Wait, I want to have an I'm Leaving San Francisco Letter too

Please post it on the Bold Italic.

(I'm not actually leaving San Francisco. I'm just scared I'll miss out and won't be able to contribute to the I'm Leaving San Francisco Letter genre)

I can still remember the day I set foot in San Francisco.  The air was aglow and the fog tasted sweet, like simple syrup.  Every day I would walk to work from my huge apartment in North Beach that cost $124 a month to my very cool job doing something creative with a lot of cool people who were also cool and unusual.  Then we would go to underground dance fashion raves in SOMA before there were offices there or before people called it SOMA until 4 am and then be fine at work the next day because the very spirit of San Francisco would keep you invigorated.

It’s different now, of course; it’s not My San Francisco any more.  I guess it started when the Thorvites emerged from the sea and began eating large sections of the Sunset, their gaping, blood-soaked jaws full of pavement and stucco and hapless dog walkers.  Of course, incinerating Golden Gate Park with thermite and napalm temporarily halted their shrieking march across the city, but at what cost?  The new Golden Gate Parking Lot is convenient but I miss the trees.  Am I being selfish, though, I wonder.  What makes the old SF any better than the new one?

There were the little changes, things that seemed small but then started to add up.  The coffee place down the street, where the owner, Rose still made delicious lattes and served heavenly muffins straight from her own oven, closed suddenly and was replaced by a Physical Form Transmutation Center, another one of those places where you’d go to have your molecular matrix disassembled and transmitted to a pulsar of pure energy.  There’s probably one in your neighborhood too.  It’s like they’re taking over!  They're like the Chase banks of physical transmutation places.  And I knew the cobbler shop probably wouldn’t last, but I was more than a little taken aback when it closed and reopened as an Alien Assimilation Center.  I know our new overlords are mighty; I guess I didn’t expect them to be so pushy, too!

I sigh and try to remember that change is inevitable.  The Mission was an Irish neighborhood once, then Hispanic.  Now it’s Biomutant.  From “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” to “Oye Como Va” to “Feast on the Skulls of the Screaming Ones, For We Are the Damned of the Night.”  All good songs, just different voices.  Change.  In 30 years, the Biomutants will be the ones getting pushed out, and they’ll probably complain about how the Drillbots have ruined the neighborhood by drilling holes in everything and driving right over the intricate temples of human bones the Biomutants spent so long assembling.  “I remember when this was a cool neighborhood, before the Drillbots messed everything up,” they’ll whine, in between bites of a child’s forearm.  It’s inevitable.

The last straw was when Gozor and his Reptile Clan won the Battle of Potrero Hill and slaughtered the last of the Golden Cadre.  The streets had barely stopped running thick and red with clotted blood when I came home to find a 3-day Notice tacked to my door.  Gozor was Ellis Acting me out.  A quick look at Craigslist and I knew my time in San Francisco was over.  I’d had some pretty sketchy apartments here, but $3000 a month for a muddy Hellpit dug in the sandy soil and covered with a bamboo lattice seemed a little ridiculous.  Especially since I also had to share a cooking fire with Jaku the Forgotten One, who honestly did not look like he kept a clean kitchen.

So farewell, San Francisco!  I shall remember you as you were, that beautiful, charming, grey City of Wonder, and not like now, just another backwards province in the Borakkian Empire.  I hear Portland is still not overrun; maybe I’ll try there next.

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.

Journalism! Oh well. Part 2.

I'm going to assume that Time magazine has gone to some kind of vanity press model where you can publish anything you want on Time.com as long as you pay them enough because that's the only rational explanation I can come up with for this sub-Debra-J-Saunders pile of drivel.  Or maybe it's just a naked, trolling pageview gambit because if any editor at Time thought this piece had any more journalistic worth than Weekly World News filler, journalism really is dead and US Weekly is our new New York Times.

The piece I am referring to, of course, is "Netflix’s New Parental Leave Policy Could Make Things Worse for Women," by one "Suzanne Venker."  It begins thusly:

No doubt people are dancing a jig with Netflix’s announcement Tuesday that the tech company will allow its employees to take unlimited maternity or paternity leave during the first year after their child’s birth or adoption—while earning their normal pay.

I'm dancing a jig!  No, I'm not, because I don't work at Netflix.  Also, who has used the term "dancing a jig" since FDR's fireside chats?  "Twenty-three skidoo, Ethel, I'm dancing a jig over the new warshing mechanism!  What's a Netflix?"

Suzanne Venker darkly sees many problems with Netflix's fantastic and generous policy that is a great benefit to employees and which I desperately wish my wife's company had:

First, offering an unlimited leave policy in the first year to new moms and dads means the remaining employees who don’t fit the bill will be left to pick up the slack. This will likely, in turn, strain relations among co-workers and make the workplace environment less effective.

[citation needed]  It will likely strain relations among co-workers!  This sounds serious!  I'm sure this is a well-documented problem that Suzanne Venker can support with studies and research.  Oh, when it's "likely" you don't need evidence.  This is the equivalent of Ancient Aliens' common use of the term "Isn't it possible that.....," as in "Isn't it possible that the stones used to build the Great Wall were quarried by ruby lasers attached to the foreheads of barely-sentient orgone slaves imported from Io?"  You can get away with anything like that!  Sure, Suzanne, it's likely!

Second, it isn’t fair to babies. By encouraging mothers, who are the still the primary parent at home, to bond with their baby for a long period of time with the expectation they’ll return to work at the end of the year means the baby will become even more attached to his mother, and separation may become intolerable.

Suzanne Venker is on much firmer ground here, because a vast amount of research supports the notion that separation may become intolerable when a mother returns to work after a year.  Oh no, wait, it's exactly the opposite!  I suppose it "may" become intolerable, sure.  If even one baby has trouble adjusting, we shouldn't do it at all!  Good thinking, Suzanne!

Offering new parents full pay for up to one year is akin to putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. The needs of children are huge, and they do not end at one year. On the contrary, they just begin. Taking a year off of work to meet those needs merely scratches the surface.

Get the message, Mom?  NEVER LEAVE YOUR CHILD'S SIGHT, NOT EVEN FOR A SECOND.  Any absence creates a "gaping wound."  Hope your college fund is for 2, because you're going with him/her!

It goes on and on in this vein, trying to shame women into staying at home instead of going to work.  Which, if you can do it and that's your choice, fine, but a lot of women either can't or don't want to and that's fine too and the last thing we need is Suzanne Venker trying to make someone feel bad with completely fabricated arguments supported by zero evidence.

