Hey, SFMTA, please double residential parking fees and introduce traffic congestion fees.

Posted on March 19, 2008 by kfarr

sfmta muni and dpt have empty pockets

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is a bureaucratic whale, containing, in separate stomachs, the Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT) and the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) public transit system.

Recently, the SFMTA crunched some numbers and said, “Uh oh, we won’t have enough money to cover our costs over the next two years.” Fair enough. Next step, “We need more money.”

Ideas? The Examiner and the Chronicle report the SFMTA has publicly discussed two classes of options: increasing transit fees and increasing parking fees.

Are these ideas justified? Most definitely yes — these fee increases are justified and necessary.

But, I believe the SFMTA needs to increase some fees significantly MORE than has been suggested. If we’re smart and look at the dirty details (below) we can find some fees that we can significantly increase. This has a multiple benefits — controlling traffic congestion, reducing total personal vehicle miles driven and rationing limited road real estate while ALSO generating significant revenue for the cash-strapped SFMTA. Win, win, win?

  • Increasing transit fees: Monthly Fast Pass (unlimited bus pass) cards cost $45 per month and are priced below market. $1.50 each way to work plus 2 weekend trips per day makes a frequent Muni rider pay $90 per month if they pay per trip. The SFMTA’s analysis of neighboring communities’ monthly pass prices is wise and on par. An increase to $60 per month is more than reasonable given the value offered by the pass. At $60, the Fast Pass is still a bargain for regular transit users.
  • Increasing parking fees:
    • Parking meters are priced at $.25/10 minutes = $1.25/hour = $12.50/day. This is below market value compared to garages. This could be increased.

      Idea: Why is Sunday meter collection or extended metered hours not discussed? Meters are not collected on Sundays. Meters are not collected after 6pm. Not only is this lost revenue but it causes inconvenience for City residents struggling to find spaces in highly trafficked commercial corridors at peak times. (This is the reason we have meters in the first place — to ration limited spaces. These spaces are still in high demand after 6pm and on Sundays in many metered commercial corridors. Just look at the Mission on Sunday afternoons; it’s a zoo.)

      Idea: Why aren’t meters priced based on demand? If meters had variable pricing, the City could collect significantly more revenue on Friday and Saturday nights, in addition to busy Saturday and Sunday shopping times on commercial corridors. This is a significant revenue opportunity lost that also serves City residents and visitors who are more than willing to pay market price for convenient parking.

    • Yearly residential permits are priced at $60/year = $5/month. Residential City parking permits are SEVERELY undervalued and could easily be doubled without approaching the true market cost of parking. Yearly residential permits should be priced $120/year immediately, with a yearly increase after that.

      At $120/year this is still an amazing bargain: I can park in my neighborhood ALL YEAR LONG for only $120? Remember, monthly private spaces cost as much as $250 per MONTH.

      People may complain, but even at $120/year this would result in no fewer permits purchased. Not until we pass $200/year will quantity demanded of yearly permits even begin to see a dent. Assuming about half of SF has a residential parking permit, just doubling this permit results in about $30 million incremental revenue per year.

  • Congestion fees: Why is this not discussed as a revenue source? (Answer: The City can’t implement fast enough to be included as a revenue source for this 2-year projected shortfall.)

    Let’s change this. The City should implement congestion pricing within the next year.

    Variable City congestion pricing serves double duty as a significant revenue generator for the SFMTA AND as a traffic and transit speed increaser. It increases the speed of its public surface street-shared transit system and increases the convenience and utility of currently congested streets for frequent City street ‘power-users’ like delivery vehicles, taxis and persons with an absolute need for personal vehicle use.

So, SFMTA, go along with your plan, but let’s instead double yearly residential parking permits and let’s introduce congestion pricing immediately.

Posted in econ, politics, transit | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

My taxi earnings: are City tourists back?

