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.

I posted a snarky response to an Airbnb ad on Twitter. You won't believe what happened next. Or you probably will totally believe it, I don't know.

Last night "Airbnb Action," which I assume is some political lobbying arm/whitewashing patrol of Airbnb, caused a tweet to appear in my timeline, proving conclusively that Twitter has no idea how to target ads.  Me being me (i.e., a snarky asshole), I felt moved to respond.

Har har. Obviously (if you've been following the issue), the reason that the Board of Supres is "pushing new rules" (that is, "enacting legislation according to their City-afforded capabilities") is that the current enforcement mechanisms are comically ineffectual.  Current law requires everyone who rents their place out on Airbnb to register with the city.  So far, "roughly 1,400 of the estimated 7,000 or more residents who rent their homes and rooms have done so, the city estimates." SO, first of all, no one is trying "2 prevent homse sharing;" we were told we didn't need Prop F because the current system works and now the current system definitely doesn't work.  Even the fucking CEO OF AIRBNB didn't bother to piddle with the little city registration system.  Why would anyone else be a sucker and follow the law?

HENCE MY SNARK.

Then some dog got all up in my business.

I guess this means that since Prop F was defeated, Airbnb is now free to do anything they want.  BASED ON OUR NEW POLICY, AIRBNB CAN NOW RAID YOUR FRIDGE ONCE PER WEEK.  PLEASE LEAVE YOUR DOOR UNLOCKED.  THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN.

It went downhill from here.

BAD DOG!  First of all, he or she didn't answer my question.  I asked what we should do when the vast majority of Airbnb hosts are not in compliance.  The response was "No the STR office. #duh They are the police."  I suppose that means we should just let the STR (Short Term Rental, btw) office handle it?  That actually makes sense if you're an Airbnb host and you don't want to bother following the law. #duh.  By the time the STR cops catch up to you, the Earth will have been consumed by the Sun and Airbnb hosts on Titan will be advertising "STUNNING RING VIEWS!!!!"

As if it couldn't devolve any lower, the sad denoument:

Of course. My opinion that Airbnb hosts follow the fucking law necessarily means that I support vandalism.  Also, that is some shitty lettering.  Maybe something like this instead?

The real stupidity about the whole thing is that, based on the link to the Airbnb advertised on Dog's Twitter page, it appears that Dog rents out a room in Dog's house.  I basically have no problem with that (within some limits).  What I have a problem with is someone taking an entire home or apartment off the market and converting it into an illegal, full-time hotel.  Like the one on my block - a 3-bedroom apartment that used to be occupied by 3 tenants and which is now occupied, at $300 a night, by a rotating cast of jackoffs smoking on the stoop.  Or with building owners evicting tenants so they can rent out the rooms on Airbnb.

Is Airbnb solely responsible for the housing crisis in SF? Of course not.  Partially responsible?  Of course. Are rhetorical questions the best mode of making an argument? Not even close.

San Francisco needs 200,000 new units of housing. No problem.

A couple of weeks ago everyone was talking about Eric Fischer's amazing blog post "Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments," in which he aggregated historical rent data for the city going back decades and found out there's no big mystery, rents go up when there are more people here making more money.  GEE I NEVER.

How do we fix it?  Eric knows:

Well, we certainly don't want to have a 51% drop in employment or a 44% drop in salaries (not my salary, anyway, although I wouldn't mind a 44% drop in the salaries of the shitstorms on Valencia every weekend night), and nobody liked my idea to offer 100,000 people $20K to leave, so all we need is 200,000 more housing units!

LET'S DO IT.

1190 Mission, part of the Trinity Place development, has 418 units in a 24-story building.

To get our 200,000 units, then, we'll need about 478 of those mothers.  NOT A PROBLEM.  We can wedge 478 of those in here.

Let's start in the same neighborhood.  Hmmm, that Best Buy on Harrison is pretty big for a store that sells a bunch of shit you're going to get on Amazon anyway.  And look at that parking lot!

Looks like we can get at least 6 1190's in there.  (That's what we're calling our Standard Housing Units, BTW, "1190's," after their original ancestor at 1190 Mission.

LO, BUILD THEM!

That was easy.  Poof, I just put 2,508 new units of housing where a bunch of flat screen TVs and parked cars used to be.  We're over 1% done and we've barely even started!  I CAN FEEL RENTS FALLING ALREADY.

A common refrain when talking about new housing in SF is that new building is always concentrated in SOMA and Mission Bay and never on the west side of town.  That has to end.  SUNSET RESERVOIR, MEET YOUR NEW NEIGHBORS!!!

I know, I know, we could probably fit like 16 1190's here, but the people across the street are already going to a series of massive coronaries and strokes followed by more heart attacks as soon as this is proposed.

We can even use 1190's to improve society!  BEFORE:

AFTER:

Ahhhh, that's better.

OK, now just have to find room for 468 more.  Don't piss me off or your block is next.

This one is called the Burrito Justice Arms, for obvious reasons, and it's actually very very expensive.  You can't live here.

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.

Million Dickhead Listing SF: This is the end

Friends, we have reached the End of our Journey, but instead of a man fake-proposing on one knee with a garish Neal Lane ring, we instead have a bunch of assholes giving money to a bunch of vipers.  Sigh, such is life.

The producers are obviously trying to make the Justin-Roh conflict a Thing because we pick up with them slapfighting while Strokes Haircut stands limply to the side.  I don't care, this whole thing is obviously staged and lame and even Justin insulting Roh by telling him he's from Hayward doesn't even make it more interesting, even if it is true.

