Comments on: Real Estate Collapse

By: dc

dc — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:06:51 +0000

It's right on my route to work, but I've never taken any photos of the immediate vicinity. The market in this old post is a few blocks closer to my house, on East 12th as opposed to East 14th (i.e. International). The Dos Hermanos Bar and the Mitchell Hotel in this post are about 8 blocks down International toward Fruitvale, while El Gato Negro is about 12 blocks away, also on International. The recent photo of the 9th Avenue Terminal with San Francisco in the background was taken from an overpass on 16th Avenue about a block and a half from where the shootout took place, but it doesn't show anything in the area. To update the (incorrect) info in "Marginalia:" the police shot and killed a guy who was reportedly shooting at them, and a bystander was wounded by some broken glass, but no one except the suspect was actually shot. The Oakland Tribune's article has a bit more info, but doesn't answer the key questions of why the cops were stopping the guy, or why he shot at them. It's not a gentrified area, but I don't think of it as violent or dangerous either. The only obvious criminal activity that I ever see near there is prostitution.

By: ng

ng — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:49:05 +0000

How does the corner where the shooting took place correspond to your various blogposts?

By: nnyhav

nnyhav — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:48:30 +0000

Metaphor? When what’s left of the bulbs approximates “realite”? (so there’s no French accents, à la “réalité”, perhaps you can photoshop in a couple of crows perching while losing the extra “i”)

By: Gene

Gene — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:47:54 +0000

Regardless, it’s a great picture.

By: avoice

avoice — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:22:38 +0000

That’s pretty emblematic of our present times I’d say

By: dc

dc — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:33:05 +0000

Ruth: I don’t even think of what California has as a government anymore—it’s more like a stopvernment.

By: ruth gutmann

ruth gutmann — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:23:01 +0000

You cannot very well call this a metaphor for what has happened in the real estate market. It is, rather, a realistic depiction of it.

As far as possible I have been following the doings — or undoing? — of California’s government. How long will it be until the governor and his minions come to their senses? I think of the many people who are truly dependent upon a properly functioning bureaucracy. How difficult it must be for them to get by and retain their hope that things must improve one of these days!