Posted on March 19, 2008 by kfarr

sf tourists are back in town

I sure noticed when tourists to the City took a vacation from vacationing. Now it appears they might be back in force. Monday I had 3 trips to Pier 33, the most common departing point to catch the ferry to Alcatraz. Three. Two of them were back to back. I haven’t had a trip to Pier 33 in weeks before this, and even then it was about once a month at most.

It is already spring break for many families with children. This week is spring break for my friends in the City attending the Academy of Art. This poorly formatted website has nicely compiled statistics about spring break dates at various universities.

My daily take-home earnings are definitely on an upswing:
Earnings as of 3/19/08

Is this the start of tourist season in the City? Will we see another dip after spring break but before the summer rush?

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Driving highlights

Posted on March 19, 2008 by kfarr

Berret? Eh?

I drove 3 shifts in the past 3 days. One of them starts early at 5 am, the other two are graveyard shifts starting at 1 am. Each lasts 11 hours.

During my shifts

  • I picked up two young, professional nice guys downtown on Market Street. They wanted to go out to the Golden Gate Bridge. I politely warned them that it might be a bit pricey, $15 or so, but they didn’t seem to mind.

    One of them held dual American and Japanese citizenship, the other was a Japanese national. They both worked for a Japanese company in the City doing IT work.

    We had a long chat about Nova, a former “big four” private English teaching school in Japan. My one visit to Japan was to visit a girlfriend who at the time worked for Nova in a suburb of Tokyo.

    My passengers summed up the drama of Nova — in short Nova used sleazy tactics forcing students to pay for gigantic class packages with steep cancellation fees. The Japanese government stepped in and stopped this sleaze, but, of course, as a result Nova didn’t earn enough revenue to cover costs. Instead of warning their employees, customers and other stakeholders, Nova kept operating business as usual until they simply ran out of money, unable to pay employee wages.

    Nova’s English teaching employees were American or from Commonwealth countries. Their Japanese was often limited, some spoke next to none. This vulnerable immigrant population was left with up to 2 months unpaid wages and eviction notices from their company owned housing with little or no resources to find alternate employment or housing. The Nova Wikipedia entry nicely summarizes this debacle.

  • The Golden Gate Bridge is far from prime ‘pickup’ points. Most of the time after dropping at the Bridge I’ll head back on Doyle Drive, an expressway of sorts, until I get back to civilization. This time, I decided to loop through the slower, scenic route via the Presidio to Crissy Field and then the Marina Green. Although these aren’t normally good ‘cruising’ streets for cabs, sometimes it pays off to take this slower route. On a nice, sunny day there are many walkers, bikers, runners and tourists along the road. Since most cabs don’t come by very often, a stranded tourist or tired hiker can be very glad indeed to see a vacant taxi.
  • My scenic route back from the Golden Gate Bridge paid off well.

    An older French lady hailed my cab. She had walked all the way across the Bridge and was in the process of walking back but the journey was proving a bit too much. I was amazed she had made it so far.

    Her English wasn’t great, a trait that seems common among the older French, while the younger Frenchies seem to have English injected in their bloodstream at an early age.

    I lived in France the summer of 2000 on a sort of exchange program while I was in high school. I lived with a host family, the matriarch of which was a retired nurse who spent her free time as an elected official on the local town board of governors. She and her husband were gracious hosts, offering as much love and care as could my own family. So, when I found out this lady in my cab was a French nurse, my warm memories of that summer in France came flooding back and I naturally projected a lot of these same feelings toward her. This helped lower my guard of embarrassment that usually surrounds my self-critical attempts at speaking French as my grammar and accent have disintegrated faster than I could have ever imagined.

    We had a great conversation, some in English and some in French as our skills in each other’s language were roughly matched. I rattled on at length about the City, we chatted at length about the shared climate of Bretagne where I stayed and the San Francisco Bay Area, and talked a bit about where she lives in Nice.

    I really enjoyed my time with her. Thanks, French lady. You really made my day.

