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Kobayashi posted:Eh, there's a difference between SF proper and the surrounding Bay Area. And I don't know, my understanding of the area is that SF was kinda-sorta analogous to Manhattan's East Side, in that it really didn't start to heavily gentrify until recently. Unlike the dot com spike, SF's latest wave of change started during the housing crisis and continues to this day. That's how I read it, anyway. Not really, it's been steadily gentrifying for 20-30 years now, basically since the start of the tech industry. Every time a tech bubble bursts, there is a brief lull, but the current trend is no different than the pre-DotCom trend. That's why most of that Techcrunch article on the housing crisis posted earlier just comes across as vapid. It attributes all of these national trends that are really just manifestations of income inequality to some unique SF Bay Area experience or local political atmosphere, when really the same thing is happening in every thriving city in the country. It may be happening more quickly here because of how crazy the tech boom is, but it's not like low-skill workers getting priced out or people wanting to preserve historic architecture at the cost of redevelopment are unique San Francisco phenomena.
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May 2, 2014 22:15
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I just don't think any of those events is unique to SF, either politically or culturally. They're the same fights that every city goes through with development, just with slightly different particulars. Portland had a massive conflict over a new Trader Joe's in a lovely lot in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, and face constant battles with Intel and Nike millionaires fighting new trail construction in parts of Forest Park that the city owns (simply because the millionaires don't want people in their area).
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May 3, 2014 00:01
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Ron Jeremy posted:There was some listicle article I read recently about how sf was terrible. The one thing that really struck me was "everyone worth a drat has already moved to oakland." Maybe that struck me because I've followed countless others in moving out of the city to start a family in the suburbs. I love sf and I can't stand it at the same time. It's great if you're post college and rich or of you're tied into the various activism groups, but other than that... I'm straight, I'm over street festivals with naked people I don't particularly want to see naked. Halloween in the Castro has been utterly neutered from the awesomeness it used to be.. It's funny how the same ridiculous attitude that the Bay Area has about LA is now being adopted by East and South Bayers about SF. So much hate on one side while the other side is just like, "yeah, that area is cool". The problem is that to all of these spurned-lover emigrants, all SF is is street festivals and letting your freak flag fly, but to lots of people SF is also about incredible natural geography, historic architecture, fantastic museums, and world-class parks. Sorry that those of us who remain aren't keeping it weird enough for you and Vice.
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May 16, 2014 16:40
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Trabisnikof posted:SF diverts water from the Tuolumne river to fill the Hetch Hetchy, but is a junior rights holder to the local irrigation district. It's not going to have an impact on water deliveries inside the SF water system, but is contrary to the narrative that ag water supporters use. LA water is really gross, though. 
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May 30, 2014 23:08
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Leperflesh posted:My "is this neighborhood too sketchy to live in" metric is based on a visual approximation of the frequency of corner liquor stores and check cashing places, plus whether or not every building has bars on all the windows on the first floor. You can get that from Google Street View, so when we were searching all over the bay area for housing back in 2009 that helped us eliminate some neighborhoods and reconsider some we hadn't at first thought would be OK. This doesn't really work for the East Bay though, because tons of the petty crime travels outside of those neighborhoods. Our friend lives at the edge of Rockridge and by all appearances in a very nice upper middle class neighborhood. In the few years living there, she's been mugged on her corner, her neighbor's house was robbed in a way that made it clear they'd been watching her activity schedule, and a guy was shot outside her house after refusing to give his cell phone to a mugger. There are car break ins all the time. For the amount of rent she pays, she could easily live in the Outer Sunset and not have to deal with anywhere close to that amount of bullshit. E: I almost feel like it's a worse situation than my friends who live on West Grand, because at least in a neighborhood like theirs you know what to expect just from looking around. Papercut fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 01:50
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Craptacular! posted:This Secretary Of State race is retarded, and I hate both my options. Why the gently caress would 10% of the state vote for Leland Yee? Because it's funny.
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Jun 5, 2014 05:31
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withak posted:IME Caltrans is where you go to work when you want to have time to spend on other (non-career) stuff. The best part about Caltrans' continuous, habitual cost overruns that are almost always due to incompetence is that we the taxpayer are the ones who end up paying for them.
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Jun 10, 2014 00:46
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Zeitgueist posted:I have no doubt it will be appealed, but even if the appeal is successful it's a bad sign. At least we have a Democrat in the White House, right? He's bound to be out there lobbying for our teach... quote:For students in California and every other state, equal opportunities for learning must include the equal opportunity to be taught by a great teacher," [Secretary of Education Arne] Duncan said in a statement. "The students who brought this lawsuit are, unfortunately, just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students. 
