Chocolate

Isn't it nice to know you will no longer have to force yourself to eat chocolate -- you can just take a pill instead ?!
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Heart-healthy Compound In Chocolate Identified (January 20, 2006) — In a multifaceted study involving the Kuna Indians of Panama, an international team of scientists has pinpointed a chemical compound that is, in part, responsible, for the heart-healthy benefits of certain cocoas and some chocolate products.

Freakshow

Saturday night, the back of the MUNI bus. Man, riding MUNI on Friday and Saturday nights is always annoying (see prior post "Amateur Night" 4/23/05).

There are three people in the back seat. Two guys, and someone lying across their laps. The guy on one side seems to be doing something on his lap, who knows ? After awhile, I realize a third guy is also with them. The guy who's doing something on his lap has a creepy looking face, lots of little, bloody scratches.

As I ride, the third guy seems normal, the other two, creepy, and then I notice, there are drips of blood on the floor; this is seeming more gross as the bus lurches into the night. Then, the person who's lying across their laps sits up... a woman, but there is something wrong with her. She's a bit pale, and she's shivering like she has a fever, but she's not sweating. And eventually things shift so I can see, the guy with bloody scratches all over his face has a kitten, which explains the scratches, but the woman who can't stop shivering is disturbing, as are the drips of fresh blood on the floor.

As I get off the bus, I notice that the trail of blood leads down the steps to the exit door -- probably someone else's blood. I exit and leave the shivering woman and her scratched up friend, glad I have stepped off the bus that seems bound for hell.

Little Red-haired Girl

Sunday, early afternoon on my way to the parking garage, approaching Jones & O'Farrell, where all the crackheads hang out, I see a woman sitting on the sidewalk, limp, slumped against a car. Her red hair looks familiar.

As I pass and turn around to confirm the familiarity, I am... shocked.

She is slumped against the car with her arms out, and in her right arm, the needle and syringe are still stuck in her flesh. Passed out or dead ? There are so many passed out on the streets, that you usually just walk around them, but this is a first -- the needle still hanging.

And she is the red-haired girl. In her mid-twenties, maybe, she appeared on the street a few months back, though time flies when something's on the periphery of consciousness, maybe it was last year she appeared, a kid, obviously now on the streets, consuming the chemicals that make life on the streets seem more enjoyable than having a roof over your head with someone who hassles you about your habit.

Just a week ago (or was it two?), I remember her tweaked out on the corner, pacing back and forth on an eight foot path of serious intent, stopping to flail her arms at nothing and everything, pulling at her hair as if it were gnawing on her brain, and the animated and pained expression of serious conversation with no one.

But Sunday, she was limp.

What can you do, I'm on my way to work in the hospital, to save other lives, and intervention in the life of a junkie is a thankless proposition ? So I call the police.

I continue to the garage, ride my motorcycle back around, 15 minutes later, no police cars. I walk up the street, and a man who looks like a pimp, but a little too nice, clean, and well groomed to be a pimp, is looking down as she begins to stir. As I pass by and head around the corner, another wizened woman who also hangs out on that corner with a glass pipe is approaching.

I round the corner and turn back. The older hardcore woman is walking towards me with the syringe in her hand -- I'm certain it's her syringe on loan. The young red-haired girl is now on her feet, dazedly walking towards the corner; not dead, and probably feeling much better about life on concrete with a cushion of pleasure coursing through your veins.

Tuesday, I'm walking back from downtown. The red-haired girl is standing on the corner, concentrating intently on strands of hair, as she slowly pulls them away from her face and examines every inch, enjoying the tug at her scalp. As I pass and observe, she looks up, smiles warmly and invitingly, in a way that lets you know her entire universe is yours for fifteen minutes or so, however long it takes you to feel a fragmentary sample of that part of the brain she needs cash to feed.

Hydroponic warehouse

Walked into a rather large South of Market store selling hydroponic equipment -- the kind of stuff you'd use to grow vegetables in a desert warehouse, or some highly valuable crop indoors, like...

So the first guy I see in the store is on his way out, but before doing so, he gives me the once over, very suspiciously. The guy who I thought was running the place also looks very nervous, and he disappeared. This leaves no one in the store but me and a short Mexican. Well, the Mexican guy works there too. He's less nervous and doesn't look at me suspiciously like the white guys. He acts like he's actually running a business (in Spanish). Fortunately, he speaks English.

Geez, if you want to pretend you have a legitimate business (not a supply warehouse for a huge illicit pot growing operation, you could at least ACT NATURAL ?!

Oh, and the other funny thing about this place... most places that sell this kind of stuff are smaller operations, and have brochures or at least one item in the store depicting a marijuana plant. In this place, EVERYTHING depicted growing flowers and vegetables, nary a marijuana picture to be found -- yet the people were 5 times as paranoid. Will the real government undercover operation please stand up ?

Rent Control

Rent control, and the high price of Bay Area real estate has odd, and potentially unintended social consequences. Take relationships.

I moved into the Tenderloin, a notoriously crack-infested neighborhood, at the peak of the dot-com boom, so my rent was $1000/mo. My girlfriend had lived in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city for fourteen years, so with rent control, she was paying the same amount for a view of the Golden Gate Bridge as I was paying to have people shitting on the street on my front doorstep.

After the bust, my landlord reduced rents in the building. I was out of work for a few months, so I moved into a crummier apartment in the building for $775. My girlfriend's rent stayed the same, because market-rate apartments in her building rent for $1800 or so. She's got a bargain, and would be foolish to give it up (too small for two people there).

Me ? My building is undervalued, because the landlord's cash flow shrunk after the bust. There are more so-so buildings without views than nicer buildings with views, less turnover in the lower-rent buildings, so there are more people taking advantage of rent-control -- a better bargain the longer you stay. So my landlord sells the building to a huge company which is notorious for harranging the people who are benefitting from rent control, so they can empty the apartments and rent them at the new market rate (around $850 for my current $775, or if they fixed it up, $900). Of course this is illegal, but there are many subtle ways to get someone out of an apartment.

So if I move, I pay more. If my girlfriend moves into something similar to what she has, she would nearly double her rent. If we lived together, in something similar to her place, we would both end up paying much more.

Buying ? Ha. Buying something that has some resemblance to middle class would cost us both most of our cash flow -- as my engineer friend and an investment friend have calculated, in this market, it actually makes more sense to rent.