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losangelesleftygayvoters · 4 years

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March 3, 2020 Primary

Hi there. We didn’t write this. But a very smart and interesting dude named Kris Rehl did. As we were about to sit down and prepare ours - we read his and thought well, we’re not going to do a lot better than this.

LOS ANGELES AREA PROGRESSIVE VOTER GUIDE

The following are recommendations for the most effective, progressive candidates in each race based on reviewing the resources listed at the bottom of this guide, news articles, and candidates’ statements. I encourage you to do your own research on each candidate as well!

CALIFORNIA STATE PROPOSITION

Prop 13: YES - This is a $15 billion bond to invest in crumbling school infrastructure, including the removal of toxic mold and asbestos from aging classrooms, to provide cleaner drinking water, and make upgrades for fire and earthquake safety. The proposition would also increase the size of bonds that school districts can place on future ballots.

CALIFORNIA STATE SENATE

21st District: Kipp Mueller - Mueller’s progressive platform focuses on homelessness, wage inequality, and the environment, calling out Big Oil in the Antelope Valley swing district.

23rd District: Abigail Medina - The daughter of immigrant parents, Medina has been in the foster care system, worked as a tomato picker, and served on the San Bernardino City Unified School board. She is the candidate with the boldest environmental platform in her district.

27th District: Henry Stern - A strong advocate for closing the Aliso Canyon gas facility and a fairly progressive candidate in a purple district. In addition to fighting big oil, he’s running on creating incentives for companies to switch to clean transportation and renewable energy infrastructure, improving the economy with small businesses and job training, supporting education by securing funding, and creating safer communities by providing funding to local governments. (Fun fact: His dad played Marv in the Home Alone movies.)

29th District: Josh Newman - Newman won his Fullerton district in 2016, focusing on 100% renewable energy by 2045, affordable education, and homelessness and mental health services. He was recalled by voters in a low turnout midterm primary, after being targeted by a Republican effort to break the Democrats’ supermajority. Despite the partisan recall over his vote to increase the state gas tax by 12 cents per gallon to fund $5.4 billion in annual road improvement and transit projects, Newman will again face the Republican he beat in 2016.

35th District: Steven Bradford - A leader on police reform and accountability, including passing AB391, a law reducing when police can use deadly force. Bradford is focused on lowering homelessness through affordable housing, enhancing access to healthcare, and increasing access to mass transit.

CALIFORNIA STATE ASSEMBLY

36th District: Eric Andrew Ohlsen - Endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, Ohlsen has excellent positions on environmental issues, immigration, eliminating student debt, and criminal justice reform. Ohlsen wants to eliminate costly and unjust private prison contracts and help people already in the system with policies targeting recidivism.

38th District: Dina Cervantes - A child of immigrants, community activist, small business owner, and former preschool teacher with a strong record on education and environmental issues. (This district’s incumbent is retiring.)

39th District: Luz Maria Rivas - The incumbent, Rivas has a solid record on immigration and housing. She also founded a non-profit in Pacoima to encourage school-aged girls to pursue careers in STEM.

41st District: Chris Holden - The incumbent, Holden has fought to expand funding for disability programs, expand lead-level testing in drinking water at child care centers, and passed legislation to improve safety on electricity systems that caused the 2017 wildfires. His only opponents are Republicans, so vote for Chris!

43rd District: Laura Friedman - Friedman is the incumbent and has a progressive voting record, including supporting the end of Section 8 discrimination and authoring several environmental and sustainability bills.

44th District: Jacqui Irwin - The incumbent, facing a Republican challenger, Irwin has focused heavily on gun violence prevention legislation and strengthened gun violence restraining orders since the 2018 Thousand Oaks shooting.

45th District: Jesse Gabriel - A progressive incumbent, Gabriel has enacted more than a dozen new gun safety measures, championed efforts to address California’s housing and homelessness crisis, and strengthened public education.

46th District: Adrin Nazarian - A strong charter school opponent, who has fought to increase public school aid by $23 billion over the past five years, with a mostly progressive record across the board.

49th District: Edwin Chau - Born in Hong Kong and raised in L.A., incumbent assemblymember Chau is facing a Republican challenger. He’s focused on legislation to prevent elder abuse and authored bills to address the affordable housing crisis as well as the California Consumer Privacy Act, enhancing protections for internet users’ personal data.

50th District: Richard Bloom - Authored some strong housing bills with a heavy focus on environmental legislation, helping establish the most stringent protections in the country against the dangers of hydraulic fracking.

53rd District: Godfrey Plata - Plata is a progressive challenger to an establishment Democratic incumbent, who has a disappointing record on housing policy. Plata is a gay Filipino immigrant, who if elected will become the first person in the California Assembly's 140-year history to be an out LGBTQIA+ immigrant. Plata’s campaign is focused on affordable housing, strengthening public schools, and universal healthcare.

54th District: Tracy B. Jones - A special education teacher, Jones is a strong advocate for increasing public school funding and improvements. He supports Medicare for All and the banning of fracking.

57th District: Vanessa Tyson - Tyson is an advocate for increasing the accessibility and affordability of college, expanding affordable housing, and investing in permanent housing solutions to address homelessness.

58th District: Margaret Villa - A Green Party candidate, Villa supports rent control, Medicare for All, and getting money out of politics. The incumbent Democrat she’s challenging (Cristina Garcia) previously made false claims about earning a graduate degree, has several sexual harassment accusations against her from her own staff, and was investigated for her rampant use of racist and homophobic language in the workplace. Vote for Margaret Villa instead!

59th District: Reggie Jones-Sawyer - A strong progressive incumbent, Reggie comes from a family of pioneers in the civil rights movement, is the nephew of one of the Little Rock Nine, and a member of the California Legislative Black Caucus. He’s co-authored legislation to provide re-entry assistance like housing and job training for persons that have been wrongfully convicted and consequently released from state prison. He also led an effort to secure nearly $100 million for recidivism reduction grants.

63rd District: Maria Estrada - Endorsed by Democratic Socialists of America, Estrada is a community activist, challenging an incumbent establishment Democratic leader, who stopped the passage of single-payer healthcare in the California legislature. Maria is running “to end the culture of policies that are deferential to industrial polluters that continue to poison our communities.”

64th District: Fatima Iqbal-Zubair - A high school teacher from Watts, Fatima is challenging Democratic incumbent Mike Gipson, who takes money from Chevron, Valero, Pfizer, and Juul. She is campaigning to end environmental racism in her district, fight for affordable housing and rehabilitation services for the homeless, better funding for public schools, and making college accessible to everyone.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY

District Attorney: Rachel Rossi - Rossi’s experience as a public defender and aggressive platform make her the most progressive option to unseat incumbent Jackie Lacey, who Black Lives Matter and the ACLU criticized for refusing to prosecute violent cops. Rossi will pursue “data-driven crime prevention” over ineffective mass incarceration, focusing on serious, violent cases and ending the revolving door of low-level offenses that waste taxpayer dollars.

County Measure R: YES - An important step toward L.A. County jail reform that helps decriminalize mental illness and build community-based care centers where people can get the qualified help they need. Measure R also provides crucial tools for LA’s Civilian Oversight Board to check a corrupt Sheriff’s department.

L.A. County Measure FD: YES - Provides firefighters with the resources they require.

COUNTY CENTRAL COMMITTEE, 43rd Assembly District (*Vote for no more than 7)

Luke H. Klipp - A progressive, who is disenchanted with the establishment, Klipp has been a housing and HIV/AIDS policy advocate and transportation analyst. He hopes to create a more walkable, bikeable, and transit-friendly LA, centering equity and climate change in all policy.

Jennifer “Jenni” Chang - A universal healthcare advocate and community activist, Jenni wants to make politics more people-centric, shun corporate influence, and hold party leaders accountable to progressive values. She supports green transportation, more public education funding, affordable housing, closing corporate loopholes, and prison reform.

Linda Perez - Linda is an immigrant and retired labor advocate, who is prioritizing immigrant protections, LGBTQ rights, education, housing, workers’ rights, and student homelessness.

Ingrid Gunnell - A teacher focused on public school funding and accountability for charter schools, Ingrid plans to fight homelessness with affordable housing, mental healthcare, and job training.

Nicholas James Billing - A Sunrise Movement member, Nicholas is fighting for renewable energy infrastructure, supports public school, prison reform, and affordable housing.

Angel Izard - A community activist, Angel supports public schools, quality healthcare for all Californians, investing in renewable energy, affordable housing, and prison reform.

Paul Neuman - An incumbent, Paul wants to empower people and make government more accessible, transparent, responsive and accountable. He has a long history of activism and volunteer work, advocating for many marginalized groups. He’s written resolutions for emergency funding for homelessness, arts education, campaign reform, and more.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT

Office No. 42: Linda Sun - Sun is an experienced prosecutor focused on corruption from professionals and businesses rather than crimes of poverty. She describes her judicial approach as embodying empathy and dignity.