  • I keep asking myself what makes me continue to drive a taxi. This is the longest I’ve ever held a job. The answer is, in part, the freedom. I choose how much and which days I wish to drive (although not the hours).

    But a deeper answer is probably closer to this: each time someone gets in my cab a god of some sorts throws cosmic dice. Will it be a man, a woman, an American, a drunk, a druggie, a murderer, a mother, a father, friends, lovers, a gabby student, a mute commuter, a gracious tipper, an elderly grandmother, or even a friend of mine? Will they head down the street, across town, through rush-hour traffic, to the neighborhood bar, to SFO, OAK, or even Cupertino? Perhaps it’s the same core addiction faced by gamblers, but deeper and more insidious, as it’s a gamble for personal connections and not simply the fare.

  • I had more than the recent usual number of international young tourists in my cab. While nothing more than unsupported conjecture, it appears that the low value of the dollar is really drawing people to come visit the USA. The young travelers spoke at length about the amount of shopping they have planned in the City during their stay.
  • After dropping one of my three fares to Pier 33, I picked up a father and son who were waiting for a cab. They were heading to a hotel downtown. They were planning to move to the City. The mother of the family was being transferred to the City from Iowa. We talked about about my midwest roots (always a winner, by the way) and my transition to San Francisco life. They were bristled by the high cost of real estate. Their expectations for Iowan quality of life won’t be directly translated to the same level in San Francisco. They seemed to have smelled their first whiff of this already in their short stay. Good luck, Iowans.
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The headline should read, “Mayor signs taxi gate fee increase, lowering pay for City workers.”

Posted on March 13, 2008 by kfarr

San Francisco Supervisor Alioto-Pier with a sign reading ‘taxi gates’ pointed upward - thumbnail

Mayor Newsom signed a bill last week that increases gate fees for most cab drivers by $5 (effectively a $.50/hr paycut) and increases the gate fee for Compressed Natural Gas and hybrid cab drivers by $13.50 (effectively a $1.35/hr paycut).

I first learned of the gate fee increase when I showed up for work this weekend. All around the cab yard there were signs posted alerting drivers of the gate fee increase which clearly identified the Mayor and Board of Supervisors as the culprit, not the cab company itself.

The Mayor’s office issued a press release that would, in theory, summarize this news. It does not. In fact, it paints a rosy picture that this legislation makes the City’s cab fleet more green and that cab drivers will jump for joy like leprechauns at the end of the rainbow to the news that we’ll all be driving Prius cabs.

What follows is the actual press release and a bit of cynical discussion, as usual.

Continue reading →

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Google makes a better online ad manager. (Oh, and it’s free.)

Posted on March 13, 2008 by kfarr

When I worked in ad agency land, one of the most excruciating parts of my job was working with poor, poor web interfaces to accomplish relatively simple tasks. This was severely magnified by our lack of bandwidth which slowed down bad web interfaces even further.

DoubleClick’s ad planning and reporting web interface was one of the worst. We used it to collaborate with publishers (websites) to plan our buys.

The end-user DoubleClick interface was god awful. Horrible.

(My guess was it was written in MS ASP.Net. I made simple web apps in old school asp, ASP.Net, php and now I’m working on one in Django. ASP.Net was the slowest and bulkiest by far.

The saving grace of ASP.Net was that it was easy to design a form exactly how you’d like it to display, with a GUI WYSIWYG form designer. The downside was that the WYSIWYG designer used a Frontpage-like engine to build the HTML pages which results in awful, awful HTML code and some asinine POST behavior. Think of an ASP.Net application as ANTI-AJAX. Instead of minimizing the amount of data sent to and from the server, ASP.Net appears to maximize the amount of data sent to and from the server to accomplish simple tasks.)

For example, if you select a few contacts to associate with a plan, click the ‘add’ button, then the interface reloads the ENTIRE PAGE for what seems like an hour just to add the contacts to the plan.

