Month: August 2011

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Phil Ting for Mayor: My Thoughts

I have tried to post regularly, but now with a crazy work schedule and creeping overtime I have had to pull back a little. Once I get adjusted and settled in this should change. Now onto the article.

When I first heard that Phil Ting was running for Mayor of San Francisco I decided to keep an eye on him. He was the county assessor, so he knew about real estate, finance and taxes. He started off with a great title for his campaign, Reset San Francisco. I kind of liked that idea. He also talked about Muni reform, score again. It wasn’t until I attended my first Mayoral debate that a few questions started to rise.

He stated that while he has been in office that the city has come in under budget every year. OK, then why is our city in the red? Is someone budgeting more funds than we can afford to pay for? In my mind I don’t care whether or not San Francisco comes in under or over it’s budget, but whether or not San Francisco comes in at the end of the day in the black.

His statement that Muni needs to change is something everyone is talking about. When I worked downtown I didn’t have too much problem with Muni. The buses and streetcars I usually get from my house take me downtown in about 40 minutes without much walking. I have other friends such as Greg Dewar [@njudah] who would beg to differ with me, but he doesn’t use the same Muni route as I do so I won’t argue with him on that. Apparently the N-Judah has lots of problems that need to be fixed since it is the busiest muni route in San Francisco.

Where Phil Ting really got me was on his repeal of Prop 13 so that people of San Francisco would be paying the real property taxes they owe. I took offense at this because the comment was targeted at me, even though not only is everyone in California benefitting from Prop 13 and that it is a state law that a Mayor cannot overturn his comment was aimed at those people who purchased a house before the first dot.com boom and have lived in them ever since. It takes about 10-15 years after purchasing a house to notice a difference in your property taxes. That is, if your home value continues to increase. Currently we’re in a down swing so it might take closer to 30 years now.

Phil used this as the excuse for why we are so low in state school ratings for achievement. I suppose he forgot that when the California State Lottery went into effect that a major portion of the profit was to go towards school funding. It was originally specified that it could not be used for teacher pay raises, but that’s where it went at first because the teachers were so underpaid that not too many people wanted to be teachers.

But let me move back to Proposition 13. Currently the taxes on your house can be raised only 1.1% per year. People are saying that is the reason that San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities to live in. I did a check of  the top 10 most expensive cities in the US to live in and yes, San Francisco was listed as number five, but out of the 10 cities only two were in California and those were San Francisco and Los Angeles [which according to the report is even more expensive to live in that San Francisco], so can Prop 13 be blamed for the failing of our schools and how expensive it is to live in California? No. New York City, Honolulu, and Miami are the top three. All in states without a Prop 13, but much higher taxes. I have a friend who I am sorry to say that his mother died recently and he received his mother’s house in upstate New York along with her rent controlled apartment in downtown Manhattan. The rental property is a deal since his mother has lived there for many years and due to rent control he doesn’t even pay $1000/month for his gorgeous almost penthouse like view of Manhattan. The two bedroom house on the other hand he has to pay $12,000 per year in property tax as well as $4,000 per year in school tax. His parents have owned the house upstate for many years longer than when my parents purchased our house in the Sunset District back in 1954. My friend has also been unemployed for longer than myself and he has to pay $10 for a pack of cigarettes in downtown Manhattan. This is not a cheap place to live and even though they have no equivalent of Prop 13, it is still the most expensive city to live in. Two bedroom condo’s sell for close to $2,000,000 there not including the HOA monthly fees. My friend has about enough cash to last him a year and half and then he’s in big trouble if he can’t find a job.

So let’s say we repeal Prop 13 like Phil Ting wants to do and say property taxes increased to 5% each year with a reassessment to bring homes benefitting more it being brought up to modern day reality. I could possibly live with that even though it would triple my yearly property tax, but from what I understand, if you home goes down in value the tax doesn’t really, it just doesn’t increase. The idea behind prop 13 was to help residents remain in their homes by not having to pay more in taxes as they got older and on a limited income. This was hijacked by businesses who got added in and they don’t want to sell their spaces they own because they can rent them out for more [rental control doesn’t apply to businesses] and gain more on their investment. Since we have a much higher turnover rate in businesses who are renting their locations in California, not just San Francisco this means that business property owners gain more than homeowners.

