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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

#231

Post by kevrone »

bilbo0s wrote: post #117
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…

This is the general arc of "gentrification". First, a few places in the neighborhood are rehabbed by developers. Next the "...Burning Man hippies, self-styled artists, people who graduated from great schools with useless majors, and the usual constituent of the ... overprivileged..." move in to the rehabbed areas and the (usually) blacks have to move out. These hippy - artist types make the neighborhood more attracti…

I didn't know Harlem had a tech community. Brooklyn, for sure. But Harlem? That's news to me.

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#232

Post by [deleted] »

bilbo0s wrote: post #194
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun writeup. Wrong attitude. Silicon Valley technology, this is Manhattan finance with a word of advice. We know the roots of the problem are housing supply restrictions and a lack of mass transit. In essence, City Hall problems. So why are they able to pin the blame on you? Because you're painting a target on your back. Ducking your heads makes you a low-risk scapegoat. Scoffing at the less fortunate, regardless of…

In Houston I, and several others who live behind the gates on Sunset, have taken to volunteering A LOT of time in Third Ward for this very reason. You're a lot tougher target when your head is raised and you have a track record of advocating for the REAL underprivileged. Because chances are, the people denigrating you would never dare go to a place like Third Ward. (Which is a shame... because the people there are qu…

[deleted]

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#233

Post by 9999 »

jrockway wrote: post #150
9999 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you worked on a personal project on a Google bus (on your own laptop, without using their wifi), would Google be able to claim ownership?

In California, Google's employment contract already covers that explicitly.

And they do claim ownership?

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#234

Post by mtdewcmu »

ritchiea wrote: post #85
zach wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

It's hipster haves versus hipster have-nots. Where's the sense of hipster fraternity?

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#235

Post by blhack »

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

This is such a stupid position to take. First of all, do you realize that those "Burning Man Hippies" are, uh, literally the people who started google? Do you realize that google has made enormous donations to those "burning man hippies"?

And yes, "uesless degrees". History, art, literature, these are all "useless" of course, the only valid degrees are either hard science and hard engineering, I'm sure?

What aspects of life do you enjoy, man? A good design aesthetic? Cause that's art...

Or, perhaps good food? That's also art.

Maybe a good book, wait...

Architecture?

Beauty? Something? Possibly something that poets and artists have given you a context for, or study?

--

This is such a stupid lazy attitude to take. Come out of your hole sometime and you'll find a whole world out here full of things that you can enjoy. Just try to steer clear of those pesky "artists" who got useless degrees.

--

The people who are crying about google's buses are idiots. Don't group them together with artists or "burning man hippies".

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#236

Post by FiloSottile »

> The bus remained where it was, the thought of driving to Mountain View with a broken window and flooded with cold air an unthinkable horror they could not endure.

Yeah, a neutral article for sure. The employees actually took the effort of collecting the fliers off the street, but after a violent attack, would you feel like going to work, or are they to blame if they didn't?

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#237

Post by simoncion »

gress wrote: post #206
kkowalczyk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Shortage of housing is even worse near Google campus than in SF 2. Angry mob or your opinions should not dictate where people choose to live. I could offer many suggestions as to how you should live YOUR life to better suit MY goal and ideas, but I don't because that would be stupid. You should choose a place to live that suits YOU the best and you should offer the same curtesy to others. The "occupy Google bus" m…

Yeah - people shouldn't complain - they should just shut up and get a job that pays them a 6 figure salary and provides an air conditioned luxury coach to take them to work.

Edit: Oh, heh. I mis-read your statement. Regardless, I'll keep my original comment below. Do with it what you will.

_________________

1) 6-figures is middle-of-the-road when it comes to meeting living expenses in SV. You will never own an urban house (and will likely not own a suburban house) on that salary in the area.