This sort of crap is rampant in the DoubleClick agency apps. Yes, these are small details, but these are important small details. The sum of all these poorly designed details meant that we spent hours each day waiting for these stupid web forms to load or navigate through pages of poorly designed end-user process flows to accomplish simple tasks.

I often thought to myself, “Gosh, what if Google or another company that really understands web development were to make an ad scheduling, placement and reporting app. It would be so much better if they just used modern LAMP dev tools and some ghetto AJAX to speed this crap up.”

I rejoiced upon hearing news that Google wanted to buy DoubleClick. Nice! They’ll whip ’em into shape and stop wasting their clients’ valuable time. But, progress was slow since the EU likes to dabble in other people’s business.

Today my dreams came true. Google didn’t wait for the DoubleClick merger to go through, they just went ahead and made a better ad manager interface.

It’s just the first iteration, and it’s mostly aimed for publishers, not agencies or clients. But, the next logical step is to expand this ad manager interface to offer tools for clients and agencies to collaborate on media buys and offer advanced reporting metrics.

Thanks, Google.

Links

Posted in internets, marketing, media, tech | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Driving highlights

Posted on March 12, 2008 by kfarr
  • There’s a new traffic light at California and (upper) Stockton. It’s a real buzz-kill when you’re flying up or down California Street, but it’s a wonder there was never one before. This intersection splits 2 segments of California which both have grades over 15%.
  • I had a lot of coincidental run-ins with old friends and coworkers during my shifts. I saw old coworkers from the ad agency on the street two different times.

    I saw an old coworker from a startup, the first place I worked in the City. I was leaving the Presidio and saw him at a stop sign. I honked at him, but that just freaked him out. I followed him out of the Presidio as I was heading the same direction anyway. I sped up and passed him on Lombard, we both stopped at a red light and I honked some more. He was trying to ignore me — I would too if some crazy cab driver kept honking at me. He gave me a quick side-glance. When he saw it was me his eyes grew large with surprise. It was funny.

    I picked up a radio call around 3 am Tuesday morning. I pulled up to the residence, rang the bell and waited until a young couple came down and opened my van cab sliding door. To our collective surprise the young couple turned out to be my roommate and his girlfriend. What are the chances? (Answer: 1 in 150.) It was fun to chat with them, especially while my roommate was a bit inebriated. I gave them a free ride. (I owed them anyway — they gave me an airport fare a few months back.)

  • I have an unofficial policy to not pick up people who are clearly agitated or angry. This includes people yelling for a cab at a volume and emotional intensity far beyond the normal cry of “taxi!”

    So, it was with a fair bit of skepticism that I picked up a lady crying out for a cab in the Mission. Had it not been a bright, sunny Sunday I would never have picked her up. But, the Mission district overflows with activity on sunny weekend days, so I felt comfortable enough stopping. If anything was fishy there were plenty of people around.

    She jumped in my cab and immediately began to hyperventilate. She barely managed to get out a few words to tell me someone just tried to rob her. Wow. I went a block as she caught her breath and I calmly asked where she wanted to go. She was heading toward the projects on the south side of Potrero Hill.

    I wasn’t sure how to react to this. Admittedly, a part of me couldn’t believe it was happening. It was a bright day, there were tons of people around. Why would someone choose to rob her right now? But, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and kept driving toward Potrero. I was already feeling stressed from a long day as the traffic began to congeal, especially around the Mission. I was listening to classical 102.1 KDFC which usually soothes my nerves. I tried to present as serene of a space for her and me as possible. I closed my front windows, turned on the AC and shut out the outside world.

    She starts crying. Wow, I think. She looks stressed out. What happened?

    A few blocks later she has calmed enough to start talking. I don’t push, but I respond with supportive comments as she tells me the story. She sells drugs on the street. Her daughter was at church this morning so she figured she’d try to make a few hundred. (A few hundred in one morning? Wow, I’m in the wrong line of work.)

