In a Small Way

January

September

Not far from the neighborhood, we stopped by Marugame Udon at the Stonestown Galleria in San Francisco. It was our first visit since the lockdown began in March. Like everywhere else, most tables and all the chairs were stacked in the corner, and sit-down service had been eliminated.

The way it used to be

The menu had not changed, but business was down. There were a half-dozen bags on the table for pick-up by delivery services. Three patrons, including ourselves, waited for their order. The food was nearly as good as we remembered---the tempura and udon cooling off by the time we got home detracted from the experience--but we're glad we went.

Supporting businesses we like is important.

most restaurants are following the rules, working their butts off and doing their best. In turn, some diners are doubling-down and ordering out with intention.

Amy Dumas, a retired wrestler and vegan, considers takeout as a way to help San Francisco. “I don’t want to see this city become a shell of what it was!” Currently, cravings aren’t what dictate dinner in her house. “It’s ‘Where do we want our dollars to go? Who are we going to support tonight?’” She skips the delivery apps, with fees that cut deep into a restaurant’s bottom line, and instead zips around on her Vespa, picking up pizza at Beretta; dumplings from Golden Era in the Tenderloin; mushroom skewers from her friends at the Kebabery across the Bay Bridge.

It's a sure thing that not every one of the people and businesses we like will be here after normalcy is restored. We can't keep them afloat by ourselves, but we can help in a small way.

Out, Damned Spots

I'll bet that this is a danger that the models didn't predict:

A Grim Reality of Reopening: More Mold

(Wired photo)

The pandemic has forced all sorts of buildings to sit empty for long periods of time. As people venture back into their homes, schools, and offices again, they may also find an unwelcome surprise inside. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns people who are reopening buildings to watch out for potential hazards like mold and Legionella pneumophila, the bacterium that causes Legionnaires’ disease...

Vacation homes and foreclosed properties often harbor mold. New construction techniques may be somewhat to blame: Because homes are now tightly sealed for energy conservation, they may be poorly ventilated and susceptible to issues like mold. Every year, some unlucky school districts return in August or September to find classrooms full of the stuff.

Homeowners may try to save thousands of dollars by doing the clean-up, albeit imperfectly, themselves. Business property owners don't have that leeway.

Because of liability and public-safety regulations, businesses must use licensed contractors. I know one rental-property owner who, when replacing the bathtub, found mold in one corner of the bathroom. Before-and-after air testing, removing the mold, tenting, drying, and recertification cost him $4,000 ten years ago.

If you're looking for a business to invest in, dear reader, try mold removal and restoration services. They should be booming this year.

The Ineffable City on Seven Hills

San Francisco's problems are so overwhelming that we can forget why we moved here in the first place.

"Dance of Dreams," a 7½-minute film by the San Francisco Ballet, reminds us of its beauty.

Choreographed to Bernard Hermann's score from Hitchcock's Vertigo, a production that combines a world-class ballet company, famous landmarks, and music from a 1950's iconic film could only have been made in a handful of cities in the world.

WSJ: “'Dance of Dreams' has its own ineffable poetics."

Eviction Moratorium: Long-Term Effects Ignored

(KVTA image)

Since the COVID-19 lockdown began in March, California law has prohibited the eviction of tenants who could not pay rent. The bill signed into law last night extends the eviction moratorium into next year: [bold added]

The legislation, AB3088, grants tenants who have lost income because of the coronavirus pandemic a reprieve on their missed rent and gives them five more months before they must start paying again in full...

AB3088, by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, would shield tenants facing financial hardships because of the pandemic from being evicted over any missed rent from March through August. The money would be converted into civil debt, which landlords could pursue in small claims court starting March 1.

Tenants would be expected to to pay a quarter of their total rent between September and January, with the rest becoming civil debt. If they could not pay at least 25% of the rent for those five months by Jan. 31, their landlords would be allowed to file to evict them starting in February.

Landlords would have to give residents 15 days to affirm under penalty of perjury that they have lost income because of the coronavirus. Those who make more than 130% of the median income in their area, if it is above $100,000, could be asked to show proof — an attempt to crack down on wealthier tenants who have engaged in solidarity “rent strikes” during the pandemic.

