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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lyft, Airbnb, and Unintended Consequences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This conversation I had kinda bummed me out

I had to take our car into the shop last week and I had a conversation with the owner I've been thinking about ever since.  Because cars are mysterious and temperamental creatures, I had to take it to a different place than we usually go to.  Anyway, the owner - super nice guy BTW - was taking my info and when I told him my address he said "Oh, I grew up like two blocks from there."

"No kidding," I said.  "Where do you live now?"

"Over by Lake Merced," he said.  Then he said the interesting slash depressing thing I've been thinking about ever since.

"But we're looking to move," he said.  "This city's getting crazy."  I nodded like I knew what he meant, although he could have meant any number of things.  Then he said, "Amd we've got a kid now and we can't send him to San Francisco schools."

I didn't really ask for clarification because, hey, he's a guy working on my car and we're not here to debate the merits of San Francisco schools but MAN IS THAT DEPRESSING.  I have a kid who's going to be going to school in a couple of years and it never occurred to me to just dismiss SF public schools out of hand like that.  I mean, we fully intend to do the whole lottery thing and whatever and see what happens.  (I assume he meant "San Francisco public schools" when he said "San Francisco schools" but who knows, maybe he just can't conceive of his kid attending any school in the city limits in which case never mind.)

It occurs to me that this attitude might be more prevalent among SF natives like this guy than with people who have moved here in the last, say, 26 years like me?  From what I understand, SF public schools used to be worse and have been improving greatly over the past few years, so maybe that's it?

This picture has nothing to do with this story except it's a cool picture of San Francisco. From some astronaut's Twitter, I think. 

The second depressing aspect of this brief exchange - and yes, I can manage to extract two depressing points out of a 20-second conversation - is that this is the kind of guy San Francisco desperately needs and can no longer keep.  A regular, middle-class guy who runs a local business and is raising a family in the city and isn't trying to commodify parking spaces or figure out yet another way to get food from a restaurant to your door.  I feel like we're losing the Normal Guy demographic and that's a vital part of this city or any city.

(Again, I'm making some assumptions here based on the fact that it's a guy who owns an auto repair shop and lives out by Lake Merced.  Maybe he's actually a billionaire who created Repair.io the auto repair app but I didn't get that vibe.)

That's about it.

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

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

1. Get to counter.

2. Give ID and credit card

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who the fuck is Emirates' target demo?

If you live anywhere or have a TV or exist in the world you've seen Emirates Airlines' ubiquitous advertising, which usually features deeply contented youngish people casually enjoying a glass of probably scotch and a plate of probably lobster while seated in a plush beige airplane seat.  The ads are plastered all over the Powell BART station even as we speak.

Photo courtesy: Me. For once, I didn't steal someone else's picture.

Many, if not most, of these ads feature some kind of unimaginable Ultimate Premium First Class.  Like check out that chick on the right.  She's just getting OUT OF THE FUCKING SHOWER on the airplane.  I can't even stand up straight in an airplane bathroom and this lady's at a fucking air spa.

That's not all you get in First Class!  You get to "savor gourmet meals whenever you please" and "join the conversation in our A380 Onboard Lounge," which looks like the douchiest bar this side of Eastside West.

"You ladies come here often? WANT TO?"

LOOKS GREAT.  Who doesn't want to savor some gourmet meals and then shower off the scent of Axe body spray you'll get from standing in the same room as Chas up there?  Let's go to, say, Singapore!

Yikes!  That's a lot of money.  Singapore's a long way away, though, and you can take lots of showers.

Point is, I've never seen another airline use as their primary marketing focus a class of service that 99% of its customers will ever see.  Isn't it just setting up all us Coach Cattle for disappointment?  "Wait, where's my shower?  Can I go to the Onboard Lounge?"  "SILENCE, DONKEY PERSON.  RETAKE YOUR SEAT AND EAT YOUR FOOD PELLET QUIETLY!!!"  Seems weird.

Anyway, we're off to the less exotic destination of San Diego via a United Flying Person Crate, so see ya later.

You should take the train

Like my fellow blogger (and fellow Blogger.com user!) M. Strickland of Civic Center, who has often sung the praises of travel by Amtrak, we decided to take the train this weekend to visit my sister in Tahoe, where she's spending the winter with her bf, a couple of dogs, and metric shitloads of snow.  Seriously there is so much fucking snow.