Therefore, I think Phil should start by speaking more directly about his plans for prop 13 by trying to amend it to include only homeowners and not businesses. That way some of the businesses that were cheap in say the SoMA area when they were purchased that now charge a fortune to rent out would be paying more into funds of the state so that which would trickle down to San Francisco and San Francisco wouldn’t have to tax businesses to be here like most cities in the US. This would help San Francisco more than a total repeal of a state law that an SF Mayor can’t do, but Phil Ting could work toward that. If prop 13 were removed completely people would start to leave San Francisco, but not by a lot so property prices might drop a bit because of the tax increase. It could also theoretically drop California from it’s current ranking as the 8th largest global economy. Phil, keep this in mind.

Monday, I will announce my official endorsement for the Mayor of San Francisco and my reason why.

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Empire Avenue: Stock Trading for Social Media

I don’t have lots of money to play around in the stock market as those who saw my broke-ass of the week feature on the brokeassstuart website. If I did, I’d put it into Apple because even when things suck, they go up. Now there’s a website for people who would like to buy stock in their social media friends and hopefully gain a profit. It’s kind of like fantasy football for the stock market lovers.

What you do is sign up and connect all your social media sites to it so they can check it out and see how much you’re worth. After I finished I had started at somewhere around $11e [e being, eaves, the name of the empire commerce currency] and noticed that people started buying shares in me. I’m hooked up in a lot of sites, not just twitter and Facebook, but instagr.am, youtube, foursquare, LinkedIn, etc so I guess that’s why it showed my value at an increase of +7.217. That’s a lot higher than some of the bigger names out there.

I’m still not sure what you can do with what you earn, but I started to buy shares in friends of mine who are on twitter and Facebook who have good increases. I’ve never had money to invest in the stock market, though I did have an great-aunt who gave me her shares in a steel company that was sold and cashed out and I got $10k with no money invested so I can’t complain there, especially since he put me through college way back when…

This seems like a very interesting experiment since after I joined klout.com within a week I was asked in five different interviews what my klout score was. Who knows, in the future people will be asking what your social media stock price is at. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll break 400 like Apple at the end of the month, but I have no idea what the highest valued social media geek is worth at the moment. I’ll need to do more research. If you join and want a good return on your investment with the e that they give you look up BBTB since that’s the abbreviation of my stock. It’s climbing quickly. Since I’ve started writing this article my stock has jumped over 10 points overnight.

 

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BART Protest: When good ideas go bad

I have to count my blessings that I don’t work downtown at the moment because yesterday’s protest would have done the exact opposite to me of what the protesters wanted. Yesterday was a day when a good idea when wrong and I’m not even sure it was that good of an idea.

There is still a little dispute about whether it was because of the shooting of a homeless man who while being drunk threw a bottle at BART police and then drew a knife and started to come at them or whether or not it was BART cutting off cell phone service last week. There’s a couple of problems with each of these.

First, Charles Hill, attacked police officers. Sure, they probably could have done some TV style police moves and disarmed him and got him to the ground, but TV isn’t real life. He had a knife pulled out and after throwing a bottle at police started to come towards them. I don’t know if he ran, lunged or just stood there stabbing the air in the direction of the cops, but he was a threat. Oscar Grant on the other hand, wasn’t a threat. I can see people protesting that incident, but not this one.

The second is the Guy Fawkes masks protesting censorship by turning off cell phone service underground to protestors. Here’s a couple of things. I actually liked going into the station after work at one of my last jobs because the cell reception was crap. I could barely get 3G service on my cell even in BART so to me if BART and Muni kept their mouths shut no one would have noticed. The second is that most of the protesters probably don’t know that Guy Fawkes came to fame by being a religious fanatic in England who was caught sitting on a number of powder kegs to be used to assassinate King James I and hopefully restore a Catholic Monarchy in England. Fawkes ended up committing suicide at his execution by jumping from the scaffold he was to be hung from before he was to be drawn and quartered. Choosing one pain over a more grisly pain. The Brits back then only hung you until you were almost dead, then dropped you, tied you down, sliced off your genitals, then ripped your guts out and if you were lucky as the last act of mercy beheaded you. Actually, now that I think about it, the people who make V is for Vengence should have done some homework as well.

Many people are calling this a denial of freedom of speech. No one was denying their the right to speak, just not on cell phones which work poorly underground anyway. I’m not even sure why you would need a cellphone at a protest anyway since you’re supposed to make your voice heard to those you are protesting against.

Much of this fell on deaf ears. Yes, there were BART Police there and many of the protesters were arrested, but did they get their point across? In my opinion, NO. When you stage a protest your goal is to bring the people around you into your outrage and join you. What this protest did was anger those people who were trying to get home from work to be with their families. No to have their trip home interrupted by a mass of people angry over the death of a man who attacked police or because they couldn’t use their cellphones in a place where cellphones don’t work very well in the first place.

