If only they'd been plugged in to the YIMBY chat
Notorious GIS reply guy YIMBY I will come to your hearing, Berkeley politician Vuvuzela owner Father @jeffinatorator on certain bird sites
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If only they'd been plugged in to the YIMBY chat
They're only selling the front half of the parcel, with the original main building and attached ADU. On the back half, they have an approved plan for a 3-story main building. It was at ZAB a couple years ago.
Area homeowner wants $528k tax abatement over 10 years to rebuild this garage, which the city has designated a "structure of merit".
Strange Currencies. 6/8 R.E.M. is best R.E.M.
Yeah :-/
Trump take 8th grade field trip to D.C.
Preemptively answering the usual questions: this is a fixed cohort of the same 13,454 properties, counting only the registered 1- and 0-bedroom (studio) units. The data point is the original rent for leases reportedly still active today. The size of the data point represents leases that month.
A little end-of-August local rent data for you. August still the seasonal peak in terms of price, but strongly declining trend from August to August to August continues. I expect to have more complete data for August next month, given typical reporting delays.
While true, according to Reddit the racist leadership who set them up for an ICE raid comes from Santa Monica.
Some of the stuff on Reddit that this article is based on is crazy. stateline.org/2025/08/31/f...
The NYT front-paged Al Gore making a long-distance phone call from his desk, for months.
Article word frequency: Walk: 0 Bike: 0 Bicycle: 0
Someone should make a 2-piece rear light that has the battery and charging port on one side, and the light on the other side, and they clip together, so you can replace the dead batteries, or get one with a more convenient charging port (looking at you, micro USB).
The only thing it can't explain is itself. How was this faction able to elect what amounted to the exact same person, 12 times in a row?
One of the "fun" facts that I think has explanatory powers is that the mayors of Berkley for 45 years, from '71 to 2016, were all born within a year or two of 1938. A certain cohort grew accustomed to the idea that they had always been and would always be in charge. Separate to your point of course.
Out here emphasizing the horizontality
Wow ... my veins are pretty full honestly but yeah. Go ahead and do it.
Somewhat ironically the developer in this case also came out vociferously against the local middle housing reforms.
Uh, actually, the zoning board in the city of Berkeley once had a hearing where one of its members said, out loud into a microphone, that it wasn't his job to make sure his kids could live in Berkeley. That was how I got radicalized into YIMBY activism.
Psychos
My favorite bit is that one well-known local shows up to oppose every new building with the same statement: these apartments will cost $X, nobody can afford that! But in this case, in 2009, he is on the record saying nobody can afford $1000, a rent that everyone would be glad to have now.
It was incredibly contentious, but the (4000+ pages of) the official records and letters from the public are a gold mine for people who want to catalog and index the past statements of people who continue, to the present day, to oppose new buildings. I am glad they teach it.
The TJs is so old that it is more than 1/3rd of the way to gaining special status such that the Landmarks Preservation Commission would have to adjudicate any proposed demolition of it.
Yes, as far as the median Berkeley resident is concerned the TJs has "always been there".
The New Californian/Trader Joes
Actual verbatim statements of the moderator ("lead") of Berkeley Nextdoor.
From a city where a teacher could buy a house, to a city were we defund the schools so tech executives can remodel their 2nd house, in just 50 years. Top job, Berkeley!
The recent history of 2845 Woolsey is that insanely rich couple from SF bought it for $4 million, immediately applied for landmark status, which the witless dupes at the Commission approved unanimously, then within days the owners applied for the tax exemption.
This is a "Mills Act" petition that permits a city to give away tax money, not just theirs but also the taxes dedicated to schools and parks and such, to property owners so they can fix up their historic property, without any standards for the meaning of "historic".
Increasingly mad about the activities of the Landmarks people. This month they are going to hear a petition from an obscenely wealthy person, the kind of person whose wedding was in the NYT fashion section, to nearly zero out their $55k annual tax bill.