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Jun 11, 2014 05:15
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litany of gulps posted:From my own experience working within these educational reform movements, it doesn't really come down to firing the ineffective teachers. The older teachers get run out on a rail, generally targeted aggressively by administrators from the beginning of the school year. After that, everyone that doesn't fit the mold gets the axe. Once you start getting 50% turnover within a school year after year, it's very easy for administration to sort of break the preexisting culture of a school and replace it with something else. This is spot on. It's important for teachers to be free to be advocates for students and for school culture, and to be able to conduct an open dialog with administrators. There's no way for that to happen in a system without seniority or tenure.
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Jun 11, 2014 19:46
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Northjayhawk posted:That Article misses the mark. The problem is not attracting great teachers to poor schools, hey someday that would be nice, but there's a bigger problem to fix first. You seem to have a misunderstanding of what tenure is. Tenure does not mean a teacher can't be fired, rather tenure is the "strong due process" that you're referring to. All it means is that if the administration wants to fire a teacher, they have to go through a neutral arbitrator to do so.
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Jun 12, 2014 04:59
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Nonsense posted:Excuse me but haven't you watched Waiting For Superman like every good American who cares about the future of our children to pay a conglomerate every step of the way through a lifetime of education? Maybe in their next round of negotiations, the teacher's unions could insist that all contractual language use "due process" in place of "tenure". Let all of these privatizers attempt to sell the public on taking away teacher's due process.
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Jun 12, 2014 19:02
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etalian posted:Yeah basically Marin county is overrun with rich fucks who don't want mixed use zoning or even apartments close to their precious mcmansions Guys remember, this just sets a floor for density. The local government's would still be free to (never) zone for the current higher density requirements. I only caught about 15 minutes of the show, but it was the perfect summary of why blaming tech workers for the Bay Area's housing crisis is missing the forest for the trees.
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Jun 17, 2014 00:14
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etalian posted:It's pretty sad how the original BART plan was more ambitious but got shot down since Marin, Santa Clara and San Mateo county didn't want to raise the bond money to make the service ring around the bay. I like the fact that the North Bay is now spending an absolutely absurd amount of money to get an above ground train just from Santa Rosa top San Rafael
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Jun 21, 2014 18:21
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Trabisnikof posted:Glad to see our corporate warriors are fighting against tyranny for us: http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/06/26/monkeyparking-tells-sf-its-not-going-to-kill-its-parking-app/ The Forum where they had on the CEO of this app company was hilarious. The guy was exactly as much of an rear end in a top hat as you'd expect, his arguments about why this is legal were completely ridiculous, and Michael Krasny actually had to interrupt him at one point and explain to him that Forum is "a dialog".
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Jul 1, 2014 03:00
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Slobjob Zizek posted:I'm at a loss as to what this guy is doing. Does his app secretly signal when someone is leaving a meter or something? I think it's like Uber except with parking spots. Someone announces they are leaving a spot, someone else is notified about it and pays for the spot, then they meet and swap places. Of course it's just an exchange of information!
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Jul 1, 2014 03:39
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H.P. Hovercraft posted:Bingo. "Oh, NASA aerospace engineer! Just like my nephew - he's an engineer at Facebook." So what about hardware engineers, do they get to count as engineers? I have a PE and if you compare what we studied in our engineering undergrad programs to what we're doing now, my friend who designs circuit boards is much more of an engineer than I am. I understand the title difference in a professional sense, but getting mad that someone's job title includes engineer when you're talking about a field that doesn't even have a PE license is just silly.
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Jul 16, 2014 23:53
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Trabisnikof posted:And with the tech industry's influence its unlikely California will accept the software PE test. I think we could probably use a software PE in California, especially as software code starts to have more and more lives in its hands (e.g. autonomous vehicles). The electrical PE exam is hilarious. Taking it makes you feel like you've timewarped back to the 1940s. Like what tiny tiny niche of PEs in California need to know the most obscure details about brushed DC motor design? Even if you're specifying motors and generators and such, they're designed and built outside of the state. By far the most useful resource for me when studying for the PE was a handbook of electrical calculations published in 1983.