    She had sold to this guy a few times before. She went down an alley to do the transaction but he tried to jump her. She wouldn’t have it. She pushed him away and ran for it. She didn’t tell me if he hit her, ran after her or any other details. Suffice to say, she made it out okay.

    She kept saying, I can’t believe it! He would’ve taken everything! I would’ve had nothin’! It wasn’t until after I dropped her off that I realized what she was implying: if he took her cash AND her stash, she would not only have been robbed of her cash, she would still owe money for the stash she was selling. She would have been in the hole.

    When I dropped her at the entrance to the housing projects she expressed her deep thanks that I was willing to stop and pick her up. She gave me a big tip for the $8.50 fare but I gave a lot of it back and we called it $10. Part of me felt as though I didn’t really do anything, I just gave her a ride. I sure didn’t save her life, she had already managed that on her own. But, I guess I provided a safe and comfortable space for her in an urgent time of need.

  • I had some very rude passengers on Sunday morning. Some people tell me they assume this happens often in taxis, but really this has been pretty rare for me. Most people in my cab are at the core polite, if not also overtly kind and gracious.

    They were young — in their early 20s. They were from somewhere in the British Isles. They hopped in my cab and didn’t know where they were going. I was polite about this, but this was the start of my frustration with their behavior. They didn’t value my time or presence. They spent a few minutes calling their friends to figure out where the party was. They ventured out a guess and we started heading toward — “somewhere like 2nd or 3rd and Howard and Tehama and Minna? Does that sound right to you?”

    “Well you named a lot of streets, so I’m not exactly sure where you want to go, but I can head toward 2nd and Howard.”

    We start going a few blocks and one of the girls starts clamoring for cigarettes. “Can you stop someplace to get some cigarettes?”

    It didn’t appear that anyplace was open where we were South of Market at this late hour. “If we see an open smoke shop or liquor store on the way I’ll be happy to stop, but I’m not willing to wander around on an endless search.” I have tried this before and rude people, like them, will get angry that it costs so much to wander around and won’t be willing to pay. All they think about is finding a store, not of the cost. Then when they see how to much the meter adds up they get pissed. And, I was already tired of their aimlessness and wanted to let them go.

    Look people, I thought then and write now, I respect that you don’t know where you’re going and you want some cigarettes. I did my best to help you find your party when you didn’t know where it was. But, it’s really just not cool to jump in a cab without a destination and demand some cigarettes. Sort it out on your own, find a destination and THEN get in the cab. (I picked them up near the Tenderloin with plenty of open smoke shops.)

    They got very angry when I arrived at their destination (after doing a few illegal u-turns as they received refined destination data via text message from their friends) without finding a cigarette shop on the way. “Can you go pick a pack up and bring them back?”

    “No.”

    Wow, these people don’t even deserve such a long post, but they sure pissed me off.

  • Sunday and Monday were busy, busy days. A doctor convention of some sort just ended and Monday meant many of them were leaving the City, heading to the airport. Many cabs get soaked up in the City/airport run such that the regular morning rush is much busier than usual. (In other words, regular residents’ demand is constant, but supply of cabs is significantly decreased.) Monday I earned $300, my highest earning day ever.
  • I took a guy to work downtown and he gave me a $50 but thought it was a $20. I yelled back as he walked away when I realized the error. He gave me an extra $5 for letting him know. Thanks, dude.
  • I took a young couple to the airport on Monday morning. They gave me a big tip, saying that I was the safest driving cabbie they’d ever met in the City. Wow, that’s quite a compliment. Thanks, young couple.
  • I had a guy in my cab going from downtown to Potrero Hill. He was formerly an economic advisor on anti-trust cases. Unfortunately for him, I have a lot of strong feelings regarding anti-trust regulation and soap-boxed it for a few minutes. He didn’t know to respond. Note to self: less anti-trust regulation soap-boxing in the future.
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Teen killed Sunday in bright daylight. Chronicle doesn’t report it?