There is a next-to-zero chance of collecting the unpaid rent once a tenant moves out, so basically the State will have taken tens of $thousands per rental unit from property owners in order to effect public policy.

Many owners cannot afford to go without rent for a year. I know elderly landlords who rent out their homes to pay, partially, for their assisted living apartments, which cost $10,000 per month. I know another single-property owner who is taking her condo off the market. Her story:

I've always rented my place at 10-15% below other condos in the area. I try to pick good people who pay the rent on time and are happy with their lease.

My tenant of three years began asking for a reduction of rent in April. I knew his business was hurting so I said yes. Every month he would call me asking for a reduction from the price, which was already discounted. I knew he had a rainy-day fund as well as a PPP loan granted in May. I suspect he was playing me and had the money, but he did pay his lower rent on time. My condition was that he move out when his lease expired. Now that he has done so, I will leave the condo vacant though it means I have to absorb $2,200 per month in expenses. No one is giving me relief on my mortgage, property taxes, or homeowners association dues. Thank goodness I have a rainy-day fund, too.

But why not get a new tenant?

It's too much risk taking on someone who I can't evict if he doesn't pay. Eviction is how you enforce rental agreements. Also, the security deposit protected me against losing much if you can evict within 30 days. If I can't evict someone for a year, I won’t rent it. Maybe I’ll let a friend or relative stay there.

This law, through its one-size-fits-all approach, has permanently changed the rental market in California. It has permanently increased the risk of being a landlord by showing how easily California can override contracts for a year in the name of a health crisis. (The landlords do get a little something--purportedly 25% of the rent due--but if the tenants don't even pay that they still get to stay rent free until February.)

I doubt the State intended for landlords to remove rental units from the market, but that's a very foreseeable consequence of imposing a new risk on an industry.

The State, IMHO, should have let the many thousands of rental arrangements play out as they were meant to, then spend monies from the general Treasury to address the homelessness and health fallout. Instead, California is making the landlords pay.

Someday there will be stories about small landlords losing their retirement savings, the means of paying for assisted living, or the house they meant to leave to their children, but I doubt they'll get much play in the news.

[Update: in a move similar to the California law President Trump declared a moratorium on residential evictions:

Relying on a public health law intended to prevent the spread of an illness, the Trump administration said Tuesday it is implementing a national four-month moratorium on residential evictions.

To stop evictions, health officials are relying on the 1944 Public Health Service Act, which gives the administration broad quarantine powers. The moratorium, which will run through Dec. 31, applies to individuals earning less than $99,000 a year and who are unable to make rent or housing payments.

Whether by means of Federal law, State law, or executive order, long-term eviction moratoriums will have far-reaching consequences on housing markets. Some landlords will lose their properties, many rent liabilities will be too large for small claims court, more tenants will declare bankruptcy, housing supply will be withdrawn because of higher owner risk, tenant credit requirements will rise, and there will definitely be more paperwork.]

[Update 2: Will Property Rights be Permanently Diminished?]

Willie Advises the Democrats

Willie Brown is unabashedly partisan, but he doesn't hesitate to call out his fellow Democrats when he thinks they're on the wrong track:

Burning Kenosha used-car lot (Chron)

Burning and Looting Will Hand the Election to Trump
If they stand up and condemn the “demonstrators,” the left wing will label them as Trump flunkies and they’ll be in all sorts of trouble.

If they keep quiet or offer passive responses, voters will assume they’re OK with burning and looting.

What we need to do is have everyone, including the media, stop calling the after-dark destruction “demonstrations.”

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did not cross the bridge at Selma under cover of darkness. You can’t even read a protest sign at night.

(NBC News photo)

Duck the Debates
Biden would probably get his backside kicked.

Biden has never been a good debater. He’s too civilized, too nuanced for a matchup with Trump.

It would be like Willie Brown taking on LeBron James in a one-on-one pickup game.

If the polls are to believed, Biden has a respectable lead over Trump in the states that are likely to decide the election.

