Mold is a common problem here in the bay area in the rainy season. Mold is not dirt. It is a living organism. To prevent or kill mold:

1. Remember that mold needs moisture. Use your clothes dryer to dry out towels, especially if you have a lot of them in a bathroom. Mold can grow quickly in wet clothes and towels.

2. Let in sunlight! Sunlight kills mold. I know people who have not opened their curtains or venetian blinds in over 20 years. They live in rooms that have never seen natural sunlight. You may know people like that too. There are many unhealthy micro-organisms that thrive in dark places. Living in a perpetually dark room is unhealthy. If you don’t believe me, ask your doctor.

3. Don’t overheat your house.

4. Let in fresh air, particularly in high humidity areas, such as the bathroom and kitchen. Keep a window ajar or use an exhaust fan, if there is one, to allow the air to circulate.

Tenant Freebie of the Month: Mold Remover. You can pick up a free bottle of mold remover from me anytime. Just ask for it. If you prefer to buy your own mold remover, make sure that the product says that it disinfects. Be sure that you are not buying soap scum remover, which is often placed next to the mold remover in stores and often comes in very similar containers. Don’t use bleach to remove mold. Bleach is much less effective in preventing mold from returning than mold remover. Bleach may also damage the walls, and your room will smell like an over-chlorinated swimming pool when you are done. That smell can hang around for a long time too.

HOT STOCK MARKET TIPS AND FORTUNE COOKIES.

My uncle, Maurice Levie, was a stockbroker for a long time. Back when he was a stockbroker, I used to ship Maurice fortune cookies 2 or 3 times a year. I printed out paper fortunes and took them to the Kar Mee fortune cookie factory in Oakland’s Chinatown. 1/3 of the fortunes said ‘BUY’, 1/3 said ‘SELL’, and 1/3 said ‘HOLD.’ After the factory put my fortunes into their cookies, I would ship the fortune cookies to Uncle Maurice in Baltimore. He put the fortune cookies in a bowl that he kept on his desk.

Maurice was a conservative investor. He was not a speculator or a day trader; however, he had clients who were. Clients often came to Maurice with questions like: “I just got a hot tip from my brother-in-law. I want to buy 10,000 shares of the Stanley Steam Car Company on margin, but I need to know – Is it going to go up this week?” When Maurice got a question like that, he would push the bowl of fortune cookies forward and tell the client to take one. The initial reaction of people when they opened one of my fortune cookies was to either laugh or look befuddled. Maurice would then tell the client that this method of predicting what a stock was going to do tomorrow or over the next few days was as good as any other. Sometimes that got a client to rethink what he was doing. When the bowl was empty, Maurice would let me know, and I would send him more fortune cookies.

I felt the same way as Maurice about this. The fortune cookie method of predicting what a stock or the stock market is going to do tomorrow is as good as any other. The Kar Mee fortune cookie factory is now out of business, but you can still get custom-made fortune cookies at the Oakland Fortune Factory or Golden Gate Fortune Cookies in San Francisco.

FTX Fortune Cookies. In 2021 and 2022, FTX paid fortune cookie makers to put fortunes into their cookies promoting the cryptocurrency exchange. On one side was the company’s logo. On the other side was an ad promoting cryptocurrency. Millions of these FTX fortune cookies were made. They were distributed to over 20,000 Chinese restaurants across the U.S. FTX is now bankrupt, and its CEO is facing criminal charges. I wonder – Did people actually buy Bitcoin because a fortune cookie told them to? I feel pretty sure that nobody bought or sold stock because of the fortune cookies they got from my Uncle Maurice.

IS THERE LEAD IN CHOCOLATE?

People are talking about an article in Consumer Reports this month stating that their tests found lead in all of the 28 chocolate brands they tested. I am sure that’s true. However, this is not news. All foods that grow in the ground absorb minerals from the soil itself. There is a long list of fruits and vegetables that contain measurable amounts of lead. In an article in Consumer Reports back in April, they stated that: “Tests done by Consumer Reports have shown that fruit juice – especially apple and grape – can contain worrisome levels of heavy metals, such as arsenic and lead.” 

The Consumer Reports article stated that their tests showed that some brands of chocolate contained far less lead than others. I wouldn’t rely on that when buying chocolate. Major chocolate makers don’t get all their cocoa beans from one place. They buy beans from many places and mix them together. The beans that went into the Hershey bars that Consumer Reports tested may have come from a different place than the beans that went into the bars that you see in your local supermarket today.

WORST MAJOR TOURIST ATTRACTION IN PENNSYLVANIA – THE LIBERTY BELL.