Justin is still trying to sell that firehouse with all the fucking stairs and people are still bitching about all the fucking stairs.  He's trying to talk the owner into putting in a $100K elevator and she won't elevate so she's just going to take it off the market and wait for a "better time" like WHAT THE FUCK LADY what's a "better time" to sell real estate in San Francisco than right fucking this second?  "Nah, I don't want 500K over asking, I want the sky-god Namaroth to personally invest me with the power to transmute objects and rain fire from the heavens onto the skulls of my enemies.  Also a 5-day close.  Those are my terms."

The whole Justin-Roh playfight climaxes with a lunch at Sens where they're trying to make a deal and it makes professional wrestling look like a Ken Burns documentary.  There's some fucking bidding war that's about as exciting as the silent auction at St. Ingrid's Spring Fling.  Whatever.  Later, Justin is finally getting his own place like a real grownup!  Based on the view, I think it's maybe Buena Vista?  You think?

The fact that he's renting a place not in the Marina is shocking to me.  Just picturing him anywhere outside the Marina or South Beach is hard.

Andrew's still dealing with Joffrey and Mom and the $20 million dump in Tiburon.  There's a $17 million offer from a "couple from Norway."  I bet it's the Ikeas!  Isn't Ikea from Norway?  Or Sweden.  One of those.  One of those Viking/blonde/slash through the letter O places.  Anyway, since they seem to be buying it as an investment, Mom thinks they're "not the right people."  FINALLY, someone is discriminating against stunningly beautiful blonde people.  ABOUT FUCKING TIME.  Keep moving, Horgor.  We don't like your kind around here.

Instead of selling to Billy Bookshelf, Mom decides to RENT the fucking place out like it's a studio on Craigslist, except this studio is on 6 acres and rents for ONE HUNDRED FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH.  That better include water and garbage.  Other than the residents.  KA-POW SEE WHAT I DID THERE!!!! PWNED!!!!

Fittingly, Andrew's new office that is under construction appears to be in Pleasanton, from which fiance Paaaaal says he'll "take over San Francisco."  From fucking Pleasanton?  Right, just like the Falklands took over Yorkshire.  Try taking over Tracy first, just to warm up.

So that's it.

Million Dickhead Listing SF: Tonight, on a Very Special Million Dickhead Listing

Sorry I missed last week.  It was boring.  I mean, they're all boring, but it was even more boring than usual.  You didn't miss anything.

Not like this week is The Wire or anything, but it had its moments.  Andrew, who apparently does not actually sell any houses in San Francisco itself, is off in Tiburon with some 10,000 square foot pile that is ugly as fuck on the outside but I guess someone's idea of nice inside.  The current owners are some British lady and her dead-eyed son who seems like a slightly more malevolent Tom Cruise in Risky Business.

The lad, "Louis," has agreed to be this episode's villain because I guess it looks good on an application to Dartmouth.  In a continuous quest to become more disturbing, the next time we see Louis his jaw is wired shut because he "got jumped by a couple of guys" and now he talks like a super preppy Marlon Brando in The Godfather.  Louis appears to be the Point Jerk in making this sale and is not impressed with Andrew's meager efforts.  ARE YOU A CAN-DREW OR A CAN'T-DREW.  Oh fuck I'm sorry.  To appease Yung Tyrant, Andrew has a big open house that's like Project X for old rich white people.  Caligula orders him boiled alive in a vat of cheap pinot and Axe body spray.

Tonight we will go on a Very Special Journey with Roh as he learns to respect other cultures, even if he does not agree with them.  Speaking of, through circumstances too convoluted to explain, I found myself at the Battery last night, that private club we all made fun of a couple of years ago when it opened.  It's nice enough inside and is populated entirely by people who look like Justin from this show and his clients.  Also, beers are $9 WHAT WHAT.

ANYWAY GETTING BACK TO THE MATTER AT HAND, Roh goes to meet a gay couple at their pad on Potrero Hill that's all sleek and Architectural Digest and Japanese garden and then he has a problem with them because they want to adopt a kid and Roh's not sure he can live with that until his wife explains to him that he needs to be more accepting blah blah blah the whole thing is wildly obviously staged but I guess it's all for the best if it makes some other Muslim real estate agent watching TV reconsider his internal biases.  The real question is why a gay couple wouldn't fire on the spot some asshole who told them he wasn't sure he could accept them adopting a child.  There are only like seven million real estate agents in this town and people will basically drive up and hurl bags of money at them for their pad so why even listen to this oh it's for TV never mind.

Justin is going to try and sell one of the two units in that old firehouse you see every time you go to Twin Peaks.

It's got a lot of stairs.  A ;LOT OF STAIRS PEOPLE.  This is apparently very daunting even to the young, shallow, and presumably fit, and there's lots of talk about installing an elevator like JUST WALK UP THE STAIRS FATTY YOU CAN QUIT YOUR GYM MEMBERSHIP.  To sell Stair Nightmare, Justin decides to hold a "sexy fun event" like "Cole Valley has never seen" but I'm pretty sure Cole Valley has seen a salami and cheese plate before Justin.  Oh he also gets some Chippendales dressed up like firemen to make it super fucking awkward for everyone involved.  It appears that the buyers are all about Dat Horizontal Life and don't want this Escher painting turned $3M condo.

Later, Justin shows up at Roh's open house with some guy with a Strokes haircut and they get in a big fight.  Justin and Roh, not the guy with the Strokes haircut.  His only beef is with his stylist.  I mean, I hope so.  I'm not sure what they were fighting about but it seemed real serious.  We'll find out next week.

Million Dickhead Listing SF: Turning and turning in the widening gyre

Just like last week, we've got a new crop of greedheads anxious to cash register out of their homes and siphon money from Google into their voracious mouths.  Unlike last week, it mostly doesn't work this time.

