
Protesters vandalize Google bus, block Apple shuttle - radley
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/12/20/san-francisco-tech-shuttle-buses-blocked/4147335/
======
tptacek
"While you're at it, Google, stop providing the property tax base for our
city, and start having your employees drive individual automobiles to work
every day."

Google: consider Chicago. We'd be happy to have you. Also our food is better,
we have all four seasons, and most of your employees wouldn't even need a
special bus to commute, because our public transportation actually works. But
you can still run your busses out to Plainfield and Elgin (the approximately
equivalent commute from SF to MTV). We'll find the busses charming, not
inflammatory.

I am of course dignifying what has happened here. Really, this is just a bunch
of people thrilled to have an excuse to fuck up a bus.

~~~
tedivm
Seriously? I'm kind of shocked at the raw stupidity of this comment- just a
bunch of people thrilled to have an excuse to fuck up a bus huh?

These are actual real problems that need actual solutions, and the elitist
attitudes really need to stop. Just because we know technology doesn't make us
better than those who don't, and for the bay area to be a sustainable location
it really needs all members of the community to work together. The tech
companies have failed at this, and that's why these protests are happening.
Not because people want to 'fuck things up'.

As far as the Chicago bit goes- yeah, it's not a bad city. I feel the bay area
could learn a lot from it when it comes to scaling things up. I can live
without the snow though.

~~~
belluchan
> the elitist attitudes really need to stop

I hope everyone of these protesters standing in the way of the bus gets
arrested (as opposed to protestors standing aside - no problems with them).
It's not elitist to want people to be civil. It's not elitist to want to go to
work. There's no solution to gentrification. Not a single one. There's nothing
to be done about private entities buying private property at a price that the
buyer and seller agree on. The next door neighbor has no say whatsoever over
the process unless there's a pre-existing homeowner's association. If you
aren't happy with it, tough luck. Annoying people isn't going to help anyone.
Because there's absolutely _nothing_ that can be done, short of a
constitutional amendment that would never see the light of day.

~~~
tedivm
If you're going to talk about following the law, how about the fact that the
bus is illegally parked in a public bus stop? That's why these guys are
protesting, because the individuals in the city have one set of laws they're
supposed to follow while the tech companies are apparently immune.

Seriously, read what these people are saying. They've complained about the
fact that Muni buses are dumping people into the middle of the road because
these tech buses are literally parking themselves in the muni bus stops to
pick people up. If any other citizen did this it would be a $271 fine, but for
some reason having a tech company behind you means you're above the law.

The two tiered system- the economic apartheid- is the real issue here.

~~~
belluchan
> If you're going to talk about following the law, how about the fact that the
> bus is illegally parked in a public bus stop?

Well that's a perfectly OK thing to protest, but I'm not sure it's illegal
though. Have you called the city and asked? I bet they have permission.
Illegal means violating the law, are they violating the law or you just
unhappy about the arrangement. I can see a valid argument being made about it
not being a good thing, but I doubt it's illegal.

If it is illegal just call the police? What do they say?

~~~
tedivm
They don't have permission, and the cops haven't done anything. Again, that's
the main point of the main protest. They don't have permission- again,
something that's been brought up at the protests, and is on the signs
themselves. Yes, they are actually violating the law.

Maybe you should like, educate yourself on the issues because picking a side?
That way you can actually be informed, instead of spouting reactions that
really don't make sense in the context.

~~~
yaroslavvb
In SF they have permission yet people still protest. Some shuttle stops even
have signs which look like they've been installed by the city, ie "No
Parking/Shuttle Stop 6am-10am" on Van Ness

------
morgante
This is really ridiculous. I used to have some sympathy for their
cause—through no fault of their own, they're being priced out of their
neighborhood.

But the point where they start physically attacking employees is the point
where they lose any respect. Employees aren't trying to get them evicted.
Heck, at least they're taking shared transit instead of private limousines.

