One big word for that… BULLSHIT!!!
I mean seriously, how stupid do they think we are? If the greed mongers that control the world did not want to give the bay area an air show this year at fleet week, couldn’t they at least have come up with a believable reason why??
I mean, come on! Who would buy that the US Military is under funded?? NO ONE! Continue reading
SF skyline (Photo credit: angeloangelo)
I have been stressed out this last week. I feel a bit like a mouse trapped in a corner. Why might you ask? It is because i am trying to figure out a way that i could become one of the ones that has the luxury of staying in San Francisco in the near future.
I am not a high paid executive and have honestly never cared much about money (to my dismay).
I look at my brother who i am really proud to see is slated to be in a good position to be able to stay in SF and become one of the new population movement. He owns his own business and it is in the medical industry so it is pretty stable and lucrative.
Me on the other hand… not so easy. And in fact… seemingly impossible to stay. I am an artist who is on disability. I am just able to afford what i have but it is far from an ideal situation !!
I either have to stay in my house (which is what is going to happen) until the man (who is very old) owns it passes or i have to leave this town.
So over the last few days i have been racking my brain. Now for the past week, I have been trying to figure out what my options are to be able, at my age, to make enough money to not have to leave SF. I came up with 2 options… drugs and sex.
If you are not in the tech or medical world or are an attorney, then, good luck! ..Unless you want to become a drug dealer or work in the sex trade.
Neither option sound good. I am not going to pick a career that vacation time is spent in the big house and i dont really particularly want to have to let old fat harry smelly men paw at me all the time to make rent!! That doesnt seem fair! Selling one’s soul for the city that they live… SUCKS!!
What other options are there here for someone who is not tech savvy?
I would be curious to hear any and all other ideas on this topic. It is a serious issue for many of us and there still may be a minute do do something about it before it is too late… so any ideas i would love for you to share!
Cheers!
While San Francisco is experiencing an extreme population boom and even more severe housing crisis, it is very easy for those who do not know or really care to just walk with the mindset of lets tear it down to be able to house more people with a new, bigger building….
Before thinking so recklessly, let us use this example below to keep this all in our perspectives. The tearing down of the Fox Theater and replacing it with Fox Plaza is one of the most outrageous oops’s SF has done to itself and even today, it stands as a landmark as to what not to do…. Continue reading
Now, i am not a drinker. At all. It is not because i do not like the feeling of having a little bit of libations coursing through my veins, lifting the veil of self conscience-ness and feel a little bit looser. Or the feeling of not needing a 3rd layer of long sleeves to warm me up a bit.
I dont drink because my body does not process it well at all. In other words, it makes me feel really sick and then almost always, really tired. ONCE in a while (interestingly enough my body seems to know when this is and i will on those rare days) i’ll maybe have a drink or a glass of wine or two.
My friends started this company called Bulletproof in San Francisco in the early 1990’s. Continue reading
The Dawn!
They always say that
“One never knows what they have got until it is gone.”
This is not and has not usually been the case for me. Nope. Instead, i can see that things are really good right now and they are changing and the changes are not ideal. I realize when i am living in one of the apex’es of my life… On the verge of a new, darker dawn. A time where things are now as intelligent and as open as they may ever be. I can see a new dawn before me, yet i am still standing in yesterday or what is today.
It is a strange feeling to be living in what feels more like a memory than the now. Usually when i think of the right now… it feels exciting and innovative and current. But sometimes it feels like the now is the yesterday or yesteryear. The golden era that once was… the good ol’ days. And it feels like right now is actually part of the past because I know what the future is looking like.
Usually when i have this kinda like reverse deja vous, it makes me very melancholy and i just wish i could push that button on that stopwatch so I can just stop time before things move into this new outline i see before me. Like a line drawing that is about to be colored in. That is what the future feels like. You know what it is going to be (in its simplest form) and you know what these changes are going to do to the reality that you have grown your life around and into. You know that big things are about to change. Drastically.
The familiar markers that you thought were a part of the landscape that was a permanent fixture of the main picture. You thought that certain infrastructures as a part of the fabric that you have come to count on would be part of that picture forever. That, without that part of the landscape infrastructure, it would or could never survive. That it has relied on these components for so long that you assume that it is and will be like that forever.
