Related: All Tapped Out
Not only do I not drink, I don't even like being around it or people who are.
Globe will hoist a few for you, though!
"Bros have turned the City by the Bay into their playground" by Christopher Muther Globe Staff January 30, 2016
SAN FRANCISCO — They are being blamed for creating a housing crisis, shoving generations of families out of their long-time neighborhoods, and causing income disparities in this once-upon-a-time daisy-scented city that long thrived as a haven for free spirits, artists, an impressive gay community, and a lot of wonderfully self-professed weirdos.
But on this particular night I blamed them for getting me so drunk I could barely open the Uber app on my phone.
What a great "job" it must be working for the Globe and being a handmaiden to the cru$t of the elite ruling cla$$ that will soon be the only ones populating this planet. That's the general tone I'm getting from their $hit-faced mouthpieces.
I’m referring to the Bros. This invasive species in San Francisco — generally male and in his 20s or early 30s — has been spreading faster than Asian carp in the Mississippi River. The Bros I encountered here have a lot in common with the Asian carp. They drink like fish.
So the carp are in the Mississippi now, huh?
For some reason one doesn't read much about that particular environmental problem much anymore, along with others. It's all global warming, weird weather, get a tax on you for it stuff.
Enjoy the New World Order if you are still around. I know I won't be.
As companies such as Google, Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest, Yahoo, Dropbox, LinkedIn, and dozens more move into the Bay Area, so do the Brogrammers. Young and flush with techie cash, the Bros have turned parts of San Francisco into their party playground. It’s a Provision.
Woooooooooooo!!!
PARTY!!!
I came to immerse myself in Bro culture, which was impossible to miss. If you come here for the Super Bowl, you’ll see them everywhere from the sterile white environs of the local automated quinoa cafeteria to the dankest of dive bars.
The game and went, who gives a damn, and I already visited the dive bars of Bo$ton last night.
“There’s definitely a large contingent of young, 20-something males that roll straight out of college into perk-heavy tech jobs that are incredibly parallel to the college setting from which they came — dining halls for all three meals, rec rooms, and cookie cutter apartments filled with people very much like themselves,” said artist and San Francisco resident Hannah Rothstein who is working on a series of Bro portraits. “Socio-economic diversity is definitely being pushed out of the city.”
San Francisco is being turned into ONE BIG FRAT HOUSE!!!
You may have gathered that these fellows aren’t so popular in certain circles. The Brolympics (cross my heart it’s a real thing) left Fort Mason, often called Frat Mason, in tatters last spring, and there was a YouTube clip that went viral of a group of Dropbox dudes arguing with some kids over who had the right to use a community soccer field. If you’d like a full backstory, I urge you to watch the HBO documentary “San Francisco 2.0.”
These foster frat dudes will be by your side and ready to tear it up like a bunch of Brohan the Brobarians come Super Bowl weekend. I’m unable to stop the Bro portmanteaus, so please humor me friends.
:-(
I confined most of my Bro research to the Marina District, a neighborhood well known for accommodating these good time Charlie and Charlenes. Female Bros are thankfully not called Bras. They’re referred to as Marina Girls. Use it sparingly, I’m told the term is falling out of favor.
On a Friday night I surveyed the Marina District with a list of bars in hand. Instead of following the list, I followed the sound of the Bros, who were whooping it up in a place called Bar None.
I soon found out that Bar None is famous for its beer pong tables, which are actually sort of sad looking folding tables covered with plastic cups.
I think I was studying the game a bit too intensely because I heard someone say “How ’bout it man. You wanna go?” He was talking to me.
For research purposes only I picked up a ping pong ball and tried my best. I instinctively knew this was a terrible idea. I was playing with a gang of Bros from a company that had just scored a healthy round of venture capital and I could tell from their devil-may-care consumption of firewater that I should probably get my tail feather out while I still could still stay vertical. Naturally I stayed.
Thank God he didn't want to smoke a joint, huh?
The rest of the night was a blur with round after round of shots....
That was when I passed out.
--more--"
Then I woke up to this text:
"‘Tech bro’ says homeless people are ruining San Francisco" by Michael E. Miller Washington Post February 18, 2016
Move over, Martin Shkreli. You now have competition for the title of America’s most reviled millennial.
The Internet exploded in outrage Wednesday after a San Francisco tech entrepreneur wrote an open letter complaining that homeless ‘‘riff raff’’ were turning the city into an ‘‘unsafe’’ and filthy ‘‘shanty town.’’
In a Feb. 15 letter addressed to the city’s mayor and police chief, software developer Justin Keller wrote bitterly about how his Presidents Day weekend had been ruined by homeless people.
‘‘I know people are frustrated about gentrification happening in the city, but the reality is, we live in a free market society,’’ Keller wrote, admitting that he only arrived in San Francisco three years ago. ‘‘The wealthy working people have earned their right to live in the city. They went out, got an education, work hard, and earned it. I shouldn’t have to worry about being accosted. I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless people to and from my way to work every day.’’
