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Palo Alto Transformed
From Slope of Hope: I've lived in Palo Alto since the summer of 1984 (it only just occurred to me typing these words that this is my 30th anniversary here - maybe I should get a cake or something). Think about how much the world has changed since then; in 1984:
- The original Macintosh, complete with 128 kilobytes of memory, was the most sophisticated personal computer on the market;
- Mark Zuckerberg was a one-month old, making dookie in his diapers instead of your social life;
- The Cold War was going strong, with USSR-versus-US relations really the only thing a person needed to understand about the geopolitical world;
- If you had a 300 baud modem to connect your computer to your telephone (as I did), you were in a very, very, very tiny minority of people who could log on to remote computers and exchange information.
Over the years, the world changed in many ways; there was the 1987 market crash; the dissolution of the USSR, the historic equity bull market of the 1990s, the Internet bubble, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the housing bubble, the financial crisis, and now, the Central Bank bubble, which dwarfs everything that preceded it.
Through it all, though, the physical appearance of Palo Alto changed very little. There was plenty of turnover on University Avenue, which is the prime retail strip in town, as stores became progressively upscale, but the vast majority of commercial real estate in Palo Alto was the same drab, one-story (two, tops) bland construction that was built in the 1960s and early 1970s. Even at the peak of the Internet bubble, the buildings didn't change, even though rents exploded higher (my little company, Prophet, was shelling out nearly $20,000 per month in 2000 for a shabby old house in downtown Palo Alto, which we used for office space).
Recently, though, things have changed dramatically. I wasn't looking for it, but over the past few months, I've been overwhelmed not just at how much construction is going on around here, but how much high-end construction is happening. In Palo Alto and surrounding towns (like Los Altos and Mountain View), an increasing number of dentist offices, retail stores, and apartment buildings are looking like this (I just photographed this today):
Owners of land in town are realizing that they are sitting on solid gold, and they want to squeeze the highest possible price out of potential tenants. These days, that means one thing: well-funded startups. These firms have huge bank balances and will not balk at sky-high rents, because the expense is inconsequential compared to how much funding they are getting.
To attract this kind of tenant, though, you need A+ office space. It has to be new, hip, shiny, modern-looking, and really well-located. There's one key thing to understand about the employees at these firms: at the moment, they are living in the very best of both worlds - (1) they get the very high salary of an adult professional (2) at the same time, they get to enjoy the life of a child, with fun and games one of the principal draws to any prospective employee (For instance, as I was meandering downtown this afternoon, thinking about this post, I passed a startup called Kiwi whose lobby had a huge blackboard listing Activities This Week, which resembled something from summer camp - - - Frisbee, barbecue, ping-pong, etc.)
So, again, if you're going to create a Playground For Young Adults, you're going to need to spend big bucks. Thus, the construction site like the one I passed below has become ubiquitous: an old, small, wood house (traditional Palo Alto) right next door to a brand new zillion-dollar Fun Space For Twenty-Somethings being constructed as swiftly as possible (this picture doesn't do it justice, but the fabric triangles at the top appear to be some kind of luxury rooftop eating area for when it's done).
When all the dust settles, Palo Alto is definitely going to look a lot more modern (and heterogeneous, like the picture above) than it did when I first moved here. All I can say, though, is that when the current bubble finally bursts, whether it's next month or next decade, there are going to be an awfully lot of expensive, empty, class A office buildings situated around town, holding nothing but the memories of ping-pong games past.
- advertisements -
"It was all quiet and nice until the aliens came!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrVEHszxL7E
I grew up in Los Altos Hills and recently went "home" to see what has happened to my once sleepy neighborhood. It was horrible. McMansions in place of tasteful, rambling homes -- mine was a ranch-like, 4 bedroom- 4 bath, still there -- with fast cars zipping down the street instead of family wagons. A child would be unsafe riding a bicycle on those streets.
Perhaps I'm romanticing what I wish I could remember about LOs Altos Hills and not what it really was. I'm not sure it was ever "grounded," as they say.
I can't understand why anyone would anyone want to live there, at least adults with kids. I can imagine young college grads passing through Los Altos Hills on their way to jobs elsewhere, bunking up in houses because rent is too expensive for a true family to afford. Such young adults delay maturity, and as their long summer of play-and-money morphs in the autumn of life -- 40 to 65, or so -- they'll leave.
No one will notice.
