There is an apartment house under construction on San Pablo Avenue at Jones Street called Jones Berkeley. It’s big. It contains 170 apartments and covers a whole block. They are renting apartments there now. Studio apartments are $3,000 a month. 2 bedroom apartments are $4,800 a month, and 3 bedrooms are $6,700 a month. Jones Berkeley. These rents are typical for the new buildings that are popping up all over town, and there are over 1,000 apartments currently under construction in Berkeley. Now – Jones Berkeley is not in a spiffy neighborhood. Across the street are auto repair shops and vacant stores. It isn’t near campus, it isn’t near a BART station, and unlike San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Berkeley does not have a lot of high paying tech jobs. There are no big tech companies or banks headquartered here. So – where do the people who live in buildings like this get the money from to pay rent like this? I can’t figure it out. Can you?
A lot of restaurants and bars in California have gotten rid of plastic straws since the state passed a law limiting where plastic straws can be used. Since then, metal straws have been popping up everywhere. You can buy them in many stores here in Berkeley, but should you? I have asked people who work in public health: “Are metal straws safe?”, and nobody said: “Yes.” The problem is this – it is easy to clean the outside of a metal straw, but how do you sanitize the inside of it? Metal straws come with a little brush designed to clean out the inside of these straws, but how can you be sure that you got all the germs and stuff inside the straw that could rot or mold? I was at a catered event and was offered a drink with a metal straw in it. I wouldn’t drink it and asked the bartender for another drink without a straw in it. I had no way of knowing who used that straw before me. The last person who used that straw might have had the flu. You can get the flu, hepatitis, and many other diseases by using a straw that was previously used by an infected person. In addition, it is not clear that metal straws are better for the environment than plastic straws. Making one nickel straw generates more carbon emissions than 100 plastic straws. Plus, how much hot water would you have to use to thoroughly clean a metal straw inside and out 100 times, and how many people are really going to do that? If you want to avoid using plastic straws, use paper or cardboard straws or drink your beverages without a straw. Many cities, like Berkeley, are passing laws to ban or phase out single-use paper products, like coffee cups and straws. I think that is a bad idea. The problem is that it is very hard for politicians in a place like Berkeley to vote against a law that is perceived to be good for the environment – even if they know that it is not a good idea.
RECYCLING CANS. Take a look at the photo below. I see trash cans like these all over Berkeley and San Francisco. This is why China and other countries won’t accept American garbage. Americans mix everything together.
1. Anything that you plug into an electrical outlet. Why risk burning down your house or electrocuting yourself to save $1 or $2? The only way you can sell a power strip, extension cord, or night light for $1 is by making it on the cheap.
2 Electronics. Cell phone charger cords are cheap, but good ones cost more than $1. Why risk frying your cell phone to save 2 bucks on a charger cord?
3. Batteries. Cheap batteries leak and can damage your gadgets. Brand-name batteries at dollar stores are often old and near the end of their shelf life, which is why they are cheap.
4. Vitamins. Most vitamins sold at dollar stores are brands you never heard of. You have no way of knowing if anyone tested them for potency or safety. Like batteries, brand-name vitamins sold at dollar stores are often old and near the end of their shelf life.
5. Makeup. Who knows what cheap makeup is made out of? They don’t list the ingredients, and anything you put you put on your face will be absorbed into your skin.
6. Anything that makes fire. This includes matches, butane lighters, candles, flares, fire starters, lighter fluid, etc. It’s just too dangerous.
MY FAVORITE THING TO BUY AT DOLLAR TREE is Häagen-Dazs ice cream cups. They usually have them in a freezer next to the cash registers. These cups are small, but I like this size. There’s a little spoon under the lid.
Does Häagen-Dazs come from Denmark? No, but they have tried to give people that impression. Häagen-Dazs even used to have a map of Denmark on the lid with an arrow pointing to Copenhagen. (See photo below.) Häagen-Dazs was started by a non-Danish couple in New York. They wanted a name that sounded Danish because Denmark is noted for its high quality dairy products, and Americans have a positive image of Denmark, but Häagen-Dazs means nothing in Danish. Besides, there is no umlaut (the 2 little dots over the ‘a’) in Danish. There are some characters in the Danish alphabet that we don’t have in the American alphabet, like the letter that looks like an ‘a’ and an ‘e’ squashed together, like in ‘Julius Cæsar,’ but there’s no umlaut. In 1980, Häagen-Dazs sued Frusen Glädjé, a competing ice cream brand with a fake Swedish name. Frusen Glädjé means nothing in Swedish and was never made in Sweden. Häagen-Dazs argued that selling ice cream with a fake Scandinavian name was their idea and that no one else had a right do it. They lost the lawsuit. Kraft sold Frusen Glädjé to Unilever, which discontinued the product. Häagen-Dazs is now made in countries all over the world – but not in Denmark.
You should be very suspicious when a business uses the expression ‘in order to serve you better’ or ‘in order to improve our service’. What follows is always the opposite. On a number of occasions, I have called a business on the phone and heard a recorded message that said: “In order to serve you better, we are now closed. Please call back when we are open.” Right now, on the BART web site, it says that in order ‘to improve service’, trains on Sunday will be 24 minutes apart. Up until now, trains were never more than 20 minutes apart. Is this really an improvement of their service? BART says that the reason they are doing this is “provide greater predictability.” Well, here is what actually predictable – as the amount of time between trains increases, the number of people using the trains will decrease. BART web site.
Snowball. One of the strangest applications I ever received was for a one bedroom apartment in Rockridge from a well-dressed, middle-aged woman. She walked through the apartment, filled out an application form and handed it to me. The first thing I noticed was that she answered ‘Name of Applicant’ with ‘Snowball.’ I said: “Is your name Snowball?” She said: “No. Snowball is the name of my cat.” I said: “But you wrote ‘Snowball’ after ‘Name of Applicant’.” She said: “Yes. That’s right.” I was confused by that. Then I read the rest of her application form and discovered that all of the information on the form was about her cat, nothing about herself. For example, after ‘Previous address’ she wrote ‘Berkeley Humane Society animal shelter.’ I said: “I don’t understand. Do you want me to put the lease in your cat’s name?” She said: “Yes.” At that point, I knew that I was not going to rent my apartment to this woman, but I was curious to know what she was thinking. I said: “Why do you want the lease in your cat’s name?” She said: “Well, as I understand the law, if the lease is in my name, then I’ll be responsible for paying the rent.” I thought about that and said: “Yes. That’s right.” She said: “Well, that’s why I want the lease in my cat’s name.” I nodded my head to indicate that I understood her line of reasoning. I thanked her for her application, but I rented my apartment to someone else.
Renting to Cats. I wonder if this woman ever found a landlord who was willing to rent an apartment to her cat. I have read stories about people who rented apartments for their pets, but I’ve never heard of a lease where only the pet was responsible for paying the rent. I thought about this woman recently when I saw a story in the news about a man who rented a furnished studio apartment in Silicon Valley for his daughter’s 2 cats. Just the cats live in the apartment. The rent is $1,500 a month. Here’s a You Tube video interview with the landlord: Silicon Valley Apartment For Cats. In the video, the landlord says that renting his apartment to these cats is “great” because cats: “don’t have opposable thumbs” and “they’ve never heard of Trump.” Well, that’s true, but does that really make cats great tenants? I think that all of my tenants have opposable thumbs and have heard of Donald Trump.
