Thus, endeth the world not with a whimper but with a bang...
Governor disgusting coward Jindal of Louisana gave a press conference where he stated it's too early to talk about Gun Control. No it is not, it's far, far, far too late.
America has been conquered by Conservatives. Every problem in this Nation can be traced back to the influence and effect the right-wing nut jobs have over the country. After losing the Civil War, the Confederacy (a Plutocracy of Rich 1% Slave Owners) has been engaging in guerilla tactics and asymetrical warfare for 150 years and they've turned the Nation (with some notable setbacks) into a Conservative Plutocracy in the same model as the Confederacy, a Neo-Confederacy.
Now, another Right-Wing White Domestic Terrorist has gone on a shooting spree but, unlike the immediate and voiceforus denunciations of "Terrorism" when the shooter is named Muhammad, Conservatives shout down anyone who links their despicable evil agenda to the violence it indisputably foments. As always right-wingers proclaim the murderer is actually a Liberal because No True Conservative...
And Gun Nuts declare we're too emotional to talk about Gun Control and converge like locusts to silence anyone who points out that Gun Violence in the United States is an Epidemic. No other civilized, so-called first world Nation suffers the levels of Gun Violence we do in the United States.
If guns were the real solution then we'd see appreciable reductions in gun violence but, the evidence shows more guns equals more gun violence.
This is such an obvious, blatant fact that Gun Makers and Gun Humping Lunatics demand those facts be altered and obscured, which is why just this month The Center for Disease Control has been banned for decades by Republicans in Congress and the NRA from collecting any data/information on Gun Deaths and Injuries.
Once upon a time, a small, dedicated team showed that it is possible to do real journalism on teevee with almost no budget.
And it's still possible. In fact, with technology getting better and cheaper, and with cable news running around the clock, the constraints on doing excellent journalism have never had less to do with time or money or talent.
The reason that political/cultural reporting in America is mostly tapioca or shit or shit-infused tapioca is because the people who own the networks like it that way.
MSNBC Is Canceling Ed Schultz And Giving His Show To Chuck Todd
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With this move, the long anticipated dropping of MSNBC’s liberal programming begins. What is interesting is that Ed Schultz has often pulled better ratings that Chris Hayes and All In at 8 PM, but Hayes is a favorite of MSNBC boss Phil Griffin, while the network head has been trying to get rid of Schultz for years. Griffin first tried to dump Schultz by shuffling him off to the weekend wasteland, but after Ed’s ratings didn’t nosedive Griffin moved him back to 5 PM ET.
One of the main problems at the network is the dreadful All In, but MSNBC had decided months ago that they would be dumping their liberal hosts in favor of people like Chuck Todd. MSNBC leadership completely mistreated their liberal audience, and when the audience walked away, the network used the declining ratings as an excuse to blame liberals.
Journalist Jessica Grose, linguist Penny Eckert and speech pathologist Susan Sankin join Fresh Air for a conversation about upspeak, vocal fry and how women’s voices are changing – and whether or not that’s a problem.
On linguist Penny Eckert’s reaction to the criticism of young women’s voices:
“It makes me really angry. And it makes me angry, first of all, because the biggest users of vocal fry traditionally have been men, and it still is; men in the U.K, for instance. And it’s considered kind of a sign of hyper-masculinity … and by the same token, uptalk, it’s clear that in some people’s voices that has really become a style, but it has been around forever, and people use it stylistically in a variety of ways—both men and women. So the disparity in people’s noticing is just very clear to me: people are busy policing young women’s language, and nobody is policing older or younger men’s language.”
With an over six-month waitlist, L.A.-based tattoo artist Dr. Woo has garnered attention for his exceptionally effortless tattoo designs. Composed from delicate lines, dots, and geometric patterns, his tattoos are a highly coveted work of body art, which require patience and effort to obtain.
We’ve seen several fusions now, but despite Steven mirroring the audience’s desire to see them, only a few have been presented as a positive thing. All the others were demonstrated by the show and by Steven’s in-show reaction to be distinctly negative for everyone involved.