Sorry, but they've reduced themselves to common hoodlums and should be treated
as such. No evictions? Evict every person who participated in a violent attack
on their neighbors.

~~~
briancaw2
When an entire class of a city are being priced out of their homes it's a bit
fickle to say a smashed window and a 100 angry protestors makes you think they
deserve no respect.

"Sorry, but they've reduced themselves to common hoodlums and should be
treated as such."

I think you'll laugh at that some day.

Edit: I hope you'll laugh at that some day.

~~~
Curious_Daemon
>When an entire class of a city are being priced out of their homes…

Presumably they are being priced out of their homes because they don't
actually own the houses they live in. Is your solution to pass a law
preventing the people who do own the houses from raising the rent?

~~~
briancaw2
No, I think rent control is generally a bad idea. The only solution I can
think of is building more housing.

------
rguzman
The xenophobia and lack of basic logic of these protests are appalling. Even
the people giving speeches at them[1] have a hard time making the connection
between the buses, the evictions, and the tech industry.

"we are against the ellis act ... we see that as related to tech and we want
the ruling class which is becoming the tech class to listen to our voices"

"we are against the tech money that has caused evictions of seniors and people
with disabilities throughout the community"

uh...wut?

I understand that the growth of the tech sector generates quite a bit of
demand for housing and that leads to increasing rents if supply is held
constant. But, this is a econ 101 problem. The solution is to let more housing
be built as to stabilize the prices and not YOU PEOPLE GTFO ALONG WITH ALL THE
ECONOMIC BENEFITS THAT HAVING A THRIVING INDUSTRY IN THE LOCAL ECONOMY BRING!

[1]:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSHbMbkqwDk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSHbMbkqwDk)

~~~
morgante
What are the police doing in that video? Shouldn't they be arresting
protestors for blocking traffic?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
As a New Yorker, this surprised me too. Tech companies should consider
supporting the budgets of the SFPD et al.

~~~
morgante
> As a New Yorker, this surprised me too. Tech companies should consider
> supporting the budgets of the SFPD et al.

Seriously. NYPD would be all over them blocking traffic and breaking windows.

~~~
jrockway
They weren't riding bikes, so I doubt the NYPD would care.

(Though honestly, the NYPD has been pretty nice to me while riding a bike. But
I'm new around here.)

------
yeukhon
The issue is complex, but let's look at demand vs supply. It is simply how the
market works. The more people living in the city, the more likely the housing
rent will increase. If there is a shortage, the rent will raise. If there are
new apartments built, more polished, the rent will be higher. And there are
companies pay for housing in MV which results in shortage.

The problem is the city does not do a good job securing affordable housing. It
isn't like Googlers or Twitter employees don't shop. They probably shop a lot,
spend a lot of cash.

These high-tech employees are also suffering with the high rent. Not everyone
makes 180K a year. At least 1/3 of the salary goes to the government and 401K.

The other reason housing becomes less affordable is foreigners who come to
invest in real estate.

Kick them out? Detroit is be happy to take care these tech geeks. But I bet 10
years later they will just be unhappy when the average residents can't afford
an apartment.

My problem is with low-pay jobs. Security at big tech companies are hired by
contractors and they get low pay. Google should be able to pay more, shouldn't
they? I remember there was a series of protest this summer in MV.

Maybe Google should just build a dorm.

It is sad people can't afford a place to sleep. I can't imagine being homeless
right now in NY, it's fucking cold. Can we do better? How do we do better?
Should we have more affordable housing and more generous affordable housing
policy?

~~~
tsax
How about drastically liberalizing zoning regs? How about taking a
sledgehammer to restrictions on increased density? How about letting very tall
skyscrapers be built with minimal delays and log rolling? Never forget the
SUPPLY part in supply and demand. It's a complex problem of course, but none
of this is even being considered.

~~~
yeukhon
> very tall skyscrapers be built with minimal delays

Coming from HK, it is indeed a way to make housing more affordable in 5-10
years, until big cash invest in them and then the entry price just goes
straight up.