Justin meets up with old high school pal "Kevin" at Milennium Towers and I for one am curious about where the fuck this high school is.  (Oh, it's Gateway; here's a 2002 SF Gate piece on a much younger Justin interning at City Hall. Sounds like he wanted to go into politics instead of getting loathsome people houses in SF, but there you go.)  I hope Kevin is a long-form performance art piece with his dog named Kevyn Jr. and his stupid polar bear sweater and his apartment and his desire to become a jam enterpeneur because if this is all real AND it's coupled with his insane request to get almost $4 million for his little apartment (later talked down to 3 mil) then he's just a gluttonous snake like the rest of them who happens to think he's so quirky and charming and that's much worse somehow.

For some reason Justin thinks the way to blood-draw 3 million dollars from some sucker for this place is to have a fashion show?  So he gets some guy to put a bunch of mannequins fucking inside? And that will make people swoon and hand over their Dropbox fortune?

I don't know anything about fashion or real estate but the only thing this makes me want to buy is a flamethrower.  Eventually some mental deficient offers $2.8 for this place and of course Kevin won't take it.  We'll taste jam in hell together Kevin.

Andrew is not in San Francisco at all, which is a positive development for everyone else in San Francisco but unfortunately it looks like he's only temporarily detained in Livermore, where a little guy with a beard spends his days rolling around a 7000 square foot mansion that keeps getting described as Tuscan although it's in fucking Livermore and not Tuscany and also having red tiles and a pergola does not make any McMansion "Tuscan."  It's surrounded by a chardonnay vineyard because of course.

Returning to SOMA, as we often do, Roh is at the Metropolitan, where Ching would like him to sell a room at the W furnished by Ikea with an assist from the Free Stuff section of Craigslist.  Oh, there's a tenant they can't get rid of, and this little cockroach has committed the grave sin of leaving its shoddy belongings all over the unit.  The apartment is owned by MR. WONG, an "investor in China."

Mr. Wong's lair I mean office

Mr. Wong initially demands ONE POINT FOUR MILLION AMERICAN DOLLARS for this place but that is ridiculous even by San Francisco standards and Roh convinces Mr. Wong to go at the more reasonable 1.25.  Next a parade of assholes stomp through the place and pronounce it "ugly" and "horrible," just like their souls.  Eventually "Heidi," who has cultivated an aesthetic somewhere between truck stop waitress and Divine, comes forth with an offer: one million dollars.  Roh gets her to come up to 1.25 but I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.  Mere offers of under asking are loosed upon the world.  Jam Magnate/Complicated Hairstyle Kevin will not sell Mannequin Fuck Palace for under 3 mil, so our work here is done.  Tiny Wine Tycoon suddenly remembers that he has a daughter who wants to get married 'midst the rolling hills and lifted trucks of Livermore and so he cannot bear to sell Tuscan Towne for 3.8 or any other price.  Roh meets with Heidi fresh off her shift at the Flying J but she is about to grind out a Benson & Hedges in his eye when she finds out that Mr. Wong is no longer selling.  Instead, he is transforming the tenant into a postapocalyptic cyborg warrior who will do his dark bidding.  One day Mr. Wong will be the landlord of all of us.

Million Dickhead Listing SF: So much fucking greed. Greed pouring out of people's eyes.

Remember Gordon Gekko's famous greed speech speech from the movie "Wall Street"?



What seemed somewhere between disturbing and obscene in 1987 now seems positively quaint.  And compared to the viperous house-leeches on last night's episode, Gordon Gekko is basically St. Augustine.  These people don't just want obscene gobs of money for their houses; they want huge, dripping bags of money, with gold coins falling out the top and huge dollar signs on the side.  Every extra $50K gives them visible full-body orgasms.  It's quite a scene.

Justin finds himself in SOMA, as we call it, where some people bought a boring-ass loft a few years ago for $1.2 million and now want $2.1 because symmetry.  He decides the way to market this thing is with an Airnstream trailer at Off the Grid Fort Mason because, in his words, "If you want to find dumb rich hipster techies you have to go to a food truck festival."  Finally, we agree on something, Justin!  He shows the box to a stream of dejected buyers, disappointed in the lack of a gym or rooftop deck or why is this kitchen not bigger and why didn't Mommy look at me every second I'm so special.

Roh is trying to move some huge pile in the Marina - a "very sexy area," he says.  If the Marina were a person, you would probably fuck it.  Anyway, the owner of  this huge 2-unit pile that looks like a hotel in Sarasota bought it for $3.2 mil 10 years ago and now Roh thinks he can get her 4.6.  She and her accent seem cool with that.

Andrew, meanwhile, is in what they're calling Nopa now, which, he says, "used to be a shithole," like everywhere else he goes in Our Garbage City.  Some dude with some yappy dogs is trying to move his condo for too much and Andrew gets him to set it at $1.098 mil.  After everything else on this fucking show, that seems like a huge bargain.

Back in the Marina, Roh is having trouble moving Casa Grande, maybe because everyone knows that it will melt like hot wax and sink into the warm, bubbling mud as soon as there's any earthquake over a 6.5 and you're basically paying almost 5 mil to rent a house until that happens.  He actually uses the word "liquefaction" at one point which is a better buyer repellent than saying there was a torture-murder in the solarium or the prior owner was a cat hoarder.

HERE COMES THE GREED.  Everyone's getting offers and none of the money-breathers want to take them.

GREED #1: Roh gets a full-price offer for a building that is literally going to vanish into the liquid Earth sometime in the next 30 years and SHE WON'T TAKE IT.  She wants more money!  MORE MORE MORE MORE MONEY MORE FOR ME MONEY MONEY MONEY

GREED #2: Justin meets up with Stephanie who I guess is the SOMA box's seller agent at Big 4, which must have a kickback arrangement with this show, for a couple of blood orange bellinis and TURNS DOWN his all-cash no contingency offer of $1.7 million.  ARRRRGGGHHH FUCK ALL THESE PEOPLE.  But they'll take 1.8.  This is the kind of dick-swinging that even people named Stephanie do for fun.

