[psmith2.0]

Well of course he is. I'd expect nothing less at this point.

Nimrod sues for $10M for being shown sleeping during a televised baseball game.

[curiousuburb]

http://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/

Some of the pics may be epically bad, but the sarcastic comments are equally WIN.

20 pages of and counting... and now apparently also a book (whose Guardian review tipped me off about it).

[Ryan]

Originally Posted by curiousuburb http://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/ Some of the pics may be epically bad, but the sarcastic comments are equally WIN. 20 pages of and counting... and now apparently also a book (whose Guardian review tipped me off about it).

I'm going to be late to work today because I just have to get through the rest of this site.

[psmith2.0]

$8,000 is a lot to spend to let the world know you're not getting laid. But, bless their souls, they did break it down into manageable chunks of $720/month, so that's something.



**In the interest of not being a complete hypocrite, please know that if I win the lottery I WILL be buying this (AND the Boba Fett and Solo in Carbonite ones as well). I'm simply not going into any financial hardship over any of it, that's all. And you gotta figure anyone sitting on $50M+, the "getting laid" thing probably takes care of itself anyway.

[Eugene]

Only in San Francisco: http://instagram.com/p/slYqLLOJMi/

[709]

I love this.

[psmith2.0]

That's awesome. Does that happen a lot? They're running north, over to the Marin County side. Is the city side wilderness enough in some places that they came from there? I guess any city has pockets of woods and nature, I'm just not familiar enough with all of the city's layout and areas.

[Eugene]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 That's awesome. Does that happen a lot? They're running north, over to the Marin County side. Is the city side wilderness enough in some places that they came from there? I guess any city has pockets of woods and nature, I'm just not familiar enough with all of the city's layout and areas.

The Golden Gate Bridge's south side entrance is surrounded by the green acreage of the Presidio. Golden Gate Park isn't too far off either.

[addabox]

It's one of the great things about the Bay Area-- the amount of undeveloped land around the coast. The Presidio is a former military base, so it's not exactly park land, but there's a lot of open wood and pasture.

Even better are the Marin Headlands and Point Reyes National Seashore on the north side of the bridge, one of the great nature preserves of the world. Several hundred square miles of pristine, unparalleled beauty. You can wander the California coast and coastal hills as they were before the coming of the Europeans, minutes from downtown San Francisco.

Amazingly, there's something like 500 elk just a few miles up the coast around Point Reyes. Tule Elk, a breed specific to California. There's so much open land in the area it can support that large a herd of huge animals. There's nothing quite taking a hike along a foggy seashore and hearing elk crashing around in the underbrush under cover of mist.

[psmith2.0]

My one visit to San Francisco in 2000 (Macworld!), we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and went to an overlook just west of the bridge, looking back to the southeast with bridge and city in the background (it's that view you've seen in a ton of movies, postcards, photos, posters, etc.). It was a park/overlook on the hillside, with some bunkers(?).

I enjoyed my day of San Francisco sightseeing after wandering around Moscone for two days. We hit all the expected high points (and my Dirty Harry/Bullitt checklists).

[Eugene]

Where I live is pretty low density. Deer will cross the path of my car on a weekly basis... We have a small gulch bifurcating our neighborhood where deer, rabbits, possums, etc. live. I almost never see their predators, though once a mangy bobcat found its way to my front door because it was desperate for food.

To my west about a mile is 280 (one of the best freeways in the US,) West of that and stretching north/south for miles is undeveloped woodland.

[addabox]

That stretch between 1 and 280 is amazing. So much beauty. A little south of where you are is the Djarassi Artists Residence program-- the guy who invented birth control had a daughter who aspired to be an artist but died before she could realize those dreams. So he funded a facility for artists to get away from it all and do creative work in the hills overlooking the sea. I had a girlfriend (choreographer) who spent a summer there so I got to go down, just magic. And the next ridge over is Neal Young's ranch.

One thing that sort of kills me is that I'm generally pretty busy, so I don't avail myself of all the astounding natural beauty of the Bay Area. I often try to remind myself that people from all over the world pay real money to come here and that stuff that's just part of my day they consider a peak experience. I mean, I wander around in the vicinity of the GG Bridge just in the course of getting shit done, and sometimes I stop and look and the fog pouring over the hills and think "That guy standing over there is going to remember this for the rest of his life. I barely notice anymore."