I think that this is an optimistic and naive perspective and not surprising from someone who’s generation has never seen the face of a drafted war or famine.
I am sure that all of those jewish people who were just living their lives in Germany, going about their business like they had been doing for generations were caught off guard when all of a sudden their friends and colleges were being harassed and eventually moved into ghettos. They never thought that that would be their reality or that they would not be doing what ancestors had been doing for generations. No, Their reality and future was MUCH much different. They would be fighting for their lives with many of them losing that fight, and the ones that managed to survive, their towns, and their families and communities did not.
My point is this… What if those German Jewish people were able to see what was in store for them before it was actually become a reality? It would make one despondent yet so desperate to try and capture the reality before the darkness. To remember it and keep it with you for always.
But that makes one not really interact within their lives. Because it feels more like interacting with a scene on a set. You cant really dig roots or make any plans for one’s future when that future is so different and unknown. What do you do?
I think this has been how it has been for me for a good portion of my life. At least my adult life. I think that this is EXACTLY why i have never gotten married or had any children and i think it is a huge contributing component to why i have suffered depression so severely over the past 20 years. It can be a never ending downwards free fall of despondence. Along with that guilt and a warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia.
I guess i am saying that it is a very weird feeling to be having a lifetime apex moment and at the same time being so totally aware that things will never be better than this very moment and you can not hold onto it. It is elusively slipping away as the seconds tick by. It kinda feels a little bit out of body experience.
It is just bizarre.
One of my favorite websites is called FoundSF.org. It has such great articles about San Francisco and all of its colorful history. Sometimes when i am bored, i go to it to just read. My ancestors were some of the founders of San Francisco. I did not learn this fact until i was the age of 19, at which point i began studying San Francisco history as well as my own lineage.
When i came across this article this morning, i could not believe how perfect it was… like it was written just for me!
I have always had trouble understanding just how my ancestors lives influenced my own. It is several generations away and clearly lifestyles have changed greatly. But i feel the past. I feel my relatives around me. They push me to become a better person and to continue to be proud of the Koshland name as well as my closely related relatives. Continue reading
Zimmerman portraying a ghost. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Go ahead and laugh. And then explain just how my door tonight became locked from the inside when i left the room empty and dead bolted when i left…?
I know we have a ghost here. It seems that i often seem to have a ghost that resides in my residences. And my childhood home growing up we even wondered if we had a ghost.
This apt. is by far the most active hauntings than all of the others. In this house, i finally got haunted by having something (my iphone mind you) fly across the room! I luckily had a witness there with me so she can confirm that i am not delusional and vice versa. That time we were the only 2 people in the house.
Usually the ghost likes to play what i like to think of as hide and seek with my stuff. I have found that if i tell it to put it back right now… it gets found in often an absurdly unbelievable spot (like the middle of my bed or right on the middle of the floor or even in my own lap… AFTER i have stood up and sat back down!).
Tonight though, it managed to lock the other lock in my room that can only be locked from the inside. Lucky for me i was able to take a bicycle spoke and wrench it back to where i could open the door. This is the only time i have ever had this happen and it is somewhat disturbing… mostly because my little baby kitty Arthur is in there. but also because… THAT IS MY ROOM!!
I went down and talked to our downstairs neighbor Mary one time and what she told me, scared the pants off of me.
Mary has lived in the building for over 40 years, raising 3 children here after arriving from Nicaragua. Mary is the shit! I really dig Mary. She is a sweet lady. However, i speak no spanish and she speaks some english but is much more comfortable in spanish.
Over a conversation lasting about 45 minutes, i got up the nerve to ask her if there was any paranormal incidents here when her boys were living up here. She told me this…
She said after one of her sons had moved away for college, he had moved back to the house (so he was a grown up by then.). She said he was upstairs taking a nap when he came bounding down the stairs screaming and crying. She made a big issue of this because i get the feeling that she was not used to seeing her son in such a state.
She said “What happened? What is it”??
He went on to tell her that while he was resting, he was levitated. LEVITATED!!
