Golden Gate Bridge 50th Anniversary Radio Broadcasts

[Weiserguy]

That's the thing right there. There's some agreement on the root causes but not on the solutions. The costs are daunting.

I recently had an online exchange with someone who had lived in downtown Portland where I had had consulting engagements. Even though my correspondent was a pro-Second Amendment kind of person, and I definitely am not, we still had an amicable discussion, where we both agreed that we just didn't have any answers to the problem. Trying to scale up solutions causes costs to grow nearly exponentially, it seems.



They're also hamstrung by homeless advocacy groups who are more interested in stopping things than in longer-term solutions. Those advocacy groups also know how to get media attention, facilitated by reporters' and editors' attraction to emotion-stirring stories, and this is certainly one of them. And then there is Fox News, functioning the way it often does in bad faith and malicious intent, along with its even worse counterparts, who like to hammer San Francisco for being the poster child of purportedly feckless liberalism. So when Fox News points out an actual problem, which can happen, it can be easily dismissed as just another instance of ideological propaganda. That doesn't help.

There's almost nothing you wrote that I can disagree with, except maybe the value of the Second Amendment, but only in the limited, original meaning of the text, not the "anything goes" current interpretation.

 

[michael hagerty]

It's not a particularly complex problem, even if the solutions would be. There just needs to be some creative thinking, some willingness to buck the conventional thinking, and a will (and the money) to execute a plan. I don't think anyone in city government really wants to deal with the blowback of fixing the problem once and for all.

Well, and that's the problem, isn't it? The complexity of solutions and the required buy-in of citizens who get a say in how their tax dollars are used.

I live in Folsom, a very nice, peaceful suburb---25 miles east of Sacramento---of about 85,000 people and growing. Safe, livable, walkable, but, in the past couple of years there's been a budding homelessness problem.

The Mayor came up with an idea, an early response---a homeless services center on a lot that's owned by the city, on the edge of historic downtown.

The citizenry came unglued:

Folsom Council Won’t Move Forward On Homeless Resource Site Near Historic District – Folsom Times

It was standing room only at Folsom City Hall Tuesday night as members of the community ranging from residents to business owners and others packed ci

folsomtimes.com

It's a long article, and there were absolutely flaws in the Mayor's logic, but the TL/DR of this is that, if you put it to a vote, jailing the homeless or putting them on an ice floe in the Arctic would win out over a humane approach. The homeless advocacy groups Mark referred to know that, which is why they're intent on policy and legislation that ultimately worsens the problem by hamstringing local jurisdictions as to what actions they can take. But---it does achieve (mostly) its intent, which is to prevent cruelty, abuse and inhumane treatment as "solutions".

 

[TomásEstefan]

I mean, yes and no.

Patty Hearst's kidnapping, the Zodiac killer, the murder of Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk...

Things were so crazy-bad in the 70s, that one morning, driving into SF from Ukiah, having just listened to the news on the radio, I asked the toll-taker at the Golden Gate Bridge if he shouldn't be charging people to get out.

That's just shy of 50 years ago.

The city runs in cycles, probably more than any city I've ever known.



It's always been expensive. When I was paying $135 a month for a one bedroom in Ukiah, a studio in SF was going for $600. Adjusted for inflation, that's $3,300.

Bill Lee did an interview with a Swedish journalist about American radio back in 1984. At that time, he said you needed "at least $50,000 a year" to live in SF comfortably.

I rented a one bedroom house adjacent to the Russian River in Ukiah for $ 150 a month!

Plus if I recall we also had the The Peoples Temple in Ukiah !

 

[michael hagerty]

Plus if I recall we also had the The Peoples Temple in Ukiah !

Kinda---about ten miles away, in Redwood Valley.

 

[TomásEstefan]

Kinda---about ten miles away, in Redwood Valley.

Loved Redwood Valley. It was kinda like a rural/suburb to Ukiah !

 

[cc333]

Yes, Redwood Valley is nice. Looked into buying a house there a few years ago, but prices were too high, and there were too many "farmers" (turns out I'm allergic to their "product", so I have to stay away or I'll get sick).

c

 

[michael hagerty]

Loved Redwood Valley. It was kinda like a rural/suburb to Ukiah !

My brain is still struggling with the idea of a "rural suburb of Ukiah", which was 10,000 people when I lived there.

Then again, it now has a Costco and an In-N-Out, so...

 

[cc333]

My brain is still struggling with the idea of a "rural suburb of Ukiah", which was 10,000 people when I lived there.

Then again, it now has a Costco and an In-N-Out, so...

Yes, but relative to Lakeport, Ukiah has always felt more city like to me, since that's where the nearest big box stores are (Staples, Home Depot, JC Penney, Kohls, etc.) among other things.

c

 

[TomásEstefan]

My brain is still struggling with the idea of a "rural suburb of Ukiah", which was 10,000 people when I lived there.

Then again, it now has a Costco and an In-N-Out, so...

Well, my understanding was that back then there was about 10,000 people within the Uk city limits and possibly about that many more within about a 20 mile radius of the city.

 

[TomásEstefan]

Yes, but relative to Lakeport, Ukiah has always felt more city like to me, since that's where the nearest big box stores are (Staples, Home Depot, JC Penney, Kohls, etc.) among other things.

c

i think, though that back in the day (the 70s) you had to go down to Santa Rosa for businesses like what you described.

 

[Lou Schneider]

i think, though that back in the day (the 70s) you had to go down to Santa Rosa for businesses like what you described.

Right - which is why when John Detz bought KVRE in Santa Rosa he was the first broadcaster to exploit the expanded Santa Rosa trading area. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat had significant daily circulation in the Mendocino, Ukiah and Lakeport areas but none of the Santa Rosa stations reached them. People would read the ads in the newspaper and regularly make the 1-2 hour drive to Santa Rosa to buy things that were either underrepresented or not available locally. He built KOZT in Fort Bragg, which covered Willits and Ukiah via a pair of translators and when 1270 in Lakeport went bankrupt he bought it and added a companion FM there.

The outlying stations were sold as a combo package with KVRE and all of the back office functions (payroll, billing, program log generation and engineering support) came out of the central office in Santa Rosa. As a result they had minimal staffs, basically the DJs (24 hour live, local programming was a good selling point but the real reason was in those pre-Internet days we didn't have an economical way to get live audio up to them) and a combination station manager/salesman who sold local advertising and forwarded the orders to Santa Rosa for processing. Greyhound ran a daily bus round trip from from Santa Rosa to Fort Bragg so sales orders could be turned around and on the air the next day via a courier pouch. Santa Rosa to Lakeport logistics were a little more complicated so they handled their own program logs and more local spot production but all of the back office functions still came out of Santa Rosa.

Due to the low overhead all of the stations were profitable from the start.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Right - which is why when John Detz bought KVRE in Santa Rosa he was the first broadcaster to exploit the expanded Santa Rosa trading area.

Off-topic...but I have to say that it makes me happy to see you here.

 

[chuckmcmillan]

Why does it seem like all the *really* fun things in SF happened 30+ years ago?

The Bay Area nowadays seems to me to be quite dull by comparison, and is becoming a strangely bifurcated society where a majority of people are either very wealthy or very not, with a rather small and increasingly struggling middle class lingering in between.

c

Outside of SF could be an option. There are nine California towns where you can still snap up a cheap place with $150,000 houses in California.

Trona, Yermo, Hinkley, Johannesburg, Herlon, Macdoel, Dorris, Tulelake, etc.