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Jul 17, 2014 00:10
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If they want to light a fire, fine anyone with a green lawn. This whole "if water is running into the street" thing is ridiculous. An old lady across the street from me was spraying out her garbage cans with a hose yesterday. Not her indoor trash cans, the cans that you put out for collection. Just hosing them down without a care in the world.
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Jul 17, 2014 18:29
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:My experience on the leeward side was less 'tropical look' and more like 'desolate volcanic hellscape'. Still pretty though. Yeah I was on the Big Island last month, staying on the dry side, and the lushest that landscape got was dry scrub grass. The vast majority of that side of the island (outside of the artificially landscaped resort areas) is just barren lava fields that haven't grown back in the 50-100 years since they were active.
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Aug 29, 2014 16:22
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Family Values posted:The point is that the people who need the safety net are also voting for politicians that want to cut or eliminate the safety net. Are you sure they're not just not voting at all? Those poor rural counties are ripe for voter suppression laws and misinformation campaigns.
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Sep 25, 2014 17:36
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:Seriously though where have Torlakson's ads been? It was literally only yesterday afternoon and early this morning when I've heard ads from him against Tuck, whereas Tuck's been inundiating the airwaves for weeks by now. I saw multiple Torlakson ads during the World Series. San Francisco is hilariously swamped with people holding "No on E" signs today. There has probably been more spent by the no campaign on that measure than on the rest of the city elections combined, it's ridiculous.
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Nov 4, 2014 20:36
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ComradeCosmobot posted:It may! (I don't know how the machines that tabulate those sheets work to know for sure) So you're just making stuff up? The simplest implementation for these would be to just look for a certain amount of non-white space between the sides of the arrow, having too much black wouldn't do anything.
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Nov 5, 2014 00:27
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SplitDestiny posted:Good, hope it passes in sf too. The last results I saw for SF didn't look good, since it needs 2/3rds instead of just a simple majority. It's a better measure than the Berkeley version too, since the money would be guaranteed to children's nutrition and health programs. Sucks because it's going to lose with a majority "yes" vote.
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Nov 5, 2014 07:50
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mA posted:I'm actually (pleasantly) shocked that Tuck didn't win, especially how things seemed to be trending during the last month and especially with the outside money rolling in. I can't believe G lost so badly. If you actually read the measure, they had carved out exemptions for basically every concievable scenario where someone was actually using their property as housing and not as a quick-flip investment strategy. The only people it hurt were real estate agents getting huge fees off of yearly property turnover and the millionaires who are buying everything and immediately flipping it.
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Nov 5, 2014 18:48
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Sydin posted:It is, and that's not a problem that's going to be fixed by making it easier to fire teachers or throwing down more charters. Our education problem is more systemic than that. Yeah but what if we just fire all the teachers? I mean literally just put the kids in buildings and let them Lord of the Flies their way to success.
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Nov 5, 2014 19:54
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King Hong Kong posted:The San Francisco version was actually defensible unlike Berkeley's "Berkeley vs. Big Soda" campaign that unsurprisingly will not tax the sundry unhealthy beverages that Berkeley voters are more likely to drink and will not do anything to improve the public's health anyway. This town's politics are awful. The ironic thing is that the only reason the SF version needed 2/3rds is because the revenue was targeted instead of going to the general fund, which was the main criticism of Berkeley's version. It's a very weird and stupid rule. We're just going to see the same measure next year, except it will be worse because they'll change it to just go to the general fund.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:45
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AshB posted:For example, it used to be that if you had three petty thefts on your record, the fourth would be a felony. Makes sense: a repeated disregard for the law for the same offense should have escalating consequences. But now it can't be felony unless the person has a prior for one of a very narrow few serious crimes like murder or rape. That's a pretty arbitrary line, in my opinion. These are good things, not bad.
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Nov 6, 2014 05:20
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Cicero posted:Have any cities ever tried extra-high property taxes that only apply to people's second homes? It seems like such a proposition would be a slam dunk at the ballot box. San Francisco had a measure this year that was basically this and it got annihilated. quote:Proposition G would impose an additional tax on the total sale price of certain multi-unit residential properties that are sold within five years of purchase or transfer. The following table shows the tax rates that would apply: Just look at all of those exceptions. It basically carved out the tax to only apply to flippers. And yet it lost 55%-45% (granted, that was out of only 170k votes cast so only a difference of about 15k votes).