WTF?!?!
Now, i have never experienced being levitated but i know that there is enough unexplained phenomenon here that enough people have seen it or had it happen to themselves that i am finally not looking quite so crazy when i come bounding out of my room mumbling …god damn ghost….
It is a curious thing though. Dont you think?
Have you ever been “haunted” before? Please share your story! It is hard to know how wide spread these things are if no one ever talks about them! Wouldnt that suck for me if i am the only one… I had never thought of it like that…. uh oh! 😉
English: The of . Français : Temple mormon d’Oakland, en Californie (États-Unis). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I know that things are starting to change over there for you in Oakland. Rents are rising and the vacancies are less. There are more people moving to Oakland because the locals are being forced out of places like mostly San Francisco due to the new sweetheart deals our douche-bag mayor arranged to bring in new tech firms and along with them over 50,000 new soul-less, uncultured, ass-brained tech workers.
This topic of gentrification has been one i have been writing about for a while now and is probably the issue that weighs down on me more than any other. It is such a heavy subject that i actually see it changing the way i see society and my general outlook on people in general. It is making me a little bit discriminating towards certain new crowds. And i know that there are probably a few cool ones in all of that gentrification… but i hate you regardless… i know… it is wrong…. Continue reading
Houses going fast and high in San Francisco.
Just to give you some idea of what a hot market that is highly inflated (if you ask me!) for housing sales… Check out these numbers….
Last year, 162 properties sold in the Bay Area for over $5 million.
AND In the 9 counties of the Bay Area, over 11,000 $1 million-plus properties were sold.
Now if you dont call that a sellers market… i dont know what is!
It does not surprise me though. If you want anything more that 2 bedrooms in San Francisco, you are looking at over 1 million dollars.
That is pretty crazy and ridiculous to me if you ask. I remember not very long ago, if you spent a half million dollars on a home, you were living LARGE. …But… that is back when being a millionaire was a big deal. Now i think you need to be a billionaire to really impress anyone these days.
So much for buying a house in my hometown in this lifetime! And… they wonder why people want or have to rent…? HELLO!! Some of us dont make a 7 figure salary… and never will. Thankfully, this is ok with me if this is our reality. As long as i have a roof over my head, running water and insulation, i am all good. That is as long as i am in my home of SF. even if it is too expensive for god! I am just going to enjoy it each day as it comes and hope that there are many before displacement is a reality for me too….
The majestic Mountain Lion…
There is a proposal being put together that addresses this issue that i hold dear. It is a proposal to put into the books a new way to deal with wild predators that we come into contact with and, more specifically, its effect on our own wild mountain lion population.
Now, if ever a mountain lion is spotted (even if it is in a thickly forested area), if it is seen, it is shot. We kill on site. If we can not find it, we go searching for it to kill it.
Why is this necessary? Do we even know how large that population is? Do they have enough animals not to go extinct if we kill each one that happens to wander into “human’s territory?”… wherever that may be? How many used to be living here that we have displaced and or killed or just taken its habitat away? Why can we not just tranquilize these beautiful animals and transplant them into deeper forest and NOT kill them? These are a few of the questions that wander through my mind. Continue reading
I saw this story on goldfish that had been dumped into Lake Tahoe. These goldfish started out small in a bowl in someone’s household who thought it would be a good idea to dump them in the lake (NOTE*** this is NOT a good idea. Native species are in danger of being eliminated from the invasive non-natives taking the natives food or outright eating the natives. Right now the biggest threat is the big mouth carp in Lake Tahoe.).
People did not think goldfish could last through the winters in the lake due to the fact that it gets so cold with the snow coming right down to the banks of the lake.
Apparently they were wrong from the looks of it…
Giant goldfish in Lake Tahoe… ARE YOU SERIOUS???
goldfish in Lake Tahoe…Makes one wonder if they are tasty?!
Lake Tahoe goldfish
Lake Tahoe goldfish
Lake Tahoe goldfish
If you make so much income, why are you really working for your landlord and not yourself? You know that you are being fleeced by your deep pocketed (and lined) landlord. It doesnt really have to cost that much to live in San Francisco but you are willing to give up up to 60% of your income in order to live here which means, you are really working for your landlord who is planning his retirement thanks to you now.