For the positive, we have Garnet, Opal, and Stevonnie (Opal is rocky, but she got the Garnet seal-of-approval in Giant Woman, and Garnet is probably our authority on healthy fusions). Garnet and Opal are seen to be quite similar, actually - cases in which her two halves’ differences balance out in a fusion, instead of compounding similarities like Sugilite.
For the negative, we have Sugilite (who shows how dangerous fusion can be), Sardonyx (who was downright mean to Amethyst - call it shade all you will, but I sure wouldn’t like my friends to form up and then talk about me like that), Rainbow Quartz (Who was a being of pure spite and completely failed the Garnet Litmus Test), and, of course, Malachite. Alexandrite gets a by because she’s too monstrous and unstable to really have a distinct personality.
So what is the difference between the positively-represented fusions and the negatively represented fusions?
Communication.
Rebecca Sugar is putting a story about consent and communication right in front of us. What’s the difference between Opal and, say, Sardonyx? When forming Opal, both Pearl and Amethyst have the same intention. They’re both know why they’re doing it (to save Steven) and they are both equal parties in the fusion. For Sardonyx, not only was Pearl lying about her motivations, she was also not viewing the fusion as a fusion of equals (I think Garnet was - she doesn’t actually think she’s better than her friends, and she seems to hate that they think she is). Same goes for Rainbow Quartz, who was again a being composed of two different motivations and no communication of those motivations (Rose just wanted to put on a show, Pearl wanted to mark Rose as her territory). Sugilite is much the same as Sardonyx. Malachite was obviously and deliberately formed with two different intentions.
Garnet has turned into a sort of relationship guru for the show. She gives people advice, seems to have good knowledge of what is healthy and unhealthy, and is held up often as an ideal relationship. She considers herself a conversation. Trust and honesty aren’t just important to her - they are literally what she is. I can’t imagine how trying all these fusions based on dishonest principles must be for her.
The importance of honest communication is the number one theme of this show. If the gems don’t start actually talking to each other sharpish, they are going to fall apart.
Hey people, please follow this person because their commentary is spot on and gets far less attention that it deserves.
“Recognize the KluKluxKlan as a domestic terrorist organization & make their eradication a Homeland Security priority.” There are 24,980 signatures by far and 75,020 is needed.
Weird, like, I feel like I’ve stepped outside of reality momentarily, like I’m only half-here.
Weird, like, I’ve had the odd taste in my throat and unease in my belly that often signal oncoming cold symptoms, but they’ve been fading and out, and the other things I usually query as self-diagnostics for “you’re getting a cold!” haven’t been there.
Weird, like, I’ve only once in my life had something that fit what others described as a migraine, but tonight I was noticing bits of the things that I felt then… in diminished form, like echoes. I’m sure my severely disrupted sleep/wake cycle the last few days hasn’t been easy on my body/mind/self, but… this doesn’t make sense.
Weird, like, I remember looking at the clock about 6:30pm and thinking I should make sure to get out of the house… and I started getting clothes on, cleaning myself up to leave — and I remember looking at the clock again just before 10pm and being certain that much time could not have passed, and I had only put on underwear and cleaned up my face.
Weird, like, I don’t know what temperature feels comfortable in here. I’ve had the heat on several times today, to higher than I would almost ever turn it — and then I’ve turned it off and opened things up to cool it way down. Then repeat the process with a few temperature changes on both ends of things… not quite as warm heater, colder cooldown, less cool next cycle or even colder still.
I know I’ve been really itching for, hungry for, needing a huge dose of surreality in my life for a while. I know I’ve been calling for fire and ocean and seeking out art that tears at the cloud of mundane corporeal existence, visuals and visions that pull me beyond. I know I’ve had that need for too long… I wonder if it was my recent call seeking Discord that finally opened the gates?
The laptop computer I’m currently using to type this is just barely — in the last couple of days — up and functional again (minus the audio output, which may not ever be working.) I hadn’t realized for some time that when I first got WinXP installed on here, I’d broken something about its ability to update itself, to apply security patches and such, and it ended up being a simpler process to wipe and start over… though the process of getting things working took several more wipe/reinstall cycles, each with a fair bit of research and experimentation and hair-pulling (and not the sexy kind.)