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Nov 18, 2014 22:42
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Shbobdb posted:I don't get that, though. When I'm in the Tenderloin, I go grab a quick bite to eat at a bangin' Burmese place (not Burma Superstar, so I get it, I'm making an unfashionable decision). Then I wander down to a loving awesome beer bar. Get pretty blackout. If I want, there are two pretty solid music venues, so I can go that direction. Personally, I usually don't, but that's because I'm not a big music guy. So, I grab a good kebab or some bangin' tacos. How is that any different from the Mission? My friend lived in the TL while going to UC Hastings and said there were people doing heroin in her building's entrance area every single day. And needles littering the ground everywhere. Also I can only assume you're not female because if so I seriously doubt you would feel so comfortable in the area. I don't have any issues visiting the area but living there is a completely different experience.
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Nov 30, 2014 17:42
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FCKGW posted:Becaue its already abbreviated to LA People call San Francisco "SF" all the time.
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Dec 4, 2014 20:00
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Ron Jeremy posted:Saying Hella is dumb. Or even worse, hecka Hecka owns, sorry haters.
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Dec 4, 2014 22:24
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Bizarro Watt posted:Is it state law that the board of supervisors of each county needs to be set at 5? That seems to be consistent. Just curious. The SF Board of Supervisors has 11 members.
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Dec 5, 2014 06:12
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drilldo squirt posted:Plastic doesn't rip if I hold it wrong. So keep a tote in your trunk, this is not hard.
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Dec 30, 2014 21:47
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drilldo squirt posted:What if I dont wana buy a loving bag when they used to be free. Then you're a grumpy old man? The horror of paying $1 for a bag that will last 10+ years, my god. I'm sorry to be the one to break this news to you, but as time passes some things that used to be free will no longer be free.
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Dec 31, 2014 00:08
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Ron Jeremy posted:I use disposable bags to pick up dog poop. Do that with your public radio tote. I buy compostable poop bags. My son's daycare sends his cloth diapers home in plastic bags and I have no idea where they get this endless supply of them. We bought an extra waterproof reusable bag for them to use instead, but they said it was too nice and wouldn't use it.
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Jan 2, 2015 17:06
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etalian posted:It's because people in the Bay Area are smarter and as a result can easily handle the more complex interchanges. It's funny because the traffic report has an accident just before the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza every...loving...day.
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Feb 14, 2015 04:07
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:It's legit terrifying to me to watch global warming slowly cook Riverside and the Inland Empire alive. It's predicted to be over 80 degrees here for the next 7 days, peaking at 90 degrees on Saturday. In March. Where, historically, only 1 day in 10 is over 80 degrees. Jesus Christ. San Francisco barely has fog anymore. It's been 70s and sunny every day for like a year and a half.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:23
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Bay Area public radio (KQED) just had an hour on earthquake safety with 4 expert guests, related to this new report. Someone wrote in asking where each expert lived and whether they had earthquake insurance, and none of them had insurance despite living right by faults (SF, Berkeley, and Pasadena). Every single one said the money was better spent retrofitting your building. 
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Mar 12, 2015 17:58
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withak posted:A well-designed retrofit is a lot more reliable than an insurance policy full of loopholes. Also the insurance doesn't do you any good if you die in your collapsed house. Yeah I know, I just thought it was funny especially in light of this thread (or maybe one of the other SF Bay threads) in the past being aghast that people don't have earthquake insurance. A retrofit is actually much, much cheaper than insurance too.
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Mar 12, 2015 18:56
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Leperflesh posted:Retrofitting your building can be cheap or expensive, but it's not an either/or proposition. People should do both, if they can afford to. An earthquake retrofit can help ensure the building itself doesn't collapse completely in a certain range of quakes, but there is always a bigger quake possible, and insurance could compensate you for damage that wasn't fatal to the building, too. So when people go "oh I've got a retrofit, I don't need insurance" they're being stupid; their potential loss could still be tens of thousands of dollars in repairs, and the insurance for their retrofitted building will be a lot cheaper. These were the guests on the show: Morgan Page, research geophysicist with the USGS in Pasadena Patrick Otellini, chief resilience officer and director of earthquake safety for the City and County of San Francisco Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory and professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley Tim Dawson, engineering geologist with the California Geological Survey Literally none of them had earthquake insurance. Obviously they're not actuaries, but if these folks don't have insurance then I don't feel compelled to rush out and get it either. e: $641 a year is super cheap, when I looked into it I was looking at $200-$300 per month for anything even remotely useful. Papercut fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Mar 12, 2015 |
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Mar 12, 2015 20:06
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