So, if you are making all of this elitist income, which entitles you to be able to call yourselves San Franciscans, WHY ARE YOU RENTING AT ALL???
You are supposed to be the smart ones right? If you were so smart, with interest rates where they are and programs for first time buyers in place, why on earth would you not be working to be paying yourself to be able to call yourself a SFer instead of some international corporation that is your landlord?
The thing that has been going through my mind ever since this new tech migration started moving in… How can these kids afford to be saving anything that they earn? They only eat out and at the hippest joints!. They can pay upwardly of up to 50-60% of their income on rent and the fees associated with hi-rise and condo living (parking, gym, etc.). They (mostly) refuse to use MUNI so only take cabs which by 2015 will not cost less than $5 just to get in.
Where are you saving or investing your income? How do you plan on actually becoming one of these rich people that you are pretending to be?
Real rich people are NOT renters that is for sure! And they have houses that are actually big enough to COOK in!
As well as a place to store all of your fun outdoor sporty equipment so you can stop having to rent a storage unit to house the real stuff in ones life. Hard to live so minimally without any storage or space isnt it? Hard to invest when you can not save. Hard to save when you are throwing all your money away as disposable income.
No wonder the city likes you so much! You come in, make a good wage and turn around and just gladly give it right back.
You all may be ‘smart’ but you do not have much common sense or intelligence. If you did, you would have migrated into this town with a whole different approach and with a knowledge of what their smartest way of integrating would be for both them and for those that they are trying to inter-merge with.
All of other groups in the past that get recruited or just decide to move to SF to work, if they can not find appropriate accommodations, They, in the past have taken a place outside the city until they can find the right place for them. Why is this not an option for you? If some of you had decided to do this, the cost of your rent would not be so overly inflated and you would be able to figure out exactly where in SF or otherwise you fit best thus looking in that area if you chose to come in after getting settled in your new job. This is how things have been done for the ages. What makes you think that instead of that, you can come in and force the market up into the sky so you can find a place right here right now??
I am just wondering, why is it not YOU that has to look outside the city to find a place and not people that have lived here for decades?
Remember the saying… First come first served… YOU are definitely NOT the first! So go serve yourself somewhere where there is availability. Quit being predators upon the local population AND with that awful entitled attitude problem of yours! It makes me truly SICK.
I am just saying….
Just incase we need a visual to get an idea of what San Francisco real estate market has been doing in the last couple years, here is a lovely chart thanks to Zillow. I know right now, i am just lucky to still be here! It wont be forever unfortunately. At least according to charts like this (and the rest are all the same…:(.
… I would like to address this to all of you. You know who you are. You are incredibly arrogant to believe that you have a right to the really REALLY unbelievable attitude you seem to feel you deserve towards our city and its residents that already live here… Here is a response to a response from an article that i read in support of these tech assholes who are (to me personally) out of their fucking minds… Here you go.. I think it explains it pretty well to you all.
This is the problem we have with you all and your point of view….
Ps. i am a little bit mad.. If you go and read the threads above mine, you can see where this agression lies…. I do apologize for the tone in this setting for you….
“What the F*** I mean is who the hell do you think you are to think that you have any right to come into a world class town and abolish its history. You godam tech narcissists think that the world owes you a world of gratitude and the ability to take whatever you see that you want. Again, i have to ask you… Who the F*** ARE YOU? … other than some ignorant uneducated in ANY OTHER field than the tech industry egomaniac? Are you serious here? You are going to look back (i would normally expect but with you lot, i am just going to hope.) and feel so ashamed. Ashamed of your shortsightedness, ashamed of your greed, ashamed of your insensitivity and ashamed of your choice to want to destroy history for many generations to come. You at that point SHOULD feel ASHAMED! SHAME ON YOU!! I think it is time for you all to open up some books… real books, Not some C+ manual. Take a look (and then… try to..) read some of them. You will soon learn just how deeply entrenched the REAL (curent or former) SF means to people outside of your little foggy bubble. Right about now, i bet that most of us “old timers” would actually chose to give up “technology” and go back to the dark ages if it were to mean that we could have our people filled with soul and compassion and diversity back as our neighbors. I know i would trade you and all of the tech that you so praise in a HEARTBEAT. I lived once without it and did just fine… i am sure I could survive just fine… Dont so much know how well you all would do though. Cant wait to find out maybe someday. When that happens, i am grabbing my popcorn and chair and catching a front row view of your well deserved melt down!! As well as i am pretty sure quite a few others. You aint makin any friends here with that f***** up attitude of yours and it needs a re-evaluation… FAST!!”