The last time I was installing Windows on here, and it asked me for the computer’s name, I started to type “ThinkPad” as I had done several times before. It would have still been the only system I own whose name does not begin with my own, then a hyphen, then a single word identifier (-laptop, -desktop, -win7desk, -dlbox, etc.) But I stopped. And I thought. And I named her.
Eris-Spawn.
How d’ya like them apples, huh? Seems golden to me!
My mother had three pregnancies, and two children. She had a miscarriage, between my brother and I, in that four year span between our births, there was another pregnancy, another child desperately wanted, who didn’t live to term.
My mother had her pre-natal care, and her post-miscarriage care, at Planned Parenthood.
Because it was the best place for her. Because at the time, she had a two year old child and a bike and they were living just around that nice little sweet spot between ‘desperately poor’ and ‘almost have enough to consider a savings account.‘ And when you are poor, and female, and need health services, Planned Parenthood is there.
And my mother walked past the protesters, walked past the people who screamed at her about not killing her baby, about how she was a whore, and she was going to hell. My mother, in mourning for a child that she had lost, blaming herself, hating herself for failing at this most feminine of things, walked through that, to care for herself, to get the medical care she needed. So that someday, two years later, she could have me.
I cannot speak to the courage that must have taken. But that path is walked by thousands of women. Every single day.
She donated to Planned Parenthood until her death. And she said to me, that the people who screamed at her saw her only as a vessel for a baby. They didn’t care about her, they didn’t care about her baby, either. They were pro-birth, not pro-life, because none of them would be there after her baby was born, to offer help and support and care.
The protesters didn’t care about her. And the medical professionals inside did. It is the right of every woman to have access to safe, affordable, quality health care, no matter where she comes from, what her income is, or what choices she makes with her life. And that is what these kind of bills are attempting to take away.
Irma Stern, “Arab in Black” (1939), oil on canvas (courtesy Bonhams)
Art Movements is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world.
Irma Stern’s “Arab in Black” (1939) was discovered in a London apartment during a valuation visit by Bonhams’ specialist Hannah O’Leary. According to the Guardian, the painting — which was once sold to fund Nelson Mandela’s legal defense — was being used as a noticeboard by its owners. The work is estimated to fetch $1.1–1.6 million at auction this September.
Gerhard Richter excluded his early figurative works from his catalogue raisonné, effectively disavowing them.
True to his word, Georg Baselitz withdrew nine paintings and a sculpture that were on long-term loan to Dresden’s Albertinum museum in protest over the German government’s proposal to require export permits for all artworks more than 50 years old and valued at over €150,000 (~$163,000).
UNESCO completed its reconstruction of 14 mausoleums that were destroyed three years ago by Islamic extremists in Timbuktu.
Ai Weiwei was issued a new passport by the Chinese government. The authorities revoked the artist’s travel rights in 2011 after accusing him of tax evasion.
A mural in North Philadelphia featuring a portrait of Bill Cosby was erased after someone spray-painted “RAPIST” over the disgraced comedian’s image.
Miami Beach officer Jorge Mercado will not face criminal charges in the tasering death of 18-year-old street artist Israel Hernandez-Llach in 2013.
Texas resident Ray Riley believes that a painting he purchased for $90 at a thrift store is a work by German artist Sigmar Polke. He intends to submit the work to an authenticator in California.
Louis Vuitton ended its 13-year partnership with Takashi Murakami.
On November 6, at the World Congress of the Organization of World Heritage Cities, Philadelphia may become the first US city designated a World Heritage City.
An exhibition based on the work of the San Diego Union-Tribune‘s longtime art critic Robert L. Pincus that was scheduled to open in November at the Oceanside Museum of Art has been cancelled.
Rirkrit Tiravanija’s first commercial restaurant — Unclebrother in Hancock, New York — passed its health inspection.
Art collectors Eskandar and Fatima Maleki settled a High Court dispute with art dealer Amir Shariat. The couple accused the dealer of pocketing undisclosed commissions from their purchases; Shariat denied the couple’s claim that he agreed to purchase works uncompensated in order to develop a professional reputation.
