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Everything posted by We’reTexas
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You, and many others on this thread, need to read about homelessness. Like, from square one. You are arguing about conceptions of homelessness without trying to understand it as a policy issue. A very comprehensive yet digestible source for this is the San Francisco Chronicle’s SF Homeless Project. To wit, someone posted the below today on Nextdoor, in a very nice neighborhood: I can’t stand that this is allowed to happen in this city. This guy is, in all likelihood, a pretty shitty person. But I don’t really care, because I’m more concerned about how to stop this. Simply writing this off as some bum who needs to lift himself up by his own bootstraps does not help that discussion.
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No. This is not accurate. Categorization of the homeless experience is complex, but this is a simplistic view with a moralistic bent that is largely irrelevant to the problem. I strongly agree with you’ve expressed in this thread, but viewing homelessness like this precludes any sophisticated policy discussion.
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I live in CA but I didn't realize how bad it's gotten
We’reTexas replied to Gil Bang's topic in Cloak Room
Yeah idk what that guy is talking about. Bay Area burbs and Oakland/Berkeley have been on fire during COVID. SF actually has come down a bit in some aspects. -
Because you didn’t read my post. They are outliers and if you focus on them you are missing the forest for the trees. Nonetheless, as I alluded I support measures like camping bans and even quality of life prosecutions to disincentive to antisocial behavior and deter opportunistic drug users, train jumpers and drifters like those Missouri women. But they are what - maybe 10-30% of a homeless population in any locale? That’s certainly something to reduce. Every homelessness feature in the San Francisco Chronicle has a moment where the reporter asks some guy why he isn’t shooting up on a sidewalk in Oakland or San Jose, and the guy just laughs and says because he’d be locked up for doing this shit anywhere else. I don’t think those people deserve my tax dollars either and I want them kicked back to Ohio or New Mexico or wherever. But you are giving them a disproportionate amount of weight in the context of homelessness.
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I don’t think you understood my point. If I lived in Austin, I would have voted for Prop B. But I live in San Francisco, and trust me, I am familiar with the research over homelessness. Affordable housing s the problem. I meant that the current municipal approach is a waste of money because it does nothing to address the underlying causes of homelessness. In 2018, SF approved a tax on gross receipts to bring in another $300 million per year for homeless services. I opposed it. The root cause of homelessness is that, as another poster noted, the median house price in SF is $1.5 million. It costs $700k to build a new unit. Median price for the nine Bay Area counties is around $800-900k. And yet, by my count, the confederacy of dunces that is the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has built less than 1,000 affordable housing units in the past twenty years. Housing needs to be affordable to address homelessness. Homeless are of course attracted to cities because cities offer the services they need, which is precisely my point - cities like SF and Austin are futilely trying to provide what California, Texas and the federal government should be providing. The bulk of homeless in a given city are from that region - it’s inaccurate to think of them all as grifters from Missouri. Nationally, about 80% of homeless in a city had a residence there prior to being homeless. But there needs to be regional collaboration on housing. It makes no sense to build housing in SF when it’s much cheaper in Sacramento, or in Austin when it’s cheaper in La Grange. This is a very complex issue. I am disgusted as anyone when I wake up to someone smoking meth on my doorstep or see some guy scream and upend a family’s table outside at a Michelin star restaurant (all within the past month), but I try to think about to address this dispassionately.
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What you are describing is, basically, the Tenderloin in San Francisco. The city oscillated between compassion and toughness for decades before Gavin Newsom (then mayor) announced an ambitious plan very similar to yours (and Adler’s - to provide 3,000 housing units in 5 years). And it worked. Some 12,000 people had moved from the streets into supportive housing by the end of his administration. Yet the number of unsheltered homeless never wavered, and is likely higher than ever today. In other words, there is a larger systemic issue causing homeless that can’t be patched up by social services at a municipal level. The primary cause of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing. There is a strong correlation between the increase of housing prices and homelessness. Mental health services (or lack thereof) are of course a huge issue too. There will be no effective long-term solution until there is state and federal involvement.