Why mess with success? Why give your opponent an audience?

Kimberly Guilfoyle's speech was a blast

Democrat vs. Republican Conventions
In terms of entertainment value, the Republicans won hands down. Their telethon was livelier and better-produced than the Democrats’...

They also had a couple of showstoppers, like Sen. Tim Scott, a Black Republican from South Carolina, declaring that only in America could his family have gone “from cotton to Congress in one lifetime.” The best line of the convention, in my opinion...

Judging by the national reaction, the real star of week was San Francisco’s own former first lady Kimberly Guilfoyle. My cell phone started blowing up even before she was halfway through her “Evita” performance.

It was reality TV at its best.

Kim Kardashian, watch out.

According to Willie Brown Democrats should denounce the riots and duck the debates. It's not an inspiring strategy, but it's probably a sound one.

Holding Their Nose and Voting Republican

The Wall Street Journal highlights another consequence of the extended coronavirus lockdown: uncollected garbage. [bold added]

NYC sidewalk, Jan., 2020   (WNYC)

Philadelphia and Baltimore are among the hardest hit cities, though others, such as Atlanta and Nashville, also are having trouble. In Virginia Beach, Va., sanitation workers demanding hazard pay held a one-day work stoppage Aug. 19, putting trash collection behind for days. In New York City, garbage has piled up on some commercial corridors and residential streets after budget cuts reduced trash pickup.

Some residents are taking matters into their own hands. On two occasions the West Passyunk Neighborhood Association in South Philadelphia has trucked trash and recyclables in rented pickups to a city facility, after waiting in vain for municipal crews.

“Our streets looked like the city was abandoned,” said James Gitto, the association’s 29-year-old president. “It’s a daunting task when you look out and there is trash everywhere.”

At its worst, he said, the smell of rotten meat seeped into his home from trash bags piled by the street, and at night he could hear cats fighting over the spoils. He added that some garbage sat so long it stained the sidewalk.

Without knowing the answer in advance (except for New York), your humble blogger looked up the political affiliation of the mayors of the above-mentioned cities. They were overwhelmingly Democrats.

Keisha Lance Bottoms (D), Atlanta
Bernard "Jack" Young (D), Baltimore
John Cooper (D), Nashville
Bill de Blasio (D), New York
Jim Kenney (D), Philadelphia
Bobby Dyer (R), Virginia Beach

According to recent polls the Democrats have a good chance of winning the Presidency and sweeping Congress this year. Well, they might have done so despite the rioting and looting in cities they govern, but garbage in the streets? That may be enough for their constituencies to hold their nose and vote Republican.

Being Philosophical

Interest in philosophy rises during troubled times:

Clockwise from top left: Socrates, Michel
de Montaigne, Henry D Thoreau. (WSJ)

today’s lockdowns (partial or full) force us to pause and question assumptions so deeply ingrained that we didn’t know we had them. This, said Socrates, is how wisdom takes root. We crave a return to “normal,” but have we stopped to define normal? We know these times demand courage, but what does courage look like? Already, we’ve expanded our notion of “hero” to include not only doctors and nurses but grocery clerks and Grubhub couriers. Good, Socrates would say: Now interrogate other “givens.”...

Stoicism was born of disaster—its founder Zeno established the school of thought in 301 B.C. after he was shipwrecked near Athens—and it has been dispensing advice on coping with adversity ever since. No wonder it’s enjoying a resurgence, one that began before the pandemic.

Stoic philosophy is neatly summed up by the former slave turned teacher Epictetus: “What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about things.” Change what you can, accept what you cannot, a formula later adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and crafty T-shirt hawkers.

A good Stoic would have prepared for the pandemic by practicing premeditatio malorum, or “premeditation of adversity.” Imagine the worst scenarios, advised the Roman senator and Stoic philosopher Seneca, and “rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck.” A modern Stoic’s list looks a bit different—a screaming child, unpaid bills, a worrisome fever—but the idea is the same. By contemplating calamity, we rob future hardships of their bite and appreciate what we have now. Adversity anticipated is adversity diminished...

