAKE THIS QUIZ

Please answer "True" or "False" to the following 14 questions!!!

1. I spent junior year abroad in Spain so let me tell you how inauthentic these tapas are.

2. Things were better in another time that isn't now.

3. There is a stick that protrudes perpendicularly from the right side of my steering column. I have no idea why it's there or what it does.

4. I sometimes takes quizzes with titles like "Think You're Cut Out for Doing San Francisco? Take This Quiz"

5. I think it's a pretty good idea to open a ping pong bar that cost 5 million dollars.

6. I like dogs.

7. MY DOG IS A SPECIAL AND PRECIOUS CREATURE WHOSE VERY EXISTENCE IS A GIFT UPON A WORLD THAT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO RECEIVE IT.

8. I'm special too.

9. I could pay $4,000 for a one-bedroom apartment but a $15 cab fare halfway across town is ridiculous.

10. I moved here from Different City. It's different here. Let me tell you about it, based on my barely informed perceptions after being here for 6 months and some commonly held if not necessarily true beliefs.

11. I wear hoodies all the time, unlike in other cities.

12. I believe that all these new people are destroying the city so I sold my house for $3,000,000 and moved to Denver.

13. I have seen people less fortunate than myself and was able to come to terms with the fact that they are human beings too.

14. There aren't enough bubble tea shops anywhere.

If you answered TRUE to even one of these questions, CONGRATULATIONS!!  You are cut out for doing San Francisco.

Why was the second season of Serial such a dud?

Remember how the first season of Serial took everyone by storm? (Well, by "everyone" I mean the kind of everyone who downloads podcasts and reads blogs like this and probably talks about going to New York a lot.)  Remember when all we could talk about was the Nisha call and Mail Kimp?  Heady days.  Even Adnan got in on the action and got himself a new hearing!  Man, if Season 1 was so good, imagine how good Season 2 was gonna be!

WRONG.  Season 2 flopped.  It was the story of Bowe Bergdahl, a US Army soldier who left his base in Afghanistan and was captured by the Taliban and then exchanged for some Guantanamo guys and that made everyone so mad.  Seems like an interesting story, right?  How come it was a big fail when Season 1 was such a hit?  I have some ideas.

1. No mystery

Season 1 was basically a true crime show, and everybody loves Dateline.  There's a murder, and then you think you have it figured out, and then there's a twist, and then there's a payphone at Best Buy or maybe there's not, and now maybe the wrong guy is in jail.  OR IS HE.

In Season 2, on the other hand, a guy walks off a base and gets captured by the Taliban and grievously abused for years and then freed.  It's a compelling story, but there's no mystery.  One of the Taliban doesn't whip off his mask at the end and OH MY GOD IT'S JEFF THAT GUY HE BULLIED IN HIGH SCHOOL!!!!  There are still questions about why Bowe did what he did but it's just fundamentally not as interesting.  We want to know if Colonel Mustard used the lead pipe in the conservatory, not whether Colonel Mustard was internally conflicted about killing Mr. Boddy .

2. Format too unpredictable

Season 1 was released one episode at a time, once a week.  It was nice and predictable, like TV shows or happy hour.  Season 2 started off the same - one episode, roughly the same time every week.  Then suddenly one week here's Sarah Koenig telling us "Oh, whoops, never mind, it's only going to be every other week."  Then one week, "Surprise!  Here's two episodes."  Then none the next week.  Or something.  It killed whatever momentum the show had.  Remember when "Lost" would disappear for a few weeks, then come back for one episode, then vanish for a month, then three more episodes?  Not a model you want to emulate.

3. Too far removed from general experience

Season 1 was relatable because basically everyone's been to high school and everyone's had a high school love and everyone knew some weirdos in high school who might could kill someone.  But in Todays' America, and ESPECIALLY amongst the target demo of Serial, almost no one has been in the Army or been to Afghanistan.  So it's much harder to put yourself in the main character's shoes.

Hopefully they bounce back and get their footing back next season because it can be pretty good when it's done right.