The ways to prevent that to happen quickly are limit how many skyscrapers
apartments can be built in the next decade and how many must be reserved as
affordable housing, plus restricting foreign money. But I am sure there will
be resistance.

As I said, coming from HK, I was used to living in a city surrounded by walls
and bricks. Then NY felt a lot different. Then this summer I went to MV for an
internship and when I came back NY was strange to me. I say we can't build a
lot of skyscrapers. I don't want to be surrounded by walls again.

~~~
tsax
I don't think too many people prefer the concrete-and-wall environs of HK
compared to the Victorian promenades of SF. However, we are all constrained by
reality and scarcity. There is scarcity of space in SF. It must be alleviated
by either increasing supply or suppressing/diverting demand. If supply is
increased to a much larger extent, an HK scenario is possible which might
decrease subsequent demand due to reduced aesthetic value. There are no
perfect states here, and choices must be made. Restrictions can stay in place,
however, no one should delude themselves into thinking that this isn't a
cartelized capture of value by existing property owners in bed with the city
council. It doesn't mean you can't support this option, but the reality must
be kept in mind.

------
yetanotherphd
>"The people outside your Google bus serve you coffee, watch your kids, have
sex with you for money, make you food, and are being driven out of their
neighborhoods," the flyer read. " _While you guys live fat as hogs with your
free 24 /7 buffet_ [my emphasis], everyone else is scraping the bottom of
their wallets, barely existing in this expensive world that you and your chums
helped create."

Wow that is a lot of vitriol, it really does feel like back in High School.
Too bad for the protestors there are fascist police to protect these fat
nerds, er, techies.

~~~
morgante
I particularly enjoyed the insinuation that tech employees are living among
and extensively using prostitutes.

~~~
oblique63
I don't know about prostitutes, but one of my good friends works at an upscale
strip club here and her clientele does primarily consist of tech workers,
especially whenever a conference rolls around.

------
yaroslavvb
There's a lot of irrational reactions to shuttles for some reason. I live on
top of a "deluxe" cheese shop in Lower Polk, and the owner yesterday told me
"Google shuttles, yeah, don't like them, they are causing all those techies to
move in and drive up rents." Especially strange to hear from the owner since
techies are probably the ones buying their $20-$120 bottles of vinegar

~~~
lwan
This really drove the point home for me.

------
moultano
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13513173-the-rent-is-
too-...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13513173-the-rent-is-too-damn-
high)

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is constructively concerned about
these issues.

~~~
yetanotherphd
A person can be "constructive" while fundamentally disagreeing with the
premise of these protestors. I would recommend the following as a starting
point:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare_economics)

~~~
moultano
Then you'll be happy to know that he attributes the problem to government
constraints on supply.

~~~
yetanotherphd
Hehe, touche, I should have at least read the summary :)

But my link is also very relevant to the discussion and covers a different
issue.

EDIT: in particular, high rents don't _necessarily_ imply that supply should
be increased, sometimes it just means poor people need to move somewhere else.

------
melling
Maybe Google could just look at a subway map and put an office in a less
desirable area, like Oakland, where people can easily commute from SF by
subway. They might get good tax breaks if they build/lease in a depressed
area. Then they would need a lot fewer buses heading south. There would be an
additional benefit that some Google employees would move close to the office
in Oakland, thus bringing some wealth into that area, which would hopefully
snowball.

I don't know the SF area, but here's a subway map.

[https://www.bart.gov/stations](https://www.bart.gov/stations)

The solution to the problem is building another office in a cheaper area
that's close to mass transportation.

------
tsax
Delicious! Social justice rhetoric comes back to bite the SV hipsters. I hope
the non SJ warriors among the techies pay attention to this demonstration of
how the left wing hate machine works. Savor your own denunciation as lackeys
of Koch brothers (lol), evil capitalists, rich, white male priviledged running
dogs, etc. Then maybe this will make them rethink their own judgments when
such rhetoric is used against other industries or classes of people.