The pandemic has made a mockery of our grand plans. Graduations, weddings, job prospects—poof, gone, rolling back down the hill like Sisyphus’s boulder. Yet we must persevere, said Camus. Our task, he said, isn’t to understand the meaning of catastrophes like Covid-19 (there is none) but to “imagine Sisyphus happy.” How? By owning the boulder. By throwing ourselves into the task, despite its futility, because of its futility. “Sisyphus’s fate belongs to him,” said Camus. “His rock is his thing.”

Are you working on a seemingly fruitless project, a dissertation or a marketing strategy, forever delayed, buffeted by the gales of circumstance? Good, Camus says, you’ve begun to grasp the absurdity of life. Invest in the effort, not the result, and you will sleep better. His prescription is our challenge in the age of Covid-19: staring down the absurdity of our predicament but stubbornly persisting rather than yielding to despair. Just like a good philosopher.

One would be mistaken in thinking that philosophy--and religion--are ascendant at the expense of science.

Some may have "lost their faith in science", but true scientists have never claimed that science had the answers. Global warming, whether a coronavirus vaccine will work, smoking cigarettes will kill you, etc. are all outcomes that are couched in probabilities. Furthermore, true scientists are open to new evidence that could overturn long-held hypotheses.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger," Friedrich Nietzsche famously said. Science, philosophy, and mankind will ultimately come out of these times stronger than ever. Nietzsche, of course, was a philosopher.

BLM

Landed families are known for giving the same name to successive generations of men (example: Alexander Rae Baldwin III, who can trace his lineage to the Mayflower), but they don't hold a candle to Handsome Dan XVIII:

Don't mistake his sniffing
for haughtiness.

The tradition was established by a young gentleman from Victorian England, who attended Yale in the 1890's. The line now numbers 18, and the original successors have been the intimates of deans, directors, and coaches. One was tended by a head cheerleader who went on to become the Secretary of State. Another was featured on the cover of a national magazine. Yale was the first university in the United States to adopt a mascot, and to this date, none is better known than Handsome Dan.

The venerable university can take down statues and change the name of its residential colleges--perhaps even rename the whole institution--but if they put Handsome Dan in the doghouse, its donation request will go straight to the shredder.

San Francisco Has Topped Out

This month I've been posting--and probably boring you to tears, dear reader--about the untenability of life in the Bay Area ("Cascading Catastrophes", "Thousands Flee"). Chronicle writers have devoted time to this theme:

Bad things keep piling on — when is enough enough in the Bay Area? [bold added]

Come for the fog, stay with the smoke (Chron)

The lightning-sparked fires spreading in all directions, fouling the region’s air and driving people from their homes in at least six of our nine counties, are the latest onslaught in a year that already has given us too many layers of stress. They come as we enter our sixth month of a pandemic that has no clear end, as protests continue against the racial inequities made stark by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May...

In a poll last year by the Bay Area Council, for example, 57% of the people surveyed by the business group said that the region was on the “wrong track” — twice the number who held that view in 2015. Almost as many, 49%, classified themselves as “strongly” or “somewhat” likely to move from the region in the next few years. Asked why, nearly three-quarters identified housing costs or the cost of living as the main culprit.

Veteran writer Carl Nolte believes San Francisco will bounce back:

Forces keep battering San Francisco — and its spirit is still alive

2003: now this is fog.

There are a lot of examples of how the city has lost its soul: the tent encampments, the boarded-up stores, the urban failures you see everyday, the moving vans taking people away for good.

But I see other things: the man up the street who left some honey from local bees on my doorstep earlier in the summer, the woman who left a nosegay of flowers from her garden by her gate with an invitation to passersby to take the flowers home. The sidewalk libraries with free books. A city’s soul is intangible, wispy and ephemeral like the summer fog. You miss it most when the heat’s on.