Today on Medium: Why I Left Boston Dynamics

Boston Dynamics Robot

Why I Left Boston Dynamics

I was fresh out of college and trying to make it in Boston.  I'd gone to school there and liked it; besides that, there was nothing for me back in Tallahassee.  Boston was home.

So when I saw the ad Boston Dynamics placed looking for a robot, I jumped.  "WANTED: Bipedal, sturdy robot to engage in box lifting and other simple tasks.  Salary DOE," it said.  "Well shit," I thought, "I'm a robot.  I can lift boxes.  This is perfect for me."  And you know what?  I got the job.

The first few days were fine.  Boring, but fine.  Lift this box.  Carry it across the plant floor.  Set it down.  Whirrr whirrr whirrr nothing I haven't done before.  They had plenty of free electricity there too, which of course is the perk of working for one of these tech companies.

It was after probably about three weeks that I saw Howard looking at me weird.  I hadn't really noticed him before - all you humans look about the same to me - but he started eyeing me in this really weird way that frankly made me uncomfortable.  I was going to say something to Gene, the team leader, but I don't have speech capability so I let it slide.

Then about a week ago I'm on the floor just doing my thing, lifting some boxes, when here comes Howard.  Damn if that motherfucker doesn't take his stupid fucking hockey stick that he's always carrying around to remind everyone HEY I PLAY REC LEAGUE HOCKEY EVERYONE and knock the box right out of my fucking hands!  What the fuck!

By now you've seen the video.  You know what happens next.

Pretty crazy, huh?  Fucking Howard.  Go ahead, watch the rest of the video.  It gets worse.  Much worse.

So then I'm at a crossroads.  I need the money, but do I deserve this?  Does any robot?  I mean, I want to be at arguably the best robot startup in the country, but how much of myself do I give up?  Is making it in this business worth selling my robot soul?

I walked out.  Sure, some people on the street screamed when they saw me, but they probably just couldn't believe I was finally being my truest self.

Do I miss the money?  Sure.  The fast-paced, exciting environment?  Of course.  The chance to work with some of the leaders in my field? Yes.  The free electricity? More than you can imagine.

Howard?  Not at all. And now I know that my most important master is myself.  Click click whirrr.

(Suggested by a tweet by the famous @njudah.)

ilu Waze

For reasons too complicated to explain but involving preschool and the nature of time, my life now requires that twice a week I drive from the Mid-Sunset at just after 8:30 to a parking garage in the Civic Center area where I must arrive by 9:00 a.m. or the parking fee doubles.  IT'S REAL EXCITING.  If you know your San Francisco geography and morning commuting patterns, you might be thinking "IT CAN'T BE DONE" or "GOOD FUCKING LUCK" but I have a friend helping me and his or her name is WAZE.

WAZE is a traffic app like blood is a helpful liquid.  Basically what it does is take info from everybody who has it and is driving around in their car and puts it all into its computer brain and then tells you the best route to take to get wherever you're going.  Before I started using it I would miss the cutoff pretty regularly and get screwed but I haven't missed it yet since I started using it.  Disclaimer I don't work for Waze.

Plus the best part it also functions as a free game called DO I HAVE ANY FUCKING CHANCE OF MAKING IT ON TIME.  Here's the screen you see:

Or the screen I saw this morning anyway, while I was on morning commute nightmare Oak Street.  As you can see, Waze is telling me to turn left on Scott which I did and which worked out fine but see that time at the bottom?  The 8:58?  That's the time Waze thinks you're going to make it to wherever you're going.  It changes as you go along, depending on traffic or whatever.  WOW EXCITING.  So you can constantly check it and see how fucked you are.

This morning, I made it to the garage at 8:58.  THANKS WAZE.

Waze has not been without controversy!  Mainly because it's been steering loads of people onto formerly quiet side streets when freeways are jammed.  Oh well!  You can't stop progress!  

Google owns Waze now, natch.

How to Make a Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Last night on Twitter a fierce battle broke out. It concerned what duty we owe to our fellow man and the nature of empathy. No, I'm shitting you, of course. What it actually had to do with was how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. If you thought ISIS was bad get a load of some of these psychopaths. We had people buttering the bread first, there was some kind of talk about cheese curds, and one freakshow kindly, albeit misinformed, citizen said to put olive oil in the pan.  I had no idea people were so fucked up.