Office No. 72: Myanna Dellinger - Dellinger is passionate about gender-related employment discrimination, harassment, and violence cases. She believes “people of color and lower incomes are disproportionately affected by environmental problems such as air and water pollution...The law should help remedy that.” Dellinger also advocates for gender-affirming treatment of everyone in and out of the courtroom.

Office No. 76: Emily Cole - As a judge, Cole is dedicated to helping the victims of crime but also helping the defendants that are in a system that they can’t get out of. She was also endorsed over her opponent by the LA County Bar Association.

Office No. 80: Klint James McKay - McKay is an administrative law judge with social services and has a history in the Public Defender Union. He has focused on an empathetic approach and understanding for all people, who pass through the court. His opponent David Berger is endorsed by the problematic current DA Jackie Lacey but was also chosen for the District Attorney's Office Alternative Sentencing Designee, where he’s worked within the criminal justice system to find alternatives for non-violent candidates.

Office No. 97: Sherry L. Powell - Powell has dedicated much of her legal career to serving and advocating for families, who lost loved ones to murder, and victims of violent crimes such as child molestation, rape, human trafficking, and domestic violence. She is running against Timothy Reuben, a real estate law firm founder, who ran as a conservative in 2018.

Office No. 129: Kenneth Fuller - As a District Attorney, Fuller has prosecuted environmental and sex crimes, but has also worked on the defense side as a military judge advocate.

Office No. 145: Troy Slaten - Slaten strongly supports criminal justice reform with efforts such as Collaborative Courts, designed to provide treatment instead of incarceration to the most vulnerable populations in the criminal justice system.

Office No. 150: Tom Parsekian - Parsekian is a civil litigation attorney, who is endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

Office No. 162: Caree Annette Harper - Harper is a former police officer, turned civil rights attorney, who has dedicated massive amounts of her time to pro bono work. In 2018, Caree obtained $1.5 million for the family of Reginald Thomas, who was beaten and tased to death by Pasadena Police Department.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY SUPERVISOR

2nd District: Holly Mitchell - A champion for progressive causes in the State Legislature, Mitchell has called for 20% affordable housing in every new development and a compassionate, non-criminalization approach to the homelessness crisis. Holly introduced the recently enacted CROWN Act, the first state law to ban discrimination based on natural hair or styles like locs, braids, and twists in workplaces and public schools.

4th District: Janice Hahn - Hanh has been solid on housing and labor issues. It should be noted that in 2015, she voted with 242 Republicans and 46 Democrats to pass a bill that proposed instituting a much more intensive screening for refugees from Iraq and Syria, who applied for admission to the U.S. It does not appear Hahn has any serious challengers.

5th District: Darrell Park - Park proposed an ambitious Green New Deal for LA County, signed the homes guarantee, and endorsed the Services Not Sweeps campaign to end the criminalization and ease the suffering of unhoused people. The current Supervisor for this district, Kathryn Barger, is the only Republican on the County Board of Supervisors.

LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT - BOARD OF EDUCATION

The following are the endorsements of the Los Angeles teachers union:

District 1: George McKenna

District 3: Scott Schmerlson

District 5: Jackie Goldberg

District 7: Patricia Castellanos

LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCIL

***The corruption in City Hall has led to inaction, worsened the housing crisis, and wasted millions in taxpayer dollars. I urge you to vote out all incumbents.

2nd District: Ayinde Jones - Wants to expand affordable public transportation and beds in homeless shelters. (The incumbent, Paul Krekorian, did not meet the new bed goal that the city council set for itself. Krekorian did turn his own budget’s $400 million surplus into a $200 million deficit with little transparency or public oversight though.) For more info on this race, check out this community activist’s thread from the candidates’ forum.

4th District: Nithya Raman - Nithya is an MIT-trained urban planner, who founded SELAH, a local homeless service organization, and served as executive director of anti-sexual harassment group Times Up. She plans to end homelessness by providing services and housing to those in need, stop evictions, and freeze rents. She is also focused on fighting the climate crisis and improving our city’s air quality.

6th District: Bill Haller - A member of his neighborhood council and experienced with environmental advocacy, Haller is running because he is disgusted by the corruption in L.A. City Hall. Haller wants to reduce city council pay from $207,000 to $93,500 (or 85% of an elected state assemblymember’s salary) and double the number of city districts to allow for more diverse, grassroots candidates, who better understand and represent their communities.

8th District: Denise Woods - A write-in candidate who has fought against housing discrimination, Denise has plans to address public safety, prevent gang violence, and expand education and job training in South L.A.

10th District: Aura Vasquez - Aura was born and raised in Colombia. In 1996, her family came to America to escape the bloodshed and violence caused by drug cartels and the War on Drugs. As an undocumented student, Aura worked nights and weekends to put herself through college. Aura has become a dedicated community organizer, environmental advocate, and was the driving force in banning single-use plastic bags in L.A. She is focused on making city services more responsive, creating affordable housing and homeless services, ensuring police treat all residents with respect and dignity, keeping immigrant and refugee families together, and supporting local schools, teachers, and after-school programs.

12th District: Dr. Loraine Lundquist - An educator and astrophysicist, Loraine is an expert on clean energy and helped organize community opposition to the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility when it posed a massive danger to the Valley in 2015. She is refusing donations from corporate special interests and wants to challenge corruption in the LADWP to create lower utility bills for residents. Loraine also wants to use humane, data-proven solutions to end the homelessness crisis, putting an end to tax dollars being wasted on inaction.

14th District: Cyndi Otteson - Cyndi served on her neighborhood council and leads a nonprofit that helped over 320 refugee families resettle in the U.S. Cyndi rejects developer, charter school, and special interest money and wants to make housing more affordable for rent-burdened Angelenos with financial reforms and protections for renters. She proposes using the $355 million annually generated by Measure H to build on or adapt commercial property that is undeveloped or abandoned for affordable housing and homeless shelters.

GLENDALE CITY COUNCIL

Dan Brotman - Dan is an advocate for a sustainable Glendale and has been endorsed by the Sunrise Movement for fighting fossil fuel infrastructure and advocating for affordable housing.

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

8th District: Chris Bubser - Bubser has been endorsed by several labor and environmental groups, and she is the only chance to avoid two Republicans on the November general election ballot in this red district.

23rd District: Kim Mangone - Kim is a veteran, running against Kevin McCarthy, one of the most far-right Republicans in Congress and the GOP’s current House Minority Leader. Vote for Kim and get McCarthy the hell out of Washington!

26th District: Julia Brownley - The incumbent, Julia passed her Female Veterans Suicide Prevention Act in 2016, which requires the VA to collect data on women veterans to identify best practices and services to end female veteran suicide. She passed a surface transportation bill to increase funds to invest in our crumbling infrastructure. Julia has been an advocate for women and working families, fighting to close the wage gap, raise the minimum wage, and expand job training and education assistance.

27th District: Judy Chu - The incumbent, Chu is chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and has a strong record on immigration rights and reform. She has also become a strong advocate for ending military hazing since her 21-year-old nephew shot and killed himself after enduring three and a half hours of discrimination-motivated assault and torture from his fellow marines in Afghanistan.

28th District: G. “Maebe A. Girl” Puldo - Maebe (she/her) is the first drag queen elected to public office in U.S. history! She is genderfluid/trans and hosts, produces, and performs in drag shows around Los Angeles in addition to her Silver Lake Neighborhood Council duties. Maebe supports Medicare for All, has experience with homelessness advocacy, and is running on a broad, progressive platform. If your knee jerk reaction is to dismiss Maebe because she’s a drag queen, kindly check your queerphobia at the door.

(Second Choice: Adam Schiff - Despite his impressive contribution to the president’s impeachment, incumbent Adam Schiff has shown himself to be a hawk, defined by donations made to his campaign by the defense industry. Even if you plan to vote for Schiff during the general election this November, I encourage you to vote for Maebe in the primary.)

29th District: Angélica María Dueñas - A member of her neighborhood council, Dueñas supports unions, Medicare For All, achieving 100% renewable energy by 2030, eliminating pharmaceutical subsidies, increasing taxes on the rich, and a humane path to citizenship.

30th District: CJ Berina - CJ is challenging an establishment Democratic incumbent, who has worked against many progressive causes. CJ supports the Green New Deal, Medicare For All, the cancellation of medical and student debt, abolishing ICE and the death penalty, and ending for-profit healthcare.

32nd District: Emanuel Gonzales - Growing up, Emanuel and his family became homeless twice: after his father was diagnosed with End-Stage Renal Disease and during the recession. Since his father died from a failed kidney transplant, Emanuel has become an advocate for expanding Medicare coverage to everyone in the U.S. and reforming the current organ transplantation system so that no organ goes to waste. Personally knowing the pain of losing a home, Emanuel will fight for affordable interest rates for first-time buyers, extending tax benefits for working families who own homes, and increasing federal grants, so people can own homes in the communities they work and serve in.

