Annoying New York Times articles

[Gerontophile]

Annoying New York Times articles

When it's been crapped out the arse of a wild feline?

[Hot Pepsi]

Annoying New York Times articles

This article isn't so annoying as the trends it identifies.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/26/san-francisco-move-to-la-bohemians-artists-tech-boom

San Francisco-esque cafes and restaurants were mushrooming, lamented Koester. “The kinds of places where pour over coffee is $7 and every table has a succulent on it. I don’t know if this can be blamed on the transplants, or on the fact that not just San Francisco, but the entirety of Earth, is becoming uninhabitable to anyone who doesn’t make their living writing code all goddamned day.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gHAqIcmtkg

[Incandenza]

Annoying New York Times articles

Hot Pepsi wrote: This article isn't so annoying as the trends it identifies.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/26/san-francisco-move-to-la-bohemians-artists-tech-boom

San Francisco-esque cafes and restaurants were mushrooming, lamented Koester. “The kinds of places where pour over coffee is $7 and every table has a succulent on it. I don’t know if this can be blamed on the transplants, or on the fact that not just San Francisco, but the entirety of Earth, is becoming uninhabitable to anyone who doesn’t make their living writing code all goddamned day.”

From the article:

The image of sharks in suits exploiting artists belied a supportive community, he said. “No one really cares about the money part of it. They just want to play music. It’s more easy to live here as an artist so people have more time, more resources.” Pierszalowski is assembling a new band under the name Van Williams. “In San Francisco that would’ve been so hard. Here it’s so easy, I’ve got my dream band.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IQHl_Ki6Ek

[Hot Pepsi]

Annoying New York Times articles

BTW, what the fuck is the deal with "pour over coffee?" How is it any better than any other method of introducing hot water to coffee grounds? I saw the lead coffee guy teaching some newer "baristas" how to do it at my favorite coffee place and it looked like it took a lot of time and hassle.

[Incandenza]

Annoying New York Times articles

Coffee evangelists say that by controlling the speed that water passes over the grounds, you are able to get a better cup of coffee by getting more out of the grounds (I know that they pause a bit to let some CO2 that comes off of the grounds after water hits it release) and you control more where the water goes.

I think that some people like the performance aspect of pour over coffee, and if I can speculate, I think some people like that it's made just for them, instead of having coffee that's been sitting in a pot for a while.

[Hot Pepsi]

Annoying New York Times articles

Incandenza wrote: Coffee evangelists say that by controlling the speed that water passes over the grounds, you are able to get a better cup of coffee by getting more out of the grounds (I know that they pause a bit to let some CO2 that comes off of the grounds after water hits it release) and you control more where the water goes.

I think that some people like the performance aspect of pour over coffee, and if I can speculate, I think some people like that it's made just for them, instead of having coffee that's been sitting in a pot for a while.

Fresh is generally better than stale, certainly, but there's something a bit douchey in expecting a "performance."

At coffee places that don't automate everything like Starbucks does, I usually get an Americano. It doesn't take too long for them to make and I prefer to have something to sip for a while rather than just an espresso shot. Especially in winter. I guess other Americans thought that too which is the origin of it.

[Flynnie]

Annoying New York Times articles

Articles about how SF sucks now are unbelievably tedious.

It's not that gentrification isn't having an impact, but it's like drinking 6 oz of a Slurpee and saying there's nothing left. It is very, very substantially the same city it has always been. The Mission has been the hardest hit, but it's not the parade of white people and crying displaced Mexican families that people claim it is. And you can go to a lot of other areas around SF and there's been barely any change at all. The only changes to my home neighborhood have been:

a) a condo development with a Whole Foods on a previously unused parking lot for an auto parts store

b) an independent bookstore (!!!), which has to be pretty much the epitome of "good" gentrification, right?

There has also been an increasing holistic feeling about the Bay Area, which is kind of a good thing when SF has traditionally regarded the rest of the region like NYC does in that New Yorker cover. Oakland is booming, I've got friends who moved to *Richmond*, and people are putting pressure on areas outside SF to carry their share of the load of the tech boom. Which is necessary because for too long the suburbs have been getting off scot-free in terms of development.

[Hot Pepsi]

Annoying New York Times articles

Flynnie wrote: Articles about how SF sucks now are unbelievably tedious.