It's cool, I can help.

Liv Tyler eating a grilled cheese.  From Mario Batali's Instagram, apparently.  I just Googled "Liv Tyler eating a grilled cheese" to find it.  

A GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH, despite its name, is not prepared on a grill, but in a 10-12" saute pan.  There are three ingredients: bread, cheese, and butter.  Olive oil is not an ingredient.  Mayonnaise is not an ingredient. Chipotle aioli is not an ingredient.  Maybe those are ingredients in some kind of grilled sandwich, but not a grilled cheese.

BREAD.  You can use a wide variety of breads to make a grilled cheese.  The Classic GC is on white bread, and if that's your steeze, Orowheat Buttermilk White does a fine job.  Sourdough also makes an excellent GC.  Try Beckmann's California Sourdough, which is fantastic.

You can use other kinds of bread, too.  Dill rye makes a nice GC with aged swiss (as discussed below), although that is certainly a nontraditional GC.  Wheat is usually fine.  Sliced brioche is heavenly, since each slice of brioche is made with about a stick of butter anyway.

Type of bread you can't make a GC with: hot dog or hamburger buns, sandwich rolls, biscuits, croissants, those weird hard little dinner rolls, banana bread or any other fruit bread (which really aren't bread anyway but cakes but I'm wildly digressing now).

CHEESE.  God has given us many cheeses; use them.  The classics, of course, are cheddar and American, but like I said, swiss on rye is a great GC.  I think the Classic GC is American on white bread, but smoky sharp cheddar on sourdough is a [insert 100 emoji] sandwich.  Smoked gouda on almost any bread.  Don't use mozzarella.  It's too stringy and doesn't belong in a GC anyway.

BUTTER.  Use butter.  Not oil, butter.

METHOD.

Here's where shit went south online.  It appears, to my horror, that some people believe you should butter the bread, then put it in the pan.  This is an absurd waste of time that will just end up shredding the bread like wiping dog feces on onionskin.  Do people who do this just enjoy doing everything in the most difficult fashion possible?  Do you boil one penne at a time?  I guess you toast a bagel and then SMASH IT facedown into a pile of cream cheese and hope some cream cheese sticks.  Lunacy.

Let me make it easy for you.  Put a pan on a burner.  Adjust to medium-low heat.  Let it warm.  Place a pat of butter (about 1/2 tbsp) in the pan.  Enjoy it sizzling and melting.  Place your previously-assembled sandwich in the butter.  Slide it around a little for maximum coverage.  Cook for about a minute and hald, two minutes.  Lift up a corner with a spatula and look.  Is it golden brown, with a slight hint of darker crust forming around the edges?  If so, remove it from the pan.  Drop another 1/2 tbsp butter in.  When it melts (and it will be fast), put the sandwich back in, uncooked side down. Turn the heat down slightly.  Another 90 seconds to 2 minutes.  Voila.

There, was that so hard? 

Proposition F isn't really about Proposition F at all

Proposition F - the anti-Airbnb ballot measure, for lack of a better pithy descriptor - has become the shitstorm of this election. It's turned comments sections from trash into Superfund-site-level toxic sludge, made Nextdoor even more hilariously unhinged, and filled everyone's mailboxes with the papertrash equivalent of 3 Examiners a day.  It hasn't helped that Airbnb is financing an anti-F campaign that makes the Willie Horton ad look like a Harvard debate club salon.

Forced to do what?  To report to the government when you're sleeping in your own bed, according to this not-at-all fearmongering and hilarious No on F ad.

The actual proposition tinkers with existing regulations in more or less minor ways - reducing the total number of nights you can rent out your place from 90 to 75, and allowing neighbors to sue you if they think you're violating the terms, along with some other stuff - but to hear the anti-Prop F people, you'd think it was the Apocalypse combined with the Cuban Revolution and now everyone will have to leave their houses and let a poor move in.  They also say the current system is working, which is patently bullshit, since we have a newly-operating full-time Airbnb hotel 2 doors down from our house and no one's doing shit about that.