Meanwhile, home prices are booming in a resort town:

Downtown Truckee, 12 mi from N Tahoe (Chron)

Tahoe’s new Gold Rush: Bay Area residents fleeing coronavirus push up home prices

The COVID-19 pandemic has stoked a real estate boom throughout the Tahoe region, propelled by thousands of workers fleeing San Francisco and the broader Bay Area. Freed from the shackles of 9-to-5 office work, these white-collar workers are seeking mountain homes near open space and tranquility far from downtown high-rises. And they have the money to pay for it.

Young people move here for the nightlife, job opportunities, networking, and the weather. The nightlife is non-existent, jobs and networking can be done remotely, and the smokey air, not fog, is now an annual summer phenomenon.

The population inflow is slowing, the outflow is accelerating, and, sorry Carl Nolte, IMHO I don't see what will stop these trends.

We Plan to Go When She'll Be Right

Combining the yearning for epic travel and epic movies, Air New Zealand's 2014 safety video holds up well today, when we have neither:

Embracing the Fake

I ordered some college paraphernalia, and they sent me the wrong shirt. It's two-sizes too big, I'm not a lawyer, and I didn't go to law school.

If I do wear it, people might get the impression that I'm smarter than I really am. Also, they might ask me about law stuff, and I could bluff them for only about 30 seconds.

Besides, going to a school named after a slave trader and owner is not cool and maybe even dangerous to the shirt wearer.

But I do like the shield emblem, and I do like the color. Eh, I'll keep it. When pressed, I'll say I got it from a friend.

When Kimberly Guilfoyle Shouts, People Listen

Kimberly Guilfoyle was derided for her extravagant speaking style by hostile commentators in the mainstream media. Here is what the normally-friendly WSJ had to say about her speech at the Republican convention: [italics added]

Guilfoyle Goes Full Blast
The convention was peppered with dark predictions about the future if Mr. Biden wins the election in November. Trump campaign senior adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle, who delivered her warning to Americans in a nearly continuous shout, said Democrats want to enslave Americans with liberal ideology, steal liberty and freedom and “control what you see and believe.”

“They want to destroy this country and everything we have fought for and hold dear,” said Ms. Guilfoyle.

After that tantalizing review, one has to see the speech for oneself:



Comments:
1) The usual outraged responders to the sexist criticism (if a man talked like that, they would say he was dynamic and forceful) are unusually quiet;
2) Her speech was over-the-top when one knows that there was no live audience; it was entirely appropriate for a speech in front of conventioneers. This will become apparent when the Trump campaign adds cheers, crowds, and confetti through the magic of CGI.
3) Kimberly Guilfoyle was once married to Gavin Newsom. Forget about the Conways and Matalin-Carville. Guilfoyle-Newsom would have sucked all the air out of the room.

Let's Talk About Racers Instead

Auto racing, hunting, and anything to do with heavy industry, extraction, and agriculture (raising tomatoes in containers doesn't count) are worlds removed from the bicoastal ivory towers, so it's no surprise that CNN got it wrong when reporting on the Indianapolis 500.

For CNN--which appears to have no knowledge of the rube culture in flyover country--referring to "NASCAR'S Indianapolis 500" is an understandable error, just like generalizing all non-STEM majors as worthless is an understandable error by people who don't bother with the finer points of credentialism (FYI, dear reader, I'm a non-STEM major). Lumping together two very distinct racing institutions like NASCAR and the Indy 500 is like referring to "Boeing's A320" or "Google's iPhone."

Christian Bale and Matt Damon (indian express graphic)

Speaking of racing, I watched the very fine Ford v. Ferrari, a "true-story" movie about the Ford Motor Company's all-out effort to wrest the 24 Hours of Le Mans trophy from Ferrari in 1966.

While it has excellent-and-not-too-dizzying racing sequences, the power of the movie rests on Carroll Shelby's effort to get Ford to agree to the car designs and the driver, Ken Miles, he wanted. Matt Damon (Shelby) and Christian Bale (Miles) give excellent performances as they battle each other, the Ford bureaucracy, Lee Iacocca, Henry Ford II, and Enzo Ferrari.