I say this because I'm one of them. Even back in teh 1970s, when Los Altos Hills was still, potentially, a family place, I was a transient as were many kids of engineers and physicists who lived there today, transferred tomorrow. To this day, I don't know what to say when people ask, "Where are you from?" I have no sense of place. I don't know my relatives. I don't know my family history and have no idea where they're from. And if I did, it wouldn't matter as I've never met any of them. I wasn't raised in a religious tradition, as my parents were self-avowed materialists/Freudian (mother was a shrink).
I'm not alone. Everyone I knew was from somewhere else. Usually Connecticut. I'm the typical dislocated, ahistorical Californian and I fear that children raised there will be utterly lost ... lost generations.
Just my 0.2 - You really can't ever go back to a place once you've left it long enough and expect it to be pleasant. It's not so much that the place has changed, but that you've changed. I've experienced it many times going back to places I've lived, including the bay area, and it always seems to leave me with a heavy, regressive feeling.
twenty cents worth?
not even 2
Parmenides and Heraclitus' old debate; is the nature of life that of stasis, or is it more in the nature of flux, per the Heraclidian stream: "A man cannot step into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man."
good post, boodles.
I'm here because of my husband's job, which (barring the unforeseen) should continue (it's not tech). But we don't have kids. I would never raise kids here!!!!! You are so right - none of the kids around here know their grandparents or aunts or uncles or cousins; they are utterly rootless. Back in Connecticut, where I'm from (hahaha yes really) I had all of those connections. I still have them, to the extent that folks are living.
People come here just for the schools, some of them - and then sell/leave as soon as their kids finish high school. I think their kids would be much better off in a "worse" school, in a real, permanent hometown.
The only thing I'd correct in your post is the age at which you say people move on. Given how this area spits out anyone over thirty, I think it's before the ages of 40-65, unless they are very "lucky."
I met a young woman from China the other day; she is getting a doctorate in geology. She wants to stay here, of course; she can't imagine living anywhere else in the U.S.. I told her it was a big country with all sorts of nice places. Then she asked me if any of them had such nice weather, LOL. She referred to Mountain View and Sunnyvale and Menlo Park as "small towns." I told her that that was not really the usage!!!!!!
I know loads of local people who are homeless (even though I'm not from around here, I tend to get to know people who are from around here). A one-bedroom rental apartment in an ordinary midrise apartment building in Mountain View is now $3200/month. Regular humans can't afford that. I keep urging people to move to Connecticut - you can buy a farmhouse in my hometown on eight acres for 200k; real estate is dead in Connecticut and has been since 2008; if you can get any sort of job you can get a nice house in a real town.
I lived in CT for 65 years, until my retirement one year ago. Yes, you can get an inexpensive home a short commute from work. The problem is employment. In the Eighties, when I was a Realtor in Avon, the largest employer in the state was United Technologies. They owned Pratt & Whitney, Hamilton Standard (Sundstrand), Otis Elevator, Carrier, Sikorsky, Norden, etc. These were high-paying, stable jobs with great benefits. Fast forward 20 years. The largest employer became Stop & Shop. That's about all you need to know about jobs in CT.
I knew someone who was a vet who got a job with UTX in Florida. It was a union shop and I told them to keep their mouth shut because they were not a Democrat. The union scum from CT who "retired" to Florida to work in the sub for UTX made sure to push this person out of the job becuase they did not love Obama. The defense contractors are as evil as Eisenhower warned us. F CT and the NE.
CT is a land of extremes. Statistically, it is wealthy. That's because of Greenwich and the surrounding areas which are really a suburb of NYC. The three largest cities, Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven are poor, violent crime-ridden ghettos with huge financial problems. Watch the TV news in any of these cities and see the daily accounts of shootings that never stop.
Yes, that is why I bolded "IF" you can get a job. It's bad. Everyone in CT wants to work for the state; those are pretty much the only "real" jobs left. My parents have a good friend in his late 20s who is a prison guard. You would think, good lord, what sort of person would become a prison guard!!!! Well, he's a perfectly fine person, actually; not some sort of sicko sadist or moron. But without a college degree (in his case), or even with one, there is very, very little out there. The big 'n fancy houses in my hometown that were built circa 2002 that have been in secret preforeclosure for years, were owned by people laid off by Pfizer (I'm from eastern CT). However the job market is also terrible in Silicon Valley for anyone over 30; I'm not sure that CT would actually be worse.