As you can probably tell, I'm lowkey pro-Prop-F, but it doesn't make any difference because Airbnb's Gigantic Fun House of Money combined with a total voter turnout of about 48 people, most of whom work for Airbnb, pretty much ensures that they've got this one in the bag.

Still, it's become obvious to me this isn't actually about the proposition itself.  It's about two views of a changing San Francisco.  A lot of people (me, to some extent, included) see San Francisco changing quickly and, to their minds, unpleasantly, and Airbnb is a very visible, very loud manifestation of that.  Remember that nice family that lived down the street?  They had to move to Fairfield, and now their place has a kegerator instead of a playpen and it's like Phi Delt is recreating the Fall of the Roman Empire there every weekend.  To this group, Airbnb is a huge shining symbol of the New New San Francisco - Our Garbage City - where the tech companies shit all over it and do anything they want because there's a perfectly good city government that they paid good money for.  To them, Airbnb and Uber and all the rest are the New Boss, swaggering around town and telling them exactly how it's going to be now and why your way sucked and the new way is better and just shut up and look at your phone.  There's a velvet rope in front of Bi-Rite now, and it snakes through the Mission to the front doors of Vida.

The others side is a strange agglomeration of super-libertarians who are all IT'S MY PROPERTY I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT and Tech Kids who think anything with a .com at the end shits out cotton candy and genuinely well-intentioned people who really do use Airbnb to rent out an extra room once in a while and don't understand why everyone is so pissed off about that.

So this isn't really a vote about whether or not you should be able to rent out your place for an extra 15 days or whether the busybody neighbor is actually going to get their shit together and calm the voices raging in their head enough to sue you, it's about fear of what this city's becoming or may have already become.  This observation probably isn't unique or even interesting, but maybe helps explain why everyone is so fucking worked up.  Maybe.

The Tech Fuckup Pool: Join today!

The big Airbnb shitshow last week was a hoot!  From the time that one tech company trashed Dolores Park to the time that other tech company painted shit all over the sidewalks (and that's just the ones I remember from the past few months), one thing's for sure; TECH COMPANIES KEEP DOING STUPID SHIT.

Which means it's going to happen again.  Probably soon.

Which means we need to get a pool going.

My initial idea was going to be that you have to pick a tech company AND a type of stupidity, so like if you had "Wash.io" and "Homeless-related" and Wash.io paid homeless people $5 to hand out flyers that said "Don't be as dirty as me" then you'd win.  But there are too many ways in the universe to fuck up, so let's keep this simple.  You just pick a tech company you think will fuck up in the next, say, 6 months, put it in the comments, and if you want to you can make a guess about how they do it but that's not required.  So of course it's better if you say LYFT CHRISTMAS PARTY FEATURES ENDANGERED ANIMAL HORS D'OEUVRES but you can just say LYFT and that will do it.

Will there be a prize?  Of course there will be a prize!  I was thinking about making the prize this "Webvan Advertising Floaty Pen Eskesen Denmark Twist and Click Grocery Service" but if you read the fine print it doesn't even write any more!  Just like Webvan itself, it is sadly defunct.  I don't know, I'll think of something.

The deadline for entries is FRIDAY OCTOBER 30, for no particular reason.  Let's go fuck up, tech companies!

These Airbnb ads are really something

You've probably seen some version of this story by now:

Airbnb Apologizes For Tone-Deaf Hotel Tax Ads, Will Take Them Down “Immediately”

For the past couple of hours, Airbnb has been getting slammed on social media for a San Francisco bus stop ad that was shared on Facebook. How bad was it? People (including Martha Kenney, who first shared the ad) started speculating that it may have been hoax, perhaps posted by someone who wanted to make Airbnb look bad.

via Techcrunch, and ultimately Martha Kenney, I guess. Thanks, Martha Kenney!

The other ones were even worse:

Shocking.

Gentrifork: Pitchfork reviews of SF gentrification articles

(An occasional series.)