GREED #3: Roh gets it up to 4.7 million.  Greedhead wants MORE MORE MORE MORE but finally takes 4.8.

GREED #4: Even the nice little man with the 2 dogs and the tastefully furnished place in "Nopa" is getting in on the action now.  1.098 million?  NO I WANT MORE MONEY PLUS I WANT TO KEEP LIVING THERE FOR FREE.  Surprisingly, tentacles do not burst forth from the ground and drag this man screaming into a dark netherworld but the buyers instead are like "OK sure!  Here, take more money and keep living there for a few more months."

In closing, this show is depressing as fuck.

Million Dickhead Listing SF: My monastery floors are better than your monastery floors

Sorry this is so late.  The past two weeks daycare has been closed so I've been babysitting I mean parenting in the mornings which means I've been cycling between the park, the bus[*], back to the park, and then the couch to watch Big Hero 6 AGAIN AND AGAIN.[**] This means I have less time for the Things That Matter, like blogging and whatever the fuck else it is I do.

[*] The kid loves Muni so much.  She thinks it's magical and wants to ride the bus or the train whenever possible.  JUST WAIT, KID.

[**] Her taste in Big Hero 6 is now exquisitely refined to the point where sometimes she just wants to watch "THE MASK THE MASK THE MASK" - i.e., any action sequences featuring the villain, who wears a kabuki-type mask.  Also, it's a pretty good movie so I guess we're lucky.

ON TO THE SHOW.  Ruh Roh is still trying to move the A/C unit on Octavia.  Whilst showing some idle rich around, he drops the, to my mind, stunning detail that the floors were taken from a "Benedictine monastery in Austria."  WHAT THE FUCK.  WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.  This had better be a lie, or it moves that apartment from "ugly" and "uncomfortable" to "actually evil." We can at least be consoled with the fact that tearing up floors from a monastery to put them in your yuppie box is a fucking 100% guaranteed express ticket to a Hieronymous Bosch-style hell.

GOOD LUCK IN YOUR NEW LOCATION

Roh's also in on the Bernal Heights place from last week - you remember, the one that's in a slum so grotesque it makes a Rio favela look like Chestnut Street at brunchtime.  He's representing some potential buyer and human-shaped eye roll Andrew has the seller.  They sit across a table from each other and negotiate like two mildly developmentally disabled fifth graders playing Risk.  The place sells for $1.9 million.  Everybody eats salad.  The universe continues to entropy.  Eventually - not soon enough for my taste - the Sun will swallow and vaporize  the Bernal Heights property.  It will then be worth much less.

Meanwhile, Justin has been engaged by a dentist who may not be a dentist but might be an actor playing the dentist from "Little Shop of Horrors" because that's what he seems like.  He lives in a penthouse in Pacific Heights and is friends with Kathy Hilton and had his picture taken with Prince Charles once so I guess that's about everything you need to know.  He wants to sell his place for $4,000,000,000 or something.  Justin can't make anyone pay that much.  He laughs nervously and everyone dies.

Back at Andrew's place, his gay fiancee says he maybe wants to fuck some chicks.

IT'S GO TIME on Monastery Manor.  The seller, a pointy man with round spectacles, insists on $2.6 million.  Roh's seller won't pay a penny more than $2.599 million.  This isn't a joke!  I'm not making this up!  In the big-balled high-pressure world of real estate, YOU WIN if you convince the seller to accept 99.9999997% of his asking price.  I wish spectacles had turned him down.  "YOU INSULT ME WITH YOUR PROPOSAL. I SHALL BROOK NO FURTHER TALK OF THIS SORT.  GOOD DAY TO YOU SIR."  Instead, that jackoff takes it!  HAHAHA YOU JUST GOT ROBBED, MY MAN.  $2,599,000 instead of $2,600,000!! What a fucking rube.  You think thousand dollar bills grow on trees?  Idiot.  Whew boy.

[Ed. note: I'm well aware that many, if not most, places in SF go for over asking in today's go-go Webvan Pets.com-style economy. For whatever reason, that doesn't happen that much on this show. Maybe they're all overpriced to start with? Anyway, fuck these people.]

Million Dickhead Listing SF: That neighborhood you thought was so cool? It's shit. Your neighborhood is a literal pile of shit.

I'm talking about Bernal Heights, of course, or at least the "OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL" Bernal Heights where a goddam honest hardworking developer can't hollow out a hillside and create an Open Floor Plan without potential occupants being forced to look at such Slums of Calcutta-type features as a neighbor with sheets for blinds or an oddly placed dryer vent.  THESE ANIMALS DON'T EVEN APPRECIATE THE $1.6 MILLION GIFT I'M BRINGING TO THIS SHITHOLE YOU CALL A NEIGHBORHOOD.

Maybe it'll bring the prices down!  Nah.  Somehow our friend Andrew must convince some rube to drop that kind of money for yet another featureless box, this one inconveniently located not in the Mission.  He is utterly stymied by the impossibility of this task until it dawns on him there might be a TECH SHUTTLE nearby, a phrase he repeats with the intensity and determination that a pilgrim on the way to Lourdes might deploy the Ave Maria.  Later, when Andrew for some reason is meeting Justin for drinks outside the Balboa Cafe (I think), a tech shuttle goes by and Andrew LEAPS FROM HIS CHAIR, chasing it, moaning "tech shuuuuuuutle tech shuuuuuuuuutle" as if his implorations might cause GBUS TO MTV to jump from its assigned stops and pick up bright-eyed young tech monsters on the Very Wrong Side of the Hill.  But alas, it recedes into the night, along with Andrew's dreams.

This is a good place to add that Balboa Cafe is a terrible, terrible place.