Anyway, I have some advice: take the fucking train.  It is so much better than driving that you will wonder why you ever drove.  We took the California Zephyr from Emeryville to Truckee.  It continues on to Chicago.  Yes, it takes a lot longer than flying, but if you're in no particular hurry it would probably be great.  From here to Tahoe took about 6 hours, so not much more than driving. (It takes about 3 days to get to Chicago - if you leave on Friday morning, you get there Sunday afternoon.)

The regular coach seats are roughly equivalent to first class seats on an airplane.  They're big and wide and there's maybe more legroom than first class.  There's also an observation car (containing, for a time, my daughter, pictured above) and a dining car.  The food is not very good but whatever.

For our trip back Sunday, regular coach was sold out so we pretty much had to buy a private room.  It was kind of expensive but also it was really nice to have our own surprisingly large space.

And it was the only way we could have gotten out of Tahoe on Sunday, where it started blizzarding on Saturday and pretty much never let up.  In fact, we had to stop up on the summit while they plowed the tracks.

In a remarkable bit of bad timing, another long-haul Amtrak train, the Southwest Chief from LA to Chicago, derailed last night in Kansas, about 8 hours after we got off the (completely different and uninvolved) train.  A lot of people got hurt.  Still, it's probably safer than driving.  I'm sure there's numbers out there to back that up but I don't feel like doing the research right now.

I will say this: the whole experience is somewhat bumpier, for lack of a better word, than I expected.  We took the train from Boston to NYC to DC a few years ago but I don't remember it being as bumpy.  It kind of feels like low-grade turbulence on a plane a lot of the time.  And sometimes when it takes turns fast, you can definitely feel the whole thing leaning to one side, which is mildly disconcerting if you're not used to it.

Still, I would enthusiastically recommend.  Unlike air travel, everyone on the train seems pretty chill and relaxed and I didn't have that feeling like I wanted to kill everyone in sight like I do when I fly.  Try taking the train.

ilu Waze

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google owns Waze now, natch.

I'm on hiatus

It's that time of year. Time to engage in some uncomfortable air travel and see the relatives and whatever.  I'll be back.

Today in Our Garbage City: This city isn't for you anymore, it's for Them

I don't think anyone really appreciates yet the level of fuckery that's going to accompany the arrival of Super Bowl L in February which is not being played in San Francisco at all but rather in Santa Clausa or whatever but will effectively shut down downtown because no Regional VP of Sales who's getting sent to the Super Bowl as a reward for beating revenue targets for three straight years wants to go to the Cheesecake Factory in Santa Clara when he could go to the Cheesecake Factory in Union Square.  So the NFL and Business Fingerpuppet Ed Lee have joined forces to shut down the foot of Market for 2 weeks so business douches and Patriots fans can wallow around in money and celebrate a sport that's not even played professionally here any more.

Despite the obvious annoyance that this shitacular is going to be, I was more or less agnostic on hating it until this came out:

The committee planning Super Bowl City are asking that Muni’s overhead wires be taken down near Justin Herman Plaza, the San Francisco Examiner has learned, potentially disrupting service of Muni’s historic streetcars and wire-dependent buses.

Supervisor Jane Kim, whose district includes the plaza, said she thought the potential plan was well-known.

“Yeah, that’s real,” she said. “The [Super Bow] committee has been very open about it. They’ve said that’s what they want.”

She added, “They’ve definitely been asking to take down the overhead wires on Market Street.”

You get this?  These dickbrains want to take down the wires that the fucking buses and streetcars use, because I guess they'll interfere with the views or something or, more likely, because they think that might keep the ugly vermin that ride Muni from making it into their Morbidly Obese Capitalism Zone.  FUCK YOU, SAN FRANCISCO!  If you need to get somewhere on lower Market in February, you should have either started a Fortune 500 company or been better at football.

Sources with close knowledge of the project also confirmed the potential plan. Those sources, who would not use their names for fear of reprisal from the Mayor’s Office, also said removing numerous wires on Market Street may cost a “seven-figure number” requiring “lots of overtime” to remove correctly.

So much here.  The only people who can talk about this must remain hidden in the shadows lest whoever the fuck it is who really runs this yard visits a terrible revenge on them.  But hey, we've got plenty of seven-figure numbers to throw around, now that all that money from Airbnb registrations is rollng in, right?

