In Defense Of Fisherman’s Wharf

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Mark

Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco is often called a tourist trap, but I don’t think that’s fair or true. The term ‘tourist trap’ implies that a place was created to attract tourists and rip them off, selling them tacky souvenirs and terrible, overpriced food. Well Yes, there are a lot of silly attractions and tacky souvenirs for sale at Fisherman’s Wharf, but there are also a lot of really great things to see and do there, and many of the best things are either cheap or free.

Sea lions. On some days, especially in summer, there can be 500 to 1,000 sea lions at Pier 39. Even though I’ve seen the sea lions at Pier 39 a hundred times, I can still spend an hour watching them without getting bored. I think they are fascinating. From the size of the crowds at Pier 39, it seems like a lot of other people think so too. They are not trained sea lions. They don’t do tricks. They spend their time sleeping, barking at each other, quarreling for control of choice real estate, scratching their heads with their flippers, and yawning. They yawn a lot. I think that watching sea lions is the best thing to do at Fisherman’s Wharf, and it’s free.
‘F’ streetcars. The ‘F’ line antique streetcars run along the Embarcadero from downtown to Fisherman’s Wharf. It is one of 3 great ways to get there. Some tourists wonder if these streetcars are really be as old as the city says they are. They are. These are not reproductions of old streetcars. They are just very well maintained. Riding an ‘F’ streetcar to Fisherman’s Wharf costs only $2.
Oakland ferry. The second great way to get to Fisherman’s Wharf is on the Oakland ferry. On the ride to Pier 41 from Oakland, you get to see wonderful views of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and you get to pass under the Bay Bridge. The ferry costs around $5.
Cable car. The third great way to get to Fisherman’s Wharf is by cable car. Although 2 cable car lines go to Fisherman’s Wharf, the Hyde Street line is the most interesting. It goes up and down the steepest hills and ends at Ghirardelli Square.
Boudin’s Bakery. Boudin makes the best sourdough bread in San Francisco, and they make a lot of it. You can watch the bakers making sourdough bread shaped like alligators, crabs, turtles, etc. It’s one of many good places to have lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf. Not all the restaurants at Fisherman’s Wharf are lousy and overpriced, although the number of bad restaurants there admittedly exceeds the number of good ones. But – isn’t that true everywhere?
Ghirardelli Square ice cream parlor. If there is a better ice cream parlor in San Francisco, I don’t know where it is. They serve ice cream they way it should be served, with generous portions of high quality ice cream in old-fashioned glass ice cream dishes, not styrofoam cups, and covered with whipped cream, not ‘whipped topping.’
Interesting stores. Some of the stores on Pier 39 are really quite interesting. They are not all tourist junk shops. Among the stores I like are the Houdini magic shop, Chocolate Heaven, Puppets on the Pier, and the NFL / College Shop, which has an astonishingly large selection of sports team clothing. In addition, some of the places on the pier that sell food products make them in their windows, which can be very interesting to watch. Frankly, I have picked up some of my best chocolate-making ideas by watching people making candy in the windows of chocolate stores around Fisherman’s Wharf.

Drive-Through Trees. A Real Tourist Trap.

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Mark

If you want to visit a real tourist trap, you can’t beat a drive-through tree. I have never been to a drive-through tree myself, so maybe I am prejudiced about this. There are a number of drive-through trees in northern California. All of these trees are either giant redwoods or sequoias. There used to be a famous drive-through sequoia in Yosemite National Park, but that tree fell over in 1969. They didn’t replace it so there are no more drive-through trees in state or national parks. My father told me that he thought that the Yosemite drive-through tree was the stupidest tourist attraction in California. All the drive-through trees in California are now on private land, and all of them are in remote locations. None of them is near a big city. Cutting a hole in a tree big enough for a car to drive through will eventually kill the tree, so places with drive-through trees have to periodically change the tree that people drive through. The way these places work is pretty simple – you pay a fee and then drive through a tree. After you drive through the tree, you done. That’s it. You’re finished. There is usually nothing else to do at these places, aside from buying souvenirs at the gift shop, and there is always a gift shop next to a drive-through tree. Now if that isn’t a tourist trap, what is?! If you decide to visit a drive-through tree, be prepared to wait. In summer, you might have to wait for up to an hour to drive your car through the tree. That is because everyone who drives through a drive-through tree stops their car inside the tree to take photos.

Whatever Happened To World’s Fairs?

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Mark

I miss world’s fairs. It has been decades since they had a world’s fair in the United States or Canada. There was supposed to be a world’s fair in Chicago in 1992, but it was canceled. They still have world’s fairs, but now they are at places that I don’t want to go to. In 2017, there will be a world’s fair in Astana, Kazakhstan, but I’m not going there. I don’t travel to places that that end with ‘stan’, like Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Uzbekistan. The last world’s fair I went to was Expo 67 in Montreal. It was a wonderful world’s fair. Montreal is a beautiful city. The west side of Montreal is English. That’s where you went to get cheap English imports. The east side of the city is French. Predictably, that’s where the best restaurants are located. Why don’t they have world’s fairs anymore in places like Montreal? French Canadians don’t hijack airplanes and crash them into skyscrapers or behead infidels. At least none of the French Canadians I’ve ever met did stuff like that. If there was another world’s fair in Montreal, I would go!