33rd District: Ted Lieu - Ted has been an outspoken critic of the current administration, bringing special attention to the treatment of migrant children in detention, separated from their families. Ted previously authored a bill banning conversion therapy and was a co-sponsor of the 2019 Medicare For All Act.

34th District: Frances Yasmeen Motiwalla - Frances supports Medicare for All, the Rent Relief Act, the Green New Deal, and urgently wants to end the war in Yemen. The incumbent Jimmy Gomez has moved to the left since facing a Green Party candidate last election cycle. If nothing else, let’s push him even more left.

37th District: Karen Bass - Leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, Karen has focused on issues such as criminal justice reform, a national minimum wage increase, and foster care. She supports Medicare For All, tuition-free community college, and capping the interest rate for federal student loans at 3.4 percent.

38th District: Michael Tolar - Supports Medicare for All, The Green New Deal, closing private prisons, getting money out of politics, and banning military-style weapons.

39th District: Gil Cisneros - A solid Orange County Democrat facing a tough reelection against a Republican this fall. Cisneros was a $266 million Mega Millions winner and became a philanthropist before deciding to run for Congress in 2018. Gil is a veteran and education advocate, who has stood up to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to lower healthcare costs, protected education funding, and worked to create good-paying local jobs.

40th District: Dr. Rodolfo Cortes Barragan - Taking on a more conservative Democrat incumbent, Rodolfo is a first-generation American, who came from Mexico at a young age and earned degrees from UC Berkeley and Stanford. He is a Green Party candidate, running on a platform of Medicare for All, tuition-free public colleges, the Green New Deal, abolishing ICE, repealing the Patriot Act, and a homes guarantee with funding for universal public housing.

43rd District: Maxine Waters - Maxine has been an outspoken advocate for women, children, people of color, and the poor. She has strongly condemned the actions of the current administration and is facing a Republican challenger this fall.

44th District: Nanette Diaz Barragán - Elected in 2016, Nanette became the first Latina to represent her Congressional district. She is a strong advocate for immigration and supports Medicare for All.

45th District: Katie Porter - Katie is a survivor of domestic abuse and a former consumer protection attorney. She impressively won a swing district while still supporting Medicare for All, gun safety reform, and legislation to reduce the influence of dark money in politics.

47th District: Peter Matthews - Peter refuses donations from corporate PACs and lobbyists, supports tuition-free college, canceling student debt, Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, universal child care, public banks, taxing income brackets over $10 million at 70%, and believes housing is a human right.

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY

Elizabeth Warren - Elizabeth doesn’t just have some of the most comprehensive, progressive plans of any candidate, she has figured out and proposed some brilliant strategies to actually move them through the gridlock in Washington. She engages with stakeholders in every community, listens, and incorporates their feedback to be sure she is addressing the needs of all Americans. I trust Elizabeth to take on corruption and create a better, fairer country by removing monied corruption in politics, implementing a wealth tax on the ultra rich, creating free universal healthcare, reforming our criminal justice system, fighting predatory debt, expanding educational and economic opportunities, and creating new clean energy jobs to swiftly combat climate change.

(2nd Choice: Bernie Sanders - Bernie is a truly inspiring candidate, and I agree with almost all of his policies. I would be thrilled to vote and volunteer for him if he becomes the nominee, but he is my second choice because I believe Warren has more effective strategies to implement an extremely similar platform, ranging from the removal of the filibuster to finding solutions that won’t raise middle-class taxes to fund for Medicare For All.)

RESOURCES

https://lavote.net/Apps/CandidateList/Index?id=3793

https://laist.com/elections/

https://knock-la.com/the-knock-la-los-angeles-progressive-voter-guide-for-the-march-2020-primary-7f2c3efc13cc

https://www.dsa-la.org/2020_primary_voter_guide

https://votersedge.org/en/ca

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/9/1917945/-LA-Progressive-Majority-Voter-Guide-to-Judges-Candidates-for-March-2020-Los-Angeles-CA

https://progressivevotersguide.com/california/

https://app.kpcc.civicengine.com/v/choose_party

http://www.easyvoterguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/EVG-march2020-Eng.pdf

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steamishot · 3 years

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3 months

it’s officially been 3 months since i’ve moved to nyc. i’m sitting here before my work shift starts at 11am and eating an omelette topped with laoganma, a new found chili sauce that i like.

work has surprisingly been quite busy the past 3 weeks or so. on one hand, i get lazy to keep doing the work and continue to put some parts off. on the other hand, it’s nice to have something to do. i still have no idea what i’m gonna be doing with myself during winter closure. perhaps take a class/learn to do something new? luckily, matt will be on easier rotation for 2 weeks so at least we’ll have some time to spend together.

i’ve been quite dumb and continue to drink caffeine in the evening/at night and then am unable to fall asleep at a reasonable time. i like to share a pastry with matt after dinner and there’s nothing better than a hot cup of tea to go along with it. we started using this app called toogoodtogo, which originated in europe and is now available in nyc and boston. the company’s mission is to reduce waste from cafes/restaurants by selling it at a discounted price at the end of the day. luckily, my favorite cafe is participating in this. i used to buy a ham & cheese croissant for $5 - now i get 3-5 randomly selected “leftover” pieces for $5.

every so often (and apparently when i can’t fall asleep), i start thinking about death (my own death, my partners, my parents, my family, my friends) and spiral into depression/anxiety. i had planned on going to run errands (sending things off thru UPS and returning items to uniqlo) this morning but i fell asleep sad last night and woke up sad, and let this low mood get the better of me.

anyway, back to the main topic: at the 2.5 month mark i started feeling more comfortable with my surroundings. in LA, walking on the streets alone felt like a scary thing. it’s pretty frequent you come across someone “crazy”, aggressive, semi-violent, or on drugs. there’s always someone “weird” whenever taking public transportation. just the other day, my mom told me a hobo in chinatown was following her and repeatedly tried to spit at her. in my experience, people in LA are more provocative.

during my first two months here, i always felt on guard whenever i was walking around my neighborhood. i looked around for anyone who looked sketchy (like i would in LA) and tried to avoid them. it took me time to adjust to being in a walkable city and in a majority black/brown neighborhood. perhaps this could be due to the pandemic, but in my experience so far, there are significantly less “crazy” people out here - on the streets and on public transportation. i haven’t seen any “crazy” people on the subway yet, and i don’t really see “crazy” people on the streets either. everyone else is mainly minding their own business and have no interest in provoking strangers. i’m more idgaf and less afraid in general.

in our home, 2.5/3 months is also the time it took for us to adjust to living together. being together after 18 months of long distance/residency/pandemic, with the last 4 months stretch of not seeing each other, we had to learn each other again. he made a joke that we were practically strangers moving in together, and it’s not false. the first month was the hardest (also due to external factors), and it got progressively better after that. it sucks that by default, i kinda have to operate on his timeline because of residency and wait for him to come around. his love grows slowly and he’s very loyal. it took him about 1.5-2 months to actually comprehend that he’s sharing a space with his s/o. i think he is relearning his love for me LOL, and has been quite affectionate as of lately.

i love when my plants produce new leaves. my peace lily is thriving - it has grown 4 new leaves since we got her. her flower is also in the process of blooming! my dumb cane has produced one new leaf. my triostar has like 4-5 new leaves on the way. i let my pilea/chinese money plant or some variation of it die. i got it off the literal street in chinatown for $5. it looked like a bootlegged version of a chinese money plant. repotting it was difficult because the plants were attached on a “string” of roots and i didn’t know how to arrange the plant correctly in the soil. my triostar is my most expensive plant so far so i do put more effort in caring for it. i play favoritism with my plants haha. today, i should be receiving a zz plant. tomorrow, i’ll receive my huge snake plant!

season of giving: i got both of my parents airpods during black friday and they love it. i used matt’s mom’s healthcare worker discount to get them some northface products as xmas gifts. i got matt a wedmadetoomuch lululemon long sleeve shirt to wear to run in the cold. and i got a discount of $20 at TNF so i used that towards a sock purchase that will be a part of matt’s xmas gift. i told him i want a surprise gift for xmas this year. the plan is to open our gifts on xmas day, take a pic - and then return the tree i got haha.

i think i influenced matt to want to gift his parents something too. they’re not big gift giving people - they just buy when they need something. since his brain is so fried from work, he barely has any capacity to think when he comes home. it seems his family doesn’t really need anything material, so i suggested that he gives them a photobook. i’m gonna help him make one!

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bienready2122 · 4 years

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Enjoy Las Vegas on Next To Nothing - Where To Stay For Less - Without Sacrificing Location

Would you like to visit Las Vegas for much less than you pay to live home? How long has it been because you've virtually had a blast? Learn what the locals realize about having an amazing time on a budget. Their Stay cation just can be your dream! Las Vegas casinos are freely giving much less and charging extra with a purpose to live on the cutting-edge economic times. Here are some methods to tip the stability for your want! 188xoso Rates generally tend to trade on a each day basis; so there's no person vicinity that is continually a better deal. Whether visiting as a pair, or with the children, you may in all likelihood shop money with the aid of staying somewhere close to the activities you need to enjoy. That said, the "Downtown" resorts and the "Neighborhood" casinos generally fee a whole lot much less than within the heart of "The Strip." But most of the parking Downtown is only free with validation.