I don't want to get into a big thing with this $not-no$ed and ignorant a$$hole, but a few things:
Most wealthy people haven't earned $hit, be it the looting banksters and their Wall Street $chemes, the wealthy family inheritances responsible for most of it, or whatever other capital acce$$ such scum had (most of the times it is tax loot, too).
That's the part of the "free market society" this guy doesn't seem to understand, because we have nothing of the sort. Tax loot subsidies to corporations are far from free market, and as for investment, etc, I'll get to that a bit later.
My last point would be regarding the gentrification in what appears to be preparation for the global genocide that has been warned about for years by conspiracy kooks, a thing I dismissed for a long time. How would their banking schemes survive, and how would they make the money they love show much? Unfortunately, the politics and backlash to the forced migrant crises has convinced me that the the public has become to unruly and aware that elimination is something that must be countenanced. There are many ways to do it. War, terror, biological and chemical crisis, general poisoning of the population, etc, etc. It's just how fast do they intend to move.
This guy's "crime" -- it is free speech, after all -- is that he has internalized the feeling of privilege from the cla$$ of which he is part, and just happened to speak what most of them think. That's a faux pas. You toss crumbs at the masses in symbolic sympathy as the $tatu$ quo continues.
Keller’s comments drew sharp rebukes, especially within San Francisco, where tech workers have been blamed for skyrocketing rents and gentrification. On social media, a flood of critics accused Keller of arrogance and insensitivity, not to mention ignoring his own industry’s reputed role in the city’s homelessness crisis.
He's lucky that is all it is, and his indu$try is getting help.
The Guardian called Keller a ‘‘tech bro’’ whose letter demonstrated a ‘‘total lack of sympathy for the plight of those in difficult circumstances, focusing instead on the discomfort of the ‘wealthy.’’’
I wasn't expecting any sympathy from his ilk, quite honestly. I'd expect spit more than that.
And in a particularly blistering rebuttal, a woman who sarcastically identified herself as one of Keller’s ‘‘servants in San Francisco’’ told him that if he didn’t like the city, he should leave.
‘‘You writing an open letter assuming you know anything about your community is a crock of (excrement) because your community is one of self-important techies and ping-pong gathering friends who like wine bars and love to have everything handed to them with a disposable waste of a garnish and a cloth napkin,’’ wrote Edna Miroslava Raia.
With his open letter, Keller had unintentionally turned himself into the face of San Francisco’s raging gentrification debate.
There is one in Bo$ton, too.
Indeed, like a character from the sitcom ‘‘Silicon Valley,’’ Keller seems to embody the social and economic issues now consuming this former hippie hangout turned haute hipster enclave.
Founded a startup that few outside San Francisco have ever heard of?
Check. According to its website, Commando.io offers users ‘‘a simpler way to manage servers online,’’ or something.
What is becoming increasingly clear is all these $tart-ups are $erving two purposes:
They are funneling the ever-increasing wealth at the top into favored hands as well as creating the data collection and technological spying grid that will be needed for the future to which we are now headed at breakneck speed.
Worships the tech bros that made it big?
Check. Keller posted photos online of his handwritten notes from ‘‘Startup School’’ in 2013, complete with uplifting entrepreneurial quotes.
‘‘Business to be my life’s work,’’ Keller wrote, quoting Evernote founder Phil Libin. Founders must be decisive leaders, Keller scribbled, quoting another Silicon Valley heavyweight.
Now that last section was not in my printed paper.
Keller’s previous blog posts are largely what you’d expect from a tech bro: a nerd-out about electronic cars and the laws of robotics; anger towards Chinese hackers; joy at a ‘‘shower epiphany’’ that enabled him to solve a vexing business problem.
And then — in a ‘‘shower epiphany’’ he is likely to regret — came his Monday post, ‘‘Open letter to SF Mayor Ed Lee and Greg Suhr (police chief).’’
‘‘I am writing today, to voice my concern and outrage over the increasing homeless and drug problem that the city is faced with,’’ begins the missive, which, in true Silicon Valley style, is published on Keller’s personal website (where articles are rated not by likes or reads but by ‘‘kudos”).
‘‘Every day, on my way to, and from work, I see people sprawled across the sidewalk, tent cities, human feces, and the faces of addiction,’’ Keller continues. ‘‘The city is becoming a shanty town ... Worst of all, it is unsafe.’’
He then describes his supposedly woeful holiday weekend, which began to turn when a ‘‘homeless drunken man’’ leaned against his parents’ car. The weekend soured further when a ‘‘high person’’ began ‘‘yelling about cocaine’’ and trying to pull down his pants just as Keller and his parents were leaving Tadich Grill, a 165-year-old restaurant that specializes in Australian lobster tail and ‘‘seafood cioppino with garlic bread.’’
Look, I'm not wanting to excuse what some homeless victim of larger forces did in the throes of addiction or mental illness. I am just glad the government drug smuggling is healthy and the pharmaceuticals may get a crack at treatment with the letting out of the jails by Obama.