2) Have you, like, ever ridden in a big bus before? They're pretty nausea-inducing and tend to get stuck in the same traffic that every other ground vehicle gets stuck in. Their only advantages are traffic reduction and (maybe, if you can fight the nausea) the ability to catch up on email during your commute in.

3) I did the commute-down-the-peninsula thing for a couple of years. It was also pretty miserable and not very cheap (but far cheaper than owning, parking, and maintaining a car). I can't argue that Caltrain is worse than these buses, but I can argue that they're both pretty miserable.

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#238

Post by chao- »

bilbo0s wrote: post #194
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun writeup. Wrong attitude. Silicon Valley technology, this is Manhattan finance with a word of advice. We know the roots of the problem are housing supply restrictions and a lack of mass transit. In essence, City Hall problems. So why are they able to pin the blame on you? Because you're painting a target on your back. Ducking your heads makes you a low-risk scapegoat. Scoffing at the less fortunate, regardless of…

In Houston I, and several others who live behind the gates on Sunset, have taken to volunteering A LOT of time in Third Ward for this very reason. You're a lot tougher target when your head is raised and you have a track record of advocating for the REAL underprivileged. Because chances are, the people denigrating you would never dare go to a place like Third Ward. (Which is a shame... because the people there are qu…

Montrose resident here. I don't have anyone denigrating me, but I wouldn't mind helping out folks in the Third Ward. Do you volunteer with any particular group or charity?

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#239

Post by JimboOmega »

kasey_junk wrote: post #169
aetherson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I want to know what people think that alternative to gentrification is. Do they imagine that high income people will eventually just not live anywhere? Do they imagine that life would be better if all growth in the Bay Area were new construction sprawl out in the edges of the urban area where there's no displacement? Is it explicitly selfish, like, "go gentrify San Jose, those guys are assholes anyway"?

I don't have a dog in this fight, but there are some pretty obvious things you could do to fight the burden of gentrification on lower income original members of the population (they may have other side effects that are burdensome). Off the top of my head: - Massive taxes on "teardown" or size exploding renovations. - Zoning laws that require at least 1 (or a % based) Section 8 unit per multi-unit development/renovat…

By "size exploding" do you mean "reducing the number of units"? Because then I might agree.

Really, though, allowing them to put up a high rise where there are currently single family homes reduces the overall pressure everywhere.

Of course, SF will never subsidize empty lot development, even if there were any empty lots to build on; the right to build in SF is far higher than in any other US city - double that of (as of 2007) Los Angeles or New York:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-o...

I don't know what you mean by "affordable housing practices", but the reality of it is building lots of housing units. You can subsidize the poor, but that will just push out those just rich enough not to qualify for the subsidies; it's a supply/demand problem, and the only solution is more supply or less demand.

I'd agree the entire metro could benefit.

Re: Google Bus blocked, window smashed in West Oakland

#240

Post by dannypgh »

manicbovine wrote: post #143
adventured wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people of Google however, pay their fair share of taxes, and don't deserve to have their mode of transportation attacked. The couple billion in taxes Google is managing to dodge is not what enables them to pay their employees so well. Google earned $10.7b in profit last year. Go ahead and take the 20% they 'dodged' in taxes. How exactly does that alter what they can pay their employees (you know, only making $8.x…

Well the taxes don't have to do with anything. Nobody deserves to have their daily commute violently disrupted.

I don't think people deserve to be displaced from their homes in massive numbers.

I don't think today's action will magically end the displacement, but I think people should have some compassion and show several orders of magnitude more concern for groups like the elderly on fixed income and the working poor facing Ellis Act evictions than for a group of techies who will be OK even after a disrupted commute. The issues being raised here are important, and I think it's more important to identify real solutions to the problems rather than focus on evading blame.

This is not to say it's either/or but I do want a world where the concerns about displacement and mass evictions are prioritized and addressed far more concern and resources than the kinds of 0th and 1st world problems that googlers (as a group - many of us have real world problems as well, of course) have.

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