The motels which have everything happening can without difficulty get higher room quotes. So the trick right here is to search for a hotel this is either round the corner or throughout the road shape in which you need to hang out, and stay there for less price when viable. Transportation additionally makes a difference in that less expensive does not work in case you end up spending the distinction simply getting around.

So, earlier than getting commenced, you will want to invite your self some questions:

Am I visiting with the family, or is that this an all grownup excursion? If traveling with the own family, and you'd just like the youngsters to have a very good time too, the downtown accommodations are close to Neonopolis which is a large open-air leisure center with 14 film theaters, a video and game middle, a bowling alley, a food court, and eating places. Fitzgerald's is the closest of the affordable accommodations in this article to Neonopolis.

Do I need to be near any specific Hotel/Casino for my stay? Please observe that among the counseled resorts are next door to, across the street from, or linked through a loose tram to most of the convention/occasion motels on the town.

Am I looking for a pampered, luxurious experience? If so, then assume to pay more, and also you possibly may not care a lot for the less pricy motels noted right here. Online evaluations of these hotels tend to reflect a 25% to forty% sadness fee; typically with the aid of site visitors that had been searching out extra luxury. I even have in my view stayed at all the cited lodges. The motels in this newsletter aren't dumps; however they're no longer top of the line both.

Will I be riding or flying into Las Vegas? If you've got chosen to fly, not to rent a automobile, and now not to pay for several expensive taxis, then you'll need to stay in a region that is transportation pleasant. Everything downtown is within approximately five quick blocks of every other - very walkable - and The Four Queens is smack in the center of it. Most of the loose trolleys are by way of the inns indexed on the south end of the strip. Bill's Gamblin' Hall is near the precise middle of The Strip. And The Deuce (bus) runs day and night time to attach you cost effectively with another a part of The Strip.

We'll be looking at four special regions in an effort to cowl most of your favored sports, but nonetheless save on the room charge. The areas will be: The Southern End of The Strip, Northern End of The Strip, The Downtown Area, and Nearby Neighborhoods or Off Strip Locations. Then we will address transportation and parking.

If you'd like a few assist figuring what part of metropolis you'd like to be near, and what you would like to look or do in Las Vegas aside from visit a casino, there are numerous tips listed inside the different subtitles to this "Enjoy Las Vegas on Next To Nothing" series. For your convenience, there's a listing at the stop of this text.

The Southern End of The Strip

The Southern End of The Strip'sbest cost is usually at either the Monte Carlo, the Tropicana, or at the Excaliburif you've got kids - all placed on The Strip at Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard. These 3 casino/hotels generally have costs which can be about one-1/3 the price in their acquaintances; and they sit down between the MGM Grand, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, New York New York, and City Center where room charges are typically near $a hundred and fifty and up.

The Excalibur may be very toddler friendly with many kid's points of interest. They are bodily related to the Luxor with the aid of an enclosed walkway, they have a unfastened storage for parking, and they have a unfastened tram that runs every five mins among the Excalibur, Luxor, and Mandalay Bay. There is likewise an over-the-street walkway to New York New York, Tropicana, and MGM Grand. So for more or less one-third the price, you are nevertheless in a high vicinity.

The Monte Carlo sits among New York New York and City Center, with a free tram that runs every fifteen minutes thru City Center and keeps directly to the Bellagio. With that connection and the previously cited accesses throughout from New York New York, again there may be no sacrifice in area for the decreased fee of rooms. And like each on line casino on this area, additionally they have a free protected storage.

The Tropicana is inside the process of being converted into a main region. It is the last of the older casinos in the location to get a facelift. So ask for a room faraway from the development, and enjoy the top location if not anything else.

Inside Tip: If your funds are extremely tight, you need to stay in this a part of The Strip, and comfort isn't always on your list of vital matters, you may want to keep in mind Hooters (which was once the San Remo.) Rates can be as low as $25 a night. They are located with the aid of the lower back door of the Tropicana, and immediately across the road from the returned entrance to the MGM Grand.

Northern End of The Strip

On the Northern End of The Strip all of the accommodations between the Stratosphere and Circus Circus have rooms available for much less than $30 a night time, but maximum traffic feel they may be too a long way from the whole thing else in town. If that doesn't trouble you, check out The Deuce bus line. Otherwise, the exceptional price is typically at Bill's Gamblin' Hall & Saloon, or the Imperial Palace, which often have rooms starting beneath $39. These two are positioned just north of the middle of The Strip, by means of Bellagio, Paris, Caesar's Palace, Mirage, Venetian, Palazzo and the Wynn - all of which rate much, an awful lot greater.

Bill's Gamblin' Hall & Saloonused to be smoke infested, and looks as if a dive. But they've cleaned it up now that it's far not the Barbary Coast. Bill's is on the nook of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard with the Flamingo next door. Bill's sits at the very identical corner as Caesars Palace, Bellagio, and Bally's, right within the center of The Strip. And they do have loose blanketed parking in their storage. Furthermore, there is now an over-the-street walkway for the entire intersection, so there's no manner to beat the price for the location.

The ImperialPalace is just a few doors north of Bill's, which makes it towards the Mirage, Treasure Island, Harrah's, Venetian, Palazzo and the Wynn. Like anybody else on The Strip, there is free covered parking. There is likewise a unfastened trolley throughout the road on the Mirage that goes to Treasure Island each fifteen minutes (which is at the same avenue corner as the Fashion Show Mall, Wynn, and Palazzo.)

The Downtown Area

The Downtown Areagenerally has a number of the lowest priced rooms in town, and the whole lot is within a block of the Fremont Experience. For the lowest fees the Four Queens, Fitzgerald's, and the Las Vegas Club usually have rooms starting round $29. Downtown the resorts will validate parking in their very own garage, for their lodge and on line casino visitors. The Las Vegas Club is one of the very few that have free parking for absolutely everyone.

Nearby Neighborhoods or Off Strip Locations

The fine price in Nearby Neighborhoods or Off Strip Locations is typically found at the Station Casinos, wherein rooms are on occasion as low as $14 a night. The closest Station Casino to The Strip is Palace Station, less than a mile away, located on Sahara Boulevard through Highway 15, with clean throughway access. Sahara Avenue crosses The Strip at the north give up next to the Stratosphere, Sahara, Riviera, and Circus Circus. An important note is that Palace Station has lately raised their "resort fee" to $sixteen.Seventy nine consistent with night, efficaciously elevating the fee of the room to around $30.

Free Public Transportation & Parking

The trams on the west aspect of The Strip hook up with all however two of the main casinos. Neither New York New York nor Caesars Palace have a tram connection; so there's a brief stroll among trams whilst going around these casinos. On the east aspect of The Strip there is a monorail that runs among the MGM Grand and the Sahara; unfortunately it's miles very pricy for a circle of relatives to use.

Parking is loose nearly anywhere in Las Vegas. The primary exception is downtown, like in any important town. Since The Strip isn't always downtown, there are pretty some loose parking garages in addition to the many loose parking lots. Due to the extreme temperatures, I might advocate the use of a garage on every occasion possible.

There are four casinos that provide loose parking in the downtown place; El Cortez, Main Street Station, the Plaza, and the Las Vegas Club. Everyone else calls for validation. The only warning you may need to understand is that the garage on the Plaza has very low ceilings and tight turns, so no longer every car might be able to use their storage.

Other Transportation & Parking

If you happen to be coming to Las Vegas in an RV, or a Big Rig, you may be satisfied to listen that you may park and hookup at Circus Circus. This is a KOA with drive-through spaces and a barely better day by day charge than most. But with their "On The Strip" place you may get better the value in lower transportation expenses. Their RV park has 399 spaces, and each of them have full carrier application hookups. There is also a convenience shop, an arcade, laundromat, playground, pet runs, and disposal stations. This will let you live on the north give up of The Strip, then use public transportation to get around.

The least steeply-priced paid transportation in Las Vegas is the town bus line. Las Vegas is a completely unfold out metropolis, with a completely reasonably priced bus line. "The Deuce" goes up and down The Strip constantly, (from Mandalay Bay to the Fremont Street Experience) with double-deckers jogging about 10 mins aside in the course of the day, and 30 minutes apart in the middle of the night. The three day rate is handiest $15 in line with character with on-and-off privileges for all of the town bus strains - you can't beat that! (Or $7 for a 24 hour price ticket.) If you force to Las Vegas it's miles inexpensive to park the car (out of the sun) in one of the loose covered garages at most every casino on The Strip, and use The Deuce to get around, than to pay for the gas.