Oh, I also hope he had as good a meal as me (btw, don't put any parmesan cheese on it).
What apparently pushed Keller over the edge, however, was when he and his girlfriend had paid close to $20 each for tickets to a movie at the Kabuki Theater (including an ‘‘amenity fee’’ for not showing ‘‘annoying television ads before the movies”) only to have their experience interrupted yet again.
‘‘About two hours into the film, a man stumbled in the front door,’’ Keller writes. ‘‘He proceeded to walk into the theater, down the aisle to the front, wobbled toward the emergency door, opened it, and then took his shirt off and laid down. He then came back into the theater shielding his eyes from the running projector. My girlfriend was terrified and myself and many people ran out of the theater.
Maybe if you or she were armed you wouldn't have been.
And where is the security, staff, or ushers at the theater anyway?
I mean, with all the shootings at the movies since the Aurora psyop.
WTF?
‘‘What are you going to do to address this problem?’’ Keller then asks the mayor and police chief, before taking it upon himself to speak for all his fellow tech bros. ‘‘The residents of this amazing city no longer feel safe.’’
In fits of pique I'm know to say I speak for God and the American people. Then I catch myself and recognize I'm not speaking for God.
After comparing San Francisco’s streets to a stock market, where ‘‘the wealthy working people have earned their right to live in the city,’’ Keller begins to grapple out loud with the question of why Adam Smith’s invisible hand hasn’t already swept the homeless to somewhere else, out of sight.
Getting to be as bad as South Carolina!
‘‘I want my parents when they come visit to have a great experience, and enjoy this special place,’’ he writes, before warning — in bold type — that ‘‘there is going to be a revolution’’ if the city doesn’t act soon.
What, is Bernie Sanders coming to San Francisco?
As for that revolution, just try to keep your head.
‘‘People on both sides are frustrated, and you can sense the anger,’’ he writes. ‘‘The city needs to tackle this problem head on, it can no longer ignore it and let people do whatever they want in the city. I don’t have a magic solution.
CAN YOU?!!!!!!!!!
‘‘It is a very difficult and complex situation,’’ Keller adds in what is perhaps his only incontestable sentence, before then appearing to approve of how the city swept the homeless out of sight for the Super Bowl and suggesting it do so permanently.
So what does he want, FEMA camps or mass graves?
‘‘But somehow during Super Bowl, almost all of the homeless and riff raff seem to up and vanish,’’ he writes. ‘‘I’m willing to bet that was not a coincidence. Money and political pressure can make change. So it is time to start making progress, or we as citizens will make a change in leadership and elect new officials who can.’’
Last I knew it was one person, on vote, but that was before the age of rigged elections and corporate governance by billionaires.
Keller’s open letter unleashed a torrent of online abuse.
That is a very interesting take, and it's obvious who$e $ide the pre$$ is taking.
This elite little $hitter is the one who has been abused.
Pffft!!!!
Many people mocked him for treating the city like a programming glitch that could be quickly solved.
‘‘Justin Keller thinks life comes with customer support,’’ read a response circulating on Twitter.
‘‘For those just tuning in, (Keller) thinks that it’s gross that he has to look at the poors when he goes to work,’’ tweeted another local.
Many locals, like Miroslava Raia, told Keller to get out — often in much harsher terms.
‘‘If you know Justin Keller ... please call him riffraff and kick him out of town,’’ tweeted San Franciscan Eric Munsing.
Like, you know, what Israelis would do to Palestinians.
Even his fellow tech bros eventually turned on him.
Uh-oh!
Guys!!
The abuse got so bad that other Justin Kellers had to take to Twitter to point out that they were not to blame for the open letter.
By Wednesday, when the Internet was reaching peak outrage, Keller took to Twitter to respond.
He also added a footnote to his open letter: ‘‘I want to apologize for using the term riff raff. It was insensitive and counterproductive.’’
That's all he apologizes for?
The sickening cla$$ of elite $cum really are deaf, aren't they?
Keller’s open letter debacle might have been avoided if he had just heeded the advice of his Silicon Valley heroes.
‘‘Be accountable,’’ Keller had written down during Startup School, quoting Watsi founder Chase Adam. ‘‘Be clear, assertive and thoughtful.’’
Perhaps the best quote — the ‘‘shower epiphany’’ that slipped away from Keller — also came from Adam.
‘‘Find something to work on that you care about more than yourself.’’
--more--"
If some misfortune comes upon Keller you won't see me crying; it will simply be one less piece of filth on this planet.
Related: Homeless in Silicon Valley
Yeah, maybe San Fransisco's homeless could be cleansed to that location, and WTF is with all the TECH COMPANIES being FRONTS for GOVERNMENT START-UPS in furtherance of TOTAL SURVEILLANCE TYRANNY?
That's a "free market?"
UPDATE: Seeking $1.2m payday, Bay Area landlord evicting 97-year-old
That's really going to piss off the bro, i$n't it?
Evicting his grandma who has cancer and making more homeless?