Rome’s Trevi Fountain, which is currently undergoing renovations, is crawling with rats.
Jan Preisler’s painting “Koupání” (“Bathing”), which was stolen from a gallery in Central Bohemia in 1996, was recovered by police in Prague.
A monument designed by 3RW was unveiled on Norway’s Utøya island commemorating the 2011 terrorist attack in which 69 people were killed.
A long-stalled performing arts venue at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan must now be completed with a maximum budget of $200 million.
Christian Deydier, a collector of Chinese antiquities, and billionaire collector François Pinault are irate after the French government forced them to return to China more than 30 ancient gold artifacts believed to have been looted.
Recently recovered French documents suggest that the remains buried in Drumcliffe, Ireland, which were long believed to be the body of W.B. Yeats, are more likely only part of the beloved poet’s skeleton “mixed pell-mell with other bones.”
This spacesuit was worn by astronaut Neil Armstrong, Commander of the Apollo 11 mission, which landed the first man on the moon on July 20, 1969. (photo by Eric Long, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution) (click to enlarge)
The Smithsonian Institution launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the conservation of the spacesuit Neil Armstrong wore when he first set foot on the moon.
Robert Gentile, the alleged mobster the FBI believes may be the only living person with knowledge that could lead to the solving of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist, has filed a complaint against the Bureau for inducing him to commit crimes it could then use as leverage to question him about the stolen art.
An autonomous underwater vehicle dubbed Sentry discovered a shipwreck 150 miles off the coast of North Carolina dating to the time of the Revolutionary War.
The current owner of the Villa Ambron, the historic Alexandria home where author Lawrence Durrell lived and which inspired his series The Alexandria Quartet, intends to bulldoze the building and put up a residential high-rise in its place.
China launched the Kaogu-01, a $12.9 million archaeological vessel equipped with powerful cranes and decompression and air-lock chambers.
The head of a giant Vladimir Lenin statue that was decapitated and buried in Berlin in 1991 will be unearthed and put on display at the Citadel Spandau.
Bristol City Council will rewrite its graffiti laws to specifically target tagging, while allowing for more elaborate works of street art.
As they attempt to cope with budget cuts, galleries and museums throughout the UK that are currently free are drawing up plans for charging admission.
The Reykjavik Art Museum’s website was redesigned. The site now features detailed records on every exhibition held at the museum since it opened in 1973.
A box of “alphabet flashcards” designed by Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) was discovered by the author’s widow, Audrey Geisel, and Seuss’s longtime assistant Claudia Prescott.
Kanye West’s new music video, “All Day/I Feel Like That,” will be screened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this Saturday through Tuesday. The video is directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen.
A 16-year-old in Derry, Ireland, was sentenced to become an unofficial court sketch artist.
The inaugural London Design Biennale will open at Somerset House on September 14, 2016.
Transactions
New York University’s Fales and Special Collection Library will acquire and maintain the archive of online publication Triple Canopy.
Grants issued by the California Arts Council toward “Local Impact” projects and “Creative Communities” total $3.8 million for 2015–2016, up by $1 million from 2014–2015.
The development of San Francisco’s Treasure Island will reportedly include $50 million in public art.
Five medals that belonged to British spy Violette Szabo — who was captured and tortured by the Nazis, and died in a concentration camp — sold for £260,000 (~$403,000). They were purchased on behalf of Lord Ashcroft and will soon be on public display at the Imperial War Museum.
Transitions
Margaret K. Hofer was appointed vice president and director of the New-York Historical Society.
Alejandro Aravena was appointed director of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Jackie Milad was appointed curator of contemporary art at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts.
The new Rizzoli store nearly ready for its opening on Monday. (photo by @caroaskew/Instagram)
Beloved New York City bookstore Rizzoli will reopen in its new home at 1133 Broadway on Monday. The store was forced to leave its longtime space on West 57th Street last year.
The ICA in Philadelphia hired Anthony Elms, Alex Klein, and Kate Kraczon as chief curator, curator, and associate curator, respectively.