What of Justin?  When he's not begging Andrew for his eponymous domain name back, what else is he doing?  He's selling the house on San Carlos, and to do this he has invited both brokers and prospective (tech) buyers, who all arrive at the same time looking like immaculately-clad parents and their potentially bright but ugly and ill-dressed children.  Shockingly, Developer Beard did not remove every interior wall to transform a perfectly fine house into Massive Cattle Enclosure Floor Plan, but thoughtfully provided a "Tesla charger" for the garage.  Justin shakes down some dork for $3.5 million BUT WAIT this surely loathsome person doesn't have a Tesla.  He or she has a Range Rover and it won't fit in the garage BZZZZZZZZZT that'll be a two-to-three month delay.  Not a problem!  I'll be in Gstaad.  Ring me when the Rovie fits.

Relentlessly cheerful Roh, meanwhile, has been lobbed the penthouse at 8 Octavia, that building that looks like a huge window air conditioner right when you get off the freeway.  Inside, of course, it looks like EVERY OTHER PLACE ON THIS SHOW.  Design is certainly not my forte, but has it always been this uniform?  Or is just a recent development that every high-end interior is COMPLETELY INDISTINGUISHABLE from the next?  If you dropped the Senior VP of Product Ninja or whatever from Google into any one of these places, s/he would not have the slightest chance in hell of telling you whether or not s/he was in his/her OWN FUCKING HOUSE or someone else's.

I don't have a picture this week, so look at this baby chihuahua instead.

Roh has a plan.  He will secure the attendance of architect Stanley Saitowitz at his open house party.  Apparently Stanley Saitowitz has the panty-dropping prowess of an architectural Channing Tatum and his mere presence alone will empty wallets and hearts.  After a series of unsuccessful phone calls, Roh finally sits outside Stanley's office in his car which may not be the best idea for a Muslim dude stalking a famous Jewish guy, but Roh isn't rendered or anything and Stanley shows up to his party, gets in some selfies, and hopefully gets motherfucking PAID.

It's just another day in Our Garbage City.

Million Dickhead Listing SF: Worse Than I Thought

You guys, I actually didn't loathe everyone on this show after the first episode and I thought I was getting soft or whatever but NOT TO WORRY because this episode cleared all that up.  Let us turn our attention to some place on San Carlos that some "developer" with a beard has evicted a bunch of cool people from and gutted and is now turning into another grey flatscreen media room open concept nightmare.

"Techies love when a property looks Victorian on the outside but they want modern inside," says JUSTIN, who I suspect secretly hates himself but can't let on.  Isn't this just the best one-line metaphor for Today's San Francisco?  "We want everything to appear cool, but we actually want it to be as dangerous as playing Call of Duty in our former dorm room at Cornell."  Justin promises Beard $3.25 mil for the San Carlos place.

Justin has an assistant named PIERRE who arrives for a meeting clutching a dead raccoon to his chest in another metaphor for the Changing City.

Pierre says he is "fitting in well here, like a glove," and he wants everyone at the all hands meeting to put the lotion in the basket.

Since the gut-job on San Carlos is icky and horrible before we put in Surround Sound and a Viking range, Justin markets it to the vapid apperie by conducting some kind of Occupying Army Walking Tour of the Mission and says "I'm kind of like the Pied Piper of the Mission District" without any apparent irony or awareness that the OG Pied P led rats out of the City whereas BOMP BOMP BOMP I'm not going to hit you over the head with this any more.

Justin takes them to a "new place" which I have identified as Cease and Desist with my superior research skills which means I entered the address into Google and also to Hog & Rocks which is a great neighborhood hang if you like $30 burgers & fries.

Let's move on.  Ruh-Roh is still trying to unload that hotel in St. Francis Wood and changes up strategies by going away from bootie parties and instead trying to push it on the Olds by which I mean people my age.  The seller's agent, a Cruella de Ville type with angry lipstick and the haughty manner of an antebellum plantation owner wife, basically spits in his face for a $6.2 million all cash offer but is cool with 6.3.  To translate for normal people like us, that's like saying absolutely no way will I pay more than $8.99 for a twelver of PBR but oh OK fuck it you got me I'll pay $9.50.  FINE. YOU DRIVE A HARD BARGAIN SIR.

There's a lot of shit with Andrew and that place in Alamo but who really gives a fuck.

Million Dickhead Listing: SF

Million Dollar Listing is a docudrama about annoying people helping loathsome people buy ostentatious apartments in New York.  It took a few years, but now San Francisco apparently has enough loathsome people to form the critical mass necessary for an outpost of the show here, so LET IT BE SO.

MDL:SF focuses on three real estate agents, two white males and a token Afghani Muslim male.  "Justin" is a native San Franciscan.  How do we know that?  Because native San Franciscans are like vegans or people who don't own a TV and make sure you know that in the first 13 seconds of meeting you.  "Andrew" shares a loft in South Beach with his fiance Paul and I'm guessing one to three dogs.  He grew up in Florida and had to steal toilet paper to survive.  Roh escaped from Afghanistan on a donkey and suddenly Andrew's toilet paperless past doesn't seem so shitty WHOOPS SORRY ABOUT THAT.

I grudgingly have to admit that Roh is actually kind of likable what with his indomitable spirit and pretty wife and cute baby and whatever.

IN THIS EPISODE each agent is tasked with selling a different MILLION DOLLAR LISTING.  As you know, a MILLION DOLLAR LISTING in San Francisco is just a VACANT FUCKING LOT, so this show is actually Multi Million Dollar Listing.

This is a $1,000,000 vacant lot at 501 Noriega. Bring a tent! 

Justin is trying to sell an ugly house in Noe Valley with one of those complete interior gut jobs where everything is now grey and flat.  The "business manager" for the people who currently own it is a severe little man who wants $4 million for the place.  Even Justin seems taken aback at this unblinking rapaciousness.

