The Art of Being a Slumlord

I’m sure this eye catching building on the edge of Chinatown in San Francisco gets photographed a lot. It’s a vibrant, interesting paint job. But what I noticed after scanning the details, the colorful characters and the hanging underwear, was that each crappy looking apartment is lit by the same cheap florescent garage lighting you can buy at home depot for under thirty dollars. Perhaps it’s a radical artist commune that agreed at a 6 hour meeting to spend the least possible on overhead lighting so that they could use the money for the revolution, but I’m guessing slumlord.

 

Housing bubble

I was listening to a science show and the topic was bubbles, real bubbles, and how researchers have noticed for the first time that each time a bubble pops thousands of new very tiny bubbles are created, little bubble babies, and it of course makes one wonders if the same thing applies to economic bubbles. I suppose froth is the metaphor, no one can get traction in froth, people frothing at the mouth, froth at the factory pipe, all froth no beer.

Landing Practice

The Air Force came into town to make sure one little part of the killing machine is working well, practicing touch and go landings here in Juneau one evening (down from Fairbanks).  Easy to get caught up in the beauty of flight and the impressive engineering involved, and you can’t beat our background. Could be used for another public relations campaign. My wife said they look like death, and someone else said they look like freedom to him. Too me they look like missed opportunity, giant flying holes that we dump our money into and set on fire.

A few more photos of the planes are here.

Back from San Fransisco

No big news to report--just a fun vacation with Mary in the North Beach neighborhood. We tried to make up for Juneau's lack of decent food by consuming as much good food as possible.

For a complete, perhaps excessive, photographic account click here.