We will later learn, although it is not disclosed anywhere in the article or the author's note, that Suzanne Venker is the kind of person who tweets things like "The war on men is real. And it has only just begun" or "Feminism is evil in disguise" so I'm starting to get the sense that Suzanne Venker isn't a 100% neutral source on this topic.

Fuck's sake, Time magazine.

Journalism! Oh well.

To understand this Journalism Thing, you need to know a few background facts:

1. The San Francisco Chronicle is San Francisco's only big-time, still-printed-on-paper-every-day newspaper.  I get it delivered to my door!  I'm old school like that.  Also, just old.  Anyway, being the single most important newspaper in SF comes with a Civic Responsibility, I think.  It is my belief that a city's newspaper should serve as the citizenry's watchdog, unafraid to keep a careful eye on what government is doing for and to its people.

2. There have been some questions about whether the Chron is living up to this solemn responsibility.

3. Former mayor Willie Brown writes a weekly column for the Chronicle, which appears on Sundays.  It is a strange, although not-unpleasant melange of lightweight political observations, very, very lightweight movie reviews, and almost certainly fabricated anecdotes in which normal folks encounter Willie and inevitably share quoteworthy bon mots.  (Example:  A guy came up to me at Town Hall on Thursday night and asked me, “You know what is both the shortest and the longest sentence in the English language?” “I do.” Complete strangers apparently approach Willie Brown at dinner with sub-Borscht-Belt level jokes.)

4. The defense in the Raymond Chow case has suggested, in court filings, that Mayor Ed Lee accepted bribes, a parctice he inherited from former Mayor Willie Brown.

Now, that sounds like a juicy story for a newspaper to investigate!  Not one but TWO former mayors taking bribes!  But wait!  Is the San Francisco Chronicle going to investigate San Francisco Chronicle columnist Willie Brown?

They don't need to!  Willie Brown has told us, on the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, that he didn't take any bribes at all!  

I could feign surprise or even indignation at seeing my name dropped in FBI wiretap transcripts as having taught the folks at City Hall the art of “pay to play” politics. But in all honesty, after 40 years of innuendo and countless investigations, I’m used to it.

So when federal court filings quoted former Human Rights Commission compliance officer Zula Jones as telling an FBI undercover agent in the Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow case that I taught her everything there is to know about laundering campaign contributions, I could only chuckle.

I have never talked about campaign contributions with Jones in my life. And I would not know her cohort who shows up in the Chow case, former Human Rights Commissioner Nazly Mohajer, if she bumped into me on the street.

I do know, however, that for years the FBI has targeted sting operations at black officials and other minority politicians all across the nation. That is why, in all my years in office, I treated every phone call as if it were being taped and everyone I spoke to as if they were wearing a wire.

So stand down, citizens.  All is well!

I tweeted about this apparent - well, you could say apparent or you could say GLOWING LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN OBVIOUS - conflict of interest yesterday:

Maybe I'm cynical, but can you trust the Chronicle to conduct a thorough investigation of their own columnist? pic.twitter.com/KTLMA0HYhM

— TK (@40goingon28) August 9, 2015

Through the good replies of my fellow citizens, I found that questions about the relationship between Brown and the Chronicle have been raised before, like in this article by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez in the sadly defunct Bay Guardian. Somebody should pay Joe to look into this more.  Surely with the billions of dollars sloshing around this town we can fund some investigative reporting.  One less laundry app!  Uber for muckraking!

(It feels weird to write about questionable journalism without Debra J. Saunders being involved, but don't worry, Debra, I'm sure you'll be featured again soon.  The odds are in my favor.)

HEADLINES ARE ALWAYS MISLEADING!!!! I mean, don't believe everything you read.

Have you heard about MEASLES PARTIES!!!??!!  It's all the rage in clueless Marin County, where Uber-privileged parents who refuse to vaccinate their children are INTENTIONALLY exposing them to measles so they'll get the disease and be done with it!

It made for a great story because it played on a current fear (measles spreading as a result of non-vaccinated kids) and allowed us to look down on a privileged group (dopey Marin parents who don't vaccinate).

It smelled like bullshit from the beginning to me.  Here's the Ur-story where it all started, "Health Officials Discourage ‘Measles Parties’."  And here's our key section:

She was approached recently by a friend who knew her kids were unvaccinated. The friend offered to help set up a play date with another child who was sick.

“She said, ‘I know someone who has the measles, would you like to be connected with them?’” Schiffman said.

That's it.  The "reporter" made no effort to contact this mysterious "friend" or otherwise verify this story.  Instead, she just ran with it.  Measles parties!  Makes for a great story.  Of course it all turned out to be BS.

In other PANIC!!!!! news, there was this tweet from SF Weekly:

Yikes! Hemlock Tavern's days may be numbered http://t.co/JKo3b5EX83
— SF Weekly (@SFWeekly) February 10, 2015

I guess all our days are numbered, so it's not really news.  Eventually the Sun will expand to envelop our planet and the Hemlock and every other venue will host its last show.  But for a music scene reeling from the loss of venue after venue, this seemed like terrible news!  Unless you read the article.

Anthony Bedard, the Hemlock's longtime booker (not to mention a staple of the city's punk scene and the man behind the genius Twitter account Folder Rock) echoed that statement in an email to SF Weekly. "The Hemlock has an ironclad lease that runs through the summer of 2021," he wrote. "After that, it's within the realm of possibility that the building owner may opt to not renew our lease." 

So the Hemlock itself foresees ongoing live music into 2021.  But I guess "Yikes! Hemlock Tavern may only have live music for the next 6 years" isn't as catchy a headline.

On a lighter note, and not to mercilessly rag on SF Weekly, but this:

Only in San Francisco: A doggie fashion show http://t.co/6GRdu9i0Hr
— SF Weekly (@SFWeekly) February 9, 2015

"Only in San Francisco" used to mean something. Like when you saw something so outrageous or unconventional you couldn't imagine it existing in any other city.  Like, "Oh, I'm off to my Vegan Polyamorous Texas Hold 'Em Meditation Group." "Only in San Francisco!"

A doggie fashion show is the opposite of "Only in San Francisco."  Not because it's so normie it makes clip-on earrings look like scarrification, but because they have doggie fashion shows in Pittsburgh, PA, Scottsdale, AZ, Providence RI, Somerville, Massacusetts, and probably any other city with at least two Pomeranians and two crazy people who like to dress them up.  A tech douche fashion show might be "Only in San Francisco," but a doggie fashion show most certainly is not.

Come on, SFGate, get it together

SFGate is the San Francisco Chronicle's presence on the World Wide Web.  The San Francisco Chronicle is an august daily newspaper that has been publishing for over a thousand years and actually has some great people on staff and still does some good journalism.