Justin seems to live with a married couple and their child in the Marina, but oddly does not appear to be a manny or in a polyamorous triad with them.  Maybe Justin made less than $200K last year and thus can't afford his own place.

Andrew is tasked with selling a concrete box in Alamo, which is not in San Francisco or actually anywhere near San Francisco and actually doesn't really exist at all except in the sense that it's a zip code containing houses out there in the far fucking East Bay somewhere.  Somehow Andrew is more annoying than anyone else on this show, and I'm including the entrepeneur with "Adventurer" in his Twitter bio.  Anyway, if you want to live in a magazine spread in Alamo that's your problem.

Roh is trying to unload a monstrous pile in St. Francis Wood for like $6,000,000.  PROBLEM: Everyone knows that St. Francis Wood is for olds who know better than to spend $6,000,000 on a house.  How to get the young, hip, and horrible into SFW?  SOLUTION: Market the place as a soundproofed after-hours party palace!  That should go over well with the CEO of Wells Fargo next door.   Roh's business partner Joel is a game show host crossed with a Pomeranian and I hope we will see more of Joel let me tell you.

The producers bring our three agents together at a clearly staged party at the end, where Andrew announces that he's bought the domain names of the other two guys' actual people names.  What kind of weird fucked up stalker shit is that. That is one step away from showing them telephoto pictures of themselves in the shower.  Why are you such a fucking creep Andrew.

FINAL SCORE: Justin sells the Noe Valley imported Italian countertop for $3.8 mil.  Andrew is mad because some guy with an accent invited the owners to the party where he was going to sell the house and now they want to keep it, destroying everyone's life in the process.  As far as I could tell, Roh has not yet unloaded Geritol Studio 54 and still has an enormous and frankly frightening beard.

Meet the Assholes Who Forced Me to Un-Semi-Retire from Blogging

I was having lunch with someone the other day who mentioned that I don't seem to blog much anymore, which is true.  I told him that maybe I just don't get as worked up about stuff as I used to.  I mean, even Debra J. Saunders' incoherent sub-preschool-level columns barely raise my ire any more.  I thought maybe I'm just not that angry anymore.

Thankfully, these gigantic assholes arrived to shake me from my slumber.

Rich Californians balk at limits: ‘We’re not all equal when it comes to water’

RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. — Drought or no drought, Steve Yuhas resents the idea that it is somehow shameful to be a water hog. If you can pay for it, he argues, you should get your water.

People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media. “We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he added in an interview. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”

Human-shaped garbage barge Steve Yuhas isn't even the worst of this crew who think that they're above the law because they have money.  I mean, it's hard to fault them for thinking that, since the whole fucking country seems bent on constantly reinforcing that idea.  Still, it's sort of breathtaking to hear them spout their entitlement-speak out loud and to a major newspaper.  At least the filthy rich used to have the common courtesy not to openly rub our faces in the yawning disparity between how they live and how we scrabble around the floor waiting for them to accidentally drop a crumb.

Let together lament the travails of Gay Butler:

“I think we’re being overly penalized, and we’re certainly being overly scrutinized by the world,” said Gay Butler, an interior designer out for a trail ride on her show horse, Bear. She said her water bill averages about $800 a month.

“It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture,” Butler said. “What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?”

Well, Gay, actually, yes.  It will come as no surprise to anyone that Steve Yuhas "hosts a conservative talk-radio show," because he is a shining example of the I-got-mine-so-fuck-you mentality typical amongst his ilk.  If there was unlimited water, Yuhas and Gay Butler and Bear could all hot tub together and hose each other down 24/7 for all I care but we don't.  There is a fixed amount of water available and these scabrous jackoffs think their lush green lawns are more important than your drinking water or your kale or whatever else you want to eat.  God I am sick of kale.  That's not the point.  The point is these people are awful.

One other factoid of note:

In a place where the median income is $189,000, where PGA legend Phil Mickelson once requested a separate water meter for his chipping greens, where financier Ralph Whitworth last month paid the Rolling Stones $2 million to play at a local bar, the fine, at $100, was less than intimidating.

Hold the fucking phone.  The Rolling Stones will play a private gig for only $2 million?  Mick Jagger is worth $300 million. What is he doing playing "Brown Sugar" for a bunch of rich dicks in Rancho Santa Fe?

I'll trade you a moratorium for a 4-story building here

Yesterday the Board of Supes voted on the #MissionMoratorium, Supervisor David Campos's idea to halt all market-rate residential construction in the Mission so rents will go down or something.  I'm actually not clear on what effect he thinks this moratorium would have, and I'm not sure he is either.  There was some vague talk about giving the City a chance to buy some undeveloped parcels for affordable housing but no one had that idea when land was cheap and no one had put forth any hard numbers or a plan to actually make that happen anyway, as far as I know.  The Board rejected it, but I doubt that's the end of it.

It's a loaded topic, and no one can dispute that rents have exploded in the Mission and a lot of longtime residents have been forced out and replaced with boring white people.  The question is what to do about it.  I wasn't convinced that stopping all construction would slow in any way the eviction of current residents.  In fact, my belief is that it would probably increase it, since people with money still want to live in the Mission and if there's no  new construction then existing landlords will just Ellis Act out their current tenants and sell off the resulting TICs to Facebillionaires.

ANYWAY I live in the Richmond district and my supposed supervisor, Eric Mar, somehow found the time to tear himself away from his tireless efforts to control what beverages people drink and weigh in on this issue.

Supervisor @ericmar415 just compared displacement in the Mission to "ethnic cleansing" #moratorium

— Curbed SF (@CurbedSF) June 2, 2015

Oh my. As @thetens pointed out after I objected to this kind of rhetoric, "Genocide isn't the only thing that ethnic cleansing means though," which is true, I suppose, but I would guess that when people hear "ethnic cleansing," they usually think of ethnic cleansing like Bosnia or Rwanda and not people of various races being peaceably (albeit unwillingly) evicted from their homes.  Don't get me wrong; it's terrible, but I don't think incendiary statements like this add to meaningful dialogue on this issue.