Elsewhere, the lovely Palace of Fine Arts, long a civic institution, is being boring and not doing what you're supposed to do in Our Garbage City, which is generate TONS O' CASH.  So hey, let's fucking MONETIZE THAT BITCH!!!

From 7x7:

The Palace of Fine Arts is one of San Francisco’s most iconic public buildings, and some folks are none too happy about potential plans to turn the cultural landmark into a luxury boutique hotel. 

Back in December 2014, Rec and Park issued a press release announcing a request for proposals for what general manager Phil Ginsburg called "a unique business opportunity" for private businesses to pitch creative takeovers of the 140,000 square-foot structure. As of last week, the city has accepted three proposals for the fomer Exploratorium space: two would transform the building into a hotel, and one suggests opening a museum and restaurant.

Whatever.  Fine.  That's where we live now.  If you're not generating ROI, you're fucking dead to us.  LEARN TO CODE, PALACE OF FINE ARTS, OR GET LEFT BEHIND.

(Also, bless your heart, makers of the Change.org petition to stop this, but it's "San Francisco," not "San Fransisco," sweetie.)

SFist or SFGate comment?

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

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

SFGate:

And SFist:

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

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

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

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

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

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

This all means something, I guess.

Answers: gate, fist, fist, gate, gate

The world according to kid

WARNING: Content may be construed as daddy-blogging.  Enjoy or avoid as your preference may be.

This is our kid.  She's about 2 1/2 years old now.  She's like a little person now.  I mean, she was a little person the whole time, but when they're like 6 months old they're basically just a blob you put food into and remove waste from the outside of, and now she is starting to get independent and talks in roughly complete sentences and has LOTS OF OPINIONS ABOUT THINGS.  Maybe they will interest you.  Maybe they won't.  The Wife is out of town for a while here and I'm putting these here for her benefit just as much as yours.

On Food

"This tastes like orange" (eating an orange)

"This tastes like a pouch" (eating a pouch)

(After hearing what we're having for dinner) "Oh, that sounds really delicious"

"I want juice and milk in the same cup."  (Ew, no.)

On Familial Relationships

(Apropos of nothing, to me) "I'm your daughter."

"Mama's a big daughter"

(To every other guy boarding the N Judah) "That's not my dada."

(One guy said "No it is not," with a sense of relief? Or something?)

Misc.

(After I tickled her) "You need to calm down." (Pause) "We both need to calm down."

Her: "Shit. Shit. Shit."

Me: "What are you saying?"

Her: "Shit. Shit. Shit the odor."

Me: (lightbulb going off) "Shrek?  Shrek the ogre?"

Her: "Yes. Shit the odor."

While driving the car

"I'm looking for a parking spot."

Obviously a San Franciscan.

As I alluded to on Twitter, the experience of solo parenting (day 5 of 10 today, yay) has imbued in me a newfound respect for single parents.  We're very lucky because she's a pretty easygoing kid and is usually great to be around, but still, sometimes you just want to hand them off and be like "Here, you deal with this for a while" and having someone else around makes that possible most of the time.  So hats off, single parents. 

Your Complete 2015 Guide to Complaining About the Outside Lands Music Festival

1. The Lineup

Wilco?  Mumford & Sons?  The Black Keys?  More like Outside Dads, amirite?  And Elton John, for Chrissake?  That's not dad rock, that's great-grandad rock.  At least there's not a comedy joke band as a headliner, like they had one year.

Did you hear what Wilco did at the Pitchfork festival a couple of weeks ago?  The day before the thing started, they released a new album on iTunes or something and then they started their set at the festival by playing the entire album all the way through.  "Hey, we're Wilco, thanks for coming, here's 12 songs you've never heard before, fuck you."

2. Ticket prices

$135 a day, or $325 for 3 days.  That's expensive!  Mumford doesn't need any more of your money.  He'll probably just give it to Carey Mulligan anyway.

3. They shut down the whole park for weeks

via Twitter celeb Miche:

The damn festival's only for three days!  Why you keeping me out of my park that I pay good tax money to use for 13 days!  Or 12 days.  I don't remember whether you count the start and end days or how that works.  Anyway, they fence off a big section of the park.  It sucks!