Why, then, does SFGate look like it was made by a Desoxyn-addled 13-year-old?

Oh my God, calm down.  There is shit EVERYWHERE.  Where is the fucking NEWS?  It's a news site, right?  Oh, there's a little box with "Latest News."  And I guess the Wise Sons Deli thing is news - but why is there a picture of Popeye's? (I actually know the answer, but will people who don't frequent the Mission know?)  What the hell does this Mill Valley 2-bdrm have to do with anything?

[LET ME INTERJECT with a little non-SFGate-related side note.  As my associate Olu pointed out yesterday, isn't it odd how little people have been talking about the Popeye's getting destroyed?  Especially given Popeye's cult status among certain internetati?  And back to SFGate, isn't it so fucking typical that even though Popeye's is in the fucking picture, and Popeye's, a place where most people can actually afford to eat, was also destroyed, the story is about $14 sandwich place Wise Sons? I mean, it's too bad about what happened to Wise Sons, and I wish them nothing but a speedy recovery, but it's just interesting is all.]

BUT WAIT IT GETS WORSE.

Just rando shit everywhere.  Here's a Buzzfeed list of the 25 Best Cities for Football Fans, complete with a satanic cheerleader!  Here's some party recipes!  Here's Home Tours!  How about Social Scene!  Wait, bond money missing?  That seems like Actual News!  Why is it buried in here with lifestyle crap?

Here's another screenshot from a week or so ago:

See what I'm talking about?  Zero fucking organization.  Just throw shit at the screen randomly and CLICK CLICK CLICK WE HOPE!!!! King of Saudi Arabia died! Curry to All Star Game! Some footbridge something or other!  ZOOOOOM MORE COFFEE!!!!!!

I'm sure there's some 26-year-old who's behind all this and knows about Monetizing Eyeballs and Click Ratios and shit like that.  But on behalf of the rest of the population of fucking Earth, SFGate, I am begging you, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.  At least in the old layout I knew what the fuck I was looking at.

TK's Albums of the Year

I'm not a Professional Music Critic, so nobody really cares, but I was going to write about Debra J. Saunders latest stupid, dumb column because it made me so mad but then I went "You know what?  It's Christmas.  Let's just be happy and not mad."  There were so many good albums this year.

I was gonna do a video for each one but fucking Blogger keeps deleting the videos so fuck it. Whoops, there goes my Xmas Spirit.

1. Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music

You haven't lived until you've heard a guy who sounds like Waylon Jennings sing about "reptile aliens made of light" and name-drop psilocybin and DMT.  I listened to this album so many times this year.

2. Cocktails, Adult Life

One of the two local bands on the list, which is crazy unusual for me.  But this album, a totally fun power pop gem, would make the list either way.

3. Cloud Nothings, Here and Nowhere Else

Am I crazy if I say this is what the Replacements might have sounded like if they practiced more and drank less?

4. Woods, With Light and With Love

I love these crazy hippies.

5. Young Fathers, Dead

It's not really going out on a limb to pick an album that won the Mercury Prize (which is a big deal in Britain, let me assure you) but it doesn't change how great this album is.  Mercury Prize =/= Grammy.


6. TV on the Radio, Seeds

I haven't had that much time with this album yet (by which I mean I've only listened to it 7 or 8 times) but I already love it.  I love everything TVOTR does.  I think 2 of my favorite 10 albums of the '00s were by TVOTR.

7. Generationals, Alix

I suggested "Black Lemon" to my friend Stephen and he said that I like that "post-MGMT stuff" more than he does.  HRMPH.


8. Painted Palms, Forever

The other local band.  Every city gets the Miike Snow it deserves.

Being a contrarian, I didn't like a lot of stuff that everyone else fell all over themselves about.  I thought the new Spoon album sounded exactly like a Spoon album.  Jenny Lewis's Voyager was whatever.  You have to be kidding me with that Leonard Cohen thing.  Be honest, you don't like Leonard Cohen.

Merry Christmas!  See you again one more time before New Years, for my annual Top Tweets of the Year post.  THE EXCITEMENT IS PALPABLE.

THE FORECAST IS FOR RAIN

Anchor Drone (chuckling): Thanks for the report, Kenny.  It's nice to know not every police beating has to be a sad story.  Now let's talk to meteorologist Skip Hapless at Weather Center 10000 who's tracking a fast-moving storm heading for our area!

Skip Hapless: HAVE YOU MADE YOUR PEACE WITH GOD?

Anchor Drone: What's that, Skip?

Skip Hapless: ARE YOU PURIFIED?  ARE YOU READY TO STAND BEFORE THE LORD?  HAVE YOU CLEANED YOUR GUTTERS?

Anchor Drone: What does the storm look like, Skip?

Skip Hapless: It will make Armageddon look like a free cone at Coldstone Creamery.  Lashing sheets of rain will pelt and destroy wildlife.  Your loved ones will cling to trees and pray for death.  THIS WILL BE A MAJOR WEATHER EVENT.

Anchor Drone: How much rain can we expect, Skip?

Skip Hapless; IF ONLY NUMBERS WENT THAT HIGH. POURING, GUSHING RAIN. MORE WATER THAN YOU COULD IMAGINE. ALL IS LOST.

Anchor Drone: Sounds like this might affect the morning commute!

Skip Hapless: WHAT COMMUTE. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND. COMMUTE TO HELL.  WE WILL ALL BE COMMUTING TO HELL ON A ROADWAY OF LIQUID DEATH.

Anchor Drone: That was Skip Hapless with the weather.

Why things are not going to work out for Buzzfeed and me

Famous web site Buzzfeed is looking to hire a "Staff Writer, San Francisco."  Since I already staff write just for fun and enjoy lazily daydreaming about leaving the choking conformist corporate culture of my current job I decided to see if I'd be a likely candidate to staff write for Buzzfeed.  No, it turns out, I would not.

First, I am over 25 and have a decent haircut, and it says right there on the site "NOTICE: WE DO NOT HIRE ANYONE OVER 25 OR ANYONE WITH A NORMAL HAIRCUT."

Here are the "Responsibilities" meaning what I would be doing during the time I'm not looking at other, better web sites.

I could do this!  As long as I don't have to ever, ever say "tech/startup space" out loud.  Blech.  Blech.  I like contributing to the conversation about culture and I try to do that every day.

Here we have requirements, which is the part I like to call "WHY I WON'T BE HIRED TO BE STAFF WRITER FOR BUZZFEED"

You see that Buzzfeed is so fucking TERRIFIED of haters that they had to put in "No haters" TWICE, once with an exclamation point!  NO!  HATERS!

