111–120 of 120 posts
Interesting. Where I grew up (San Luis Obispo county in CA), you'd need an act of congress to touch a mature oak tree–even on your own property. Our church actually had to build around one when they did a building project. I bet if an entrepreneur or real estate developer wanted to cut down oak trees for a building project, they wouldn't get past the first step in the permit process ... but I guess when city wants th…
@earthlink.net for the Mayor? Ouch! He probably has a Flowbee and a Zack Morris bag phone to boot.
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Sure, it looks ugly now, but I think it'll look decent in two years, and pretty good in five. I actually agree that it will look better with uniform height trees than gradually replacing trees. It just doesn't seem like that huge of a deal. The street is temporarily ugly. This too shall pass.
Hm. Tree-lined avenues don't really get into their own until a few hundred years, if you ask me.
I like Cal Ave partly because it's about as close as you can get in this area to my favorite neighborhood in Seattle (15th Ave). A photo I took yesterday while they were taking the last one down: http://openbs.org/photo/wehavenotrees.jpg Quote from the notice they sent out: "The City of Palo Alto Public Works Department ... shall be replacing most of the street trees on Cal Ave ... most of the existing trees are Holl…
Heh ... I'm certainly not into "US-bashing", but I can't help think that someone could do quite a lot of that fueled by that particular quote. The City of P.A. thinks it needs to protect its residents from the tripping hazards of ... acorns? Hilarious. :)
This is just a small number of people trying to force their idea of what will look good onto the larger community. Bringing in things like 'tripping hazard' and 'the seeds are more pedestrian friendly' are just way to try and justify their actions/views against people that are outside of their group. It sounds good and all about wanting the trees to be a uniform height, but I suspect that decision was made partially because they expected there to be public outcry. They just wanted to tear down the trees without giving people a chance to rally against the action. Now people are stuck with the decision whether they like it or not.
They may have suffered from Sudden Oak Death. My limited understanding is that because the disease spreads erratically they prefer to remove infected trees in order to prevent others from becoming infected, and to prevent damage being caused from the dead, weakened tree. Edit: It appears there is no known cure, only preemptive measures. http://www.suddenoakdeath.org/
At first I thought it might be some kind of serious disease. Why else would they do such a crazy thing? But all the other arguments the city listed, e.g. "Their branches cover street lights and grow over building storefronts and roofs requiring frequent tree trimming. They bear and drop large acorn fruits that are tripping hazards for pedestrians." make it clear this wasn't the case. If they were infected by some tre…
I can't recall the details any more, but I'm reminded that there's a historic cemetery in Boston, where several of America's founders are buried, where the tombstones have all been moved from their original locations. Someone during the Victorian period decided they'd look nicer if they were all arranged in nice straight rows. Nobody recorded their original positions, so the locations of the remains are now unknown.…
Yeah this is really bad. First of all too many people have the silly idea that you can move trees around as if they are pieces of furniture or large heavy pieces of sculpture. "Oh lets get rid of these trees and put in different ones. Won't this be grand!" Moving trees is always tricky and not assured of success. When they get those new maple trees in california ave, I am sure that at least a couple of them will die…
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I stand by my comment. My opinion is based on evidence: some high-karma members can get away with stuff other members can't get away with. If a newbie posted about oaks getting hacked, the post would be flagged right away. Of course, since PG runs HN, the community should indeed cut him some slack as a token of gratitude. My comment was an attack on the herd phenomenon, not on PG. It was not meant to offend anyone. I…
I agree that the comments shouldn't offend anyone. I disagree with your reasoning, though. This neighborhood is (apparently) pretty well known in Ye Olde Silicone Valley(e). That being the case, I'll bet any number of nerd bloggers or private individuals could have written it up and gotten upvotes; perhaps not as many, but that's not a problem unless you dislike the idea of reputations in general. The other factor to…
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It's a herd phenomenon. Even if PG writes something utterly pointless, he gets upvoted to the stratosphere. It would be nice if this changed. Intelligent and successful people like PG don't need this kind of adulation.
This isn't utterly pointless. I'm glad I know about it, and I wouldn't have without this essay. Or were you just saying "in general"? If so, point me to something PG has put online that is utterly pointless. He has a remarkably good filter for useful content, even within his own essays there are rarely sentences that are extra.
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It's a herd phenomenon. Even if PG writes something utterly pointless, he gets upvoted to the stratosphere. It would be nice if this changed. Intelligent and successful people like PG don't need this kind of adulation.
This isn't utterly pointless. I'm glad I know about it, and I wouldn't have without this essay. Or were you just saying "in general"? If so, point me to something PG has put online that is utterly pointless. He has a remarkably good filter for useful content, even within his own essays there are rarely sentences that are extra.