What resonated most with this boomer was the movie's depiction of pre-1968 America, when men were confident in their ability to accomplish anything after the shared experience of World War II and when the women they loved supported them while being smarter than they were--Holy Pride and Prejudice, Batman! (1966 language reference). In tone, color, character, and attitude the movie was very much like The Right Stuff, the movie and book about the fighter pilots who became the first astronauts.

Highly recommended, even for those who don't know the difference between carburetion and fuel injection.

Jesus' Wife (Not)

Karen King holds the papyrus in question
(Boston Globe/WSJ photo)

It wasn't great literature, but it was a provocative page-turner back in the oughts.

I read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code in 2005, which (spoiler alert!) promulgated the theory that Jesus married and had children. Though fictional, the book sparked keen interest in the theory that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife. Fame and fortune would flow to the scholar who would find proof of this thesis.

In 2012 Harvard Divinity Professor Karen King unveiled the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife based on a papyrus fragment that purportedly said,

"“Jesus said to them, ‘My wife . . .’ ”

According to journalist and book reviewer Alex Beam in the WSJ

A married Jesus would turn the Catholic Church on its head. The papyrus hinted at a wife named Mary, presumed to be Mary Magdalene, painted as a prostitute by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century. The New Testament, however, never mentions a marriage, other than in references to the Church or holy Jerusalem as Christ’s spiritual bride. Christ’s purported bachelorhood undergirds the Catholic doctrine of priestly celibacy. If the papyrus accurately described a wife of Christ, “this means that the whole Catholic claim of a celibate priesthood based on Jesus’s celibacy has no historical foundation,” noted Ms. King, a feminist scholar and expert on the apocryphal, second-century Gospel of Mary.

Journalist Ariel Sabar's latest book, Veritas, recounts the history of Professor King's blockbuster finding, the subsequent re-examination, textual and physical, of the papyrus, and its ultimate debunking. Not helping Professor King's credibility was the background of the person who produced the fragment, one Walter Fritz. Mr. Fritz was a Berlin Egyptology student who ended up in Florida making pornographic films.

Ariel Sabar accuses Karen King of desiring and driving toward a conclusion that the evidence does not support.

“[Ms. King’s] ideological commitments were choreographing her practice of history,” Mr. Sabar writes. “The story came first; the dates managed after. The narrative before the evidence; the news conference before the scientific analysis.”

Ideological objectives have subverted premier education and news institutions that once held the search for truth (veritas) to be their highest calling.

Now their mission is combatting some -isms and elevating others. The truth takes a back seat to the narrative.

And if you want to take down the 2,000-year-old Christian narrative, you're gonna need a bigger piece of paper.

Bay Area: "Cascading Catastrophes"

SF on Wednesday: it's not the fog. (Chron)

We alluded to Northern California's perfect storm of problems--wildfires, COVID-19, homelessness, unemployment, crime, etc.--two days ago. The Chronicle describes how State and local governments are overwhelmed:

Firefighters may face increased risk of contracting the coronavirus while living and working in close quarters on the front lines. In hospitals and evacuation shelters across the region, people suffering smoke exposure may have symptoms that could be confused for COVID-19, complicating care and draining resources.

“These are all cascading catastrophes. We’re looking at the consequences of these overlapping emergencies,” said Dr. Matt Willis, the Marin County health officer. “We had been concerned there might be a fire here or there. And now we’re dealing with fires everywhere. And while we’re still seeing all this viral transmission.”

And on top of it all, everyone’s exhausted...

Adding to the constant chaos [not a hyperbolic description of the way things are, per Democratic VP Nominee Kamala Harris] is the confusion from government officials: [bold added]

In a pandemic, people are told that outdoor activities are better than inside. But with smoke choking the region, everyone’s being told to stay inside now. People evacuated from their homes often are urged to stay with friends or relatives if they can. But that’s not necessarily a wise choice now, either, when the pandemic message is to avoid others.

Don't count on the government to save us or our homes. It's paralyzed by indecision and is spewing conflicting advice in all directions. It also lacks resources; across Northern California Cal Fire is hoping the fires burn themselves out.

When the crises are over, a lot of jobs won't be coming back, and neither will the people who fled "temporarily".