4. Muni sucks

I mean, generally, but especially on the festival days, anywhere west of Van Ness or near a BART station.  Imagine trying to get home and waiting for a 5 Fulton only to see it zoom by without stopping, packed Tokyo-subway-like with horrible stoned teens wearing fringe vests and stupid hats.  And forget taking Uber anywhere; usually it's 1700x surge pricing or some shit.

5. Literally get off my lawn

If you need a bottle of Fireball during OL for a practical joke or to clean engione parts, good luck finding one because all the neighborhood liquor stores are sold out because all the execrable teens who were recently jamming up the Muni are now kneewalking drunk and peeing on your stoop.  That's right, if you live anywhere near GG Park this weekend, get ready for the Drunk Teen equivalent of the Mariel boatlift, as wave after wave of them crash upon your shore.  You can't even turn the hose on them because you might accidentally get some Drunk Teen runoff on your property.  Gross.

6. The Noise

Outside Lands features heavily amplified music that, depending on the weather conditions, is often audible well outside the park.  I made this map to help you evaluate your personal risk.

The best thing you can do is FLEE THE AREA.

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

Audis

Mohawks

Superpremium vodka

Coachella

Private planes

Cologne

MDMA

Working in the technology industry

Burning Man

Being a DJ

SOMA

OK, maybe Uber isn't all bad

The Wife and I went to a wedding in Saratoga, CA on Sunday.  Saratoga, if you're not familiar, is a cutesy little town with shops and restaurants and white people in shorts.  The wedding venue was one of those fancy gardens-type places that mostly exist just to be a place to have weddings.  I was under the initial impression that we could walk there from our hotel, since it appeared to be about a half-mile away on Google maps.  What Google maps did not reveal was that the road there was a tiny 2-lane thing with no sidewalks and cars whizzing by, and the gardens were at the top of a large hill with no sidewalks leading up to it, so ergo, no walking.

Obviously the open bar is the killer app of weddings and there was no way either of us were driving, so I called the local cab company and told the guy who answered we needed a cab at the hotel.  He asked me where we were going and when I said "Mystical Wedding Gardens," he suddenly said "Sorry we don't have any drivers in the area," which is of course total bullshit because he didn't say that until I told him we were only going about a half a mile and he clearly wasn't interested in a fare that low.  Ok, fuck you then.

So I turned to Uber.  Despite its relative proximity to Uber headquarters in SF, it appears that there is but one UberX driver serving the Saratoga area.  His name is Ali and he was just as nice as you can be.  Ali left his house and came and picked us up and took us to the wedding for $10.  $10 is a lot to go a half a mile but cheaper than lifelong paralysis after being hit by a car while walking on a 2-lane road or a DUI.

When the wedding was over around 10 pm, Ali left his house and came and picked us up and drove us back to our hotel, this time for only $7.  Bargain!  Ali seemed positively delighted to ferry two semi-drunk people around the corner to their hotel at 10 o'clock at night.  Thanks, Ali.

The moral of this mostly boring story is that I like to hate on Uber just as much as the next guy, but once again, the refusal of cab companies to provide the service for which they FUCKING EXIST proves that we need something like Uber or Lyft.  Now just start treating your employees like employees and not this contractor bullshit and we'll all be cool.

The end.

The solution this city needs: GTFO

You know the problems.  There's nowhere to live and the rents are ridiculous!  BART is too fucking crowded!  Even if you say fuck BART, I'm driving, that's a goddam nightmare too!

Here are some possible solutions: (1) build a fuck ton more housing, especially in San Francisco; (2) Build a second BART tube from, I don't know, Dogpatch to Alameda to Fruitvale; (3) Build underground tunnels for cars all over everywhere.

That all sounds very expensive!  The second BART tube alone, which everyone basically already agrees has to be built, is gonna cost 12 billion dollars.  12 billion dollars!  That's probably more than Larry Ellison spends on yachts every year.

ALLOW ME TO SUGGEST AN ALTERNATIVE.  What's the common link between every single one of these problems?  TOO MANY PEOPLE.  Look at this:

Graph courtesy of FRED, some kind of economic thing blah blah blah Federal Rsserve Bank blah blah blah

Back in 1990, there were 723,496 people in San Francisco, at least until I moved here on October 15, then there were 723,497.  A lot of people, but in 2014 it's 852,469, including the doofus I saw in the Mission yesterday wearing a Facebook t-shirt, like who even does that? Why the fuck would anyone wear a t-shirt that says "Facebook" on it?