I hope to cover all 50 states. I have already covered Washington – the Seattle gum wall; Massachusetts – Plymouth Rock; and California – any drive-through tree. Admittedly, my list is personal and subjective. My message is this – don’t waste your time visiting these places. Although these tourist attractions are visited by millions of people; there are other, better, and more interesting things to see nearby.

The Liberty Bell is the most famous tourist attraction in Philadelphia and probably in the whole state of Pennsylvania. The Liberty Bell is the symbol of Philadelphia. It is incorporated into the logos of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams. Over 1 million people visit the Liberty Bell every year. Unfortunately, everything that people think they know about the Liberty Bell is wrong. The Liberty Bell had nothing to do with the American Revolution. The Liberty Bell did not ring out on July 4, 1776 to announce that the Declaration of Independence had been signed, although you often see that in movies and TV shows. Besides, the Declaration of Independence was signed over a period of several weeks, not on a single day. The quote on the bell “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land” is not a reference to the Declaration of Independence. The bell was made in England more than 20 years earlier.

The famous crack in the bell did not occur while the bell was ringing after the death of George Washington or Chief Justice John Marshall. No one is sure when a crack first appeared. At first, it was just a hairline crack. The crack you see today is not a natural crack but the result of a botched repair job made by incompetent repairmen. They thought they could get the bell to ring again by creating a much wider crack and then bolting the 2 sides of the bell together. It didn’t work. The bell is also not as big as it looks in photos. The bell is only about 3 feet tall. Most people visiting the Liberty Bell stay only a few minutes. There is no point waiting for the bell to ring. The bell has not rung since the 1840s.There are a lot of great things to see in Philadelphia. The Liberty Bell is not one of them. Visit the Franklin Institute instead.

MARK’S PETTY PET PEEVES.

BLISTER PACKED SCISSORS. Last month, I went to Walgreens to buy a pair of scissors. They had several brands of scissors. Unfortunately, all of them were in plastic blister packages. In order to open any of these packages, you needed a pair of scissors. I bought a pair of scissors and took them to my nephew’s house where I was able to open the package and get the scissors out by using a pair of his scissors. It is just plain stupid for manufacturers to put scissors in packages that require scissors to open the package!

TAIL-ON SHRIMP. It annoys me when a restaurant serves me a dish like garlic butter shrimp with tail-on shrimp. The only way to get the tails off is by getting your fingers covered with garlic butter. Even if you wipe the butter off your hands with your napkin, your hands will still smell like garlic and shrimp. They should use tail-off shrimp.

I would appreciate your comments. If you want to comment on any article in this newsletter, you can do so at: Mark Tarses Newsletter

I was watching ‘Stagecoach’ on TV last week. It is a wonderful movie (the version with John Wayne). Some people consider it the best Western ever made. In this movie, a drunk doctor quickly sobers up after drinking a pot of hot, black coffee and then delivers a baby. It is a myth that you can sober up or sober more quickly by drinking coffee. You will find this myth in a lot of Hollywood movies. Coffee doesn’t neutralize or get rid of alcohol in your body. No matter how much coffee you drink, it will have no effect on how long it takes to become sober. In other movies, someone immediately sobers up after having a bucket of ice water tossed in his face. That doesn’t work either. These myths may seem funny, but they really aren’t. There have been fatal auto accidents caused by drunk drivers who thought they were fit to drive because they were drinking coffee. Here’s my New Year’s Eve advice – If you know someone who believes these myths, you should tell him that they are just Hollywood myths.

WHY DO SO MANY COMPANIES SELL GIFT CARDS?

At the Target store in Emeryville, they have gift cards for sale from over 200 companies. Below is a photo I took there. This is just a fraction of the gift cards they had for sale. Gift cards are the single most popular Christmas present in the United States. Why do so many companies issue gift cards?  The answer is the obvious one – gift cards are very profitable. The profits from gift cards are so huge that many famous stores and restaurant chains are only able to stay in business because of the profits from their gift cards. But – how is that possible? Gift cards are usually a small percentage of a company’s total sales.

There are a number of ways in which a company makes money on its gift cards, but the 2 big ones are this:
1. A gift card is an interest-free loan to the company that issued the card. Even very big companies can’t borrow money at 0% interest.
3. The main reason why gift cards are so profitable is because so many of them are never redeemed. Retailers make billions of dollars every year from unredeemed gift cards.