I sorta wish Eric Mar would turn his supervisorial gaze to his own district, where we could use some help.  Here's the corner of 6th Ave and Balboa, in the heart of the Inner Richmond, not far from where I live:

Empty one-story restaurant, one-story storefront, empty one-story storefront, empty one-story coffee shop.  Talk about a prime development opportunity!  No tenants to evict, and a shitload of space!  You could put up a 4 or 5-story building here, ground floor retail, looks like you could get easily 20 apartments in here.  LOOK OVER HERE AT YOUR DISTRICT SUPERVISOR MAR!!!  HEY!!! OVER HERE!!!!

Believe it or not, the Mission is not the only place in the city where people could live.  If you put up 20 apartments here, do you think they'd sit vacant?  Do you think those people might patronize a coffee shop on the ground floor?  How about saying "Sure, cool, I'll vote for a moratorium in the Mission if we all agree to speed through development in my district"?  What if every other supervisor did that?

I'm kidding, of course.

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!

What bar will your building have?

Noted local radio host/IPA enthusiast Burrito Justice had a bold proposal:

new SF zoning requirement: mandatory bar and/or live venue in every new condo development
— Burrito Justice (@burritojustice) April 23, 2015

I like it! Maybe because I had a similar thought not long ago and I always like it when people mirror at me.  That's how I get my self-worth and validation.

Anyway, it made me think.  If Burrito's plan becomes reality, what kind of bars would go with what kind of development?

3500 Nineteenth Street is a "balanced blend of urban living and comforatble luxury, rising above the rest."  Ugh.  Here's a 2-bedroom rising above the rest at $10,000 a month.  The Thought Leaders and App Monetizers who will live at 3500 Nineteenth demand a bar that understands their particular blend of infinite arrogance and crippling social disability, and now they have it:  SWIPE, a bar at which no human interaction is permitted.  Simply use the bespoke SWIPE app to order a $16 Red Bull & vodka, find out if vaping is allowed inside (only in the VapeShape Room, please), or message that cutie at the end of the bar.  Oh she works here.  OK.

The Massive Project at 16th and Mission has already been dubbed Royal Gate by local wags, and it shall have a bar befitting both its on point nickname and its location: DT's.  DT's will feature a fun, not really that friendly enviornment, where getting blackout drunk is on the menu! At DT's, you'll never have the embarrassment of having to ask where the bathroom is - it's everywhere!

The Proposed Condos at 16th and Albion have arrived at a fraught time in Mission development history, so its bar shall be called Moratorium.  Moratorium will feature drinks like the Planning Commissioner, which costs $3500 and use of your condo in Maui for a week.  Nobody saw you order it!

Surely you don't believe that the Richie Riches in Laurel Heights will ever allow 500 units of housing that are 40 feet tall at the UCSF Laurel Heights Campus do you?  The bar there will be called No Fucking Way.

I'm sure that the people who move into one of the Nine Condos Directly Behind Bottom of the Hill will be totally chill with loud music until 2 am and that awesome back patio where everyone totally keeps their voice down all the time. But they don't have to go next door to get a drink!  They can visit the onsite bar, Noise Complaint, which has a big bowl of earplugs on the bar and your city supervisor on speed dial.

The Elbo Room Condos will boast ElboRoomLand, an immersive experience that's guaranteed to take you back to your old Elbo Room days.  You'll enjoy sharing a joint with a white guy with dreadlocks as you bounce your head to the fourth-best touring Sublime cover band!  JAH LIKE.

This is the kind of project SF needs. Too bad people are going to lose their fucking minds over it.

You may not know this, but there is at the present time an 86-unit apartment complex at 5th and Kirkham with the wonderfully unimaginative name "Kirkham Heights."  Yelpers give KH mixed reviews; Chris B. of Long Beach says it's "very quiet" and is great for a cat, if you're into that sort of thing, but doesn't have enough electrical outlets, so if you have a lot of appliances like Chris probably does maybe you might need some power strips.  Bonnie G. from L.A., on the other hand, thinks the Heights is a "NIGHTMARE" because they told her her place would be 783 sq ft and she measured it and it's 630.  That's a 150 square foot lie!  Bonnie couldn't even fit her furniture!  I picture Bonnie angrily U-Hauling her enormous futon back to Reseda or whatever, never to return.

Anyway, owner Westlake Realty has some BIG PLANS for the Heights.  Very big.

A longtime Inner Sunset property owner is proposing to build the largest residential development the Inner Sunset has ever seen, a 460-unit project nestled into the hillside on 6.3 acres below Mount Sutro.

San Mateo builder Westlake Urban has filed an application to tear down the Kirkham Heights apartment complex, an 86-unit row of structures built in 1950 at Fifth Avenue and Kirkham Street that has been popular with UCSF staff and students from the nearby Parnassus campus. A mix of condos and rental units would replace them.

Gaye Quinn, Westlake Urban’s managing partner, said the new project would include 86 rent-controlled apartments to match what is currently on the site. Another 12 percent of the apartments would be below market rate. Westlake Urban has owned the property for 40 years.

What is it we're always saying?  San Francisco needs more housing?  And not just $5 mil luxury condos, but housing for regular people?  HERE YOU GO! It's a net gain of 374 units.  Not bad looking either!

Not pictured: Annoying neighbors w/ their indoor cats.

The SF Business Times is throwing their hat in the ring for Understatement of the Century:  "The Westlake proposal is likely to get strong reactions from the neighborhood." YA THINK?  People are gonna lose their damn minds, more like.  WHAT ABOUT THE TRAFFIC! THEY'RE GONNA CLEAN OUT THE GOLDEN BEAR MARKET AT 6TH AND JUDAH! ALL THOSE CATS ARE GOING TO MAKE A TERRIBLE RACKET!