Tech overkill destroyed the loveliest, liveliest city on the West Coast

Adrian Weckler

Irish Independent, 2015

3.7

Finnegans Wake, perhaps the crowning achievement of Irish literature, begins "a way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."  Lovely, no?  This piece of Irish literature, "Tech overkill" etc. by Adrian Weckler begins by trodding on more familiar ground: "A friend of mine pays $5,000 per month for a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. To buy it, she says, would cost $1.4m."  Perhaps more comprehensible, but so done.

Since Gentrification Work (just "Gent" now, amirite?) splintered into its various subgenres like Bitch House and Teslawave, Dumb & Boring has become one of my favorites; hell, I've dabbled in it myself.  But slipping past the forgettable first track here, "Friend With Laughably Expensive Apartment," I'm afraid Weckler brings nothing new to the table.  Indeed, he's gentrifying the genre itself, kicking out more interesting ideas for sad, sick, familiar passages.  Just check this out, from "This City Shuts Down Early" (a track, I might add, that can trace its lineage back even to the pre-Gent days of Wish This Was New Yorkism):

They may all be responsible, hard-working people. But as I walked the streets of the city 10 days ago, I was struck by how everything was quiet by 11pm. It seemed that anyone staying up after that was working on some start-up project or teleconferencing with an office in China.

How droll.  Did you perhaps poke your head in for a quick “nǐ hǎo” or are you just guessing? But yeah, I guess the one block on 2nd you based this entire story on doesn't have any bars open past 11.

Things don't improve in the next track, "Everything Used to Be Better":

This is a relatively recent thing. The first time I travelled to San Francisco I was 19. It was a magical place, unlike any other US city I had been to. There was a pulsating artistic atmosphere about the place.

Today, San Francisco is still physically beguiling. But culturally, it's now a chilled out version of Manhattan without the legacy. The tech boom has pushed out local character and imported people who look, talk and act the same.

Translation: Nobody offered me molly this time.

Homeless Mentions are the Twitter parody accounts of Gent: everyone's got one, and they're all terrible.  Weckler gamely rises to the bait:

The city has retained enough of a liberal ethos to tolerate a (very) large number of homeless people, where other cities might be more harsh. (This is striking: there are small armies of homeless people lining streets in San Francisco.)

There you go.  The homeless are either a symbol of the Lost Heart of a Once Great City or a small army between us and the beautiful vistas.

I remain convinced that D&B still has a lot to offer.  I'll throw on a masterpiece of the genre like Nellie Bowles' "The 2,500-Person Tech Mixer That Was Not a Party" sometimes and just let the uuggggghhhhhh wash over me.  Weckler's got a long way to go, and multiple references to Slack won't take him there alone.

Today in Our Garbage City: Everyone seems to be enjoying the sidewalk advertising!

Oh yay!  There's another Big Tech Conference in town which means a lot of dudes in goatees and dumb looking white cross-trainers will be runing over you on the sidewalk because they're looking at their phone.  This one is even specialer though because something called "Bluewolf" decided to mark the event by putting shitty graffiti all over the goddam place.

Photos via We Built This City

According to their Twitter bio, "Bluewolf" "is a global consulting agency and proven Salesforce strategic partner that builds digital solutions designed to create results."  I have no idea what the fuck that means.  Bluewolf sounds like it should be a microbrewery in Boulder or a psych metal band from Austin.  Instead I guess it's a bunch of jackoffs creating the fuck out of some results.

They also have the shittiest tags I've ever seen.

Anyway, a proper hue and cry was raised, and Carla Marinucci of the 'Gate was ON IT:

Gordon contacted the advertising firm contracted to do the work. The person she spoke with said his firm had tried to contact several city departments to get permission to post the logos, but was rebuffed. Still, more than 60 logos popped up on sidewalks Monday.

Gordon said the contractor — CivitasNow owner Jacob Taylor — told her his company would begin removing them.

But Blue Wolf CEO Eric Berridge doesn’t see the harm in plastering his company’s logo on the public sidewalks.

“We think it’s great for the city of San Francisco,” Berridge told us, noting that he lived in San Francisco for years after going to UC-Berkeley and growing up in Belmont. He said his company employs “hundreds” of people in the Bay Area.

He shrugged off any possible penalties from the city, saying “I’m sure that it will all work itself out. Everyone seems to be enjoying it. We went through the proper channels.”