Well, on behalf of me and other haters, fuck you, Buzzfeed.  You won't silence us!

(Also, BUZZ FEED, I have to check the manual but I think "18 Times Paris Hilton Committed Gloriously Bad Crimes Against Fashion" is the work of a HATER so you may yet have haters on staff!  Commence your purge of haters AT ONCE!!!)

Let's see what else.  I'm not 100% sure what emotional intelligence is but I probably have that.  I have the ability, but not the willingness, to take the perspective of others, so I'm good there.  My dog had a "positive, curious, playful disposition" but I couldn't say I do.

Ok then. This has been 17 Great Reasons Why I Won't Get a Job at Buzzfeed.

Best airport food is at DFW? Come the fuck on.

A couple of days ago Internet dinosaur Yahoo! (or is it just Yahoo now, sans excitement) went and published a list with the unwieldy title "Every Important U.S. Airport, Ranked by Its Food and Drink," when they could have just said "Best Airport Food" or gone full Upworthy with "Every Airport Serves Food. Which One Has The Best Will Shock You."

[DIGRESSION ONE: It was actually 3 days ago, so I guess it wasn't a "couple" of days ago, but really, can't a "couple" be up to 4?  Like if you said "I'm meeting a couple of friends at Hometown Buffet" would that ALWAYS mean EXACTLY 2 friends, or could it mean a loose assemblage of up to 3 or 4?  Maybe just 3.]

[DIGRESSION TWO: No, seriously, I really want to know why Upworthy, and Upworthy alone, has a stylebook that calls for Capitalizing The First Word Of Every Title Including The Articles Like A And An And The.]

Like everything else they do, Yahoo fucked it up.  Let's cut right to the chase: they said the airport with the best food in America was human stockyard Dallas-Fort Worth.

If you have ever flown on American Airlines, then you know the sinkhole of human misery and pathos that is DFW.  Long lines of dead-eyed humans dressed for a slumber party in a Third World dumpster shuffle aimlessly on and off the TRA'AIN from one endless terminal to the other.  Luckily, there is a plethora of tasty and nutritious food to satisfy these weary travelers!

Not really.  Here's what you get in Terminal C:

I know what you're saying.  HOW COULD IT BE BAD IF THERE'S A WENDY'S.  Of course you're right.  Wendy's is magical.  But does a Wendy's and an Au Bon Pain and a Chili's Too make for the Best Airport Food? No.

(Also, WTF, Taco Bell Express?  Taco Bell is pretty fucking fast already.  I can't imagine how you make it express.  I guess you could have a Food Product Gun that shoots a pre-made slurry of Meat Substitute and spray cheese into either a hard or soft edible wrapper, but that's about it.)

Don't come at me with your Grove Natural Snacks.  That's yogurt covered raisins in a plastic pouch.  The rest is all garbage.  I've eaten at the Texas Stadium Skybox Bar & Grill and it tasted like someone put McDonalds into a food dehydrator and then reconstituted it in gasoline.

SFO came in second.  Just for comparison's sake, here are your options in SFO Terminal 2:

Andale Mexican Restaurant

Burger Joint

Cat Cora

Lark Creek Grill

Napa Farms Market

Peet's

Starbucks

The Plant Cafe

Pinkberry

Vino Volo

Wakaba

But yeah, I guess Manchu Wok would beat the shit out of grilled steelhead salmon with mashed potatoes, broccoli, and sundried tomato-bacon vinaigrette. 

Debra J. Saunders uses assisted suicide on reason and sense

I was just thinking the other day that I haven't read anything stupid and nonsensical from Debra J. Saunders in a while.  Luckily she's here to fix that.  Today Debra J. Saunders is tackling assisted suicide, which is a complicated, nuanced topic that Debra J. Saunders cannot understand or discuss intelligently.

SPOILER ALERT: Debra J. Saunders is against assisted suicide.

Here's my favorite disclaimer in a while, at the VERY END of the column, so you have to read her childish attempts to rail against it before you find out:

Full disclosure: My husband, Wesley J. Smith, is a paid consultant with the anti-assisted suicide Patients Rights Council.

Haha.  I hope he has some better arguments than you do, because yours are terrible.  Debra is here to discuss the case of Brittany Maynard, who has terminal cancer with less than six months to live and is moving to Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal, because she wants to be in control of the end of her life.  Personally, I have no problem with that, but we're not here to discuss why I'm right, but rather why Debra J. Saunders is so very wrong.  Here's the key section:

I love the spirit, but there is a huge flaw in Maynard’s reasoning. She says she wants her story to help change California law so that no one else has to “move to another state to not die horribly.” Close to 40,000 Americans kill themselves every year; they make the same choice Maynard is making, although most won’t have the media attention that is being lavished on the vibrant and telegenic UC Berkeley graduate. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in this country.

Perhaps Maynard sees this choice as a way of beating back at death, to not allow the beast to own every turn of an end approaching far too soon. I respect that. But she is wrong to call it, as advocates do, “death with dignity.” The very phrase suggests that people who do not choose suicide lack dignity.

I've read this over and over and I can't see what she thinks is the "huge flaw in Maynard's reasoning."  Is it that "advocates" call it "death with dignity" and that somehow impugns non-suicide death?  Because that argument is so breathtakingly stupid I'm amazed that Debra J. Saunders could turn on or operate a computer to compose those sentences.  In no way does calling suicide "death with dignity" imply anything other kinds of death, any more than calling Debra J. Saunders an idiot imply that she has occupied the idiot field and there are no other idiots.  Sadly, this is not true.

Also, nowhere in the article does Saunders attribute the phrase "death with dignity" to Maynard, so it's not even her goddam argument.  Debra J. Saunders is assisted suiciding a strawman.

She - or husband Wesley, I don't know - also comes up with one more anti-assisted suicide argument.  Well, she doesn't, but she manages to write down what someone else said. 

Marilyn Golden of the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund in Berkeley is concerned that Maynard’s story obscures the larger picture. “For every individual with a happy family who’s not at risk for abuse, there are many other individuals who may be subtly steered toward assisted suicide by their insurance company or pressured by their family.”

Sure, families subtly steer other family members into all kinds of bad decisions, but we don't ban options that people want because some people may get steered towards them.  Just because a kid in a military family feels pressured to join the Army, we're not going to ban the Army. 

In the end, just like with gay marriage, it's impossible to construct a logical argument against assisted suicide, because it doesn't fucking affect you at all. Debra J. Saunders is just too dumb to realize this.

Grover Norquist went to Burning Man and doesn't understand how it works

Ugh, more Burning Man stuff.  Sorry.  Just ignore this if you want.  It's just been bothering me and this is where I let my grumpy-old-man-writing-letters-to-the-editor hang out.