If you want to read the actual article and ALL of the comments (beware they can get a little agressive. Clearly this is a passionate topic for all involved)… you can read it here…
Let me know what you think and what side of the coin you chose to fall on ok? Thank you!!
Dear Neighbors,
I write you today to ask for your understanding. You see, I live in the house that you can’t stand.
You know the one. The blithe on the block.
We dont look unusually bad in appearance (not particularly good either but it is on the corner and is 100 years old so, its design is generally not too offending plus, we are a dirty color of white so we dont really stand out except if you begin to look closely. That cheap1960’s want-to-be wood grained paneling that is broken in places and entirely painted white… probably in the 60’s!, doesn’t exactly look regal i know).
No it is not our appearance that is so offending. It is us. Continue reading
Modern Apartment at 1000 N. Lasalle (Photo credit: PPMChicago-Alex)
Views over Plaza Cataluñya. Modern apartment for sale in Barcelona|LFS3064 (Photo credit: lucasfoxbcn)
I dont know why some smart little city near sf (maybe like foster city over on the bay side or somewhere like that…) does not decide that they are going to invest in a portion of town and build luxury living (renting) and luxury dining for this part. Clearly we need another place that these tech workers would consider living other than the city or there will be nothing but only tech and advertising highly paid kids living in the city. They are young and quite wealthy (at least bringing in large paychecks) and want the lifestyle of luxury and modernity and hip swank. Continue reading
This is a long thread that i had to copy from reddit to be able to share with you, however, it is such entertainment, i was pushed over the edge of my yes decision to post it. If your mind works anything like mine, then this will give you several SEVERAL good hard (possible hours) of laughs!! I hope you enjoy it as much as i did! Oh Atherton…….
(to be able to read this in a more cohesive format, go to reddit’s link here: http://www.reddit.com/r/firstworldproblems/comments/18gsc4/police_blotter_for_atherton_ca_where_the_median/ )
[–]Freakazette 244 points 1 day ago
Some of these are even better if you read the ones right next to them. Like, the actual real crime makes some of these more ridiculous.
[–]Dustin- 241 points 1 day ago
Man stabbed in San Jose, injuries not life threatening.
In other news, a woman reassured a police officer that she knew her way home. Continue reading
If you happen to live in Atherton Ca. which happens to be the states 4th most expensive zip code (median home price is 4.9 million!), then it is no huge surprise that you have even less than first world problems. You have maybe half world problems. And when there is a problem… Who do you call? The police of course. Boy if i were a Santa Clara county deputy i really would love to be assigned this beat! But only if i still had my patience and a serious sense of humor!
(To see the original article on the SFist, follow this link…
http://sfist.com/2013/02/14/all_the_best_police_blotter_gems_fr.php#photo-7)
This was just too funny to pass up sharing with you all. I have lived in the Bay area my whole life, growing up deep in the Santa Cruz mountains. My dad’s business was over the hill and so we had friends over there. I have always been familiar with Atherton. I think my parents had friends that lived there (keeping in mind that this was in the 70’s & 80’s when it was really rich but the whole bay was much less populated than it is now).
In fact, life was much less complicated than it is now. And much more connected. Now days, fear is fed to us along with the ideals that beauty rules along with sex (however, it can not be talked about) and consumerism.
I dont think that in the days i was a kid that people living in Atherton were this incapable and terrified of… well… Anything that they might happen to come across. I suppose that is reserved for our curent generations of frightened stiff un-functioned twits living in their walled manses afraid of the world and clearly delusionally entitled.