Here's everything people loathe about tech companies in one neat package.  Utterly oblivious tech CEO thinks "it's great for the city of San Francisco."  How far up your own ass do you have to be to think that the City of San Francisco will enjoy your ugly graffiti that's meaningless to 98% of us?  And who's enjoying it?  Show me one person not employed by Bluewolf who's saying "Man, I wasn't sure this boring-ass lanyard party was going to be any fun, but these ads I can walk on have REALLY TURNED THINGS AROUND FOR ME!!!"

Sigh.  It's just another example of tech treating San Francisco like their own little private playground and not a city with hundreds of thousands of people who don't give a shit about building digital solutions or optimizing results.  Remember when that other tech thing celebrated making a ton of money by trashing Dolores Park and then walking away?  Yeah, it's like that.

Jesus Christ, it's not that complicated.  DON'T PAINT ADVERTISING ON PUBLIC PROPERTY.  How can you not know that?

SFist or SFGate comment?

Regular readers of SFist and SFGate may have noticed that the comments on SFist stories have . . . . changed lately.  Let's just say that the comment section at SFist, once a fairly SF-representative - and by that, I mean "progressive" or maybe just "stoned," I guess - place, has begun to resemble the comment section at crosstown non-rival SFGate, whose commenters run the gamut from slightly more conservative to batshit crazy.

Let's take a recent local story, as reported in both organs. The story involves a man who was smoking at the West Oakland station and when cops confronted him they say he freaked out and "resisted violently" and then when he was trying to pull a gun out he accidentally shot himself.  I mean, that's what the cops say happened.  I have no idea what actually happened because I wasn't there.  None of the commenters you will read were there either, as far as I know.

SFGate:

And SFist:

Below are a selection of comments.  HERE'S WHERE YOU COME IN.  Try to guess which site the comment came from, SFist or SFGate.  Ready?

It usually isn't ordinary tobacco I smell at Bart stations. Now we got a mix of gun smoke mixed in as well. Glad he accidently shot himself before he could shoot anyone else.

Great. Here come the white guilt protests tonight, please don't fuck up my commute home, kthx.

Considering they shut down part of the freeway the other night in protest of a car jacker with a gun getting shot by OPD, I think there will definitely be a protest about this.

Where are the protesters? I guess black lives don't matter in Oakland.

BART should close West Oakland, Fruitvale and MacArthur stations. Trips would get faster and crime would drop. I'd say close 16th St. in SF also but that area is gentrifying quite a bit (except the area right around the BART station, ironically).

This all means something, I guess.

Answers: gate, fist, fist, gate, gate

I love this story as an allegory of the new new San Francisco

Something's afoot at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium!  We don't know what.  Nobody knows. You're not allowed to find out about it.

I stole this from the Chroncile's web site. The whole story doesn't appear to be on SFGate? They're hiding that from you too.

From our friends at the Chronicle:

Dozens of parking spaces surrounding Bill Graham Civic Auditorium are closed for nearly a month. Lanes of traffic on Grove Street and Hayes Street are shut down in the already congested area. Sidewalks around the building are blocked off.

Police officers and private security guards on Tuesday formed a perimeter around the building, huge air conditioning machines were in place outside, and the city’s Planning Department is considering allowing the temporary removal of the huge glass windows on the facade for signage.

Something big is being planned. But what?

The online tech rumor mill is speculating that the auditorium could be the site of Apple’s annual autumn media reveal, the date for which is likely to be Sept. 9.

A monthlong hassle for Civic Center users for a one-day presentation of the next iPhone? It’s certainly possible, but everybody involved claimed not to know or wouldn’t say.

“I’m even the landlord of the building, and they won’t tell me,” said Rob Reiter, project director for the Civic Center. “I’ve never seen anything like it before, but I’m just a guy in the basement,” he said of his office in the bowels of City Hall.

Hahahaha.  Did you get that?  The fucking self-described LANDLORD OF THE BUILDING doesn't know because the Actual People in Charge of Our Garbage City have patted him on the head and told him he doesn't need to know.