Anita Chung left the Cleveland Museum of Art, where she had been the curator of Chinese art, to become the chief operating officer of Hong Kong’s Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation.
Ferran Barenblit was hired to be the new director of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona.
Brian Whiteley, a co-founder of the now-defunct Select art fair, will launch a new art fair during Art Basel Miami Beach in December, named Satellite. Fellow Select co-founder Matthew Eck is launching a satellite fair of his own, called X Contemporary.
Accolades
Jill Frank, Elizabeth Lide, and Masud Ashley Olufani were announced as the winners of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia’s Working Artist Project.
The winners of a competition to revitalize three viaducts in Midtown Detroit were announced. Each team will receive $75,000 toward executing its design.
The Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans revealed its first lineup of artists-in-residence.
The New York Foundation for the Arts released the list of its 2015 fellowship recipients.
Chenjerai Hove (1956–2015), novelist and poet. Opponent of the Mugabe regime.
Dieter Moebius (1944–2015), musician and electronic music pioneer.
Tom Moore (1928–2015), artist. Worked as an illustrator for Archie Comics, Underdog, and Mighty Mouse.
Ingrid Sischy (1952–2015), journalist, critic, and former editor at Artforum (from 1979 to 1988).
Vera Stern (1927–2015), arts administrator. Stern and her husband, the violinist Isaac Stern, were instrumental in saving Carnegie Hall from demolition in 1960.
James Tate (1943–2015), poet and Pulitzer Prize winner.
Harold Meyerson overstates his argument on the Southern economy as the point of low-wage capitalist production both before the Civil War and today, but he makes a lot of good points and it’s well worth your time. Basically, Meyerson uses the new historical literature on the connections between northern capitalists and southern plantation owners to draw comparisons to the recent growth of low-wage industrialization in the anti-union South. There has been some return of heavy industry to the South in low-wage, non-union states that provide workers few opportunities for economic advancement and are constricted by state governments that are firmly in the pocket of the companies. And that has, as Meyerson states, created two nations in one, as during the mid-19th century, as northern and western liberal states increasingly pass worker-friendly legislation while southern and Midwestern states pass anti-worker legislation.
Meyerson also notes the expansion of southern style governance north in the present, although he significantly underestimates how prominent this was in the pre-Civil War North, as the Democratic Party was a white supremacist party no matter where it ruled. The point about two nations in one is something I’d observed. I will note that the comparison between slavery in 1860 and non-union auto factory work in 2015 is stretching it pretty far; after all, there is still plenty of truly brutal work happening around the world, often in conditions of slave labor. But there’s no question that in a world of globalized capital, low-wage American production can make sense in some industry and unless the U.S. government steps up with pro-labor measures, politicians in the pockets of corporations will bend over backwards to create states that serve those companies as much as possible.
“He is probably the most controversial figure in the musical world today and when you hear his performance, if you will forgive me, you’ll understand why,” says the talk show host in the 1960 clip of I’ve Got a Secret. He’s speaking of John Cage, who by then was highly successful for his difficult music. And Cage was firm on the point of making music — when the host announces that Cage teaches “a course on experimental sound at the New School,” Cage is quick to correct him.
“I consider music the production of sound, and since in the piece which you will hear I produce sound, I will call it music,” Cage says placidly with a subtle smile that never fades throughout his performance of “Water Walk.”
It wasn’t the first time Cage had been on a game show — in 1959, in Milan, he was a guest on Lascia o Raddoppia? where he answered esoteric questions on various species of mushrooms (which was his subject of choice). In I’ve Got a Secret, the ostensible aim is to reveal its contestant’s “secrets,” which for Cage means his instruments: an iron pipe, a goose call, a bottle of wine, a vase of roses. In a typically Cageian manner, he announces he will make music out of seemingly unmusical objects. The piece, he explains, is called “Water Walk” “because it contains water and because I walk during the performance.”
Before the performance, the host assures the audience that it’s fine to laugh, perhaps even encouraging it. “These are nice people, but some of them are going to laugh. Is that alright?” he addresses Cage. In his soft voice, Cage answers, “Of course. I consider laughter preferable to tears.”