I would not like to see these people cope in a natural disaster where you are forced to rely on your friends and neighbors. If this was survival of the fittest, these people would NOT survive.
It is funny but also just kinda sad, dont cha think?
Watching the big game on two huge screens in Klaus!!! #superbowl (Photo credit: Eweinhoffer)
I was just sitting here on my bed watching painfully our 9ers play without fire in their bellies and losing badly at the Superbowl. My computer sits on my lap and i am checking my local blog sites (bernalwood.wordpress.com, CurbedSF.com & the SFist.com). I decide to go to my blog stats page to see if my theory held up.
My theory was that stats for visits for my posts would be low, just like they were Christmas day.
My Christmas day prediction was wrong and today’s Super Bowl day prediction on visits was also wrong.
My prediction on Xmas was that there would be a lot of people online viewing blogs and social media sites. They weren’t. They in retrospect were of course with family and probably in a food-semi coma. NOT online.
My prediction for today was similar to what the actual xmas outcome was. I assumed that people would be at Superbowl parties and at bars across the USA, getting drunk and basically only connecting to the big screen TV and possibly their sattellite that connects to their big screen TV.
But i was wrong again. Views are high on Superbowl Sunday. Views are low on Christmas. So, Superbowl Sunday is a social media intertwined event and Christmas is not. I wonder what the 4th of July will be….
I dont know what it is about the guys here that are reading the community postings on Craigslist in Las Vegas NV. Either i am extremely unlucky or L.V. has a serious problem with how the guys here think, & how they should treat a woman. They have absolutely NO shame about inappropriate behavior towards unknown females. Let me tell you!!
I am out in Las Vegas not for a pleasure fest or to gamble and party, but because my father is dying here. He had a fall last week and we thought we were about to lose him. I was asked to come out ASAP so i bought a ticket to arrive within 24 hours of the call. Because the flight was so last minute, it wasn’t cheap! $234 + tax and fees to be exact. It cost my dad (who was kind enough to pay for it!) paid a little over $250 one way.
That seems like a lot of money to me and since he is paying out of pocket for his meds right now, i did not want it to total $500 to get me here and back to San Francisco, SO, since i have always had a good experience with rideshare, it was 1/5 the cost and i never ride in cars anymore… AND i also had the time… i decided i would post a basic ad on Craigslist with my phone # & a photo. The photo didnt last longer than it took my first harassing caller… a Mr. Hassan Abrahim (at telephone # 618 410-1446. & who was too stupid to block his # before he decided to send me lewd and agressive text messages! Stupid DoucheBag!!) to call (within the first 2 hrs of the poist being up… & at like 6pm!) Anyway, today i decided that i would do a reverse phone search to see if i could find out who was agressively sexually harassing me via text the day before. I cant wait for you to see what i found! I found his name with a reverse call search. There were 2 comments with one of them saying that he owned property. You can see why i was surprised and a little alarmed when i then searched his name and found this…
and this…
(btw, shortly after that, i pulled the photo off the post!).
But that was only the first! in less than 12 hours three more slimy ass dudes hit me up wanting there to be some “fun” on the ride or they were not interested in just saving some money on gas to take me.
Is every city apart from the coasts this disgusting and crude when it comes to desperate (i just have to say it too… and cheap! They could and should pay a professional for a request like that!!) total scumbags trolling the COMMUNITY pages (yes i said that right. These guys were not even hitting on the strictly platonic posts from girls in the Personals section… No! They were trolling up next to the Pets page and Volunteers postings!! That is some SERIOUS trolling!!
It turns my stomach to see the respect for women slide so far into the gutter that these so called men actually think they have a right to ask and project such an insane notion to a total fucking stranger. Probably too pussy to propose such a lewd thing to a womans face! They are a bunch of pathetic lonely ass twats that should stick to what they know… video games and Klenex and spare the general population the sorry ass behavior that they are representing.