It's not that gentrification isn't having an impact, but it's like drinking 6 oz of a Slurpee and saying there's nothing left. It is very, very substantially the same city it has always been. The Mission has been the hardest hit, but it's not the parade of white people and crying displaced Mexican families that people claim it is. And you can go to a lot of other areas around SF and there's been barely any change at all. The only changes to my home neighborhood have been:

You live there and I've only visited so I'm no expert, but I'm afraid this explanation isn't very reassuring.

The first appearance of the term Silicon Valley was in 1971 and it became common in the 80s, suggesting that the "tech boom" has been going on for 40 years and rents have been rising rapidly for longer than that.

Interesting data here. It suggests that the current trends have been, um, trending since right after the war.
https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employment-construction-and-cost-of-san.html

So it appears that the strata of people who can afford to live there has been narrowing steadily for many years. I don't know if the number of think-pieces opining "San Francisco sucks now" has grown recently. Maybe they were there in the 70s and 80s too, but few people saw them because they were only in low-circulation alternative papers as opposed to on the internet. I know that I saw articles saying that "tech" had ruined the Bay Area as early as 1998-1999ish.

And "not changing" is, according to many, a big part of the problem. The unwillingness of the haves to change the "visual character of the city" to accommodate a few more of the have-lesses is constraining the supply of housing. However, as this data shows, that's only a small part of the problem.* Inequality and the exploding wealth of the top end is the bigger problem.

a) a condo development with a Whole Foods on a previously unused parking lot for an auto parts store

I'd rather have an empty parking lot than a Whole Foods. Kids can skateboard on an empty parking lot. Whole Foods' are just douche-magnets run by a giant anti-union douche for people who can afford to believe in quackery.

b) an independent bookstore (!!!), which has to be pretty much the epitome of "good" gentrification, right?

It's better than a lot of things, but in this day and age, independent bookstores, along with record stores that sell vinyl, and farmers markets are, ironically, a sign of affluence rather than a return to a nicer pre-Amazon time. Hipsters imagine they're getting in touch with something "authentic" from days gone by, but actual working class people can't afford to collect vinyl records, especially when all the music in the world can be had on Spotify for a few bucks a month, and, if they can afford to buy books, rather than check them out of a library, and have the time to read them, they can't afford to ignore that Amazon is probably cheaper. And they sure as hell can't afford artisanal ice cubes and all of that shit.

It's also possible that the bookstore isn't making much money on books but instead is a bookstore/cafe-type deal that makes the margins with the aforementioned $7 coffee and relying on local people to support it as a cultural institution rather than a competitive business. I've seen a number of such places (not usually $7 for coffee, but still, the coffee is subsidizing the book part). That's better than no bookstores at all, I guess, but its not a model that can work most places.

There has also been an increasing holistic feeling about the Bay Area, which is kind of a good thing when SF has traditionally regarded the rest of the region like NYC does in that New Yorker cover. Oakland is booming, I've got friends who moved to *Richmond*, and people are putting pressure on areas outside SF to carry their share of the load of the tech boom. Which is necessary because for too long the suburbs have been getting off scot-free in terms of development.

That's good, but it also just means that the gentrification is spreading. Where are the people who used to live in Oakland and Richmond going to live? Where are the trash collectors, police, kindergarten teachers, janitors, etc going to live? Stockton? And if so, how can they really be part of that community?

*To me, the solution is simple. Build many huge skyscrapers to the, ummm, sky and then have lots of skywalks with moving sidewalks, between them and self-driving airships floating from one to the next. And flying taxis. And let the super rich live in luxury satellites in orbit.

[hobbes]

Annoying New York Times articles

This article isn't so annoying as the trends it identifies.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/26/...ns-artists-tech-boom

Ashley Wenham, an artist and designer, and Stephen Meeneghan, a [strike]naturopathic doctor and acupuncturist,[/strike] fucking simpleton are being evicted by their San Francisco landlord due to rising rents in the city. They plan to move to LA.

[delicatemoth]

Here's a cunt from Toronto writing about how he's not as much of a cunt as his previous article suggested. Knock yourselves out.

"I also didn’t like the photo because in reality my wife is much more attractive than she appears in that photo.

My concerns extended far beyond the photo, though. The whole thing stank of click-bait, and there was a mean-spiritedness that ran through it now that wasn’t in the original draft. Malcolm had tried to mitigate this somewhat by altering the paragraph:

In retrospect, we could have just cut off the electricity but that didn’t feel right. Another option would have been to start the demolition with the tenants still there but we were worried that the angry tenants, one of whom was known to the police, would start smashing up the stained glass or other features we were attached to keeping.