What ensues reminds me of being at the theater when audience members laugh at awkward or taboo scenes as a way, I think, of coping with an uncomfortable experience that wasn’t intentionally funny. Hysterical laughs follow the clunk of ice cubes in a cup; the gulp of water entering a jug; and the slam of radios falling onto the floor. Cage repeats the same actions in a willful, structured manner, though the order of sounds — which over time echo and sit in the air — is never predictable.
The audience’s flippant reaction is at odds with what we normally think of Cage — there is a certain seriousness attached to his work. Yet watching Cage onstage it’s clear he had a sense of humor or that at least he was unfazed by others. At one point, the host reads a review in the New York Herald Tribune of Cage’s then-recent album: “Certain compositions of his are really a delight to the ear. This is something that cannot be said of quite a few other Cage items.” Cage, in response, gives a wide, lighthearted smile.
Picasso at his 80th birthday celebration (screenshot via YouTube)
How did Pablo Picasso celebrate his 80th birthday? Thanks to recent efforts by the Associated Press and British Movietone to make their newsreel archives more accessible to the public, we can now witness snippets of the occasion. The two companies announced a project to upload over one million minutes of digitized film footage to YouTube, comprising over 550,000 videos dating as far back as 1895. There are plenty of art-related clips to explore — watch New Yorkers in 1995 react to Christian Boltanski’s “LOST: New York Projects” in the subway or see Christo and Jeanne-Claude unwrap the Reichstag — but one of the greatest gems is the documentation of Picasso’s birthday.
Titled “Still Young at Eighty,” the clip shows the fresh octogenarian in 1961 at his French Riviera home surrounded by a swarm of guests, who were treated to an exclusive exhibition of over two dozen of his paintings. Many of the works were usually tucked away in private collections, and the video teases us with views of a couple of portraits. It then features the Spanish artist enjoying himself at a bullfight, after which folk dancers give a special performance for him. The event stands as a stark contrast to his 90th birthday, which he ignored, according to the New York Times.
Amid the AP archive, one can also find the sale of a number of Picassos at a Sotheby’s auction almost exactly a year before those birthday festivities. The works, from New York financier Jacques Sarlie’s private collection, raked in a total of £430,000, with Picasso’s “Crouching Woman” (1902) bringing in the most: £48,000. “La Gommeuse” and “Still Life with a Candle” fetched £30,000 and £17,000 that night, respectively.
“As everyone knows, Picasso can be difficult,” says the video’s narrator. “But people in the money want his work.”
Fast-forward to 1973, and one can witness the funerary procession following the artist’s death at the age of 91. The video shows hazy shots of Picasso’s chateau at Vauvenargues, which his wife Jacqueline chose as his final resting place, before cutting to a small crowd of mourners waiting outside the gate. Watching the completely silent scenes is especially somber after seeing the fanfare of his 80th birthday.
One more notable, Picasso-related reel offers a glimpse into the day “Guernica” entered the permanent collection of the Museo Nacional del Prado, during a 1981 exhibition that coincided with what would have been the artist’s 100th birthday. The painting depicting horrors of the Spanish Civil War had spent decades away from Spain at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and Picasso wanted it to return to his homeland only after democracy was restored. Issues over its custody divided officials and the artist’s daughter, who argued that the post-Franco society was not yet democratic enough, as the video describes; the painting’s arrival in Madrid thus marked shifting attitudes towards the political climate.
“A genius, immortalized through his work, Picasso belonged to the 20th century,” the narrator says. “His depiction of ‘Guernica,’ now in its rightful place, will remind Spaniards of a tragic chapter in their history, but by it’s presence, it shows faith in Spain’s young democracy.” The painting, as the video notes, was “one of his most controversial,” and it fueled debate once more when it moved just a little over a decade later to its present home, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.