[psmith2.0]

Exactly. All those years I spent in SoCal (right at a decade), with two of them living a block-and-a-half from the ocean (I could hear the waves at night through my bedroom window), and the other years I was always a 5-15 minute drive from the Pacific. Growing up here, people work/save the entire year just so they can go spend 5-6 days on the beach in Florida somewhere, and I had it around me for all those years and it just became "so?"

People back home would say "don't you swim and go to the beach every day?! What the hell's wrong with you?!"

Even here, people come from 100 or so miles all around to see our Aquarium, the river, Rock City, Ruby Falls, the Hunter Museum, the mountains, the 2-3 nearby whitewater rafting rivers, the various Civil War monuments and parks, etc. and I grew up with all that so it's just "eh...".

As we speak, there's some puddinghead in Hawaii or New Zealand not giving two craps about the beauty or coolness he's surrounded by.

When it's your home, or just outside your back door, it's commonplace and no big deal after a while. Unfortunate.

Every now and then, particularly in the fall, I'll be driving down some backroad highway around here and I'll notice the colors, mountains, the river, etc. and I'm like "damn...there are people who've never seen a view like this!" and I'm reminded just how beautiful it is here (and that I shouldn't take it for granted).

[709]

Originally Posted by addabox "That guy standing over there is going to remember this for the rest of his life. I barely notice anymore."

Yeah, but I find that sentiment incredibly beautiful as well. I dated a Parisian for a year, back in my 20s, and flying her to my home on the shore of Lake Michigan, I got choked up when she first saw the lake: "You said it was a lake. This is a sea!"

Indeed it is. Sometimes it takes seeing someone with googly-eyes looking at your backyard to realize just how great you have it.

[addabox]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Even here, people come from 100 or so miles all around to see our Aquarium, the river, Rock City, Ruby Falls, the Hunter Museum, the mountains, the 2-3 nearby whitewater rafting rivers, the various Civil War monuments and parks, etc. and I grew up with all that so it's just "eh...". As we speak, there's some puddinghead in Hawaii or New Zealand not giving two craps about the beauty or coolness he's surrounded by. When it's your home, or just outside your back door, it's commonplace and no big deal after a while. Unfortunate. Every now and then, particularly in the fall, I'll be driving down some backroad highway around here and I'll notice the colors, mountains, the river, etc. and I'm like "damn...there are people who've never seen a view like this!" and I'm reminded just how beautiful it is here (and that I shouldn't take it for granted).

I'll probably end up back in the South after the Bay Area becomes uninhabitable for anyone with less than a millions bucks in the bank. Since it's where I grew up I have the landscape and weather and smells imprinted on my heartstrings. Fireflies and thunderstorms, Bay Area. Look into it.

First time I did the Ruby Falls thing the tour guide (who was the perfect Southern sorority girl with a summer job) told us this: "These stalagmites and stalactites has formed over millions and millions of years as water has leached through the limestone, drop by drop. Tiny bit by tiny bit, the dissolved minerals have been deposited until they create the magnificent towers and columns you see around you. Now if you look to your left, you'll see one that looks like Myrtle the Turtle." Awe and majesty, girl.

Also I was always impressed by how the owners of Rock City somehow managed to convince every barn owner in a 300 mile radius to paint "See Rock City" on those roofs.

[addabox]

Originally Posted by 709 Yeah, but I find that sentiment incredibly beautiful as well. I dated a Parisian for a year, back in my 20s, and flying her to my home on the shore of Lake Michigan, I got choked up when she first saw the lake: "You said it was a lake. This is a sea!" Indeed it is. Sometimes it takes seeing someone with googly-eyes looking at your backyard to realize just how great you have it.

So true. I love to have people visit and show them around. I get sort of prideful, like it reflects well on me to live in proximity to such cool shit. And then I see it anew through their eyes and am impressed all over again. Like the stuff that light and fog does around the Bay, or how the fog literally pours over the hills like an advancing tidal wave, or how the costal hills smell in the fall.

It kills me, what's happening to SF, and the Bay Area. It's been fairly expensive for as long as I can remember, but there was plenty of room for weirdness and subculture and off the beaten path. You could drive a few miles and be in some kind of hippy encampment, or weird little rural setting.