I think the protesters today need to do a little homework to learn how to be more effective. Perhaps it would have been better to protest at BART headquarters, but that would require more work to get there. People will not join your cause if your only purpose is to disrupt the people. BART and MUNI don’t really care too much about that, but the people do.

 

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Sam Mazza and his Castle

I’ve talked about Pacifica before and I figured it was time to talk about it again since I just discovered that Sam Mazza who owned the castle up on the hill and who died in 2001 now has his castle open to tours on the weekend by the Pacifica Historical Society.

I’ve only been able to see pictures of the inside and a few video clips from local news about the place, but I’ve never been able to actually enter Sam’s place. As it turns out Sam himself never lived there having purchased the castle in 1959 for $29,000 it was more a quirky art installation for him.

Sam was a painter who worked for theaters in the Bay Area and collected much of the stuff that in his mind was what a castle should have, swords, suits of armor, coats of arms and of course, a throne. After doing a little digging I found out the history of this castle on the hill and thought it would be interesting to share.

Built in 1908 originally by lawyer Henry H. McCloskey [grandfather of politician Pete McCloskey] it was to serve as a safe haven after the shake up in San Francisco in 1906 we all refer to as the Great Quake. When McCloskey died in 1916 it soon became of all things an abortion clinic run by a man with a history of identity theft. After his arrest his son continued the business until he also was arrested [remember back then not only was abortion illegal, but an extremely risky procedure.]

In the 20’s the castle passed to a miner from Montana who turned it into a speakeasy during prohibition with it expanding into a brothel. I’m sure the roaring 20’s roared pretty loud there since the police were regulars, but they usually entered with battering rams to try and shut the place down. Since the place kept in business even after the police kept trying to close it down I’m sure there were a few very powerful businessmen and politician probably from San Francisco who were caught in the age when they showed up. After it final closing it made a shift in the opposite direction being turned into a Red Cross station.

That would have been fine if the Eakins family which owned the castle and turned it into a Red Cross hadn’t leased it to the Coast Guard. Apparently the military folk didn’t treat the house too well and pretty much tore the place to pieces.

The castle sat in disrepair for years until Sam Mazza had a chance to realize his dream. I remember seeing him on TV once giving a tour to a field reporter for the local news. He was an unassuming guy that did what he did in the castle just because he could. One day, I’m hoping to have that ability too.

After his death he left money to start the Sam Mazza Foundation. Apparently being a painter could make you some decent money back then. Be sure to check out this site to see the slide shows of the inside and outside of the house. Oh and if you like spooky things the castle is also supposedly haunted, but how could it be a real castle without having a few ghosts walking around?

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Sorry to my loyal readers…

I found a couple of sites that I won’t mention who pay you to put ads on your Facebook and tweet feeds. I thought I might be able to make a few extra bucks on this, but it turns out that in the past month I haven’t earned even a dollar from both combined.

So just to let you all know that I’ve stopped the ads on my Facebook and Twitter feeds so when you read something it will be from me and me only and not from someone who’s giving me a couple of cents per post.

My apologies. I will only be accepting sponsorships/advertising from San Francisco local businesses that I wish to promote and not from people  who will be trying to sell you crap. I will continue with the AdBrite adds at the end of each post until someone can suggest a better way to make money since as we all should know by now that Google is evil and their AdSense is a scam.

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Commuting the Golden Gate Bridge

I have to say that most of my commute experience has involved Muni with a short 3 month stint having to drive from San Francisco to Burlingame. Of those two experiences I’d have to say the commute to Burlingame was the worst because it involved 280, 380 and 101. Commuting to Marin is much different and I learned that highway 101 has a dark and a light side, but with the opposite meanings applying.

Traveling down to Burlingame I usually hit sun pretty quickly, but I also hit much more traffic. I could get there in a half hour to an hour and a half and you just could never tell. While I’d call this the light side because the sun always seemed like it was out even in the winter, it was also a nightmare because the traffic was stop and go most of the way.

Getting to the Golden Gate Bridge is another story, while current construction work on Fulton made it take me 30 minutes to get from Ortega and 19th to Fulton and Funston, from there it took me six minutes to get to toll booths of the bridge. I’ve figured out a work around that will get me from my house to the bridge avoiding the back up and get me to my twelve mile destination in under a half hour. The odd thing is that in this case even including the bridge toll [$6 because it’s the Golden Gate Bridge be-atch!] is cheaper than taking the public transportation route which would be Muni to Golden Gate transit and would take a little over an hour to do. It’s actually about half the price including gas.

