Brr
"What's disturbing is that Wal-Mart is really profiting from female poverty -- both from its workers and its shoppers. Part of the problem with the Wal-Mart business model is that it requires more poverty in order to grow. They really have no incentive to improve working conditions. If they are lowering living standards everywhere they go, people have no choice but to shop at Wal-Mart."
This
article on Salon isn't big news, but it's plenty chilling.
The News
Walter's Leaving Tribe
He's gonna work on his writing, and we're planning on some
serious travel. Yay! The real estate bubble is just going to have to continue without us for a while.
Tap tap tap
Big news soon, I think...
Cleaning, packing, moving — but not buying
I. Am. So. Tired.
Couldn't justify the crazy rent in my filing cabinet in the Fillmore any longer, and the real estate hunt continues to continue, so this week I packed and packed and scrubbed and scrubbed and moved to my fella's place in the Castro. It's, er,
cozy.
Made an offer on a 2-unit place, then chickened out at the counter-offer. If my realtors are ready to strangle me, they're hiding it well. The place would have been a
great investment if I didn't have to live there. On the market too long thanks to an incompetent listing agent (who didn't even put it in the MLS), desperate sellers, sweet price. Solid Edwardian building with nice high ceilings and even an eensy deck off the upper unit. So what's wrong with it? Well, the downstairs has at least ten adults (and I-don't-know-how-many kids) crammed into it — half of them in slapped-together cubicle rooms in an unventilated basement. If there were a furnace malfunction? A dropped cigarette? It's a nightmare. A landlord who saw that basement and didn't make sure it stayed empty would be looking at charges of criminally negligent homicide if something went wrong.
So there's the wee deathtrap aspect. And then there's the weekday-afternoon drinking parties out front. And the drug dealers. And the urine on the sidewalk. And the fact that this particular Edwardian is one of five identical buildings (which means five identical basements, pretty much all — in this neighborhood — rented to immigrant families and whoever they can squeeze in). People gotta live, I realize this. But I'm not ready to live on that block, or keep watch over that lower unit. Not yet, anyhow.
The other 2-unit in my price range needed $120k worth of foundation work and a new roof. Oops.
This city is
harsh, man. But I'm happy here for now. I can learn not to stub my toes on boxes, and sleep next to my man every night while the cats fight for the right to occupy the top of my mattress, now propped against the wall. (If cats could design furniture, I think it'd all resemble sideways mattress-and-box-spring sets — comfy, easy to climb, and sooooooo tall.)
So I guess, in other words; I haven't found my happy mattress-top, but I'm not living in a basement cubby either. Just waiting, so far.