More bus records is to be had on their website at RTCsouthernnevada.Com. Passes bought on line aren't downloadable or to be had to print through your pc at time of buy. When shopping a pass on line, please allow sufficient time (five to 7 days) for transport via USPS mail. Currently, all passes ordered on line are brought via USPS mail and sent to the cope with you offer. Children six years of age and more youthful journey free and must be accompanied by using an grownup.

Transportation Passes may also be bought in individual at the Downtown Transportation Center, South Strip Transfer Terminal, RTC Administration Building, supplier places at some stage in metropolis, and all Las Vegas Albertsons Grocery Stores.

Using public transportation also can make journeys to the Las Vegas Premium Outlets, the Las Vegas Outlet Center, and among the different points of interest a manageable component - with out using your car or an costly taxi.

Inside Tip: For similarly financial savings and to keep away from tipping conditions, right here are a few tips:

Don't valet your car. Even though valet parking is unfastened at lodges, you may be predicted to tip the attendant one or bucks. Parking your personal vehicle in one of the free garages and riding the elevator down will save you a couple of bucks you may have a laugh with later.

Don't purchase gas on The Strip. Gas expenses are plenty inexpensive at maximum stations that are two or more miles from The Strip. I might pressure west from The Strip on Flamingo Road, Spring Mountain Road, or another cross street close to your resort.

If you want to find out greater approximately your quality offers, there are too many alternatives to show in this newsletter.

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thecatladyknits · 6 years

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Feeling super frustrated this morning. It seems like D and I had some misunderstandings about this moving plan.

We were talking about how we would move the cats, if we would drive or fly or what and we were talking about driving my car out. He said something like "well when we come back..." and I'm like "...come back??" and he's like "we're only going for like 3 months?" And I'm just like... what. Like, yes, we would move to a furnished place for the first few months because it would be easiest and the story back to my work would be it was just a temporary adventure, but like in reality, we’re fucking moving. We talked through it and I basically said, I can't imagine any reason why I would want to come back unless I absolutely hate it (impossible), and I've been wanting to leave for awhile. I also don't want to go out there just knowing I'll have to come back here. So then he starts saying how we couldn't stay in the places we were looking at long term because they’re expensive and we would have to move further out in the suburbs maybe and I'm like, of course not??? Obviously?? He was the one who wanted to pick a "baller pad" for the initial move; I never wanted to do that, but given he said he would pay for it, I was like fine, pick whatever you want.

Then he's like "are you expecting to be fully remote? because if so, we don't need to be near your office" (they have offices in every major city) and I'm like........................ did he completely forget about the whole "working on Eastern time" thing??? No, I'm not going to go to the office at 4 am!!!! I didn't shout it at him; I just said "I was planning on working Eastern time hours and since I have 7 or 7:30 am meetings, I would be working at 4 or 4:30 am so no, I would probably never be at the office" but still what the fuck, we talked about that before?

Then he starts talking about how he might have to look for a job there if his remote job ends (for other reasons, unrelated to the move) because he doesn't want to just burn through his savings. And I'm like... again... yes... obviously??? Which I'm like, why the hell would I have brought up that I was worried about whether I would be able to get a job or not OUT THERE, if we were just coming back here? Then, he said he would not want to have to walk 6 blocks to work or something if he gets a job there. And I'm just banging my head on things like... I never said we would have no vehicle or only use public transportation. I said that *I* don't want to have to drive a lot and *I* want to be close to public transit and to some things that are walkable. I never, ever said he would have to do that or anything. He knows I hate driving and I was only speaking about myself.

I don't want to force him to live where he doesn't want, but I don't want to live here anymore. But I also don't want to lose him. Ultimately, he said "home is where you and the kitties are, whether it's here or Seattle or whatever" and was all sweet and we didn't fight, it was just a lot of confused discussion back and forth, but I'm feeling pretty crushed right now. He's not saying we're NOT going at all. I'm just scared that after 3 months he's going to want to leave and I'm going to want to stay, and what happens then? I know everyone will say, just take it one day at a time and see what happens but it will ruin my time there if I might have to come back here or know that he doesn’t want to stay.

So obviously I slept for shit last night. Then I got up and had to put on my fucking winter coat because it's 29 degrees with a windchill of 9 and I hate cold and winter. At least it's Friday. I am grumpy.

#possibly moving?#so frustrated #please explain your damn thought process boyfriend bc i don't get it

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richigneven · 7 years

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Buenos Aires Calling!

The signs could not have been much better: My first ‘vacation’ lasting more than a week since the awesome festival so called “gneven im grünen”, three concert tickets for my more or less favorite band ‘die toten hosen’- a band I have followed along down the road, which not only makes good music but also supports smaller bands, ethical correct NGO´s and sometimes even play in your living room if you are lucky AND the promising city of Buenos Aires, which goes as the Berlin of South America, or not even Latino American anymore. So my expectations were quite high as well, still they s were exceeded...

My hostel was great, although I arrived way too early they welcomed me with breakfast and showers. As I did not take the first internet recommendation I ended up in a 100% spanish-speaking community, from which a few studied and others sadly escaping war in Venezuela and some others doing whatever. Crazy those two things, first I could never do my exchange semester out of a dormitory, as I already troubled falling a sleep when not completely wasted- how do people snore louder than a airplane taking off? Second why have we reached the point that people need to escape their homes again and shouldnt we welcome them a little more than given them a bed in return of work? You find Venezuelans everywhere in South America right now...

Anyway, I wanted to get to know this European city, which at first glance showed off with nice facades, broken sidewalks and a walkable traffic situation (remember Im used to Lima at the moment, I actually got quite a cultural shock when people actually followed traffic rules and not everyone looked quite similar). I did a walking tour, and right away I saw it at its best, stunning buildings and cemeteries everywhere(at least in the right suburb..) Btw the popularity of their steaks is based on the flatness of the countryside of Argentina, cows actually do have some space to walk around and not need to be cooped up in some stall. Afterwards, I stumbled around myself, and by this is into a huge demonstration. All kinds of human protested in favor of rights for everybody, especially Woman and the LGBT scene. Every of the last ten years more than 200 women has be mudered by their husband or partners, I have heard about it before, but seeing the demonstration showed me how serious the issue is and how many must have suffered domestic violence. I followed along and was quite impressed by the creativity and number of participants. It seems like still the authorities dont really care, as this has been run for over a year now...

it really was endless...

I bet a better photografer would have made a good pic out of that!

Rushed from the energy of the protests I had a buncher Spätibeer (cerveza de ciosco) and decided to go see my friend from my old exchange semester in good old fresno..So we met 9 years ago and havent seen since. Ines were just working in a restaurant and I already had a few beers too many. So after she invited me for two more I tried too call it a night, which is always hard when you in a foreign city for the first time 10km away from your bed and trying to go by public transport. AllI know, I woke up in my hostel the next day and some blurry memories sitting in some other bar with some Germans, but I dont know why. Alright lets face it, probably the craving for more beer.

In the morning, I realized today would be the day I have never really imagined to become true. Seeing “Los Hosen” in Buenos Aires is said to be special. I always wanted to know what´s about it, because special is also sitting one hour in the” Berlin Ringbahn” and drink beer or the Chinese Wall, but neither gets a lot of my attention. After another day of enjoying various parts of the city I went in front of the venue, Museum, a buncher years ago crashed the stage in the second song and the concert was over. The first guys I approached were already a win in the lottery and I could not have asked for more. Spätibeer here and there and talks about everything what my Spanish has to offer. The show was crazy, a venue like SO36, long and narrow. A small terrace all around from which Campino (singer) jumped into the crowd and somehow mad his way back, totally red, as people did not want to let him go...A few punch were needed so he reached the stage again.

The crowd of 800-1000, of which maybe 100 were German, freaked out at pretty much every single song. Decent singing along but even harder dancing along. Everybody full of energy, led by a Band which noticeably enjoyed to be part of it once again. After the concert I went further to a few more Bars or you could call it Club even, energy for those after concerts partys I usually do not have after concerts in Germany. This night, I got a ride home, across the entire city, letting somebody out at the bus station apparently is no option when you their “guest”.

Party people

The same reason, the next day, I was invited to a match of one of the biggest football teams over there.. Boca Juniors, it was really interesting to see such a steep stadium which shacks because everybody jumps and how fascinated all the players and fans are. But I certainly have friends which can analyze those events way more. Side note: Argentina has stopped to allow fans of the visiting teams for all league games, in order to prevent violence. A working approach, but defiantly not in the sense of the sport.

A couple more or less boring hard working days for my uni were interrupted by a Cover concert and even more interesting of a Concert of the Magic Mystery tour show in a house in Buenos Aires. You can apply ahead and if you lucky the Hosen come to give a show and the fans possibly destroy all you have. I talked to many people who at least once tried it, but these gigs are quite precious. Getting inside this house was not possible, but through same delays in my taxi I arrived for the last few songs of the concert, which was totally sufficient for me. Except the drummer, everybody got outside of the house once and of course Campino climbed every fence there exist on the premises. Afterwards, a little party in front of the fence took place and once again a intercultural understanding with hands and legs. Knowing a few words of Spanish certainly made the situation even more fun and allowed me buying beer in the cioscos around, which was hard as for some reasons they only wanted to sell cold beer, but to understand this I almost failed.