Since I rarely have reason to travel across the Golden Gate Bridge I had forgotten what it was like. Dark, Stephen King like fog until you get through the rainbow tunnel of the Waldo grade. I had to turn my wipers on and off because the fog was so heavy a person from San Diego would call it rain, but it was just an amazingly fun drive. The Bay Bridge speed limit is 50 mph which means people drive about 70-80 mph in part because the fog is usually higher up over there and the lanes are wider and there is more of them.

The Golden Gate Bridge is 45 mph which means that people drive maybe 50 mph, but during commute it’s usually around 40 mph if not a little slower. because there are only three lanes north bound and two lanes south bound. I guess they want people to get out of San Francisco as fast as possible, but we only want to let them in at a slow and expensive rate.


I had vowed in the past to never cross a bridge again, but only realized that was from my experience with the Bay Bridge. Crossing the Golden Gate was, well, nice. It was the calmest drive I’ve ever had and I definitely didn’t feel as cramped as I did do when I ride on Muni during rush hour.

The biggest bonus was after getting out of the Waldo tunnel seeing sunlight and arriving at my destination I find that the company I’m freelancing for offers it’s employees free snacks like fresh fruit, chips, granola bars, yogurt, juice, tea, sodas, coffee and bottled water. They’ll even make a lunch run for sandwiches which you can enjoy in the employee lounge which has a 60″ HD flat screen TV and comfy couches. When I look out my window I get a gorgeous view of the Marin estuary and when I walk out on the deck I get the smell of the fresh salt air which I love while watching blue heron’s and egret’s walking around the marshlands.

I think I’m going to get used to this freelance gig really quick.

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Why I don’t like working from home

So today, after a minor delay, I get to leave the house to go to work. I’ve been freelancing from home for the past several months and while there are advantages, there are also disadvantages. Let’s take a look from my perspective.

Advantages:

  1. You get to make your own hours.
  2. You don’t have to dress up
  3. You can go at your own pace
  4. You don’t have to deal with work place authority
Disadvantages:
  1. Family interruptions that break your train of thought.
  2. You can smoke in your home office which means you will smoke more than you need to.
  3. No one will fire you for drinking on the job so you probably drink more than you need to.
  4. You forget about what time of day it is so you don’t eat regularly.
  5. You have to find your own health insurance coverage.
  6. You don’t get out of the house as often.
  7. You get less exercise.

I like job stability and while I’ve just got a temporary in house freelance job which means it won’t be long lasting, it will at least give me a reason to have some focus in my day and to get up and move around. I’ve been trying to stop smoking and since smoking isn’t allowed in workplaces here this will help. I’m one of those people who smokes because I’m bored, not because I’m stressed. I have managed to cut down quite a bit, but now it will be even easier.

I’ll get to be more mobile and meet new people which I always like. Some of them might come in handy in the future which is always a good thing. This will also give me a change to get outside the city since I don’t get to do that very often and it’s usually down the peninsula. I also won’t have my 18 year old cat sitting next to me yowling for attention all day and night. The only bad thing about this, is that I’ll have less time to spend with my daughter which only means that when I do have time I’ll enjoy that even more and it will spur me on to do more with her when I have time to.

So here I go, off to work a journey into the unknown, but at least I know that I’ll have a regular paycheck coming for a little while. I will also be able to count myself as not one of the hundreds of thousands of unemployed for a little while that will hopefully turn permanent. So here I go, full guns blazing!

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Attack the Bridge!

Being an lover of  sci-fi and horror movies I’ve noted a trend when the movies are set in San Francisco…The Golden Gate Bridge always goes first. The X-men did it, Terminator did it, It came from the deep did it and now the bridge is attacked by those damn, dirty apes! [Rise of the Planet of the Apes reference.]

We all know that when someone mentions San Francisco in a story, that there is almost always a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. It is the icon which binds San Francisco together even though in most movies shots of the bridge are taken from Marin facing San Francisco, yet when the bridge is attacks the cameras shoot from San Francisco towards Marin. I suppose the movie makers want to blame Marin for the fall of the bridge.

To many long time residents of San Francisco when you leave the city headed north when you see the bridge coming home, you know you’re home. Many have noted that we don’t charge you to leave San Francisco, but we do charge you to enter it. [San Francisco is still trying to find a way to charge Peninsula residents to enter the city.]

Perhaps part of the bridge always being destroyed has to do with appeasing people outside of the city who hate us for our San Francisco Values. I’m not sure, but I think it’s always kind of funny. I have rarely had reason to drive across the bridge as I’ve lost contact with most of my old friends in the Marin area and I don’t really have any business contacts in that direction, but I do generally like Marin and especially Sausalito. I have in past five years actually walked across the bridge for the first time in my life which I have to say is a rather invigorating, but pleasant walk to take.