Grover Norquist is a noted ultraconservative and anti-tax crusader who famously declared that "I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."  Like a puppy you don't want!

Anyway, Grover decided he wanted to go to Burning Man because "There's no government that organizes this. That's what happens when nobody tells you what to do. You just figure it out. So Burning Man is a refutation of the argument that the state has a place in nature."

Right off the bat, Grover has a few misconceptions.  It's not like 60,000 people just materialize in the remote Nevada desert and organize themselves into a semicircle of camps.  While it's not controlled by a "state" per se, the Burning Man organizers most certainly do serve as a "government."  There are SHITLOADS of rules about what you can and can't do.  Here's a whole page of them. No tampons in the Porta Potties.  Never start a fire on the playa.  No audio systems stronger than 300 watts.  All cars must be licensed.  MAN I AM FEELING THE BOOT OF THE GOVERNMENT ON MY THROAT.  Grover's apparent idea that it's rule-free libertarian wonderland is a fantasy.

So he went and wrote about it for the Guardian.  His article has all the usual first-timer wide-eyed crap about naked people and drugs, but a few passages stood out to me.

A community that comes together with a minimum of “rules” demands self-reliance – that everyone clean up after themselves and help thy neighbor. Some day, I want to live 52 weeks a year in a state or city that acts like this. I want to attend a national political convention that advocates the wisdom of Burning Man.

If you want to live in Burning Man for a year, Grover, be my guest.  I have a few questions, though:  Who's going to bring in the food and water you'll need for a year?  After 3 or 4 months, the camp next door is going to get sick of you showing up every day with your plate out.  Who's going to pay for that food?  More importantly, who's going to maintain the roads that whatever vehicles that bring the food will travel on?  Will Burners leave and voluntarily go on road-paving details?  Because government bad.

What about if someone gets sick? If there's a doctor at Year-Long Burning Man, he's going to be working his fucking ass off providing gifted health care to everyone.  Is that fair?  Who's gonna pay for medical supplies?  What if the person who gets sick doesn't have any money or any shiny beads to trade?

What if Year Long Burning Man gets attacked by the Cliven Bundy Ranch Militia?  You can't bring guns to Burning Man, so who's going to defend you and your fellow Free Society lovers?  Certainly not that bad old government.

(Incidentally, I wonder if Grover, the author of "Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives" knows that he is NOT AT ALL FREE to bring guns to Burning Man.)

Also, the Burning Man political convention is too silly and juvenile an idea to discuss, but it would make for great TV.  I'd fucking love it if Mitt Romney gave a speech about how everyone in the audience had lizard heads with fountains of pure light streaming from them.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of what he says is pretty true, about how you need to be self-reliant at the event and everyone gives of themselves.  I think he's trying to make the point that this kind of attitude and behavior could be writ large in society and we'd all live in a government-free boho paradise, but this is the kind of thinking that most people leave behind when they start high school.  The fact is, Burning Man is a tightly controlled, self-selected community where everyone knows they have to provide for themselves.  When I went, I spent about $2000 to do that.  That money didn't come out of thin air.  In Grover's Burning Man fantasy, what about the people who don't have $2000?  What becomes of them?

Of course Grover Norquist is welcome to go to Burning Man.  Anyone is.  But trying to promote it as some kind of tax-free libertarian fantasyland is ridiculous.

OK, that's it for Burning Man for this year.  Hopefully all years.

I'm trying to figure out what bothers me about this article

It's called "I Moved to San Francisco - and Now I Have an App for Everything."  I saw it on Slate, but it apparently first appeared in Business Insider, which doesn't surprise me at all.  It was probably a 43-screen slideshow in its original form.  Business Insider is the worst.

Anyway, amazingly enough, it wasn't the title alone that put me off.  In fact, I've re-read this article three or four times now and I still can't figure out exactly what about it fills me with rage.  Or sadness.  Or some feeling.  I don't even know any more.  I think I'm past the ability to get mad about how we lost San Francisco.  Now I'm just like the French guy weeping when the Nazis march into Paris.

On to the article.  It starts with a description of how convenient everything is near the author's "Upper East Side apartment" in New York City and how there are two Starbucks within 1000 feet of his Dream Pad.  Two Starbucks!  Already sounds like heaven.

Things are more difficult in San Francisco.

It’s not like that in San Francisco, a city where I now have to walk at least 15 minutes up a steep hill to get to my nearest grocery store. Plus, everything closes early. If I want a pint of Ben & Jerry’s at 2 a.m., I can’t just walk to my corner 24/7 bodega like I could in New York. I’m left unsatisfied and ice cream-less.

Shield your eyes, children, so you don't have to see Upper East Side struggle 15 minutes up a steep hill for groceries.  The nearest Starbucks must be way, way more than 1000 feet away.  Maybe even uphill.  Suicide is looking good.

But wait!  In today's San Francisco, there is never a reason to walk uphill or even interact with any of your fellow recent arrivistes.

New Yorkers are probably already familiar with the food-delivery service Seamless, but in San Francisco there’s a Seamless-like app for everything. Your laundry. Housekeeping. Groceries. Car rides. Even booze. And it all comes almost instantly.

Truly we are living in the Promised Land, where even New Yorkers can get instant food delivery in San Francisco.  When we have finished remaking the city, no upper middle class white person shall ever want for anything again.  Starbucks every 999 feet.

I also tried Washio, a service that will pick up your dirty laundry and dry cleaning and have it back to you within 24 hours. Like Sprig, you manage Washio through a smartphone app to schedule your pickup and drop off times. Washio has an army of contractors—or, in startup parlance, “ninjas”—who swing by your place to get your dirty clothes. They also give you a free cookie with every pickup. The first time I tried Washio, my ninja gave me a bonus—a free pair of underwear as part of a cross promotion with another startup. (Yes, you can also get on-demand underwear in San Francisco.)

A free cookie!  I LOVE COOKIES!  And ninjas handing out underwear.  The future will be bright, and we will all wear clean underwear.

(In case you're wondering, unlike your Mom, Washio charges $1.60 a pound to do your laundry, with a minimum 15 pound order, so $24 for your smallest load.  Before we moved and I had a washer/dryer in my house, I used to drop off my laundry at my local wash & fold which charged $1.50 a pound.  I have no idea how Washio is going to make money.)

A dark cloud approaches.  Not everything is right in Magic Startup Land.  A wrinkle has arrived that threatens to ruin Upper East Side's User Experience.