~~~
yetanotherphd
I don't think there are many social justice warriors among "techies", at least
those whose title is "Engineer". Some people might go along with it because
they really agree or because they fear the consequences (viz Ben Noordhuis)
but most of this politics comes from outside the industry, or from the
leaders/management.

~~~
tsax
Sure, I don't think there are many either. But this instance should remove the
attraction and 'cool' factor of SJWs in SV.

------
ultimatedelman
Is it just me, or is this less of the tech companies' and workers' fault and
more of the greedy landlords jacking up prices? Shouldn't the protesters'
anger be directed at them instead?

~~~
viraptor
I'm not sure if they should be angry at anyone at the moment. The market works
- jobs mean more people coming in, high salaries mean high rents, people who
can afford a good location will choose their place. Unless everyone in one
group changes their mind, there will be an unbalanced situation (until the
bubble bursts - rent goes so high that some people realise it's not reasonable
to pay anymore and some big shift occurs - another campus of a big company
gets built, new easier way of commuting is created, etc.)

If they really want change, they'll have to figure out a way to create an
incentive for the landlords to keep the price low, or for the workers to
choose their house location differently. Being angry at anyone trying to
maximise their comfort in a lawful way is rarely useful or effective.

~~~
mempko
clearly the markets are not working for everyone.

~~~
viraptor
It's working the same way for everyone. It's not beneficial for everyone, but
that's always the case.

------
yetanotherphd
I'm posting the full text of a flier[1] so people can see just how nasty and
threatening these protestors were (in addition to the actual violence):

In case you’re wondering why this happened, we’ll be extremely clear. The
people outside your Google bus serve you coffee, watch your kids, have sex
with you for money, make you food, and are being driven out of their
neighborhoods. While you guys live fat as hogs with your free 24/7 buffets,
everyone else is scraping the bottom of their wallets, barely existing in this
expensive world that you and your chums have helped create.

You are not innocent victims. Without you, the housing prices would not be
rising and we would not be facing eviction and foreclosure. You, your
employers, and the housing speculators are to blame for this new crisis, so
much more awful than the last one. You live your comfortable lives surrounded
by poverty, homelessness, and death, seemingly oblivious to everything around
you, lost in the big bucks and success. But look around, see the violence and
degradation out there? This is the world that you have created, and you are
clearly on the wrong side.

Predictably, you might even believe that the technologies you create serve the
betterment of all humans. But in reality, the benefactors of technological
development are advertisers, the wealthy, the powerful, and the NSA analysts
running dragnet surveillance over email, phone calls, and social media.

If you want a Bay Area where the ultra-rich are pitted against hundreds of
thousands of poor people, keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll have a nice
revolution outside your door. But if you want out then you should quit your
jobs, cash out, and go live a life that doesn’t completely fuck up someone
else’s.

GET THE FUCK OUT OF OAKLAND!

[1] [http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/12/20/google-bus-
proteste...](http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/12/20/google-bus-protesters-
manifesto-get-o/)

------
radley
Pando:

[http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-
googl...](http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-google-bus-
in-west-oakland-smashing-window/)

~~~
clarkm
"The San Francisco group was organized by a loose coalition of housing
activists, including representatives from Eviction Free SF, Our Mission No
Eviction, and Just Cause."

Do these organizations seriously campaign for _no_ evictions, or are their
names just hyperbole?

~~~
bmelton
Seems like, basically, exactly that. Or, put another way, you're free to own
property and rent it out, but you're only allowed to make as much profit as
they want you to, maybe?

"We are a direct action group, whose mission is to help stop the wave of
speculator evictions that have been hitting San Francisco by holding
accountable, and confronting, real estate speculators that have been
displacing long time San Francisco residents for profit."

------
leot
There are protest-able problems, and there are unprotest-able ones.