To read:

We considered cutting the electricity, changing the locks or just starting the demolition with the tenants inside, but we felt for the squatters and didn’t want to cause them undue distress. They had had tough lives, and here we were, the privileged gentrifiers waltzing in to kick them out.

Although this sentence may appear to be kindhearted, I read it as the exact opposite..."

[Fussbudget]

Not blessed with self-awareness, is he.

I doubt he meant to project that, but the way he talks about his wife throughout the piece makes it sound like he thinks she's a complete simpleton who needs supervision to tie her own shoelaces.

[Gerontophile]

It reads like a wind-up. A gentle goading of the readers.

That said, I lasted 4 paragraphs after I realised there were comments.

[caja-dglh]

Another stone cold classic from the New York Times real estate trolling playbook

On two occasions, Mr. and Ms. Karas made offers on apartments that their daughter never saw, even though she lived and worked in New York City. They lost both those apartments in bidding wars. The studio they ultimately bought needed work, but it was in an elevator building, a feature the Karases wanted. “To this day, she won’t say it’s the most fabulous place she’s ever had,” Ms. Karas said of her daughter, who works in sales.

When the Karases bought their son’s apartment, Ms. Kriegstein represented them and had very little interaction with their son. Mostly, he existed on email threads. “We’d put together a list, and his only response would be ‘I kind of like these,’” Ms. Kriegstein said. Ms. Karas would visit the apartments and then report back to her son, who works in sales and travels during the week.

“The whole process of buying an apartment in New York City, it’s overwhelming for them,” Ms. Karas said.

[WOM]

It reads like a wind-up. A gentle goading of the readers.

That said, I lasted 4 paragraphs after I realised there were comments.

He digs his own grave in the article itself, but he really doubles-down in the comment replies.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Saves his mother digging it for him after a lengthy e-mail conversation about features.

[Sam]

Is the story delicatemoth linked to still live? One of my browsers says it can't reach the page as it appears to have been removed, and the other says the domain julianhumphreys.com is available to buy.

[Sam]

Another stone cold classic from the New York Times real estate trolling playbook

The kids ask not to be named, so the NYT just names their parents, and gives their ages. I'm sure no-one will be able to work out from that who they are.

But even then, what kind of employer has a problem with employees talking to a newspaper about something like this? It's not like they might spill trade secrets. They want a sentence on how you find your parents a bit overbearing or really value their help, that's all.

[Gerontophile]

Perhaps Sam, the employers don't want to let the world know that they employ people who find flathunting "overwhelming".

[Lang Spoon]

Here's a cunt from Toronto writing about how he's not as much of a cunt as his previous article suggested. Knock yourselves out.

"I also didn’t like the photo because in reality my wife is much more attractive than she appears in that photo.

My concerns extended far beyond the photo, though. The whole thing stank of click-bait, and there was a mean-spiritedness that ran through it now that wasn’t in the original draft. Malcolm had tried to mitigate this somewhat by altering the paragraph:

In retrospect, we could have just cut off the electricity but that didn’t feel right. Another option would have been to start the demolition with the tenants still there but we were worried that the angry tenants, one of whom was known to the police, would start smashing up the stained glass or other features we were attached to keeping.

To read:

We considered cutting the electricity, changing the locks or just starting the demolition with the tenants inside, but we felt for the squatters and didn’t want to cause them undue distress. They had had tough lives, and here we were, the privileged gentrifiers waltzing in to kick them out.

Although this sentence may appear to be kindhearted, I read it as the exact opposite..."

The link seems indeed broken but that is just vile. Christ almighty.

[SouthdownRebel]

The site is still live but he's deleted the whole blog.

[Exiled off Main Street]

The New York times is a great party, to which you are Not Invited.

[ursus arctos]

It is equally true that if you happen to find yourself at a party with that audience, you very much wish you weren't there.

[Lang Spoon]

Aren't you supposed to get less left wing with age and salary increase? Fuck I'm a ball of powerless stroke inducing anger at this shitty world most every day now. Bring back the complacent last boom, when I was mostly too off my tits and still comfy to notice anything.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Apparently you get more right wing as you get older, yes.

Can't say I've noticed, like. I'm further to the left of Lenin*

*TM some boring bastard

[caja-dglh]

Obviously, unfortunately for Julian Humphreys, the web never forgets.