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TBF, “woketopian” is my new favorite lib-owning buzzword of the week.
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Some of my favorite fried chicken in town. I’m so happy this Treme institution reopened (but don’t let appearances fool you - there’s the former head chef of Upperline in the kitchen).
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San Francisco’s problem is that it is a municipality taking on a regional - even national - problem. Certainly, San Franciscans deal with homelessness, but in general the city is taking in homeless from other parts of the state and country. Many trace this back to California’s significant mental health budget cuts in the 80’s. Likewise, I imagine the majority of homeless in Austin are simply there because they were drawn to an easy place to be homeless. It has never made sense to me why homeless drawn to SF or Austin need to be provided housing in SF or Austin. These are extraordinarily expensive cities where even high-income households struggle to afford housing. We need to reframe homelessness as a state and federal issue as well, and not solely a city one.
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Confirmed. The budget option is to shoot a chicken with an AK-47.
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The vaccine rollout here was a total disaster, though we have made huge strides since then. Note that the winter surge was in Southern California. In Northern California (ie, the Bay Area), rates have always been among the lowest in the nation, and I think it’s fair to attribute that to strict masking/social distancing protocols and universal compliance.
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I live in SF and probably 80-90% of people are still masking outdoors - I’m talking 25 year olds walking alone on a block. CA technically hasn’t revised its mask mandate yet but I highly doubt so many people are being that nuanced about it. State and local governments here have never engaged in a serious discussion over risk tolerance and reopening, and “zero risk” has more or less been the ethos expressed by public health officials. Life here has basically been unchanged since June 2020. It’s not the mask part I care about, it’s that I worry that a huge chunk of the CA (and especially the Bay Area) population can’t handle reopening. We are at a point where public health guidance (UCSF Medicine Chair is fully vaccinated and advises double masking on airplanes) and public policy are finally sharply diverging. We are unprepared for conversations about, for instance, school reopening (SFUSD incredibly has been closed all year and has no plans to reopen) or office reopenings to save the various Bay Area transit authorities from ruin. Many of my wife’s fully-vaccinated coworkers are balking at the idea of returning to the office in July. I suspect this is the situation in many major cities, and I think we need to normalize the concept of reopening. We have been awful with messaging about vaccination so far, of course, and I’m not optimistic about how authorities will message the total removal of the tier system.
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Thing$ $till not going well for Joe Rogan, I $ee.
We’reTexas replied to Parliament's topic in Cloak Room
This was a great post and all, but I just wanted to emphasize that W embraced a lie that led to thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead while dragging the country into the exact same mistake of the war he was too cowardly to fight in thirty years earlier and the only regret he has ever expressed was the audacity of Kanye West to call him a racist. Fuck him and his water colors. /rant, apologies for the interruption.- 4021 replies
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What's the logic though? Just clouds of Covid hovering around everywhere? Being outdoors is the best place anyone can be. They are universal outdoors in the Bay Area and people will be openly hostile to you if they catch you without one. We’ve known there is no science behind it for months now, but the prevailing logic has been that the cost-benefit was worth it. Maybe during the winter surge, but certainly not for some time. Derek Thompson from the Atlantic wrote an article about ending the mask mandate outdoors that basically read my mind. Across urban areas like DC, SF and NYC, people dutifully mask up as they walk alone in the sidewalk and then promptly do away with masks and they eat or drink together (increasingly indoors). This is the exact opposite of what we should be doing - it’s like wearing your seatbelt while you are parked but taking it off when you drive. I really do think people will have a hard time with this development in SF. It’s more of a social norm at this point than anything based on a public health objective.
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This is how I see it. I live in San Francisco. At this point homelessness is institutionalized from a zoning/structural standpoint. Debate over the issue aside, SF and LA are now servicing a national problem with municipal resources. Also, I have not lived in Austin in quite a few years - what is the pulse on the vote? I’m surprised the camping ban was repealed in the first place. Even here in SF your average Democrat on the street is appalled at the current situation.