Campino not only gave its best during the show, the aftershowparty he won against everybody!

In front of the fence, it was still cleanable afterwards, nobody know about inside

Wow Wednesday already, but still two more official shows to go! The German Hosen fans, organized a bus tour to the town of the next venue, La Plata, which is 1-2 hours down south from BA. Ive almost missed the bus, due to lets face it: Hangoverness but also Credit Card issues, during which I kind of realized how screwed you could be in a foreign country. But all worked out and with 1 hour delay and a busdriver who ask after 1 hour ride where he actually supposed to head we were almost at our first stop: The barbeque party in some Argentina´s house. The owner just decided to through a party for everybody who wanted to come and as it was somebody´s birthday the owner bought beer and steaks for the most of them. (unluckily no grilled cheese, but this time people were at least to buy warm beer in the Späti next door) So i tackled my hangover from last night with a few beers and it become a really nice get-together with people from all parts of society, ages and regions of Germany and Argentina. The good bye was a kiss for the woman living there for everybody and the last existing steaks as “Schnittchen” for later. When was the last time you invited 70 unknown people to your backyard and when it comes to cleaning up they all get in a bus and you give them food and beer for the road? Arriving in front of the venue the people once again couldnt even wait to party on and sang along the sound check inside which was with the song “Reisefieber”, so an old and popular one, this was promising. I dedicated myself to socialize and to the Späti´s around so once inside It starts to be more of a blur...I remember a few songs, some crowdsurfing, an amazing venue as very wide, once again energized Hosen, more beer(in cans btw) and a few special acts. Is there anything more to ask for? Claro, afterparty, but this is even more of a blur...With many more beer and whatsoever for everybody who was tired or just wanted to be sure to make it a good night we drove through la plata and some other parties over there...At some point i recall 7 people, from which I knew 1 slightly before but good times. At some point at 6 or 7 we returned to BA, I was already sleeping in the car for a while. But the others were still going strong not being tired at the moment. Such a day, no shower, one more sip of beer and straight to bed. I reckon I will never get closer to Punk rock than this before.

Days with the most drinks, usually the ones with the fewest pictures for me ;)

Next day started slowly, ended slowly but again a Coverband concert, Peru tied Argentina, so know it´s very interesting who is going to qualify and another day I made a nice tour through the party area of Palermo with two new friends. The show on Saturday was in a huge venue of 5000-7000 people. The living room of the Ramones, they said. Many other guest, setlist switched again and At least the first third of the concert everybody went crazy once more. With forgoing time, people got more relaxed and only half of the stadium jumped along..I mobilized my last strength and had an amazing time. Meeting people in the crowed I have met during the last week and giving them a possible last high five or smile.

Los hosen more or less announced the location of the aftershow party: the club we went the week before but I called it a night in some bar close to my hostel. A friend gave me his sweater to show once more how welcome I am here. Lots of promises of reuniting in whatever part of the world were mad and at some point I went home to my Hostel. I´m not sure if or when I will see this city and especially all those nice people again. But the times, friendlyness and in all kinds of situation and circumstances they gave me here will always be reminded in my brain and my heart. I now understand when los Hosen say they do not come for the music, they come to meet the people, I seldom received such a warm welcome of different people in various situations in several forms. As always I hope to be able to return the favor in a place where I can show people around and gave them a good time, but for now I can just say thank you!

rocknroll

last beer, this time for sure!

more impressions:

there he is!

street art

subway art

maybe next time Ill tell you about my first Spanish interview! ;)

#hastaluego #hastalamuerte #buenosaires #dietotenhosen #cerveza

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televisedbirdwatching · 5 years

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#NoMoreFreeways, Induced Demand, and the destruction of a neighborhood (again).

Last week, record store Beacon Sound posted a batch of stickers on their instagram. The stickers read “Someone tell Ted Wheeler that you can’t be a ‘climate mayor’ and expand I-5 at the same time.”

In 2017, the Oregon Department of Transportation proposed the addition of “auxiliary lanes” on a section of I-5 as it runs through North Portland. Since that time, they have been trying to sell the public on the benefits of this expansion. They write: “Three Interstates (I-5, I-84, and I-405) intersect in the short distance between the Morrison Bridge and the Fremont Bridge, creating the biggest bottleneck in the state of Oregon… With a new ramp-to-ramp lane in each direction on I-5 from I-84 to I-405, drivers will experience a safer, more reliable trip with less potential for crashes… Adding these upgrades is expected to reduce crashes up to 50 percent on I-5, save over 2.5 million hours of travel time each year, and result in $732 million in economic benefits while staying within ODOT’s existing property.”

[source]

Portland isn’t buying it. Writing in the Willamette Weekly, Rachel Monahan called the proposal’s public comment phase a “flaming wreck” In fact, when I first began my research for this article, I imagined I would find a heated debate between oppositional viewpoints. Not so. As it turns out, everyone hates this project. It was difficult, really, to find voices in support of the project, with a few notable exceptions: ODOT, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, and most of the city council.

I’ll discuss the anomaly of ODOT and Wheeler’s support later. First, I’d like to explain some of the arguments that have been brought against the project. First off, highway expansions have been proven, time and time again, to be self-defeating projects. The phenomenon of induced demand explains that as highways increase supply by expanding the number of lanes, they end up generating an equal amount of demand, meaning that after a short time, the new highway becomes just as congested as the old one used to be. Citylab explains that our default assumption is that traffic behaves like a liquid, flowing through the available space. Instead, we ought to think of traffic more like a gas, “expanding to fill up all the space it is allowed.”

In a review of academic studies about the phenomenon of induced demand, California’s Department of Transportation concluded that “a 10 percent increase in road capacity yields a 3 to 6 percent increase in vehicle miles travelled in the short term and 6 to 10 percent in the long term.” More lanes: More traffic. Other studies show that induced traffic fills in all of the new available space within a period of 3 to 6 years. Highway expansion projects are a waste of money and time. At their best, they relieve congestion for a few years. At their worst, they actually generate more vehicle miles traveled.

Second, this particular freeway expansion raises a number of environmental justice concerns. If you read my last post, you’ll know that the Albina neighborhood was the only place in Portland where black residents and refugees from Vanport were able to live. Is it a coincidence that when I-5 was constructed, it cut a straight line through the heart of Albina?

The construction of I-5 in Portland. From a City Observatory Post where Cortright talks about construction and displacement in Albina. He writes: “In the two decades following construction of the I-5 freeway through lower Albina, more than 1,700 persons were displaced from this neighborhood.”

I-5’s trajectory narrowly missed Harriet Tubman Middle School. Portland Public Schools was forced to close Tubman in 2009 due to budget cuts, but is finally ready to re-open the school this fall. In response to the freeway expansion proposal, Portland State University scientists produced a 66-page report on air quality at the school, whose playground is a literal stone’s throw from the freeway. “It found levels of arsenic and three petroleum byproducts—acrolein, benzene and naphthalene—that come from vehicle exhausts well in excess of local safety guidelines. Arsenic readings were more than four times Oregon's ambient benchmark concentrations and naphthalene's were six times.” They began their recommendations section with this: "student outdoor activities [should] be limited at Harriet Tubman Middle School, especially during high traffic periods.” Adding lanes to highway I-5 would make this problem even more concerning.

The building right next to the freeway here is Harriet Tubman Middle School. The baseball diamond is part of their schoolyard.

To review: It’s unlikely that adding additional lanes to I-5 in North Portland would reduce congestion. Thanks to the phenomenon of induced demand, any reduction in congestion will be short lived (3-6 years). Further, any faster travel times will be at the direct expense of Middle School students at a historically black school. In the face of these concerns, why do ODOT, Wheeler, and the City Council still support the project?

In writing this article, I spent weeks trying to find a coherent reason why Wheeler might support the freeway expansion. The only sensible explanation I found came from this article in the Mercury, where Dirk VanderHart debunks Wheeler’s arguments. It seems as though Wheeler has uncritically accepted ODOT’s claims, even though these claims have been proven false by multiple independent, third-party researchers. Portland-based journalist and activist Joe Cortright [from City Observatory and No More Freeways] featured this succinct and hard-hitting call-out on his blog:

“Objectively, the conduct of the Oregon Department of Transportation has failed to conform to the most minimal expectations of professional conduct. This agency produced an environmental assessment with no data on average daily traffic (ADT) the most fundamental and widely used measure of traffic volumes; essentially the equivalent of presenting a financial report with no dollar figures. This agency concealed the assumption that its traffic projections assumed that the region would build the $3 billion Columbia River Crossing (in 2015). The agency denied its was widening the freeway, but engineered a 126-foot wide right of way, sufficient for an eight-lane freeway. The agency denied it had any engineering plans for the project, and was subsequently forced to release 33 gigabytes of such plans. The agency made false claims that this freeway was the number one crash location in Oregon, when other ODOT roadways in Portland have higher crash rates and fatalities. These are not random or isolated acts; they’re part of a pattern and practice of concealing, obscuring and distorting essential facts. If Oregon is to make a reasoned decision on a half-billion dollar investment, it needs a more honest, transparent state Department of Transportation.”