BUT I DIGRESS.  That means in the past 24 years we've added about 130,000 new people and zero new BART tubes and like 3 new apartments. No wonder there's a 2-hour wait for fucking brunch.

What we really need is plain: FEWER PEOPLE.

So here's the plan: We will offer 100,000 people a check for $20,000 if they move out of the Bay Area.  That's it, no strings.  You pack up your shit and hit the road, you get twenty thousand American dollars.  Holy shit!  You're already almost halfway there to owning this $45,000 charmer on Cabernet Parkway in Reno.  With 20 grand, you could probably buy a whole town in North Dakota or whatever.

It will be called the General Transitional Funding Office, or GTFO.

TOTAL COST: 2 billion dollars.  That's it!  Less than 20% of what the new BART tube alone will cost.

We can even break it up across the Bay Area a little.  Let's clear out, say, 60,000 people from SF, because that's clearly where it's most crowded, and then maybe 20,000 from Alameda County and 10 each from San Mateo and Santa Clara.  Marin and Contra Costa, you're on your own.  There's plenty of room out there.

Imagine SF with 60,000 fewer people!  It'll be just like it was in 2006.  We weren't really bitching about rents and that kind of shit in 2006!  It was an earthly paradise.  Look at these apartment ads from August 2006:

A delightful one-bedroom on Russian Hill for $1500!  A large 2 bedroom flat in Laurel Heights for $2750!  Yeah, it's still expensive but considering that ZERO BEDROOM apartments are now going for $2700, it seems like a pretty good deal.

Of course there will be enforcement issues.  What if someone who's taken advantage of GTFO tries to sneak back in?  I don't know, we'll figure it out.  Maybe a master list of everyone who got the money and check anyone who tries to rent an apartment or get a mortgage for a place in SF against the list.  We can work out the details later.  What if a homeless person takes the money and comes right back?  Who gives a fuck, we already spend something like $30,000 per year per homeless, so it's a bargain.

Just imagine San Francisco with 60,000 fewer people. Room to stretch out and breathe!  One less jackass looking at their phone and blocking the door on Muni!  It's only 2 billion dollars. Let's make it happen.

Urban Etiquette: Parking Wars

We open on a busy San Francisco thoroughfare.  The time is earlier this morning.  Our protagonist, ME, is just returning to his street from dropping off his adorable daughter at day care.  (Or, as she would put it, "day tare."  She can't do hard c's or k's yet.)

Our Protagonist rolls up to his block and LO AND BEHOLD there is a parking spot not 3 buildings away from his building.

[BRIEF INTERJECTION: I am #blessed enough to live on a street specifically, and a neighborhood generally, where parking isn't that hard.  You can usually find a space within 5 to 7 minutes.  On weekdays during the day, you can find a space basically anywhere you want.  I USED to live in North Beach and no fooling one Sunday night I once spent almost an hour looking for a space and finally found one on Bay Street which if you're familar with the area is NOT REALLY in North Beach at all.]

O.P. pulls into the spot and parks.  BUT WHAT'S THIS.  There's a pickup truck up ahead with its backing up lights on.  Let me illustrate our relative positions with a diagram.

I love trolling with Comic Sans. Someone is going to feel COMPELLED to say something about the Comic Sans.  The yellow thing is a bike lane BTW.

As you can see, Pickup Truck is double parked at least 3 cars up ahead.  O.P turns off his car and then sees Pickup Truck backing up towards him once the traffic clears.  Pickup Truck has his window down and is saying something.

Pickup Truck is staffed by a maybe early to mid-20's kid with a an attempt at a beard.  "Hey man," he says.  "I've been waiting for that space.  I was waiting for traffic to clear so I could back up."

"What, from all the way up there?" O.P. says.  Notice that O.P did not shrug and say "Tough shit, kid."

"Yeah," Pickup Truck says.

Now, at this point, O.P has two options.  He's already IN the space, so he could get out of his car, lock the doors, and walk away.  Like everything else in life, it's like that scene from Seinfeld.

O.P., however, chose Option Two: Roll Eyes So Broadly It's Visible From Heaven, say "Fine," get back in the car, and park around the corner.