Anyway, i may have found a decent ride home but it is not until Tuesday. At least i have free lodging, food and FULL CABLE TV.. with ALL movie channels!! I can easily kill an additional 24 hours here without ever dropping a dollar on a slot machine! Yea! Plus.. more time with my dad and although i miss my little rescue kitty Arthur, he is being well cared for by a friend who i am having stay in my room while i am away. She is in between apts. so she can stay and take care of the king (Arthur) as long as i need her to. Things could be worse i suppose.
I would be interested to hear if anyone else has been experiencing this sort of thing around the country / world or if it is only indelible for Las Vegas??
Spectacular San Francisco Famous Downtown Landmarks Cityscape (Photo credit: davidyuweb)
Cabin of a Virgin America A320 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Here i lay at my familiar crossroads of travel… Should i fly home or find a rideshare? There are pluses and minuses to both… Here they are….
positives and negatives of flying…
The positives and negatives of Ridesharing…
So, thats the pluses and minuses of my options. I am going to take whatever i can find and hope that it is not the most stressful way possible for me to travel! Fingers crossed!!
I like to remember things as they were when they happened. I find my own personal memory faulty and i do not trust modern day media editing! So… Lets watch once again, right from the footage that aired back then. I remember that day in 1989 when i was waiting for my ride home from swim team practice, less than 10 miles from the epicenter! You could definitely say i was there!
…And a friendly reminder that everywhere SOME natural disaster can hit at any time. Get that emergency kit ready. You need enough food and water (and pet food) for at least 3 days per person!
So, if one can do this to themselves while just walking on a normal (downhill to give me some sense of not total humiliation! Well. No. It is totally humiliation no matter how i try and see it!), then imagine what kind of hurt one could do texting while driving! Let this be a public service announcement. Dont text and be moving!
the perils of texting and walking. Photo taken last night.
This is day 2. Oh yeah.. i forgot to mention that my iphone took a big brunt of the fall. Thank god for AppleCare!!
I want you to take a look at these pictures and then guess how much this mansion is asking on the market in Detroit….
649 Van Dyke Place, Detroit
649 Van Dyke Place, Detroit
(you can see all of the other pictures that were not able to be copied to this post over on Curbed.com’s detroit site. Use this link… http://detroit.curbed.com/archives/2012/02/interoir-reveal-van-dyke-mansion.php).
…ARE YOU READY? ok.. here goes.. take a seat or hold on to something tight…
This house.. no Mansion.. is selling for a whopping $One Hundred and Fourty-Five Thousand Dollars!!!
You can not even get a Studio in the Tenderloin here in SF for that much!! It makes me light in the head just thinking about it!
……
Gosh Dang… I LOVE this place. Living in San Francisco with the insane prices of, well, EVERYTHING, but especially home prices (even worse, rent prices…), i can not even comprehend a home like this selling for the price listed above. Sheesh, (hopefully no one will do this), but just the architectural salvage would bring in more than they are asking. I wish i could buy this beauty and live in it while i watch the city rebuild around me! Detroit is now the perfect place for a huge artist community to come in and be able to finally create without worrying about how to come up with $2000 a month for a dinky studio apt. With prices like that, how could an artist actually afford to make art unless they have already made it big? I think there are big and awesome things in store for Detroit.
It is so sad to see what has happened to a major metropolitan mecca and almost unbelievable! But i dont think that this city is going to be dead like this forever. For many many americans (and others), this situation, that has happened to it has allowed dreams that were always only a fantasy, to come true. There is actually a place now for those dreams to be lived out. I have so much hope for Detroit, unlike SF. The hope actually makes me happy and excited! Sf is almost too far gone to try and grasp it back down to reality! I wish it werent so far, or i’d take my measly $$ and actually try and become a home owner!
I have faith in you Detroit! And… You will come back!
Enjoy a few pictures i stumbled upon, with bicycles as the anchor.
Enjoy!
EnBike Circle
Bike Fence
Bike made for 5!
No comment needed.
Clever concept, hard to ride though….
A DOUBLE penny farling!
Comb bike rack
parent and child penny farling!
I have a friend who was awarded SSI Disability a couple of years ago because she suffers from pretty debilitating clinical depression and generalized anxiety. She received a letter a few months ago stating that her benefits were going to be under review. This did not surprise me due to the state of the economy and how butchered funding towards social services has gotten.