Starbucks is a good example of just how profitable gift cards are. In 2021, Starbucks made $160 million profit from expired gift cards and breakage income, that is, income from gift cards that are unlikely to ever be redeemed. To put $160 million a year profit into perspective, if Starbucks was a bank, it would be among the top 10% in the United States. Starbucks customers are holding billions of dollars of unredeemed gift cards. This is a major source of financing for Starbucks. If you are holding a Starbucks gift card, then you are giving Starbucks an interest-free loan. The next time you are in a Starbucks, look around. Everything for sale: the bagged coffee, the merchandise, the pastries, the sandwiches, etc. is financed by unredeemed gift cards – your unredeemed gift cards.

What is breakage income? Suppose someone has a $50 Teriyaki Madness gift card, and he spends $49. The card now has a $1 balance. That $1 balance is unlikely to ever be redeemed. Most people throw away gift cards with balances that small. After a while, all gift card issuers write off these small balances as breakage income. Nationally, breakage income comes to about 3% of all gift card sales; however, some companies have breakage rates as high as 10%, and breakage income is pure profit.

Maintenance fees. Another reason so many gift cards are never redeemed is maintenance fees. A maintenance fee is a monthly deduction from the value of a gift card for inactivity. So, if you have a $25 gift card, and it has a $2.00 a month ‘maintenance fee’, that card will become worthless fairly quickly. Some gift card issuers call their maintenance fees ‘inactivity fees’, ‘dormancy fees’, or ‘service fees’; but they are all the same thing. These fees may seem like a scam, but retailers have a legitimate need to know what their liabilities actually are. It’s not their fault if you lose your gift cards or never redeem them. In California and a few other states, gift cards never expire, even if a gift card has an expiration date printed on it. California also bans gift card maintenance fees.

My advice. Don’t think of your gift cards as part of your savings. Gift cards do not improve with age, and many become worthless. Use or sell your gift cards. You can sell gift cards on a number of websites, like Giftcards.com. You can also donate unused and partially used gift card balances to a very long list of charities through the website Charity Choice. You can get an income tax credit for your donation.

Don’t regift gift cards like the proverbial fruitcake. Don’t regift gift cards unless you feel pretty certain that the person you are giving it to will actually use it. Someone once gave me a $100 gift card from a tanning salon in Albany. The person who gave me the card got it from a third person who also got the card as a gift. A gift card from a tanning salon is worthless to me. Going to tanning salons increases your chances of getting skin cancer by 50% or more. I knew 2 people who died from skin cancer. Tanning salons are now subject to a 10% federal excise tax, modeled after the tobacco tax. The tax is to offset the cost to the government of providing medical care to people on Medicare and Medicaid who get cancer from going to tanning salons. It seems to me that a tanning salon gift card is a sadistic present, like bringing brownies to someone who is going to Weight Watchers. I’ve known people like that. Andrew Carnegie used to send John D. Rockefeller (whom he hated) a bottle of expensive Scotch whiskey at Christmas every year. Rockefeller was a devout Baptist and did not drink or smoke, and Carnegie knew it. Rockefeller sent Carnegie nasty Christmas presents in return. I gave my tanning salon gift card to a charity website, but looking back, maybe I should have just tossed it in the trash can.

WHAT IS THE WORST MAJOR TOURIST ATTRACTION IN CALIFORNIA? I hope to cover all 50 states.

ANY DRIVE-THROUGH REDWOOD TREE. There are 3 drive-through redwood trees in northern California.  Below is a photo of the drive-through tree in Leggett, California. The tree has a hole cut in its base so you can drive a car through it. Cutting a hole like this will eventually kill the tree. When one of these trees dies, the owner just cuts a hole through another big tree nearby and moves the road. Leggett is a 4-hour drive north of San Francisco. The other 2 drive-through trees are even farther away. There is a $5 fee to drive through the tree. On a summer day, you may have to wait in a long line to drive through the tree. That’s because people stop their cars in the tree and get out to be photographed next to their car parked in the tree. There is a gift shop there, but after you have driven through the tree and visited the gift shop, there is nothing else to do. A lot of tourists visiting San Francisco spend a day – a whole day – just to drive through one of these trees and then return to the city. My father said that he thought that a drive-through tree was the stupidest tourist attraction in America.

You don’t need to drive 4 hours to see big redwood trees. There are a lot of places to see them in the bay area, but unfortunately, there are only a few places where the first generation or old-growth redwood trees weren’t cut down. They are usually valleys where logging trucks couldn’t get in. The best known of these places is Muir Woods, but there are other places in Marin County with old-growth redwoods, such as Roy’s Redwoods, where George Lucas filmed parts of Star Wars movies.

I would appreciate your comments. If you want to comment on any article in this newsletter, you can do so at: Mark Tarses Newsletter