It sorta goes up and down 🥁
20th century architecture criticism was the result of huffing paint.
What I was trying to find: detached two-car garages that face the street, so I can photograph them.
LOL. I wasn't even looking for this. The only explanation why Phil Bokovoy's house is blurred out on Google Maps is that notorious NIMBY and sore loser Phil Bokovoy requested it.
Uh I think it's pretty difficult to know the history of Lyft bike share, through Motivate, Alta, 8D, and the Montreal Public Bike System, and conclude that it was a neoliberal silicon valley idea.
I think we need a better explanation than "profit motive" because that can't explain why SF, and Portland Biketown, are hybrid and operated by the same people. I think only local rules can explain the difference.
Did I share this from Friday? There is so much demand for bike share at the top of Bancroft near U.C. Law and other major destinations that people treat it as if it were dockless. We need 50 more docks in Berkeley but we're only doing a dozen or so, and very slowly.
Just screwing around, doing my errands, getting the groceries, and going to my friend's house in a day adds up to a normal workout distance on the bike. That's what I like the most about biking for transportation: it's also a bit of a workout.
It's weird how some places have stable prices and other places want $25 for a tamale.
Is this corridor zoning generally, or the long-abandoned dry cleaner project specifically?
Goes well with: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
A reasonable method would be to count the water that data centers are charged for. Unpriced resources are things we don't care about, pretty much by definition. If people think there is a significant unpriced externality, the solution to that is to price it in, not to whine about data centers.
Until recently there were benches in the plaza just to the photographer's left, but they were removed. There must be some intention to this, rather than an accident or oversight.
Why are all the buildings so modern at Fifth and Page? It's a little center of modernity.
There were porno theaters and surface parking lots up and down Shattuck as recently as 30 years ago, so the vibrancy taken for granted is something that was only recently gained anyway.
I reject this complaint on the principal of sowing before reaping. If we take this complaint too seriously, then the only sites that can be developed are the severely under-used ones like parking lots. But there are many more developed sites that we should also redevelop.
Where can I read the new amendments? I have 7/17 version.
I think it's amazing. I believe one of the reasons that the newer buildings are plainer is that in response to this project, or at least subsequent to it, the exactions in the form of fees and affordability requirements were radically increased by the city.
Tremendously popular noodle joint. Before? Parking. There might be a theme here.
"Gather" in the corner of the David Brower Center. If you guessed that it was a surface parking lot before that, you were right!
Here's Sobo Ramen in the "Stonefire" building. Before: surface parking lot.
I will be photographing the tenants in new buildings, and new businesses that moved into long-vacant spaces nearby. This will be a long and long-running thread.
Debunking the myth of vacant store fronts in new buildings in Berkeley. Starting near my home at the "New Californian", built 2009 after a huge NIMBY slap-fight. It now has the Trader Joes, of course, as well as a cafe. Across the street: a patisserie. Before: abandoned pet store parking lot.
That building is all boarded up because a car drove through the wall.
Mine doesn't really start to earn Its keep until MTB/CX season kicks off. Why aren't we starting a neighborhood car share?
Literally the cheapest Honda that was available!
I looked at my credit card data and it appears that I spent more on maintenance for my car (not even repairs, just changing the fluids and whatnot on a schedule) than I spent on fuel. It really calls the utility of the thing into question, or it would if I didn't need it to get to trailheads.
That sucks, sorry. Getting down to minimal car usage is pretty easy but getting to zero is not. I wish we still had a municipal car share.
Yep. Multiple new Fortune 1000 companies established in Mountain View over the last 40 years and they are still clinging to Eichlers.
To be clear, it absolutely is NOT fair. "Fair" would be if armed agents of the HCD Enforcement Division raided the next Mountain View council meeting.
“It just doesn’t seem fair, given all that we’ve done as a city in Mountain View to accommodate the growth of housing,” Cox said, referring to the scope of SB 79.