Posted on March 10, 2008 by kfarr

San Francisco is really a tale of two cities: the yuppie, high income, peaceful facade of the northern and western edge of town, and the rougher, minority majority, low income Bay View/Hunters Point district.

But, you’d think that the San Francisco Chronicle, being the San Francisco Chronicle and all, would report on a murder in broad daylight within the City and County of San Francisco, even if did take place in Bay View/Hunters Point, an area which yuppie Chron readers conveniently ignore.

Nope. The Examiner is the sole print daily that reported the story of 17-year-old Tauvares Wooten gunned down on our City streets on Sunday.

What does the Chronicle report? Well, they sure hit hard with the news the Mayor covets the Governorship. They reported on a tragic accident in which 2 SF residents lost their lives to a careless driver in Cupertino. They even managed to report on a hit and run that happened this very morning on Market and Octavia. But, not a word about the tragic death of Tauvares Wooten or that the SFPD haven’t arrested a single suspect.

Am I the only City resident that feels scared that our main, respected source of local news doesn’t report on a vicious murder in broad daylight on our City streets?

Link to Examiner Article

UPDATE 3/12/08: In an odd twist of fate, Mr. Wooten was featured in a Chronicle photograph from 2004. The photo accompanied a Chronicle article about Visitacion Valley Middle School principal Jim Dierke’s grant request for a grief counselor to help students deal with frequent shooting deaths in the area.
Chronicle photo of Tauvares Wooten from old article

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Driving highlights

Posted on March 5, 2008 by kfarr

While driving Sun-Mon (1am-12pm)

  • These few days were slow, slow, slow. I find it funny that I have such a hard time estimating how much I’ll make beforehand. It’s almost like gambling. The only ‘sure-fire’ well-paying weekends are those with big street fairs or festivals, or huge conferences at Moscone Center.

    I get a bit more stressed when my earnings are on track to be significantly below my all-time shift average of $170 (11-hour shifts). I try to separate out those things over which I have no control, most notably that would be demand for taxicabs in the City during my shifts. But, it’s tough to do in practice.

  • I was struggling to find fares on Monday morning during the usual ‘morning rush’ to work. I saw a lady urgently hailing my cab on Fillmore as I headed down the hill in Cow Hollow/Pac Heights. It turned out she was hailing for her husband who was heading to a meeting downtown.

    I really enjoy passengers that exhibit a steady and relaxed aura. Not cold, quiet people — confident and wise people comfortable with their person. This guy was one of those people.

    The first thing he said after putting on his seat-belt was, “You don’t do this full-time, do you?” I replied, “Right now, it pays my rent.” We had a good conversation.

  • I picked up a radio call in the Financial District after dropping someone off downtown. The guy was in his mid-20s. He hopped in my cab and said he needed to get to Cupertino. I was a bit worried — I had never gone that far outside of the City. I didn’t do a great job with the protocol.

    I knew the general directions, but I had to call the dispatcher to get directions to the address in Cupertino. I looked up the price estimate and couldn’t believe it — a fare from SF to Cupertino is $160.* Wow.

    *(This includes a 50% surcharge for empty return trip. The ‘meter fare’ is about $100 to Cupertino. SF law says taxis charge 150% of meter fare for trips 15 miles or greater outside of the City. The additional 50% pays for the cost of the empty return trip. I know, this seems like a lot to me too. But, I did the math in my head as I was heading there and back. It is a long trip down there, as much as 2 hours round trip. It uses a lot of gas, let’s say $10 worth. So I could make $20-40/hr for 2 hours and not spend as much on gas if I stayed in the City. So that’s as much as $80 that I would make if I stayed in the City, and I would make significantly more if I had an airport run. If cabs charged pure meter for out-of-town fares, there would be no additional motivation for the increased risk of traffic problems, unknown territory, and higher chance of/penalty from a no-pay that out-of-town fares bring. Thus, without the 50% surcharge, most cab drivers would turn down out-of-town trips.)