The only negative experience I’ve had so far was with Instacart, an app that sends a personal shopper to a nearby grocery store to pick up whatever you need and deliver it to you within an hour. It works as advertised, but the prices are marked up, and customers run the risk of not being able to get what they want because the store is out of stock. Instacart’s shoppers try their best to find similar items, but in my case I couldn’t justify buying a five-pound package of bananas instead of a normal bunch. 

WHAT THE! The unmitigated GALL of marking up prices when you have a ninja who works on commission and tips doing your grocery shopping for you!  They don't mark prices up at the bodega when I go to get ice cream at 2 a.m.!

So there you go.  It's fun to snark at this and we've had our laughs but I still can't put my finger on what it is about this that bothers me.  Maybe it's just the continuing thread of infantilization, with apps replacing your Mom.  Or maybe that the life the author describes is one in which all the opportunities we used to have for interacting with other citizens - going to the laundromat, grocery shopping, going out to a restaurant - are being replaced by home delivery through your smartphone.  If you never have to see anyone from a different social strata (or, for that matter, a different fucking type of company), it's easy to dismiss their concerns.  Why does the Bayview need a grocery store?  Just use Instacart! Why should I worry about the terrible public transit? I take Uber everywhere. Ew, homeless people. Leaving my apartment is the worst.

It's a lot of things.  Welcome to the New San Francisco, I guess.

Sometimes missing out is for the best, SFGate

OK!  Hopefully no one else dies for a while so we can get back to doing what we do best: SPOUTING ILL-INFORMED SNARK ABOUT THINGS WE HAVE ONLY SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE ABOUT!

Let's start with this SFGate article by Heather Knight entitled "Is S.F.'s too-cool attitude a turnoff?"  The gist of the article is that San Francisco is missing out on all kinds of cool stuff because, I think, we make it too hard to build things or make things or host things or whatever here.  Here are the things the article says we were too cool for:

1. Another America's Cup
2. A new 49ers stadium
3. George Lucas' "art" museum

To be fair, Heather has a point with the 49ers stadium.  The City - and by The City I mean Gavin Fucking Newsom - did not do enough to try and keep the 49ers in San Francisco.  I will totally grant you that.  The rest, however, is pretty much bullshit.

ANOTHER AMERICA'S CUP?  ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND HEATHER KNIGHT.  Do you even remember the last one?  THE CITY LOST MONEY ON IT.  This is an event so few people give a shit about that THEY HAD TO PAY TO PUT IT ON TV.  The way I understand it, with other sports, thee TV people actually pay the sports people for the right to broadcast the sport.  Not the America's Cup!  I guess the 0.000001% of America that has any interest in sailboat racing is used to buying TV networks though.

Anyway, point being, if you think SF really lost out on something by losing the privilege of hosting a bunch of Scrooge McDucks' boat race and taking a bath on it in the process, we'll have to disagree.

Then there's the George Lucas Ego Monument.  I'm no Star Wars geek or anything but I get the impression that all those nerds think George Lucas really fucked up the franchise with the later movies.  Basically he wanted to take some of his huge wet gobs of money and plop down a museum wherever the fuck he wanted it, in this case Crissy Field, a beautiful open space that was lovingly restored just a few years ago.

I wasn't crazy about the renderings for the museum either

So when the Presidio Trust said he couldn't put his museum there the City offered him another PRIME FUCKING SPOT on the waterfront but had the UNMITIGATED GALL to ask George Lucas, who has the net worth of $unlimited and could buy Chile on a whim, to kick in a little for the fucking site.  So George Lucas got Chicago drunk on Fireball shots and Chicago giggled and gave George Lucas a prime waterfront spot for $1 a year.

OH SHOOT.  What did we miss out on?

You have got to be shitting me.  We've already got a Maxfield Parrish, and it's located exactly where it belongs, in a bar.  The Vargas is nice if you're decorating an L.A. porn producer's house in 1988.  And hey!  It's a DVD cover!  I get the strong feeling that the gift shop at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be larger than the galleries.  The point is, we hardly need a tourist trap museum with a questionable collection to be considered a world-class city.  I just can't work up a lot of grief over losing this thing.

[STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Of course there's all kinds of stuff SF could do differently, it's probably too hard to get things done in this town, blah blah blah, we all know that.  I'm just talking about these two things in particular.]

Oh no, Debra J. Saunders is looking at gentrification now

Oh God.  You know what that means.  A quasi-libertarian word salad and some unfocused jabs at "the left."

The piece is called, for no particular reason other than, I guess, to recycle a 15-year-old movie catchphrase, "I see rich people."  It starts off like so:

In the Star Trek movies, San Francisco serves as headquarters of Starfleet Command. This cracks me up no end, as I cannot imagine the Board of Supervisors approving construction of Starfleet Academy or the oddly shaped high-rises you see in the background. And if City Hall somehow did approve the project, you know there'd be some ballot measure to kill the deal. The grounds could be endless: No photon torpedoes. Too many techies already. What about affordable housing?

Debra, look away, because Salesforce Tower is already underway:

Deb moves on through some well-trod ground, including 8 Washington and then the fact that she can't afford to live in SF, then mentions Kim-Mai Cutler's incredible article in Techcrunch, "How Burrowing Owls Lead to Vomiting Anarchists (Or S.F.'s Housing Crisis Explained)."  Then we get these curious paragraphs:

Cutler also supports proposals to make it more expensive and difficult for owners to evict paying tenants. There's a price for that approach. In a city with more renters than homeowners, do you want to be the chump who buys a duplex when City Hall can tell you want you can and cannot do with your own property? (Keep in mind that this City Hall won't let retailers give away paper bags.)

Groups like the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project stage protests to send this loser message: "The Yuppie dot-com lifestyle must be fought and eliminated, because if it is left unchecked, it will eventually ruin our neighborhoods, our cities, and our planet." They ignore the fact that the Mission is happening now in part because of the influx of tech money.

Most working people want to live in a neighborhood where residents spruce up buildings and keep the streets clean. Who is most likely to do that? Homeowners.

Para 1: Judging by the current real estate market, there appears to be no shortage of people who want to be the chump who buys a duplex.  If Deb's logic was on, duplexes would be dirt cheap.  I haven't checked lately, but I don't think that's true.  BONUS POINTS for any mention of the plastic bag ban.

Para 2: I don't think the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project has existed since the first dot com boom, sweetheart.  And have you walked down Valencia lately?  It's over, and the yuppies won.  (Sadly, they never managed to eliminate "Neighborhood enemy number one," Beauty Bar.  We can still dream!)

Para 3: I was wondering why the streets are so dirty!  Now I know why: RENTERS.  Why can't you clean up after yourselves, you dirt-loving planet destroyers?