HERE'S WHERE YOU COME IN.  Was that right?  Did Pickup Truck have any sort of viable claim on the space from 3 cars ahead?  If he wanted that space so bad, why wasn't he waiting, say, RIGHT NEXT TO IT?  Did someone pull out just as I arrived, when P.T. was already way ahead and he saw it in his rearview and decided to impose a Retroactive Space Save on a space he had absolutely no entitlement to?  What is right?  What is the nature of justice?

In a related humorous story, when The Sister lived in the Lower Haight she was getting ready to pull into a space when an angry woman pulled up next to her and yelled "YOU SAW ME TURN AROUND BITCH" implying that if you see someone turn around to get a space you lose all rights to that space.  I don't even think she saw her turn around bitch in the first place.  Life is complicated.

The 5L doesn't really work

Christ, what could be more pedestrian than complaining about Muni? But HERE WE ARE. You want hyperlocal coverage?  YOU GOT IT.

The 5L Fulton line seems like a good idea.  Make limited stops as compared to the poky old regular 5 line and you'll just fly through the city on gossamer wings, right?  The only problem is it doesn't fucking work.  At least at rush hour, in my experience.  What actually happens is that it is either the same speed as the regular 5 or slightly slower.  This to me is as inexplicable as quantum mechanics but here's two days of anecdotal experience.  These are not atypical experiences BTW.

WEDNESDAY there was a regular 5 with a 5L right behind it.  I thought I'd be all smart and get on the 5L because there is no way, given our current laws of physics, that a bus making every stop could beat a bus making like every 5th stop.

We never caught up to that damn bus.  Frustratingly, I could see it in front of us the whole goddam time.

THURSDAY the 5L was in front and the 5 was behind it.  Imagine my shock and horror as the supposedly slower 5 PASSED US and jetted off to the coast for a drink 'n tan.  I shook my fist in impotent rage, as I do at least once a day.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING.  As with many things, the causes are numerous.  First, it appears that many more people are riding the 5L, making each stop exponentially longer as all the #sheeple slowly get on and off with their backpacks and whatnot and then stand on the bottom step so the doors don't close and oh god it's just agonizing to watch.  Meanwhile there are fewer people on the regular 5 so it just pulls over for a sec and then is on its merry way.  FACTUAL SUPPORT FOR THIS BELIEF courtesy of Streetsblog (from whence the above pic was sourced also): "New 5L-Fulton Limited Muni Line Has Brought 2,000 More Daily Riders," and they are all SLOW AS FUCK.

Also, our driver on Thursday was one of those Turtle People who fears disrupting the spacetime continuum if they push it to more than 5 mph and also lets every car in the fucking universe go at every stop sign until there aren't any more cars left in the City & County.

Maybe it's better at off-peak times, but at rush hour anyway, the 5L is like Muni itself: a good idea, really poorly executed.  I'm going back to the regular old 5 (which has the newer better nicer buses anyway).

Sorry this was so boring.  Have a nice weekend.

The Bachelor: Badlands, or Worst Lands?

Was it just me, or was this episode boring as fuck?  I mean, we all put up with a lot to watch this shit, but this one really seemed to drag for some reason.  Anyway, we pick up in media res with The Widow Kelsey collapsed on the floor, suffering from a seemingly fatal case of crazy bitch.  Medics (Australian, I think - is there some reason why every reality show is contractually obligated to use Australian medics?) huddle around, trying to pump sane juice into her.  Sadly, she lives and returns to the Girl Cave cackling madly and talking about brownies.

So now we have a Rose Ceremony up top!  It's like going through a car wash backwards.  Teen Mom and Who The Fuck Is Samantha are out.  Samantha, we hardly knew ye.  Good luck in your new location.

We have unquestionably run out of locations to visit because we're going to Deadwood, South Dakota.  Oh, for a Deadwood/Bachelor crossover so I can hear Al Swearingen telling Kaitlyn that the only motherfucking reason to live is to make sure that other fucking cocksucker dies.  ABC has also run out of hotel budget because the girls are staying in a Holiday Inn with a corrugated steel exterior that looks like it was just flown in from Guantanamo.