    I warned him. He didn’t seem to happy about it, but he needed to be in Cupertino so he dealt with it.

  • I was surprised how busy late Monday night (early Tuesday morning) was in the City. For some reason a lot of people went out on Monday night. But, Tuesday late morning and day was rather slow and I was getting stressed out.

    I picked up a sedan call in the Marina. A ‘sedan’ call means no vans, no SUVs. Usually elderly persons request sedans because it’s easier to get in and out of the cars.

    It turned out to be an older lady who had lived in San Francisco all her life. She was great fun. She was heading to the UC hospital from the Marina. She had to move very slowly because of a leg injury, hence the hospital trip. I always love getting older life-long San Francisco residents in my cab. I’ll quiz them all the way to our destination about what life was like in the City back in the day. I’ll also prod them about old school Muni (of course).

    Like the older guy above, she had a comfortable, steady demeanor which really calmed my nerves from the stress of the busy City traffic mixed with low cab demand. Thanks, lady.

  • I picked up a dispatcher and driver for another cab company early in the morning. He had missed his Muni bus connection because the first bus driver was flirting with a passenger and didn’t leave on time. Oh, Muni. We talked a bit about the difficulty of needing to judge passengers, especially late at night, before picking them up for our safety. It is a tough and scary thing to do.
  • I picked up a Mexican guy in the Tenderloin. He didn’t speak English well and asked to go to “Seventh and Mission.” I started that way and when we arrived, he said, “No, Seventh and Mission.” I realized he had meant “17th”. I didn’t mind, started the meter over, and tried out my very limited Spanish with him. I confirmed that he wanted to go to 17th and Mission. I guess I should keep taking Spanish classes.
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Meeting people in the City is tough. Why?

Posted on March 5, 2008 by kfarr

streetpedestrians.jpg

I am a recently single guy and just realized how hard it seems to be to meet new people (men or women) in the City. One craigslist post summed it up well, “Ever notice how people (downtown anyway) just walk right past each other, no eye contact? Creepy.”

I heard a great Perspective on KQED on a closely related topic: why do we crave proximity but not intimacy with those around us?

It seems like after college there is no regular, required ‘mixing’ environment. University offered 5-7 new classes each semester, a forced shared living environment, and communal extracurricular activities.

Of course, there’s always the workplace, but that’s often ineffective. Coworkers are in varying stages of life connected only by an employer, not a shared desire to meet others.

Bars are okay, but alcohol gets in the way of real interactions. In the City, Zeitgeist is a good bar for meeting people, especially when it’s busy and you’re forced to sit next to strangers.

KQED Perspective: Proximity Without Intimacy

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Ignore the Hillary/Obama charades: NAFTA is good.

Posted on March 1, 2008 by kfarr

hillary and obaaaaaaaaama

Marketplace painted a nice picture of Obama and Hillary’s voracious battle for the crown of ultimate NAFTA hater.

This is frustrating. Yes, they’re in Ohio. Yes, they have to cater to the lowest common denominator.

Instead, they should rise up above the normal crap and say, “Look America, NAFTA is here. I (didn’t support it/didn’t agree with my husband), but it’s not going anywhere soon. But, I *DO* support free, government supported retraining programs to help displaced persons find jobs. This is a *REAL* way that, if elected, my administration would work toward a solution for Ohio and American citizens that were hardest hit by NAFTA.”

Please remember: NAFTA is not bad. Free trade is not bad. But, free trade often displaces labor that is most easily displaced — which is most often low/unskilled labor.

Our government must recognize that the effects of free trade often hits hardest our lowest income members of society. As such, our government has a strong social duty to provide free retraining and placement programs for those displaced by trade.

Link

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