True. But I don't think anyone would disagree that we need more housing and this is more housing.  Plus it's not one of those stupid all-concrete and glass dbag cages that are going up all over goddam SOMA.  This looks like housing for normal people who use "disrupt" to mean when someone calls during dinner.  Let's do it.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Sorry, "sportsball" people, but my team is back in the World Series so this blog will be transitioning to pretty much an all-baseball format for the next couple of weeks or so.  In case anyone forgot, I tend to do a post for every single World Series game the G's are in and I probably will again.

I don't understand these housing protests at all

From ABC 7 News:

SAN FRANCISCO RESIDENTIAL SURTAX FACES OPPOSITION

(ALL CAPS belong to ABC 7, not me.)

If you click on the link you can see the whole boring video, in which they stuck poor Lyanne Melendez up on Twin Peaks for some reason.

Anyway, here's the crux of it:

Anyone buying two or more units without living there would be severely taxed if they sell the property within five years. They would be taxed 24 percent the first year and then less every year after that.

Mar got enough votes from the Board of Supervisors to put the measure on the November ballot.

"It's a small, narrow group of people that are flipping buildings so it's really narrowly tailored to only the handful of people that are making profits off people suffering and throwing our housing costs out of whack," Mar said.

The surtax will not be imposed if the property is sold at a loss.

So it's basically an anti-flipping ordinance.  If you buy a multi-unit building and then turn it into TICs (or sell it as is) without living there, you get hit with a tax.  Given that there's been a lot of Ellis Act evictions going on just to flip buildings into TICs, I can understand why this sounds good.

Now, if you want to protest this, FINE.  Stand up and be proud and say "HEY I'M A FLIPPER AND I WANT TO BUY BUILDINGS AND KICK OUT TENANTS AND SELL THEM AS TICs FOR A FAT PROFIT.  SO YOU SHOULD LET ME DO THIS WITHOUT PAYING EXTRA TAX BECAUSE AMERICA."  That I could at least respect for honesty.

But that's not what these protesters are saying.

The Chinese Real Estate Association of America opposes the measure. "Most of the Chinese or Asian people, we believe in purchasing property, owning a property and passing on the property to the next generation," spokesperson Tina Wong said.

WAIT WHAT.  Hey guess what, Chinese Real Estate Association of America? I HAVE GOT SOME AWESOME  NEWS FOR YOU.  If you purchase and own property and pass it on to the next generation, YOU WILL NOT BE SUBJECT TO THIS TAX.  So you can stand down.  You have nothing to worry about.

(Now, I'm not an idiot.  I know the CREAA actually wants to flip buildings and make money without paying more taxes.  Which, if that's your position, fine. Own it. Just don't pretend to be something you're not.)

In Protest #2, we have the Levins, who didn't read up on rent control before they bought their building.

Dan and Maria Levin bought a small home in the 400 block of Lombard St. It has two units, each with one bedroom. 

The person renting their other unit can't afford to move out. The only way is to pay them off - their attorney said it would cost more than $100,000.

"We want the extra unit for our family and friends because currently we have no room whatsoever in our one bedroom, small apartment and it would be great for when they come and visit," Maria Levin said.

In other words, they bought their building knowing there was a tenant in one of the units and that tenant can't just be kicked out because they need their own personal Airbnb, but despite knowing all that AHEAD OF TIME, they are stunned that the tenant won't just sheepishly pack up and go.

(If they weren't notified about the tenant, or the tenant was hiding in the closet when they did their inspections, that's another story but I doubt it.)

(Also, it will cost whatever you work out with the tenant.  If the tenant will move for $30K, then it'll cost that.  If the tenant will move for $26 and a Wade Boggs rookie card, so much the better.)

Advice for the Levins: if you don't want this problem, don't buy a building with a tenant.

Attack of the Smoke Detector Bird

Baby Beyonce is 13 months now (and fucking adorable, I assure you) and at this point her sleep pattern is such that she goes to bed around 7 pm and gets up maybe once or twice a night, usually around 1:30-2:30 and then sometimes again in the 4:00-5:00 range.  The Wife typically attends to her during these fairly routine and brief episodes.  Other than that, getting enough sleep has not been too bad.

Until recently.

We have a large tree in our backyard, and it appears that it has now become the morning hang of some kind of bird.  I'm not sure what kind of bird exactly except it sounds like the LOUDEST MOST DEFECTIVE SMOKE DETECTOR IN HISTORY and its preferred time to GO FUCKING NUTS is about 5:30 a.m.

Here's the tree. NOT PICTURED: Smoke Detector Bird

I know you're thinking I'm overdramatizing this but we sleep with a white noise machine on in our room and the call of the Smoke Detector Bird cuts through that like a Caramel Unwrapper through the quiet part of the symphony.  It might be OK if it had any kind of pleasing, mellifluous tone, but it's more like an abrasive BEEP every half second.  I tried to identify it online and the closest I could come is the Downy Woodpecker but that's probably not it.  The sound is close but not nearly as annoying.

One morning last week I finally lost it and decided to take some action, so at 5:45 a.m. I got up and found half a lemon in the fridge.  I opened the back door (we're on the second floor so we're level with the tree) and fucking CHUCKED THAT THING at the tree.  Voila, the sound of BEEPing receding into the distance.

It's back again.  This morning, right on schedule at 5:30.  Fucking bird.  I don't have an infinite supply of lemons so I don't know what the fuck.  I think we might have to move.

ONE OTHER THING.  Another year of SF Weekly's Best of San Francisco awards, another year I didn't win Best Blog.  Um, congratulations, Bold Italic.

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.