Tri-Valley is in a different dimension.
2 days from now ChatGPT will be telling its users about the landmark case Pod v. Amber.
They engaged a historical consultant who identified elements worth retaining, while describing the existing structures as below the lowest tier of merit. It's nice that they were able to retain a few details.
There was a slapdash landmark designation proposal from Finacom, then a bunch of meetings were cancelled, and the address was never mentioned again.
This improvement on Bancroft Way, inches from the university, started demolition this week. Do you love to see it? Fun fact: in the days before SB 330, the LPC was going to landmark this to stop the project, but that was Feb. 2020 and as far as I can tell they just forgot to do it, because COVID.
I think they are actually expanding into two different places.
0-to-infinity for the high school kids. Maybe there are a few electrics but I haven't noticed any in the mornings. I think they are all wise to the theft risk. There are a few e-bikes in this photo though. I don't think the family bike with the Yepp is for a high school kid.
There was a dude in there making coffee yesterday. And drinking it!
I am delighted to see that someone used a python program to gerrymander Republicans out of California.
Also check out the under-construction cafe on the corner. It is a branch of the nearby and rather excellent Rose Pizzeria. Opening when? Who can say.
Most of these kids use the car lane on Milvia because, ten days into the school year, they're all well aware that the detour at the corner of Center is a trap.
Annually, as a holiday. Prisoners in white power gangs get to paint a big portrait of Robert E. Lee, and free descendants of slaves get to burn it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Every participating prisoner gets 10 years added to their sentence.
BHS traffic jam.
Explain what happens to the people currently renting those homes in your fantasy scenario.
Great job, everybody. Area housing affordability now down to "*" which, I am confident, is not a number.
Not depicted: the taco tent that is actually the most popular thing in the neighborhood.
North Berkeley BART developers filed updated drawings this week, so it seems that at least the subsidized/affordable/supportive component of the project is still moving forward.
Apparently reading CEQA case law can't be my weekend hobby any more, since they no longer allow randos in the law library on Saturdays. I wonder why this changed.
This same guy led a protest (an actual one, with signs on sticks) calling congestion pricing a tax on working people in Chinatown.
The civic traits in the new Civ DLC are terrible.
The median Nextdoor poster is 87 years old and does not know how to use Apartments dot com. Every day there is another person saying "Look at all these apartments why does Berkeley allow building more"
Actually the fact of how quickly it was built is mentioned in the designation proposal.
Honestly it might be for the best, if this shows, conclusively and for everyone to see, that landmarks preservation is a malignant disease on the body of the city.
Here's how far off the rails things have gone in Berkeley, California: next week the Landmarks Preservation Commission will vote to designate this detached garage as a structure of merit, a masterwork of mid-century architecture that "emphasizes horizontality" and "is free of adornment".
Are there any stats on the proportionality of car chases that end in Berkeley? It seems over the top.
I was hoping they were here to raid the landmarks preservation commission, but I think it might be some lesser crime.
There are cop cars from every agency in the county on MLK at Delaware. Right now. AC Transit is being diverted. Total disaster.
Does this person know how many votes of people in LA generally would be needed to divide Hollywood from LA via the LAFCo process? It already didn't work in 2002. Hollywood can't do this by itself, they need millions of Angelenos to vote for it.
The weird schism between autonomous car R&D and revenue service is obsolete and we should drop it. California should unify oversight taking the stronger aspects of each, particularly the operators as taxi services (Waymo) should be subject to the better incident filing regime the DMV uses.
It turns out that the people who make movies and the people who think newspapers are the firewall protecting American democracy are the same people, or at least they were prep school roommates.
Reavers polling at a surprising 48% approval across all worlds.
I am told the Hopscotch opens tomorrow.
North Shattuck changes: Itani takes over both sides of the food hall; old Cesar next to Chez Panisse no longer boarded up, for the first time in five years.
That article confirmed all my priors about the exact person who would go to that boxing gym.