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If you could fight one politician or political personality?
We’reTexas replied to TexArcher's topic in Cloak Room
Can I just piss on Rush Limbaugh’s grave? -
I had to read it a few times since it was an oral interview, but Weingarten (who is Jewish, and married to a rabbi) is arguing that teachers’ unions are intrinsic to the “ladder of opportunity” of public education and that the position that the unions are too powerful is basically anti-public education. I have no position either way, but that’s actually what she is saying. Also, extremely hot take by a new Newsweek editorialist with poor critical reading skills.
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Pontchartrain, Columns, the Chloe on St. Charles. Not really up to speed on BnB’s off Mag, but my in laws stayed at Maison Perrier recently and really liked it.
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Who's been covid vaxxed? Stand up and be counted.
We’reTexas replied to High Plains Drifter's topic in Daily Texan
About 12 hours for me - woke up in the middle of the night with chills and a headache. And I didn’t even get a microchip. -
A story about a pathetic man's downfall [34 Felony Convictions]
We’reTexas replied to Francisco 2.0's topic in Cloak Room
I don’t understand why we are not twisting the knife on this more. Twenty years ago the MAGA crowd - and many on this board who were on HornFans - was about freedom fries, “If you haven’t done anything wrong you shouldn’t be worried”, and blindly trusting the Deep State about WMDs because it involved bombing brown people. The Lee Greenwood bukkake has been going on for two decades but their positions have basically reversed. -
That was the week before Mardi Gras 2020, so there likely was some ‘rona in that crowd.
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Front room of Clancy’s. Like downstairs at Galatoire’s, it’s a see-and-be-seen spot for the Uptown crowd that makes for great people watching. If we can’t snag a table, we’ll sit at the bar. Had to fly home last week, so did just that. Veal with crabmeat and Béarnaise. Last meal in NO: Corned beef po boy at Liuzza’s by the Track. Last beer in NO: Canebrake at Liuzza’s.
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It’s probably our most frequented place in the city. Easy to get a spot at bar and always a reliable fish special and wine list. It’s Monday, so red beans and rice and Kermit Ruffins. Mother-in-Law Lounge.
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This is huge: Tip’s and Howlin’ Wolf are opening back up this weekend. Ivan Neville at Tip’s and Rebirth at the Wolf. Hot 8 returning to their usual Sunday gig at the Wolf as well.
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Clancy’s is my favorite restaurant in New Orleans, but Gabrielle has done some of my favorite cooking for some time. I’ve meant to post about it, but I highly recommend it for any kind of visitor to town. Over the past decade New Orleans has become a hotspot of talent, and the city has broken the “thousand restaurants, one menu” image with dozens of places like Shaya, Turkey & Wolf, Carrollton Market (RIP), Compere Lapin, kin, Saint Germain, etc. But no one has tried to take on the mantle of New Orleans cooking. This is a problem, because JoAnne Clevenger, Frank Brigsten and Susan Spicer will only be around for so long. Fortunately, three years ago Greg and Mary Sonnier reopened Gabrielle, which closed after it flooded during Katrina. It’s a bit of a Rip van Winkle story of a chef from a different era of New Orleans cooking reawakening. This is a restaurant that always has a gumbo on the menu, because back then a chef was measured by their gumbo. While the Sonniers aren’t young, their enthusiasm in being back in the game brings a vitality to traditional New Orleans cuisine that makes it exciting. It’s traditional New Orleans creole, but done at a high level and with creativity you won’t find at Galatoires or Antoines. And it’s a fantastic story - Gabrielle is their daughter, now all grown up and you’ll find her working the floor. I was too young to experience the first iteration, but this has been a staple for every trip since they reopened. I don’t have any pics because the food isn’t particularly ‘grammable, but in a good way. It precedes the era of tweezers and plating. Below is this crawfish bisque from a few weeks back, which was outstanding.
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