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Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

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Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#81

Post by thisiswrong »

api wrote: post #52
jessedhillon wrote: post #48

West Oakland is a traditionally black neighborhood that surrounds the Port of Oakland. It has been heavily gentrified, developed, and restructured over the past three decades. Now there is an upper class enclave that has been established near the West Oakland BART station, in Jack London, and in the city of Emeryville. Oh fuck you and your dreadlocks. There are only two photos on that page, so I don't definitively kn…

"These are Burning Man hippies, self-styled artists, people who graduated from great schools with useless majors, and the usual constituent of the Bay Area's overprivileged poverty tourists: 20-30 y/o white kids from middle class families." That describes a huge fraction of today's protestors and activists, which is why despite many things in the world sucking I rarely take today's "activism" very seriously. It's mos…

> That describes a huge fraction of today's protestors and activists, which is why despite many things in the world sucking I rarely take today's "activism" very seriously. It's mostly activism-as-entertainment for trustafarians.

The irony is that your comment only emphasizes the severe disconnect between relatively wealthy & employable 'techies' versus the rest of the struggling recession-hit population.

It's hard to understand how life has changed since 2007 when, coming from a tech-related field, one generally doesn't suffer the everyday hardships that most Americans endure [1].

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/poverty-in-a...

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#82

Post by [deleted] »

jessedhillon wrote: post #48

West Oakland is a traditionally black neighborhood that surrounds the Port of Oakland. It has been heavily gentrified, developed, and restructured over the past three decades. Now there is an upper class enclave that has been established near the West Oakland BART station, in Jack London, and in the city of Emeryville. Oh fuck you and your dreadlocks. There are only two photos on that page, so I don't definitively kn…

[deleted]

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#83

Post by PeterisP »

cbhl wrote: post #49
Pxtl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case they should be smashing windows at City Hall (or not anywhere, preferably). The municipality must be up to its gills in property tax cash and is the only people who can properly manage the response to this skyrocketing demand for housing. This isn't Vancouver or Tokyo or Manhattan, there's room to build more housing and drive down the supply/demand imbalance, and money to be made doing it... but without…

I don't see that happening unless the people who already own property in the city suddenly decide en masse that they're okay with repealing laws that prevent you from building tall apartment complexes to preserve the "look" of the city.

As far as I recall, the power to decide how things should be rests with all the people, not just the landlords. The renters outnumber them, and they have the ability, the rights and the reason to achieve cheaper rents by allowing to build apartment complexes.

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#84

Post by antiterra »

jessedhillon wrote: post #48

West Oakland is a traditionally black neighborhood that surrounds the Port of Oakland. It has been heavily gentrified, developed, and restructured over the past three decades. Now there is an upper class enclave that has been established near the West Oakland BART station, in Jack London, and in the city of Emeryville. Oh fuck you and your dreadlocks. There are only two photos on that page, so I don't definitively kn…

Your disdain for people who attend Burning Man, have so-called 'useless degrees,' and are self-styled-artists does nothing but discredit you as a reasonable person. Plenty of people who fall into any combination or all of those groups are productive and capable, many of them in the technology/tech startup sectors (and don't have a problem with Google's buses.)

EDIT: removed some of my own frothing

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#85

Post by ritchiea »

zach wrote: post #67
jessedhillon wrote: post #48

West Oakland is a traditionally black neighborhood that surrounds the Port of Oakland. It has been heavily gentrified, developed, and restructured over the past three decades. Now there is an upper class enclave that has been established near the West Oakland BART station, in Jack London, and in the city of Emeryville. Oh fuck you and your dreadlocks. There are only two photos on that page, so I don't definitively kn…

So it's hipsters versus nerds now? Has it come to this?

Let's be real. Some of the nerds are also hipsters.

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#86

Post by unclebucknasty »

api wrote: post #52
jessedhillon wrote: post #48

West Oakland is a traditionally black neighborhood that surrounds the Port of Oakland. It has been heavily gentrified, developed, and restructured over the past three decades. Now there is an upper class enclave that has been established near the West Oakland BART station, in Jack London, and in the city of Emeryville. Oh fuck you and your dreadlocks. There are only two photos on that page, so I don't definitively kn…

"These are Burning Man hippies, self-styled artists, people who graduated from great schools with useless majors, and the usual constituent of the Bay Area's overprivileged poverty tourists: 20-30 y/o white kids from middle class families." That describes a huge fraction of today's protestors and activists, which is why despite many things in the world sucking I rarely take today's "activism" very seriously. It's mos…

But, how is it that we recognize "many things in the world sucking" and criticize today's activism as lacking; yet have not done more ourselves to reduce the world's suckage?

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#87

Post by elipsey »

If "Gentrification is a dynamic and nuanced problem", perhaps throwing bricks through windows is not the best approach to finding a solution.

I'm not convinced that "gentrification" is always a problem. Must prices always remain the same? Am I entitled to be protected from competing as a buyer with other buyers who can put scarce housing resources to more valuable alternative uses, for example allowing someone else to commute to a job at Google, rather than allowing me to work a pizza place? This is not condescending, I have, and I wasn't surprised that I couldn't afford housing near the private university, or fancy corporate campuses at that time.

Furthermore, if we think housing prices are a problem, perhaps we should look at zoning and density. If entrenched interests prevent a majority consensus from altering zoning laws, then try throwing some bricks.

Has that happened in SF and I just don't know about it?

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#88

Post by null_ptr »

yarou wrote: post #80
null_ptr wrote: post #58

Gotta love “TECHIES: Your World Is Not Welcome Here” I find it hard to sympathize with a bunch of lazy thugs who do nothing to improve their situation. Engineering and white collar jobs in general have always paid well. Industries who are in demand even more so, and for just reason. Did similar protests happen in Detroit 50 years ago during the auto boom? Did unskilled rubes that do nothing all day put up banners say…

These kids never worked a day in their life, though. Their parents provided them with all the tools to succeed, but they still managed to fuck it up. They have no desire to improve themselves, they simply want to continue to leech off of whatever person will tolerate them the longest. Sickening.

Exactly. They want a free lunch off the hard work of others. Otherwise they would have been on their way to work this morning, not vandalizing a bus.

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#90

Post by saalweachter »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #25
jrockway wrote: post #4

It would be much better to have 100 more cars on the road during rush hour, right?

By providing free transportation from SF Google employees are encouraged to live there. Why not live closer to work? It would probably result in a few more cars on the road but a lot of the employees would move closer to Google freeing up apartments for people who actually work at businesses in SF and HAVE to live there. NB: I have no stake in this, I like in Ireland.

I'd bet you've got it backwards, actually.

Google isn't trying to encourage people who work at Google to live in San Francisco: they are trying to encourage people who live in San Francisco to work at Google.

It's the same reason they have such a honkin' big office in the middle of Manhattan. They could much more cheaply have an office park out in western New Jersey, but having the office in Manhattan captures a large number of employees who want to live in New York City, and would end up working at a hedge fund to support their NYC-habit.

Likewise, they probably found themselves interviewing a lot of great people who turned down the job because they lived in San Francisco and couldn't deal with the commute, and would rather find a different job than leave San Francisco. (Or employees who were commuting by car/rail and were quitting because they couldn't handle it any more.) The buses were probably a cheaper / more satisfactory solution than setting up a new office.

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