In his book Walkable City, Jeff Speck writes “The profession of traffic planning is so desperately in need of a course correction that the most productive approach would seem to be to shame them mercilessly.” Engaging this directive, here’s a quote from Jane Jacobs (in 2004’s Dark Age Ahead):

“It is popularly assumed that when universities give science degrees in traffic engineering, as they do, they are recognizing aboveboard, expert knowledge. But they aren’t. They are perpetrating a fraud upon students and upon the public when they award credentials in this supposed expertise. I thought sadly: ‘Here they are, another generation of nice, miseducated young men, about to waste their careers in a fake science that cares nothing about evidence; that doesn’t ask a fruitful question in the first place and that, when unexpected evidence turns up anyhow, doesn’t pursue it… … This incurious profession pulls its conclusions about the meaning of evidence out of thin air- sheer guesswork- even when it does deign to notice evidence… In the meantime, each year students have poured forth from universities, a clear, harmful case of education surrendered to credentialism.”

There’s a few related things I’d like to pull out of Cortright, Speck, and Jacob’s arguments here. First, I’d like to focus in on the idea that traffic engineering “doesn’t ask a fruitful question in the first place.” Of course, the point of widening the I-5 corridor is to reduce traffic congestion. However, what the phenomenon of induced demand shows us is that there will always be congestion. What if slow-moving traffic isn’t a problem? What if congestion is just the reality of living in a place where many thousands of people are trying to get to many thousands of different places at similar times?

Portland freeway “Traffic Monsters,” as seen on social media.

Second, I want to bring attention to Cortright’s main argument in his blog post. ODOT’s failure to conduct themselves in a way that even approaches scientific rigor is disappointing, but the I-5 expansion highlights the near-complete lack of democratic, citizen checks on ODOT’s power. ODOT is run by a citizen board of commissioners. However, these citizen commissioners have failed to “insist on basic standards of openness and truthfulness from their staff.” Given that the public comment period was a “flaming wreck,” given that I struggled to find any citizen or neighborhood groups that are in favor of this project, given that the overwhelming evidence suggests that such a project will have zero effect on traffic and a negative effect on the environment: if it is successfully built, it will represent a complete breakdown in democratic procedure for ODOT.

ODOT’s board of Citizen Commissioners.

Finally: I think we ought to take environmental justice claims seriously. I am not willing to argue that ODOT is intentionally targeting Middle School students. However, their refusal to take these concerns seriously exposes the seriously limited visionary scope of traffic engineers. Speck writes: “ while all traffic engineers can be trouble, state engineers are the toughest because they have no obligation to listen to a local mayor or citizens. They answer to a higher authority, which is ultimately the god of Traffic Flow.” ODOT’s narrow focus on the pseudo-problem of highway congestion is dangerous. We should not only hold our sate traffic engineers to more rigorous scientific standards, we ought to insist that the develop a more holistic set of goals that includes, for example, the health and safety of middle school students, and protecting their right to play outside.

On Tuesday, March 12th of 2019, ODOT held one three-hour meeting in order to hear public concerns about the $500 Million Dollar project. This was the only meeting they held during the whole of the public comment phase. One young student from Harriet Tubman Middle School spoke to the citizen board and said: “I respect your choice,” (!!!) “but know that this will affect students today and students in the future.”

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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If You Care About Cities, Apple’s New Campus Sucks

The new headquarters Apple is building in Cupertino has the absolute best door handles. The greatest! They are, as my colleague Steven Levy writes, precision-milled aluminum rails that attach to glass doors—sliding and swinging alike—with no visible bolts.

Everything in this building is the best. The toroid glass of the roof curves scientifically to shed rainwater. And if it never rains again (this being California), well, an arborist selected thousands of drought-tolerant new trees for the 175-acre site. Not every Apple employee will get to work in the new building—ouch!—but 12,000 will. Of course, it only has 9,000 parking spaces, but that’s supposed to encourage people to take an Apple shuttle to work. And once they arrive, they’re not going to want to leave. The fitness center has a climbing wall with pre-distressed stone. The concrete edges of the parking lot walls are rounded. The fire suppression systems come from yachts. Craftspeople harvested the wood paneling at the exact time of year the late Steve Jobs demanded—mid-winter—so the sap content wouldn’t be ruinously high. Come on! You don’t want sappy wood panels. This isn’t, like, Microsoft.

Whether you call it the Ring (too JRR Tolkien), the Death Star (too George Lucas), or the Spaceship (too Buckminster Fuller), something has alighted in Cupertino. And no one could possibly question the elegance of its design and architecture. This building is $5 billion and 2.8 million square feet of Steve Jobsian-Jony Ivesian-Norman Fosterian genius. WIRED already said all that.

But … one more one more thing. You can’t understand a building without looking at what’s around it—its site, as the architects say. From that angle, Apple’s new HQ is a retrograde, literally inward-looking building with contempt for the city where it lives and cities in general. People rightly credit Apple for defining the look and feel of the future; its computers and phones seem like science fiction. But by building a mega-headquarters straight out of the middle of the last century, Apple has exacerbated the already serious problems endemic to 21st-century suburbs like Cupertino—transportation, housing, and economics. Apple Park is an anachronism wrapped in glass, tucked into a neighborhood.

The Architecture

Apple Park isn’t the first high-end, suburban corporate headquarters. In fact, that used to be the norm. Look back at the 1950s and 1960s and, for example, the Connecticut General Life Insurance HQ in Hartford or John Deere’s headquarters in Moline, Illinois. “They were stunningly beautiful, high modernist buildings by quality architects using cutting-edge technology to create buildings sheathed in glass with a seamless relationship between inside and outside, dependent on the automobile to move employees to the site,” says Louise Mozingo, a landscape architect at UC Berkeley and author of Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes. “There was a kind of splendid isolation that was seen as productive, capturing the employees for an entire day and in the process reinforcing an insular corporate culture.”

By moving out of downtown skyscrapers and building in the suburbs, corporations were reflecting 1950s ideas about cities—they were dirty, crowded, and unpleasantly diverse. The suburbs, though, were exclusive, aspirational, and architectural blank slates. (Also, buildings there are easier to secure and workers don’t go out for lunch where they might hear about other, better jobs.) It was corporatized white flight. (Mozingo, I should add, speaks to this retrograde notion in Levy’s WIRED story.)

Silicon Valley, though, never really played by these rules. IBM built a couple of research sites modeled on its East Coast redoubts, but in general, “Silicon Valley has thrived on using rather interchangeable buildings for their workplaces,” Mozingo says. You start in a garage, take over half a floor in a crummy office park, then take over the full floor, then the building, then get some venture capital and move to a better office park. “Suddenly you’re Google, and you have this empire of office buildings along 101."

And then when a bust comes or your new widget won’t widge, you let some leases lapse or sell some real estate. More than half of the lot where Apple sited its new home used to be Hewlett Packard. The Googleplex used to be Silicon Graphics. It’s the circuit of life.

Except when you have a statement building like the Spaceship, the circuit can’t complete. If Apple ever goes out of business, what would happen to the building? The same thing that happened to Union Carbide’s. That’s why nobody builds these things anymore. Successful buildings engage with their surroundings—and to be clear, Apple isn’t in some suburban arcadia. It’s in a real live city, across the street from houses and retail, near two freeway onramps.

Except the Ring is mostly hidden behind artificial berms, like Space Mountain at Disneyland. “They’re all these white elephants. Nobody knows what the hell to do with them. They’re iconic, high-end buildings, and who cares?” Mozingo says. “You have a $5 billion office building, incredibly idiosyncratic, impossible to purpose for somebody else. Nobody’s going to move into Steve Jobs’ old building.”

The Landscape

But that’s all future-Apple’s problem. Today-Apple’s problem is how the campus fits into Cupertino and crowded, congested, expensive Silicon Valley.

Between 2010 and 2015 the San Francisco Bay Area added 640,000 jobs, with more than a third of that growth in tech. But the region didn’t add nearly enough housing; with the exception of a spike during the boom years leading up to the 2008 recession, the number of new housing units built in the city of San Francisco has trended steadily downward, and the same is true for other Bay Area cities. Here’s what happens when supply fails to meet demand: The median price for a home in the Bay Area has climbed to $800,000. It’s even higher in Silicon Valley.