She has been disabled technically since her early twenties but really started getting professional help in the early 2000’s. Her depression was severe enough to (according to the Certified Vocational Specialist) be “almost entirely unemployable” due to the amount of days that would be called in sick and the randomness of those days. No employeer would want to deal with someone calling in sick on and off and not being able to set any work schedule that could be absolutely relied on all the time. It would be impossible because she never knew when the bouts of depression would hit. When they did, she can not even get out of bed let alone function in any productive environment (unless it contains a lot of sleeping and crying).
This does not however mean that she is a mess 100% of the time. When not depressed, she is quite engaging and very bright, cognitive and intelligent. In fact she is usually the one that friends go to to ask for advice because she has the most level and informed head on her shoulders. She knows when the depression is going on and sometimes even why, however, her cognivity is not so strong to be able to overtake the depression with logic. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. She is at the mercy of her disability regardless how intelligent and stable minded she is when it is not at play.
She researched online and by asking professionals if there was any risk of these benefits might be at risk of being revoked, and she got an abounding no, because she was not able to attain any work over that 18 months, she continued seeking professional help (even adding a therapist due to the depression getting worse), as well as upping the dosage of medications over this period of time.
She was sent to a “doctors appointment” that was scheduled by SSI that had her do basic learning as well as mostly memory tests. She thought it was something like she did in Jr. High when she was tested for learning disabilities minus the math.
She was told at the end of the appointment that she did “well above average” with the tests. She got nervous and was assured by the therapist that there were a many intelligent people in the world that suffered from mental disabilities and not to worry.
BOY was she wrong. Not only did they not bother to look at the notes all of her doctors submitted that have been seeing her regularly. Or the fact that she has been prescribed increased dosage in her medication and added another mental health doctor. Nor the original judgement. They went solely on this one test that said… “well she can think and understand and organize thought and interact with people so that must negate the depression.” So they told her that they were going to revoke her benefits because she was not disabled anymore.
She now is about to go through the process of appealing this revocation. It really does not seem fair that after 3 long years of applying and appealing to finally see a federal disability judge and have them rule in her favor, to now have to have an employee of disability be the one who decides if they were wrong by revoking. If they uphold their revocation, then she has to appeal to the Supreme Court of her state. At least at that time, it is not going to be a partial employee to the SSI system making this decision, but another federal judge. However, receiving this news has thrown her back into the mental mine field of suicidal thoughts and regular long severe bouts of depression.
I think that they are trying to ‘shake the tree’ so to speak and see where they can avoid having to give money, but is it that being cognitive cancels out suffering depression and difficulty in finding and maintaining gainful employment due to this fact?
It just does not seem fair to me. She is not faking it and i am concerned that she seriously thinks about how much easier it would be to just not be here anymore. How could they not even look at the legal decision ruled by a federal judge that landed her benefits in the first place?
The world we are living in, here in America has truly been hijacked by greed and Corporations. I say get out NOW while there is still a chance or there is going to be nothing but a high class and a slave class with unsafe infrastructure and rioting crime. No healthcare and education that is teaching nothing but ignorance (see posting a few days earlier titled “Pun intended…”).
In the last 15 years i have seen what was the land of freedom and economic opportunity has turned into. It is now a place that you can watch the picked fences falling before your eyes. No one can get a job because they have all been outsourced yet at the same time, inflation has gone up like they are playing with monopoly money. Every time that we have inflation, the banks make a profit off of this. I have a feeling that because of this, by 2020 it is going to be about $2700 for a cup of coffee and $50 million for a starter home. Why is it we just sit and watch our utopia be hijacked by greed and government? What is worth fighting for these days? And what kind of future are the youth going to have to survive in? Unless bankrolled, or REALLY above average intelligent applicable in a relevant profiting industry, they are going to have no choice but to survive however they can and that usually means crime.
It is crazy to watch a first world country/#1 world power collapse into a 2nd world country in less than one generation. It is such a waste of what so many worked so hard to build and so unfair to those that are not the corruption that greedily caused it! It truly makes me sick and very afraid.
bluepearlgirl's world 