In the San Francisco housing thread below, Steven Attewell points to this post by Robert Cruickshank that complicates the most simplistic version of the claim that some portions of ‘the left’ in San Francisco oppose housing. Cruickshank, accurately, points out that a number of recent leftist politicians and mayoral candidates ran on platforms with thoughtful, progressive plans to increase supply, with a strong focus on affordable housing. I don’t doubt this is true, but I don’t think that entirely rebuts the central claim of Metcalf’s central argument; namely, that ‘the left’ has unwittingly contributed to the current housing shortage and attendant affordability crisis. I don’t doubt the sincerity or wisdom of Matt Gonzalez and others’ housing plans, but the rubber meets the road when that faction is forced to choose their second best option amongst the following:
1) New housing built, with significant units set aside for affordable housing
2) New housing built, with relatively few units set aside as affordable housing
3) New housing not built.
The problem isn’t that the left favors (1), it’s that they have repeatedly agitated for (3) over (2). The case that adding more housing to our cities positively contributes to a significant array of progressive goals seems pretty much unimpeachable to me. Martin Duke lists the benefits, in the context of Seattle; most apply just as well to San Francisco:
Fewer vehicle miles traveled, resulting in less energy usage, air pollution, and run off into the Sound.
Less farmland and virgin forest destroyed for new housing.
More legislative representation and better treatment of urban issues in Olympia.
More time in congested central cities, where vehicle speeds make fatalities rare.
Less competition for existing affordable units.
More economic activity both in construction and in the businesses spawned by new units
A larger tax base for large capital projects (like light rail) that benefit everybody, as well as social programs
And this is true even when the new housing is expensive, because it takes the pressure off older housing stock by taking rich people out of the bidding for it. But significant portions of the left in San Francisco have worked very hard to convince themselves that (3) makes a greater contribution to progressive policy outcomes than (2). This leads them to make some pretty strange and embarrassing arguments. Since it was linked in the thread below and I saw some anti-housing NIMBYs in Seattle circulating it on facebook a few weeks ago, let’s take a look at Tim Redmond’s effort on that front:
The people with high disposable incomes who fill those condos or luxury rentals will spend money in town, creating a demand for jobs – restaurant workers, grocery clerks, cops and firefighters, bank tellers … and those people will also need a place to live.
(Sup. Scott Wiener notes that the city’s police force hasn’t kept up with the population growth. Perfect example – bring in 5,000 new wealthy residents, and the city faces pressure to hire more cops to protect them. Those cops cost tax money – but they also need places to live. And that puts pressure on the housing market).
So according to the study, by Keyser Marston Associates, every time the city allows 100 new high-end housing units, it needs to build between 20 and 43 new affordable units – just to keep the housing balance the way it is now. Put the affordable units in the main complex and the impact is lower (because fewer millionaires move in). Built them, as is common, somewhere else and the impact is greater.
In summary, for every 100 market rate condominium units there are 25.0 lower income households generated through the direct impact of the consumption of the condominium buyers and a total of 43.31 households if total direct, indirect, and induced impacts are counted in the analysis.
If the city demands 15 percent affordable set-asides, then every market-rate building adds more demand for affordable housing than it supplies. That means every new building makes the housing crisis worse.
This analysis has a rather obvious empirical flaw, so obvious one would think it hardly needs to be stated: refusing to build a luxury unit will not dissuade its would-be wealthy resident from moving to the city. It’s not like they’re moving to the city because they really liked that one particular condo. They’re almost certainly going to come anyway, and bid on some less-nice unit, denying some less-rich person, quite possibly a long-term San Francisco resident, for those worried about displacement, from living in a city.
But the obvious empirical flaw in this argument is trumped by an even more terrible normative flaw: namely, that it’s a good and progressive policy to prevent jobs, including some good middle class jobs, from being created. In the context of 2015, less than a decade after a massive job destroying recession, followed by many years of anemic job growth, which has pushed many thousands out of the job market and harmed the economic well-being and security of the middle class, this is particularly grotesque, simply because the city doesn’t want to go to the trouble of allowing for enough housing for them, should be seen as appalling immediately.