More confusion ensues:

But I don't think it would hurt for San Franciscans to reorient their thinking to make this town more livable for the middle class. Last week, I walked from City Hall down Market Street at dusk with a friend from out of town. It stank, the police had a couple of people in handcuffs, and the mood was downright eerie. Yet the left in this town thinks Twitter is bad for San Francisco.

People pay top dollar to live near what only can be called squalor. Those Yuppies whom anarchists hate pay $700,000 for a condo in a neighborhood where they have to step around street people on their way to work. And the Yuppies rarely complain until a neighbor wants to rent to out-of-towners through Airbnb. Then suddenly they are outraged, and their quality of life is threatened.

Let's unpack that first paragraph, because it's the Italian opera of SFGate columns: it sounds pretty, but I can't understand a fucking word.  OK, first, yes, it wouldn't hurt to make the town more livable for the middle class!  Yes!  Great!  How do we do that?  Wait, now we're walking down Market Street and something something the left hates Twitter.  Wait, what?  I learned in 6th grade English, Debra, that the PARAGRAPH is supposed to flow from the TOPIC SENTENCE.  You don't write "Argentina is a land of many features" and then follow it up with how you flew over Mexico once.

The second paragraph has no coherent thought at all.  People pay a lot of money to live in a bad neighborhood.  Then they complain when someone uses Airbnb.  WHAT IS YOUR FUCKING POINT.

It's fine to have problems with current SF housing policy, but for fuck's sake, if you're going to go public with them, write some coherent arguments down instead of a bunch of disconnected phrases that floated through your head.

Gentrifork: Pitchfork reviews of SF gentrification articles

(Per a suggestion from Burrito Justice.  I promise I won't write all my future posts based on suggestions from Twitter.)

A Tale of Two Cities

Laurie Penny
New Statesman; 2014


5.5





In "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," Laurence Sterne wrote, "Human nature is the same in all professions." That has nothing to do with this review but it sounds both academic and pretentious, so it's perfect.

Laurie Penny’s article “A tale of two cities: how San Francisco’s tech boom is widening the gap between rich and poor” is like a Transformers movie performed onstage by the Royal Shakespeare players: the material is well-traveled, but the approach only pretends to seem fresh.

Penny kicks off with a fresh take on an old classic, “Homeless People in Front of Twitter Headquarters on Market.” It’s a comforting welcome that beckons like an old easy chair, made even more reassuring by the follow-up, “Artisanal Coffee That Costs $20.” Why bother with fact-checking when the beat is this good? In fact, fuck it, let’s use “artisanal” twice on the same page!

Penny has a knack for knowing what her audience wants, and what we want is “A Visit to the Tech Incubator.” What could come across as derivative and tired in fact comes across as derivative and tired. By now, we’ve heard this song so many time that mentioning vegans with multicolored hair just lends an air of ennui to the proceedings. By the time we get to Google buses, the article is crawling through the emergency room with a disconnected IV and a crazed look of desperation.

We're offered no respite, thought, and as we arrive at “inventor and founder of the Noisebridge hackerspace in the Mission,” we’re as thirsty for a beat as the  desiccated desert crawler in the classic New Yorker cartoons. Sadly, though, all Penny can offer is yet more multicolored hair and kids frantically typing on sticker-covered laptops. If you’re looking for a pot of gold at the end of the brown rainbow, you’ll find no succor here; rather, we’re informed, America itself is the problem. Physician, heal thyself.

Leland Yee: The Lego Version

Sorry about the "instroduced" typo but I don't have the time to go back and fix it now.

The Bachelor: It's Victoria O'Clock Somewhere!

This episode will be full of surprising departures.  Beginning with the fucking dog, who has decided to swim to safety and abandon this shitshow.

Swim, dog!  SWIM TO FREEDOM!!!!

Hairstylist Clare gets the first date apparently.  WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DATE CARD.  Getting a little free with the editing, huh ABC?  We need our establishing shit.  Anyway, Whan blindfolds her and puts her in a car.  That's how the Cali Cartel does it too!  This date will apparently end with a burning tire around Clare's neck.  The Abduction Limo delivers W & C to - what, a Christmas tree lot?  A ski resort?  ABC is so completely out of date idea now that anything some PA drunkenly mumbles gets made into a date.  "Winter wonderland! That's a date!" Whatever.  It's no winter wonderland for girlfriend's hair, I'll tell you that much.  MEOW.  Wait, what did he say?  "Looking at her smiling is better than living in a box?"  Oh, a "million bucks."  A ploos on the English Whan. 

Following some ice moving, it's over to the Hot Spring TM spa for some relaxing and WHOA CLARE GOT HER DADDY ISSUES ALL OVER THE SPA. That's gonna leave a stain.  Basically Clare's Dad cured cancer on his way to the Moon carrying an orphan and a puppy on his back and if you can't do that, you will not get far with Clare. After some lightweight kissing ("You taste like snow" she says - CALI CARTEL I'M TELLING YOU) they are treated to some sensitive guitar playing by a fat guy with a beard. HOTT.

OK next up is Kat who is V V V EXCITED.  Kat open mouth laughs a lot and I bet she's a good drunk.  They board a private plane and are whisked to - wait for it - SALT LAKE CITY!!!!  Nothing says fun like Salt Lake City.  I guess Cleveland was busy.  Anyway, K is furnished with a neon raver outfit and they're going to something called the Electric Run which is a real thing?  Oh, it's the "World's Premier Nighttime 5k run/walk experience."  What it looks like is the World's Premier Exercise Rave For Idiots.

Anyway, he gives her a rose onstage and the only thing that would make this bearable is about 3 tabs of X which you probably can't get in Utah anyway.  Utah.

Let's move on.  Group Date!  Hey, guess what? In a first for the Bachelor, Doglvr Kelly has not one but TWO lazy eyes!

Maybe "Science Educator" Chelsie can explain this anomaly once she comes down from whatever the fuck she's on.  Anyway, they are going to some kind of photo shoot when a man with a neon blue beard appears and tells them they have all been dosed with 100 micrograms of blotter acid and to find a buddy quick because the next 8 hours are going to be super intense.  Oh wait, PUPPIES!!!!  It's a "sexy photoshoot with the dogs."  This requires costuming.  Kelly dresses up as What Happens When a Meth Lab Explodes Onto Someone Wearing Blackface.

The 1st Grade Teacher is assigned Getting Naked With a Cardboard Sign but she smartly switches with Free Spirit Lucy, who would get buck for half a Bud Light and a handful of M&Ms.  Lady Lawyer Andi isn't so sure about the naked thing either but Whan talks her down and they pose with Free Spirit who seems to think this is Hustler and not Dog Rescue.