The real problem with SF is its density and the people preventing it from
getting denser (its density is a third of Paris', e.g.). Unfortunately, there
are no protest-magnets for that problem.

low density -- attractive -- affordable

Pick two.

------
iribe
Note that these hipsters moved to Oakland/SF thanks to paying higher rent
compared to the black people they kicked out.

------
fuckdc
what about the laws in SF that prevents developers from building new places to
live? - go to the alley between 17th and 18th on mission and you'll see a
picture of 'danny the developer' and gentrification references - this is their
attitude although it's inherently wrong - more housing would lower prices but
the city (it's rabid pro government constituents) in particular has made it
insanely hard to build new projects -- got a neighbor w/3 stories and you want
to build a 12 story project? good luck - not going to happen

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanization)

the same protestors that are big-government (these aren't anarchists -
"anarchists" in america are nothing short of hand to mouth socialists) have
found out they can't have their cake and eat it too - fuck them and fuck their
precious little government as well

------
TomSawyer
Oakland!

[http://youtu.be/CzkoeyhAAdk](http://youtu.be/CzkoeyhAAdk)

------
sytelus
Google + Apple employees combined count is less than 1% of Bay Area
population. If you include all other rich tech firms, their total employees
would probably account for less than 3% of population in Bay Area. So it seems
incorrect to think that these people are driving others from their
neighborhoods.

My view on California real estate is a giant bubble that fuels itself by boom
in tech industry but ignoring above numbers. Last time it tried to bust it got
deflated only by 25% and it back up to those levels again and going up even
more. If you wanted to short some market this is probably it.

------
skc
I'm idly wondering how many of those protestors use Google or iPhones on a
daily basis.

If people really want to get some attention from these corporates, vote your
displeasure with your wallet en masse.

------
belgianguy
Modern-day Luddites, the lot of them. Holding up or attacking buses with
employees on their way to work is an easy target. Not to mention the
protestors mental acrobatics to somehow blame the passengers of the bus for
the rising housing prices. That's very shortsighted and flimsy justification
fodder for some extreme political activists to start riots.

At no point will violence and vandalism be a valid argument in this
discussion. The fact that the different spokespersons seemed to go out of
their way to not condemn this act, is telling of their expectations from their
members. They're willing to place themselves above the law or at least are
willing to try and look the other way if their supporters commit crimes, but
at the same time they want sympathy and understanding for their dire
situation?

Good luck with that.

It's an economic reality that if a property attracts higher value through
development (eg richer people moving in to a part of town), that its
surroundings will rise in value as well. Shops and services targeting this new
demographic will start to show up, catering to their (often different) needs,
which have new needs of their own etc, ... This will affect everything from
the pavement, the cars in the street, the small shops, the traffic lights, to
the big brand supermarkets. It's usually a welcome sign that an area is
improving.

Yet from the protester perspective, they see the housing prices starting to
outgrow their incomes and see themselves being forced out by their landlords
to make room for richer people who can afford the rent. They don't want the
area to develop further, they want to keep it at a status quo to stop the
housing price from rising further.

Does that make is less of a tragedy? No, leaving one's house because one can't
afford it anymore is a heartbreaking decision, but it's a decision that a
houseowner should make sometimes. You can't keep something just because you
think you deserve to have it. We aren't living in an utopia and we must adapt
to changes in our environments, whether that is getting an extra job or moving
elsewhere, or trying to get more housing developed to satisfy demand and stop
the prices from skyrocketing. Why not protest the government?

IMO the protesters had a cause, but this violent act has done them much more
harm than good. Protesting is a right, but when your words aren't heard, you
don't get to throw stones at buses and expect to get a free pass. People
_will_ judge a group by its most prominent and vocal members. Grammatical
dissection of whether or not the spokespersons are in fact not condemning the
act doesn't really help their case, it rather defuses their argument and makes
them look juvenile and opportunistic in the process, exactly what those who
want them out, want them to be.

Great success.