Another thing–there’s plenty of potential for new housing with minimal displacement in the city, simply be liberalizing some of the rules that strangle development in single family zones. One example, which had some success in Vancouver and Portland, and is now being proposed in Seattle, is to change the incentive structure and rules regarding the construction of backyard cottages:
Adding tiny, freestanding structures behind single-family homes across the city would increase density while preserving neighborhood character, proponents say. This would go a long way toward satisfying the city’s official policy of “infill development,” putting more housing on existing underutilized land. But first, the city would have to tweak existing building regulations tailored to mid-20th century lifestyles.
The trend is catching on, with small apartments popping up in urban backyards across North America. Like attached “granny flats” within existing buildings, backyard cottages are smaller dwellings, tucked away off the street — typically 200 to 800 square feet — with little aesthetic impact.
But remarkably, San Francisco seems stuck in a 1950s zoning mentality, mandating single-family dwellings with large backyards across nearly two-thirds of the city’s residential land. Backyard cottages are nearly impossible to construct within city limits, due to a combination of zoning laws, labyrinthine building codes and a lugubrious review process that grinds development to a halt when just about anyone protests.
This isn’t a silver bullet–nothing is–but it’s an obvious no-brainer. Each unit contributes to affordability twice, once for the renter and again for the homeowner, making it easier to make the mortgage. While the linked article overstates the potential here, it’s a good idea that costs the city nothing, is more likely to produce relatively affordable units than luxury construction, and has the potential to help out strapped homeowners, all while distributing density in a low-key way.
(I work for a small shop in town. We get a few tourist high points a year. It’s a mountain town with a population of about 8,000. It’s only 20 minutes away from another town and about 45 minutes from a larger city.)
Customer: “How do you people live out here?”
Me: “What? What do you mean?”
Customer: “It’s so… remote.”
Me: “Oh, well, we have everything we need here. Also, there is larger city about 45 minutes away if we need something that we cannot find here. Besides, it’s beautiful here.”
Customer: “But… do you have electricity?”
Me:*looks at all the lights in the store, the electronic cash register and the neon sign outside, the lamp posts outside and the traffic lights* “Yes… yes, we do.”
Customer: “What about plumbing?”
Me: “Yes…”
Customer: “Are you sure?”
Me: “Positive?”
Customer: “What about [popular and huge hotel]? Do they have lights and toilets?”
Me: “Yes… everywhere here does. Literally, everywhere.”
Customer: “But… it’s so remote. How do they get the lights here?”
Me: “….wires and light poles?”
Customer: “But where do the wires come from?”
Me: “The nearest power station?”
Customer: “What about water?”
Me: “Pipes, and it would come from the nearest water treatment plant, which we have here.”
Customer: “I just don’t understand you people at all.”
Me: “Well, enjoy your stay…”
Customer: “Do the people here have cars?”
Me: “Have you seen cars since you have been here?”
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) will patch 1.4 million US vehicles following the reveal of a hacking method by Wired. The "voluntary safety recall" -- which it seems will come in the form of a USB dongle -- applies to vehicles equipped with 8.4-inch ...
I don't wear skirts usually, especially longer ones that go beyond the knee. I had this gathered cotton skirt that I thought would make a better dress. Below, I came up with a way to refashion a skirt into a trapeze style dress. You can even do this with a strapless dress to add extra coverage.
Begin by cutting the waistband from the skirt. You will then cut the side seams down a bit for the armhole. I'd start with a couple inches and then increase once fitted on. You will need to finish the armhole edges.
Use a collar, pattern, or tank you like for the top and cut. I decided to do a boat neck with a slight racerback. Their are many styles and fabrics you can choose from. Halter or collars from old shirts like the one on the left. Fabrics can be laces, embroidered handkerchiefs, macramé like the one above.
Cut 2 patterns for the front and back then finish the edges.
Pin both front and back pieces on the skirt. Topstitch along as shown in the photo. If the bodice doesn't fit the skirt you may need to gather the skirt to fit the bodice properly.
Finish by sewing the front and back right sides together at the shoulder seam.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) will patch 1.4 million US vehicles following the reveal of a hacking method by Wired. The "voluntary safety recall" -- which it seems will come in the form of a USB dongle -- applies to vehicles equipped with 8.4-inch ...