That’s starting to change. San Francisco has 62,000 units in the pipeline, and San Jose is adding thousands every year, too. (To be clear, those numbers are still far lower than places like Houston and Atlanta.) But the towns along the 101 and 280, the homes of companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook? Nope. Cupertino, Mountain View, and Palo Alto all have tens of thousands of workers in the tech business, adding more and more all the time, but those cities have been reluctant to build new houses or apartments.

How is this Apple’s problem? “Apple’s obviously very important to the city, and when they came in with that plan, we understood this wasn’t going to be just any development,” says Aarti Shrivastava, Cupertino’s assistant city manager. “They had certain needs.” Heightened sensitivity to security was one of them, which meant no public access—and even closing a major road.

In the early days of the project, reports suggest Apple wasn’t willing to participate in “community benefits,” financial or otherwise, and Cupertino’s city council didn’t seem too willing to push one of the city’s biggest employers and taxpayers. The mayor at the time tried to propose higher taxes on the company, but the city council didn’t support the move.

Over time, though, Apple committed to giving the city some money to help with traffic and parking. “We had to bring them into our world. They don’t do urban design. They don’t do planning. We needed to talk to each other,” Shrivastava says.

In its HP incarnation, the site had about 5,000 workers; the new Apple complex will more than double that. Just 10 percent of them live in Cupertino, but according to an Environmental Impact Report on the project that an Apple spokesperson sent me, that still means that demand for Cupertino housing will increase by 284 percent. Apple is paying a “Housing Mitigation Fee” to the city. It’s based on overall square footage, but it turns out Apple is only adding about 800,000 square feet of building over what used to be on the site. So the company agreed to double the usual fee. But since the city had already halved the fee, so Apple is just paying … the fee. It’ll be about $5 million.

You can do math: Ten percent of people working in Cupertino means that 90 percent of the people in the Spaceship will commute. Most of them live in San Jose (10 miles east) and San Francisco (45 miles north). The lack of a cohesive regional transportation network in the Bay Area privileges cars, which is why Google and other tech companies started fielding their own buses in the last few years. (In 2014, San Franciscans angry about gentrification met Google’s buses with resistance.)

Apple has shuttles that range the entire peninsula and into the East Bay and has committed to raising the number of trips to its headquarters not in single-occupancy vehicles to 34 percent. According to the EIR, just 1.5 percent of commute trips to Apple’s existing facilities are on public transit; by that calculation, the company says, the public bus system’s plenty robust enough. That logic is as circular as the building; if you don’t build it, they won’t come.

Of course that wasn’t all Apple worked on with Cupertino. Because part of the new campus subsumed what was going to be public space, Apple paid $8.2 million so Cupertino could build a park somewhere else. And the company agreed to help address the community’s major concern: traffic. Cupertino already had big plans for walkability and bikability; Apple is paying for a lot of those efforts around its campus. It ponied up $250,000 for a feasibility study on improving one of the nearby intersections, and an extra $1 million for another. Recognizing that not having enough parking for everyone on site meant that people were going to park in nearby neighborhoods, Apple is paying $250,000 to Santa Clara and $500,000 to Sunnyvale in parking restitution. “We worked very hard with both cities to figure out what amount would be OK, and Apple was very open to that,” Shrivastava says.

Oh, and two big ones: Apple is one of Cupertino’s biggest sources of tax revenue, but the city used to forgive all of Apple’s business-to-business sales tax. Now the city will get 65 percent of it. And the company built, at a cost of around $5 million, a system to bring recycled water from Sunnyvale to hydrate the new landscape. That’s not a direct community benefit, but developments at two more sites, the Hamptons and the old Vallco Mall, will also use that water if and when they get built.

Still, though…Apple has $250 billion in cash. Against that, these community benefits feel small. The company could have chipped in to double the frequency of CalTrain’s commuter rail. It could have built a transit center in Cupertino, which, unlike Mountain View and Palo Alto, has none. “Apple could have done anything. Money was no object,” says Allison Arieff, editorial director for the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association and lead author of its recent report on corporate campuses. “They want to be innovative in everything, and they’re not innovative in this thing.” Apple is instead making significant improvements to roads and highways. “If the intractable problems of the region are housing and congestion, they’re giving the finger to all that,” Arieff says.

The problems in the Bay Area (and Los Angeles and many other cities) are a lot more complicated than an Apple building, of course. Cities all have to balance how they feel about adding jobs, which can be an economic benefit, and adding housing, which also requires adding expensive services like schools and transit. Things are especially tough in California, where a 1978 law called Proposition 13 radically limits the amount that the state can raise property taxes yearly. Not only did its passage gut basic services the state used to excel at, like education, but it also turned real estate into the primary way Californians accrued and preserved personal wealth. If you bought a cheap house in the 1970s in the Bay Area, today it’s a gold mine—and you are disincentivized from doing anything that would reduce its value, like, say, allowing an apartment building to be built anywhere within view.

Meanwhile California cities also have to figure out how to pay for their past employees’ pensions, an ever-increasing percentage of city budgets. Since they can’t tax old homes and can’t build new ones, commercial real estate and tech booms look pretty good. “It’s a lot to ask a corporate campus to fix those problems,” Arieff says.

But that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t try. Some companies are: The main building of the cloud storage company Box, for example, is across the street from the Redwood City CalTrain station, and the company lets people downtown park in its lot on weekends. “The architecture is neither here nor there, but it’s a billion times more effective than the Apple campus,” Arieff says. That’s a more contemporary approach than building behind hills, away from transit.

When those companies are transnational technology corporations, it’s even harder to make that case. “Tech tends to be remarkably detached from local conditions, primarily because they’re selling globally,” says Ed Glaeser, a Harvard economist who studies cities. “They’re not particularly tied to local suppliers or local customers.” So it’s hard to get them to help fix local problems. They have even less of an incentive to solve planning problems than California homeowners do. “Even if they see the problem and the solution, there’s not a way to sell that. This is why there are government services,” Arieff says. “You can’t solve a problem like CalTrain frequency or the jobs-to-housing ratio with a market-based solution.”

Cities are changing; a more contemporary approach to commercial architecture builds up instead of out, as the planning association’s report says. Apple’s ring sites 2.5 million square feet on 175 acres of rolling hills and trees meant to evoke the Stanford campus. The 60-story tall Salesforce Tower in San Francisco has 1.5 million square feet, takes up about an acre, has a direct connection to a major transit station—the new Transbay Terminal—and cost a fifth of the Apple ring. Stipulated, the door handles probably aren’t as nice, but the views are killer.

The Future

Cupertino is the kind of town that technology writers tend to describe as “once-sleepy” or even, and this should really set off your cliche alarm, “nondescript.” But Shrivastava had me meet her for coffee at Main Street Cupertino, a new development that—unlike the rotten strip malls along Stevens Creek Blvd—combines cute restaurants and shops with multi-story residential development and a few hundred square feet of grass that almost nearly sort of works as a town square.

Across the actual street from Main Street, the old Vallco Mall—one of those medieval fortress-like shopping centers with a Christmas-sized parking lot for a moat—has become now Cupertino’s most hotly debated site for new development. (The company that built Main Street owns it.) Like all the other once-sleepy, nondescript towns in Silicon Valley, Cupertino knows it has to change. Shrivastava knows that change takes time.

It takes even longer, though, if businesses are reluctant partners. In the early 20th century, when industrial capitalists were first starting to get really, really rich, they noticed that publicly financed infrastructure would help them get richer. If you own land that you want to develop into real estate, you want a train that gets there and trolleys that connect it to a downtown and water and power for the houses you’re going to build. Maybe you want libraries and schools to induce families to live there. So you team up with government. “In most parts of the US, you open a tap and drink the water and it won’t kill you. There was a moment when this was a goal of both government and capital,” Mozingo says. “Early air pollution and water pollution regulations were an agreement between capitalism and government.”

Again, in the 1930s and 1940s, burgeoning California Bay Area businesses realized they’d need a regional transit network. They worked for 30 years alongside communities and planners to build what became BART, still today a strange hybrid between regional connector and urban subway.

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Tech companies are taking baby steps in this same direction. Google added housing to the package deal surrounding the construction of its new HQ in the North Bayshore area—nearly 10,000 apartments. (That HQ is a collection of fancy pavilion-like structures from famed architect Bjarke Ingels.) Facebook’s new headquarters (from famed architect Frank Gehry) is supposed to be more open to the community, maybe even with a farmers’ market. Amazon’s new headquarters in downtown Seattle, some of 10 million square feet of office space the company has there, comes with terrarium-like domes that look like a good version of Passengers.

So what could Apple have built? Something taller, with mixed-use development around it? Cupertino would never have allowed it. But putting form factor aside, the best, smartest designers and architects in the world could have tried something new. Instead it produced a building roughly the shape of a navel, and then gazed into it.

Steven Levy wrote that the headquarters was Steve Jobs’ last great project, an expression of the way he saw his domain. It may look like a circle, but it’s actually a pyramid—a monument, more suited to a vanished past than a complicated future.