What a fucking dump.  Anyway, one on one date with Becca, who looks like she played softball in college and orders her lingerie from J. Crew.  Unbelievably, she says she's never ridden a horse.  That is a bunch of bullshit, Becca.  There's some outdoor shit and horseback riding and a campfire and I don't know how she's going to eat that kebab because she never fully opens her mouth.  Farmer hits her with his usual "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" question and she says "Heading up the entire East Coast region!"  Not really.  I don't know what she said but I'm sure it was boring.  They have a long sleep-inducing conversation about feelings and I can tell she's a virgin because she wants 4-6 kids.

Group date!  These fillies are going to write some country music, aided by a park bench hobo and a carpet salesman wearing a cowboy hat.

Oh, it's famous country music people Big & Rich.  I like the bum looking one, he seems like he's drunk the whole time.  There's a lot of nothing and then Farmer gets up to sing.  He sounds like a Downs kid doing karaoke.  Of course Cruise Ship Carly sees this as her *BIG* *MOMENT* and does a full single spotlight ballad.  Then her eyebrows leap off and perform "La Cucaracha" to a mostly disinterested room.

Day turns to night and we're still hanging around this bar.  Just between you and me, Deadwood appears to be such a fucking tourist hole it makes Myrtle Beach look like Brussels.  Jade says she can see herself being in Iowa but she's from LA and she's thinking Field of Dreams instead of existential boredom and corn.  Farmer grabs SparklyBritt and they run off to a Big & Rich show, which is Britt's "virgin country music experience" like she's just desperate to have something virgin about her.  There's some rose thing and B&R play their carefully calibrated corporate rock/country.  They're like Kid Rock without the edge.  When they go back to the rest of the chix, everyone is SO MAD.  At least Baby Voice manages to squeak out that she's "here for the right reasons," so it's not a total loss.

Let's get to tonight's Main Event, the Widow Kelsey vs. Virgin I Cage Match of Death!!!!!!!  Everyone hops into a helicopter and flies over Mount Rushmore.  Virgin "literally with this can't even" and that might be the most coherent thing she's said so far.  Anyway, they land in some Badlands where there just happens to be a canopy bed and the whole thing looks like a Pink Floyd album cover.  Virgin puts Kels on blast and tells Farmer how everyone just hates her so much.  Natch Farmer immediately snitches her out to Kels, who sadly doesn't kill the Virgin.  Everyone cries.  Virgin would be a good match for anyone looking for an emotional Costa Concordia who needs psychiatric treatment if she gets a raspberry filling chocolate from the See's candy mix.  In the smartest move of the season, Farmer kicks them both off and that's it for this week.

Next week we're probably going to Bloomington Indiana, the way things are going so far.

The Bachelor: Isn't my hair amazing? I mean my story. Isn't my story amazing.

Good morning, fellow farmers!  We have arrived in Santa Fe, because over 20 seasons we've now exhausted all the real cities and are bottom of the barreling it in New Mexico.  But it's good news for Megan the Simple, who's "never been out of the country!"  Oh, Megan.  Here, I got these blocks for you.  Anyway, we're staying at the picturesque Buffalo Thunder Casino, which looks like when Pier 1 went through their Southwest phase.  Also, what the fucking fuck, Buffalo Thunder?

Buffalo Thunder has obviously never been to a casino, because alcoholic beverages on the casino floor is basically the RAISON FUCKING D'ETRE of casinoing.  How the fuck you gonna keep car dealership finance managers playing $10 blackjack without watered down G&Ts?

Anyway.  Solo date with Carly, the "cruise ship singer" who is about as sexy as Dora the Explorer.  They go to some house and there's a transient camped out by the pool and instead of shooing her away with a broom they sit down to whatever the fuck this is:

I guess the T is silent probably.  There's some sage burning and mystical shit and then it's time to GET FUCKING BUCK which sucks for Carly because she's "terrified of physical intimacy."  Not a good look for the fantasy suite, Carly!  There's some Conscious Disrobing like it's My First Porn Shoot and then breathing into each other's mouths and I hope nobody got the garlic schmear for breakfast.

The Night Portion is basically just champagne in a hotel room because ABC has given up on dinner.  Oh, here's Carly's story.  Her last BF wouldn't touch her!  Wait, was he a "cruise ship singer" too?  Because I may know why, Carly.  Farmer nods a lot and thinks Carly is "cool and smart," which is how you might describe your second favorite sibling.  Then some closed mouth kissing which probably feels like a Wesson oil orgy on ecstasy to Carly.  Poor Carly.