Well, now this has changed. Tomorrow I will start some freelance work across the bridge in Mill Valley. This could, after awhile turn into a permanent position. Now I think I have to understand the method of thinking involved in having to cross a bridge to go to work. I had previously vowed never to do this, but the company that wants me is just so cool that I couldn’t resist it. Hopefully, I won’t encounter any crazed monkeys tomorrow.

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Ed Lee breaks his promise

As expected Mayor Ed Lee will announce today that he is running for re-election as Mayor of San Francisco. This is coming from the man who received the position of Mayor all because he is not a politician and because he vowed not to do what he is now going to do. Ed has been a good Mayor in the seven months he’s had to do the job but he has now done the first thing that all politicians should not do — broken his promises to the people.

I would have to say that things could have been a lot worse in San Francisco since he’s been in office, but do feel some ground rules should be set.

  1. He should answer for why he has broken his promise to not run for re-election. A promise that got him the job as well as support from several of the Board of Supervisors to put him in the position in the first place.
  2. His ties to Rose Pak who along with the backing of several Chinese construction companies seeking to serve the Chinese population of San Francisco and not the citizens of San Francisco need to be looked into very closely to make sure that none of the money from the Run Ed Run campaign of Progress for all goes into his coffers.
  3. He needs to be held accountable for trying to save the city money, yet offers candidates a dollar for dollar supplement to run their campaigns. This was a first for San Francisco and is costing the city large revenues.
  4. His exemption of Twitter from having to pay local tax on employees while making the rest of the cities businesses continue to pay. [most cities do not charge local employment tax on businesses.]
Lee himself has declared that he is not a politician and that is why he was chosen as the interim mayor of San Francisco. By not being a politician he was expect not to make any sweeping changes to the city, but more act as a general manager and keep it together. So now the non-politician is going to step it up and run for the real Mayor position and jump into politics.
Perhaps this could be an attempt by Rose Pak who has stated anyone, but Leland Yee to dilute the Asian vote to keep Yee, the front runner from any possibility of gaining ground. If so, I would consider that a bold political move of a high stakes poker game sort of thing. In the long run though, I like Ed Lee and he was a good interim Mayor, but interim is just that. He will be appearing at a panel at the Castro street theater tonight and I urge you all to attend and see what he has to say, but think about what I’ve just written.

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Sunrise Deli

I have to say I came a bit late to learning about falafel, but when I did I happened to find the best place in the city to get it and that is the Sunrise Deli. They specialize in Middle-Eastern cuisine which means it could be based on just about any country there so expect to see a few variations [definitely not Egyptian based as those falafel are made with fava beans]. Opening in 1984 at 2115 Irving Street this location has expanded to serve a total of three locations in San Francisco and one in Berkeley.

Falafel tends to be on the greasy side and should be eaten as soon as it comes out of the fryer. I’m not sure what type of oil they use here, but it not greasy compared to other places and the taste holds up even after it’s sat for awhile. I know this because we were looking for an inexpensive way to serve up food to people at my daughter’s first birthday so we decided to go to the Sunrise Deli.

There is a lot more to this place than just falafel, but that’s what brings you into the store usually. I’ve gotten a lot of my friends hooked on the fried paste that’s made from dried chickpeas [garbanzo beans], onion, garlic, parsley and a few other spices and fried up into little hockey pucks as my cousin who’d never had them before called them. I like to dip them in hummus which is actually a little like falafel that hasn’t been fried with more olive oil mixed in, but they can be stuffed into pita bread with a host of other ingredients and served as a sandwich.

Speaking of sandwiches, I tried the shawarma one day that in some places looks more like a middle eastern burrito rather than the way they are truly made, but stuffing the contents into a half a pita bread. There’s usually some chicken or lamb involved with onions, tomatoes and other grilled vegetables topped with some tahini sauce and pickles and these are wonderful. Their vegetarian plate will appeal to vegans since there are no animal products involved at all.

The best part about the Irving Street location is the price. I won’t knock them because I know that downtown rents are expensive, but a half dozen falafel is less expensive on Irving Street than it is downtown and since they’re so close to us that makes it an even better bargain. When we called in the order for my daughter’s party we had more than enough to feed a crowd of about 30 people for a little over $50. Of course we had the tabouli, babaganoush and olives as well as the pickled turnips [those are the pink strips in the picture that if you don’t tell someone what they are they’ll try them and tell you they’re quite good]. We rounded it out with several of their fresh sesame seed bread rings.

On a weekend when you want something that you can say it fried, but light the falafel at the Sunrise Deli is the place to go.

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