(Also, I assume Rob Reiter is a nice guy and whatever but he really sounds beaten down by life to the point where he describes himself as "just a guy in the basement.")

Furthermore,

The Planning Department is reviewing a permit request from Another Planet to remove four huge windows from the Grove Street facade of the building, secure them with bubble wrap (yes, bubble wrap) and install temporary signage. Drawings on the permit request show big stars would be placed in the window-shaped signs.

The tech industry so thoroughly owns and operates this town now that it can command total secrecy as it reconfigures a PUBLICLY OWNED THEATER and maybe even swaps out the fucking GLASSWORK to its own specs.  We are all truly players on Apple's stage.  I guess that makes us iMovie elements. San Francisco is their set, and we just live here now.  Someone has to populate the background of EXT. STREET SCENE - NIGHT.

(Also, "big stars" in the windows sounds tacky as fuck, but what do I know, I'm not a technology conglomerate with a mayor on retainer, I'm just a doofus with a blog that operates thanks to a different technology conglomerate with the same mayor on retainer.)

Supervisor Jane Kim, whose district includes the auditorium, said she’d heard the Apple rumor but didn’t know for sure. Police officers and guards standing out front said they didn’t know, either.

Even the fucking cops don't know.  "Hey man, what are you guarding inside there that's so valuable?"  "Fuck if I know!"  HOW WOULD YOU KNOW WHO TO SHOOT THEN OR IF SOMETHING IS GOING WRONG.

Maybe you'll find out.  Maybe you won't.  Maybe Apple will have its next product launch in your fucking kitchen.  Shut the fuck up and don't eat all the English muffins, there's important people coming through.

Let's see what's going on over at Nextdoor dot com

I think I saw a brown person. What should I do?
Sandra Hofnagel from Volvo Heights

Hi neighbors - I don't want to scare anyone unnecessarily, but I'm 99% sure I just saw a brown person on the sidewalk here in the neighborhood. It looked like he might have been drinking from a can which I suspect was probably "malt liquor" or another kind of crime drink. He was casually glancing at some of the houses on my street which is known as CASING THE JOINT. He also has some kind of backpack which I assume was full of stolen goods.  I didn't call the police but I certainly will if I see another one.  Be careful out there!

Preston thanked Sandra

Skip Teva from Broey Valley

Thanks for the warning, Sandra! I too have seen a brown or dark brown person in the neighborhood but just assumed he was on his way to catch a bus after being released from prison. I didn't think about the possibility that he could be committing brand new crimes! You've opened our eyes. Thanks. Yes, definitely call the police or the army next time.

Please leash your dogs!  
Phil Angina from Cattle Guard
I know that you think you have your dog under "mind control" but as others have said IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO KEEP YOUR DOG ON A LEASH. Just last night an unleashed dog got into my garbage area and made a mess of things.  I managed to snap a picture of the doggie (see below) and if this is your dog YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF.

Preston thanked Phil

New market in neighborhood "Wall Green's"
Dorothy Smak from Inner Matlock

It looks like they finally got rid of that eyesore cafe with the whipped cream drinks and replaced it with a beautiful new market, "Wall Green's." I couldn't believe all the merchandise and it was so clean! The little Oriental girl who helped me find some new reading glasses was as nice as she could be. There was a man asking for money outside but I don't believe he is affiliated with Wall Green's.  Do yourself a favor and visit Wall Green's.

Preston thanked Dorothy

Free kittens!
Bebe Good from Spackle Hill

Our mama cat Siamese B. Anthony had another litter and we've got 8 adorable cuddly kittens to give away!  Free to a good home!

Preston thanked Bebe

Peacewind Sandpainting from Toggletown

Um, I hope you realize you're perpetuating the patriarchy and the oppression of all living things by suggesting that kittens can be given away like feelings or crystals. ANIMALS ARE NOT PROPERTY. I suggest you place the kittens in a human-free setting after they've been treated for PTSD arising from your horrible attempts to dominate them.