Today's Group Date is whitewater rafting, which looks more like brownwater rafting to me.  Too bad Jillian's not here to carry the boats downriver in her teeth!  The first time water splashes into the raft Jade falls out and she has a "condition" where her "body goes into hypothermia at like normal temperatures it shouldn't."  WebMD says this is definitely CANCER, Jade, so you are fucked.

The sun has set.  Jade's "condition" has rendered her a vegetable who can only blink her lame attempts at flirting.  BUT WAIT WHO'S THIS?  Our favorite tequila receptacle, Jordan!  She's somehow sobered up but not enough to put on makeup.  She wants back in!  HELL YEAH THERE'S BOOZE LEFT.  Now J's drinking lemon water and not making any friends.  After consulting with the chix, Farmer says nope to Jordan.  You'll have to buy your own drinks now, Jordan.  Also, Jordan claims to be 24?  Not a fucking chance, sweetie.

Meanwhile Carly tells us that Sparkle Princess Britt hasn't been showering?  Maybe that explains the dreadlog on her head.

Farmer comes to wake her up at 4:30 but she's wearing full makeup despite smelling like the 24 Hour Fitness on Van Ness.  They're going hot air ballooning and Britt seems to have already forgotten her fear of heights, because sadly she doesn't freak out or have seizures.  It's beautiful and magical and Britt wants "a hundred kids" so maybe's she's a chinchilla.  Same size and build, anyway.

The Widow Kelsey has decided to tell her story!  She reveals that she was married to Sanderson Poe, which was apparently a person and not a law firm, who died of heart something, maybe "congestive heart failure"?  She can't really remember.  The whole thing seems a little made up, actually.  Maybe she's totally Gone Girling this.  Oh wait, spoiler.  She does actually say "Isn't my story amazing?" which is great because it's a good way to tell if someone is a psychopath.

Shit is getting fucking REAL now because Farmer's too emotional for the Cocktail Party and sends Chris Harrison in to tell the chix his mind is made up and we'll just go straight to the Rose Ceremony.  For some inexplicable reason, this causes The Widow Kelsey to collapse in the hallway.

NEXT WEEK: We'll find out if "congestive heart failure" is contagious.

Exercise is getting weird

HOLY SHIT ARE YOU IN THE OFFICE TOO of course you are. Why would you be reading this on your own time? I can't believe we have to be at work.  Fuck.

Anyway, it's a brand new year and that means everyone has decided to exercise for the first time.  You could do normal things like that fake bicycle ride in the gym or running on a treadmill or lifting a heavy piece of furniture up and down but what's the fun in that?  There is no fun in that.

Based on my observations, people exercising outside have collectively decided to just go "FUCK IT I'M DOING WHAT I WANT FUCK YOU WORLD." This very morning, driving through San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on my way to drop off my offspring at daycare, I personally and with me own eyes observed the following:

- One gentleman walking quickly/almost jogging in the bike lane, swinging his right arm back and forth in a wide arc as if to ward off a cloud of invisible flies that were surrounding and troubling him, or maybe pretending his arm was a single windshield wiper and his body was a car driving through a terrific rainstorm

- A lady fast-walking and rhythmically tapping herself on the head with BOTH HANDS, elbows at ear level, as if she was playing a simple drumbeat on the bongo that is her very own skull

- An otherwise normal-appearing jogger with those neon shoes everyone likes now, also running in the bike lane at a very high rate of speed and through an intersection against a red light as a bus bore down on him, making me believe I was about to see what literally "getting hit by a bus" looks like and wondering (not totally unreasonably) if this was going to make me late for work because I would have to give a statement to investigators while they placed pieces of the jogger and his ugly shoes into a bag

Google Image Search result for "weird exercise." YEP YEP YEP.

In fact, the Running in the Street thing (which is actually mostly Running in the Bike Lane) has become so prevalent that I see it on the reg now.  What's up with that?  Isn't there a perfectly good sidewalk for that?  Is it revenge for bicyclists biking on the sidewalk?

One time I was driving AT NIGHT on a street with no bike lane and this girl was jogging in the street alongside all the parked cars WEARING BLACK. Either she had an exercise-related death wish or she was a terrible cat burglar making the world's worst escape from the scene of her latest cat burglary.  Either way, I can't imagine she's still alive.