The Afterparty finds us all in sparkly dresses at the Usual Bachelor LA Rooftop Pool.  TIME FOR SOME FUCKING DRINKS.  Former NBA Dancer Cassandra has to come out as a parent.  She has a kid named Trey because of course.  Dad?

OK let's get to my girl Victoria.  Girlfriend is on the champagne like a lab rat on the cocaine switch.  She is dancing around in her bikini and spring breaking all over the rooftop and she is SO ALIVE.  Here she comes creeping on Whan and Pediatric Nurse.

WHOOOOOOO!!!!  SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS!!!!!!

Then it's off to the bathroom for a good cry & decompensating.  Mom Renee tries to comfort her as she weeps next to the toilet.  Oh, now she tells Bon Iver she's going home!  ENOUGH OF YOUR SHIT BACHELOR SHOW!!!  So Whan gives the Rooftop Pool Rose to Lazy Eyes, for some reason.  The fuck did she do?  WHY ISN'T VICTORIA GETTING THAT ROSE?

Dawn breaks at the Ladies House.  Everyone is already bikini'd and discussing Vicky Cristina Barfelona.  Oh, she got to stay in a hotel last night!  JP goes to see her and I think she's still drunk and she's all "Sorry about last night" but he fires her and what I want more than anything is for ABC to send out a camera crew to follow Vicks around.  THAT'S THE SHOW I WANT TO SEE.

Pre Rose Cer.  Newshound Amy does a painful faux reporter thing.  HERE'S WHAT WE DO KNOW.  YOU LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT.  Wait, who's coming apart at the seams now?  Cassandra?  What is the fucking problem?  Good thing Mom Renee is here to gently stroke anyone's hair who needs it.  Anyway, now Whan has to talk her down too.  Here's my advice, Whan: pick one of the chicks who doesn't need to be talked off a ledge every 5 minutes.

OK, Rose Cer.  You're right, Whan!  It has been a berry good week.  OK, who's in.  NBA dancer, Brown Roots Nikki, The Lawyer Who Hates Being Naked, Too Smiley Elise, Don't Really Care Opera Singer, Everyone's Mom, Maybe Black Danielle, Free Spirit, Who the Fuck Is Alison, Turned Up to 1000 Chelsie, Somebody Named Lauren I Think and Kristie the Stripper.  Sorry Black Chantel and News Team 7 Amy!  OUR LEAD STORY TONIGHT: YOU ARE DUMPED.  

Either Glenn Dickey or me is confused about hydrology

"Me is confused"? What am I doing? Anyway.

Examiner scribe Glenn Dickey does not like the idea of the new waterfront Warriors arena planned for Piers 30-32.  And he has some reasons why.  He hates progress, basketball, and fun!  No, not really.  Oddly, he's concerned the new arena will FLOOD THE CITY, literally:

I believe this is a bad idea for several reasons. One is that a huge amount of concrete will have to be poured into San Francisco Bay to provide support, raising the water level for a city that is already threatened by the potential of rising water with climate change. 

Wait a minute. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but is he saying that pouring a lot of concrete into the bay will make the water level around San Francisco go up?  I THINK THAT'S WHAT HE'S SAYING.  Based on my very limited knowledge of hydrology, I don't think that's how it works.  Let's look at a diagram.

OK, so as I understand it, even if you pour a shitload of concrete in at Piers 30-32, I'm almost 100% sure that's not going to flood the Financial District, because all the water that the concrete displaces is just going to flow out underneath the Golden Gate Bridge into the Pacific Ocean, right?  I mean, every time one of those huge container ships sails by, do you notice water sloshing up over the Embarcadero?  What am I missing here?

That's all I've got.  Have a great weekend.

Do you want to know why non-Bostonians hate Boston sports? This is why.

Yay, Boston won the World Series! Good for you, Red Sox.  Bad for the rest of us.  Because we now have to read insufferable articles like this, by terrible baseball "writer" Jayson Stark.  Take it away, Jayson:

BOSTON -- Every once in a while, an evening comes along in your lifetime where sports aren't just sports.

What we witnessed Wednesday night at Fenway Park, where a century-old ballpark throbbed with passion and joy, was one of those nights. 

To call this a mere sporting event doesn't do it justice. To call this just a baseball game would not be adequate.

Even to describe this as the night the Red Sox won the World Series doesn't really capture it. 

Not on an evening when 38,447 people charged through the gates of Fenway and became part of what was very likely the most momentous sporting event to take place in the city of Boston in their time on this earth.

Did they ever think they would live to see this? Did they ever think they would live to experience this?

Holy fuck, did Jesus descend from heaven and go 3 for 4 with a dinger against Cards pitching and I fucking missed it? That must have been that brilliant shaft of light in the 1st inning! No? Oh, he's just talking about the Red Sox winning the World Series? LIKE THEY DID IN 2004 AND 2007?

Where do we start? With the smoke and the sadness of Patriots Day and the Boston Marathon?

With the collapse of 2011 and the disaster of 2012, which threatened to unravel a seemingly unbreakable bond between this team and the people who have spent their lives caring about the Red Sox way more than human beings should ever allow themselves to care about any little old sports franchise?

Or how about with 1918 -- and 95 frigging years of waiting? Uh, 95 years is kind of a long time, you know. Over these past 95 years, an incredible 1,166 players got at least one plate appearance for the Red Sox -- and never did this.

An astounding 701 pitchers walked to the mound wearing a Red Sox uniform -- and never did this.

Which serves as an excellent reminder that 1918 wasn't exactly last week, either.

Oh my fucking God.  My head. ATTENTION, JAYSON STARK: I need you to sit down, because I have some pretty amazing news.  In fact, this is going to blow your fucking mind.  THE RED SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES IN 2004 AND 2007!  Man, is that fucked up? You didn't know that, right?

I get it. I know he's talking about winning the last game in Boston.  Which, fine, fair enough.  But for Chrissakes, don't act like this is the Greatest Event in Human History when the Red Sox REGULARLY WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

It goes on and on and on and on this same vein - 56 unbearable paragraphs - including a drooling tribute to David Ortiz, who is on so much Human Growth Hormone that his head is roughly the size and shape of a basketball, but unlike Jayson Stark "weep[ing] for what [Alex Rodriguez] has done to the sport", it's all cool because David Ortiz plays for this scrappy band of brothers that just happens to have the 4th highest payroll in baseball.

Let us put ourselves out of misery:

This was a life experience for millions of people. And that's not something you can say on the final night of every World Series.

Actually, I think you can say EXACTLY that about EVERY final night of EVERY World Series.  Unless Kansas City ever wins it.