Here is your typical CT job market
Town of Newtown - Board of Education
Masonicare at Newtown
State Dept. of Corrections at Garner
Taunton Press
Charter Communications
Big Y Supermarket
Town of Newtown
Crisis Actors Guild
crisis actors guild ? So it was fake ?
http://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2014/06/16/high-school-teacher-fired-for...
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/education/2014/06/16/fox-lane-teacher-fi...
Totally agree!!!
"The United States of Amnesia" - Gore Vidal
Hang in there bro. It could be worse. You could be from LA trying to pitch a screenplay or trying to be an actor. You would be filled with celeb worship or turn into a Lindsay Lohan stalker. ;-)
F Sily-con Valley. Their software, hardware, apps and web sites are filled with spyware shit. More and more of the world is getting hip and they don't want the spyware shit. Microsoft is freaking out because foreign companies and people outside the USA are tired of being spied on.
Palo Alto wiill turned into a crime filled barrio with MS-13 gang members. East Palo Alto is filled with gangs.
Your 100 percent correct. The international companies and foreign buyers are getting hip and don't want our crap because of the spying. So they are working on or have apps that don't spy on you. The NSA has did alot of damage to the US technology field. Because now many of these foreign buyers are buying from elsewhere or making it their own. And your correct East Palo Alto is gang infested, it's only a matter of time for the rest.
East Palo Alto was filled with gangs but they all got gentrified out by the 20-somethings who needed an affordable place to live to go along with their plum Silly-Con Valley job.
-Chumbz.
Yeah all the Scum gentrified out to Stockton...how's that workin' out my NEEEGROWS?
Now they are called Phoneboys
East Palo Alto is still very dangerous. It has four times Palo Alto's murder rate: http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-East-Palo-Alto-California.html
Used to be an old saloon blues joint, gritty as can be, good to place to go though, back in the day; now just a memory, the land is part of a premier office + Four Seasons hotel complex..
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KaiserHoff wrote:
I presume that you live in either Charlottesville, VA (Univ. of Virginia), Williamsburg, VA (College of William & Mary), Blacksburg, VA (Virginia Tech Univ.), or Fairfax city, VA (Geo. Mason Univ.) Which one is it?
-- Paul D. Bain
PaulBain@PObox.com
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Actually you forgot Harrisonburg (James Madison University) that is doing quite well or Staunton (Mary Baldwin) that is also doing fine. Charlottesville (University of Virginia) is hideously overpriced part of northern Virginia moved 100 miles south. Both the city of Charlottesville and UVa are coasting on their overblown reputation.
Zombies, that's what could go wrong. The only line of defence between Palo Alto and the undesireable areas is a freeway. It works now but wait until the EBT cards zero out. Still, they're in better shape than those poor schmucks in the Oakland hills or Pacific Heights. It doesn't help to be the smart guy with all the brains when brains is what for dinner.
is this a practice essay for intro to creative writing?
Memo to self: skip any article written by Tim Knight
Agree.
This fucker is nauseatingly self-absorbed.
It's a California thing. I lived there for 15 years once and still haven't been able to figure it out.
True. this is a bit like being in Europe where Americans blurt out "I'm an American!" Like everyone is supposed to drop everything and cater to them. It is very embarassing. If I am anywhere near - I almost want to blurt out - "Don't look at me, hoser -- I am a Canadian- eh?"
Sort of like this dude. My guess is these Russkies and Ukrianians are not going to give a shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFBU4GwBa1s
These were the same scum bags at Bundy Ranch working for Obama and Hairy Reid.
I must say the only reason there was a bust in 2000 is because of stupid money chasing momo stocks. There is a little of that today but not nearly as much as back then, and, investors seem to be much more conservative in their deal selection. I think that the Bay Area economy is booming because of tech and I don't see the same harbingers of disaster threatening the local economy. I think the region is pretty resilient. That being said, a bust at the national level will impact everyone, including the hi tech economy of the Bay Area. Short of a national implosion, I think the local scene is pretty solid.
sw^2c
I have one word the encapsulates the future of your trendy little village - Fukushima. Unless you have sunblock 2 million available, I suggest you invest in cancer treatment centers, dude. The you can contine to engage in producing meaningless tracts of circumstantial and tangential random thoughts about your narcissistic existence...
I'm going long with Rick Simpson's Cannabis Oil (High CBD)
Organic Hemp Oil...so many good factors in it, two tablespoons in morning...for healthy body and brain
http://manitobaharvest.com/category/15/Hemp+Oil.html
and users, after they are fucked, won't really give a shit, maaaaaaan