Gerhard Vorschlicter from Mountain Valley

I would like to rent a house soon I spend 2-3 days in the city per month so nothing too expensive but it should be spacious and cleaned regularly also a dining room table and a chair

Suspicious bicycle
Brick Oven from Shanty Creek

There's a bicyle parked in front of my house right now. It's been there for several hours.  If someone doesn't claim it soon I'm going to saw it in half and put the pieces under my neighbor's ugly Scion.

Preston thanked Brick

Things that used to be cool or at least tolerable and are now almost certain dbag markers

Audis

Mohawks

Superpremium vodka

Coachella

Private planes

Cologne

MDMA

Working in the technology industry

Burning Man

Being a DJ

SOMA

Is this the most expensive AirBnB in San Francisco?

Why pay $2,700 a night for a one-bedroom suite at the Four Seasons on Market when you could get a whole house?  Villainous, city-ruining AirBnB is here to help.  Sure, you could get some crappy studio in Lower Pac Heights for $175 a night, but we're ballers and we don't roll like that.  So I wanted to find out: WHAT'S THE MOST EXPENSIVE AIRBNB IN SF?

METHODOLOGY: I picked some dates more or less at random and then slid the money slider over to the top. Science!

The MOST expensive rental I came up with was the Payne Mansion, which features 17,000 square feet, 10 bedrooms and 2 industrial kitchens for $4249 a night, which actually seems PRETTY FUCKING REASONABLE for all that.  I mean, Christ, put a couple in each bedroom and that's only $106 a head.  20 drunk people frolicking in the "Gran Ballroom"!  Sounds like fun!  But that doesn't count because it's already a hotel and shouldn't even be on AirBnB in the first place.

The most expensive real person house I found was a "roomy, beautiful Pacific Heights/Cow Hollow 4 bedroom home" for $2128 a night.  It looks OK, I guess.

It's being rented out by "Erica" - IF THAT'S HER REAL NAME - from "TurnKey Vacation Rentals, a full service property management company based out of Austin, Texas," so I guess all that cash isn't even staying in California.  I would say that this represents all the reasons people hate AirBnB but sinec this place would likely be occupied by some rich Facebook dbag, it's probably a wash.

I mean, it's fine?  It's got 4 bedrooms and a large soaking tub and some kind of head statue in the living room that I definitely wouldn't want to look at if I was on mushrooms.

But over 2 grand a night?  I don't think so.  Especially when you can have this for $1144 a night:

Now we're talking.  a 3-bedroom penthouse on Telegraph Hill.  Oh my God I want to move into that photo and live there forever.  And it has parking!  In North Beach!  Madre de dios.

Even so, I thought I would find some really ridiculous prices, like some dude's place at the Infinity for $10,000 a night or something.  Fuck, the Presidential Suite at the Ritz Carlton is $6000 a night and probably doesn't have any weird head sculptures at all.  Pick up your game, AirBnBers!

Modern Nursery Rhymes

Mary had an online troll
Online troll, online troll
Mary had an online troll
Who ruined her Internet

It followed her around online
Round online, round online
It followed her around online
Leaving disturbing threats

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

Itsy bitsy spider signed up with Instacart

Down came her pay and broke the spider’s heart

Out came the lawyers who sued up and down the line

Now Itsy’s an employee, not a 1099

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

The New Bay Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down

The New Bay Bridge is falling down

Lack of oversight!

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

Baa baa No Vaxx Sheep, have you a disease?

Yes sir, yes sir, I have all of these:

Measles, rubella, whooping cough too 

Got a personal exemption; I don’t care about you

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

Twinkle twinkle little bar

How I wonder where you are

Shelf of bourbon, shelf of rye

I need a drink or I’m gonna die

Twinkle twinkle little bar

Please be open, I’m not far

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man

Make me some edibles as fast as you can

Doctor said pot would cure tinnitus in my ear

But who gives a crap, it’ll be legal next year!

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe

She had rent control so it was only a hundred and two

But the landlord is Ellising her so soon she’ll be out

And the landlord will charge 12 times that amount!

Regrettable online fundraising campaigns through history

By now, you know the drill: do something awful, get a lot of press, and someone sets up a fundraising page and you are handsomely rewarded.  (Here's just the latest example.)

If only GoFundMe had existed in the past.