Now, it's just more and more whatever kids with money like, and kids with money aren't that soulful. They like high end gyms, and high end restaurants, and high end clubs. They like expensive knickknacks. The Napa Valley still had a bit of small town charm until recently, now it's just a playground for the super wealthy. All the little coastal towns are one big B&B with local businesses supplanted by expensive antique and gift shops. There are whole swaths of SF where I spent parts of a disreputable young adulthood hanging in dive bars and punk clubs that are nothing but office towers and places that cater to the our new Tech Gods. Even Oakland, seemingly invulnerably downscale, is being overrun by the kids priced out of SF, which means they're pricing out the locals. I've heard Oakland called "the new Brooklyn" which makes me want to go on a killing spree. At least the South has room for ne'er-do-wells such as myself.

[Ryan]

I grew up in a dying Bay Area suburb. Hated it. Thought I'd hate the South too but ever since I left earlier this year, I've missed it. Houston and San Antonio are great towns.

Boulder is the same as addabox describes today's Bay. Lots of tech money, though I'm part of that myself. Those who don't have tech money have daddy's credit card. I miss the grubby taco carts, hole-in-the-wall Korean joints and perfect margaritas of San Antonio. Food in Boulder is just variations on an organic veggie burger. Endless yoga studios, trustafarians pretending to be homeless, and startup groupies. I should've stayed in Texas.

[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by Ryan ...trustafarians pretending to be homeless...

Nothing worse.

Spot the 250 things wrong with this picture.

[Ryan]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Nothing worse. Spot the 250 things wrong with this picture.

I believe his brother hangs out on the corner by my office.

There are a few core groups like that in Boulder. Each has its street corner staked out. You can follow them on Twitter if you like. Not even kidding.

They sit there, begging for money. With iPhones in hand. Dreadlocks. When they get bored, they go back to the apartment their parents rented them. Some actually get aggressive, heckling you if you ignore them. Generally just shouting insults about how you can't appreciate what they do for world or some such bullshit. Not often, it's only happened to me once or twice.

I'm quite certain that if I asked my father for money so I could pretend to be homeless while still affording assloads of pot, he'd just punch me in the face. And I'm fine with that.

[psmith2.0]

Yeah, I've experienced the indignation and anger of these folks. The ones who always come up and ask me for "spare change" in a vaguely hostile, confrontational manner (mind your distance and my personal space, hammerheads...), while sporting hundreds (thousands?) of dollars in ink, piercings, smartphone in hand, etc. Never seeming to make that connection that the 6" pot leaf surrounded by the flaming vagina they've had tattooed on their neck might be factoring in a bit to their employment woes.

Fly your freak flags all you want, people. Just don't take it out on me when some real-life consequences/downsides arise down the road as a result.

[addabox]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 ,,,,the pot leaf surrounded by the flaming vagina they've had tattooed on their neck might be factoring in a bit to their employment woes.

[Ryan]

There's a (probably apocryphal) story that some of them went to a Boulder homeless shelter and threw a fit when the bagels weren't gluten-free. I really hope it's not true.

[Eugene]

I only ever see legitimate homeless people down on the peninsula. Don't go up to the city much, but there's plenty of real homeless people there too. I'm sure there's a few of these "trustafarians" out there, but hardly anything worth mentioning.

e: At least in my mind, you're more likely to see that stereotype in Portland or Austin these days.

[Mugge]

From my (Danish) iMac:

Localisation fail or inept hacking attempt?

[Brad]

wait what

Jones' Good Ass BBQ & Foot Massage

that URL at the end omg

[Mac+]

Originally Posted by Brad wait what Jones' Good Ass BBQ & Foot Massage that URL at the end omg

'Tis a classic. I still like it.

from a different thread

His other stuff is worth a look too.

[Ryan]

Two guys have a five-page argument on the number of days in the week.

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hp?t=107926751

[Kickaha]

Oh curse you, I came here to post that exact thing a few hours ago and got distracted.

It's amazing it stayed hidden since 2008. You know, 8 years ago. LOL

[Ryan]

Originally Posted by Kickaha Oh curse you, I came here to post that exact thing a few hours ago and got distracted. It's amazing it stayed hidden since 2008. You know, 8 years ago. LOL

Didn't even notice the timestamp! That link has been making the rounds on Twitter tonight and gave me a good laugh.

[murbot]

Holy motherfucking hell, I had to stop reading that after a while. Sometimes all you can do in an argument with someone that retarded is hit them with a brick.