Charles de Gaulle’s Plan To Ship The Eiffel Tower To Montreal. This story is incredible, but true. Charles De Gaulle was frequently criticized in both America and France for grandiosity – and with good reason. France used to be the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, and the French language was the international language of government, science, and business. Charles De Gaulle never really accepted the idea that those days were over and would never return. De Gaulle wanted France to be the most influential country in Europe again and a first-tier world military power in its own right. Most people, even in France, thought this was unrealistic.

De Gaulle hoped that someday the people of Quebec would break away from the rest of Canada and become an independent French-speaking country politically tied to France. When the World’s Fair came to Montreal in 1967, de Gaulle wanted the French exhibit to be spectacular. He proposed disassembling the Eiffel Tower and shipping it to Montreal for the fair, then shipping it back to Paris after the fair was over. At first, many people in France thought this proposal was a joke, but de Gaulle was serious. The French government did a cost estimate for the proposal. When de Gaulle saw how much it would cost, he dropped the idea. Charles de Gaulle was grandiose, but not insane. De Gaulle attended the Montreal World’s Fair, where he created a international incident when he made an off-the-cuff statement to a large crowd. He said: “Vive le Quebec. Vive le Quebec libre!” (with emphasis on the word ‘libre.’) He was supposed to just say “Vive le Quebec”, but he got carried away and added the rest. The Canadian government was furious. The prime minister of Canada said: “Canada does not need to be liberated.” He told President de Gaulle that he was no longer welcome in Canada. De Gaulle was forced to cut his trip short and go back to France. He never returned to Canada. I came to Expo 67 after the ‘Vive le Quebec libre” incident, but it was still the hot topic of conversation.

Lease Renewal.

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Mark

If you have a lease with me that expires on May 31, now is the time to renew it. My leases do not automatically renew when they expire. If you intend to move out when your lease expires, you have to give me 60 days written notice. It’s in your lease. If you want to stay when your lease expires, you need to contact me immediately so I can prepare a lease extension.

Mark’s Job Hunting Tip #1

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Mark

When making appointments, use specific dates.

‘Today’ and ‘tomorrow’ can be dangerous words in e-mails. A lot of people have missed job interviews because they used the words ‘today’ or ‘tomorrow’ ambiguously. Don’t say: “I’ll see you tomorrow at 3 o’clock.” Say: “I’ll see you tomorrow, Tuesday, June 3 at 3 o’clock.” Keep in mind that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) go down all the time. When they do, e-mails get delayed, sometimes for hours. If you send someone an e-mail at 3:00PM that says ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’, the recipient may not get your message until he comes to work the following day, in which case, you may show up a day early or a day late for your appointment. Don’t leave prospective employers (or anyone else) wondering what date you are talking about. It makes you look unprofessional. It also makes you look like someone who doesn’t pay attention to details, and worst of all, you could miss your appointment. Remember the old saying – You only get one chance to make a good first impression.

There is another problem with the words ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow.’ There are different ways of thinking about the meaning these words. For some people, ‘today’ means ‘this day’, or in other words, from sunrise to sunset. For other people, ‘today’ means sunrise to sunrise, and for other people it means midnight to midnight. A lot of people use the words ‘day’ and ‘date’ as though they thought that these words meant the same thing, but they don’t. In your mind, your day may have started when you got out of bed this morning, but you know that the date changed at midnight. ‘Today’ and ‘tomorrow’ can be ambiguous. Dates are specific. Use specific dates in all your business correspondence.

I often have this problem in my business. When I have a house for rent listed on Craigslist, I frequently get e-mails from people with questions like: “Can I see your house sometime tomorrow?” I don’t answer questions like that with ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ because I don’t know what this person has in mind by ‘sometime tomorrow’. I write back and ask: “Specifically when would you like to see the house?” You might be surprised at how frequently people are offended and get angry with me when I ask them to tell me exactly when they want to come on over and see my house. It’s strange, but this happens quite often.

Worst Applicant Ever

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Mark

The Loose Screw. While I’m on the subject of e-mails from prospective tenants, let me mention the ‘loose screw.’ A ‘loose screw’ is an expression that my father used to use. A person with a loose screw is somebody who is just plain screwy. He is what is known in the San Francisco bay area as a ‘Berkeley type’, and there are a lot of Berkeley types in Berkeley. Berkeley types are usually well educated, articulate, and interested in the arts and politics. These people are not mentally ill, and they are certainly not stupid. They are just really weird. I always have my antennae up when reading e-mails from prospective applicants, looking for the guy with a loose screw. Here are some e-mails that I received the last time I had an apartment listed for rent on Craigslist. Do any of these people sound to you like they have a loose screw?

“Your apartment is exactly what I am looking for. I am very excited! I am ready to sign a lease now and move in tomorrow. I just have one question. Where is Berkeley?”

“I saw your ad on Craigslist. Your ad says that the apartment has 4 bedrooms. Are they all inside?”

“Your ad says that you won’t allow a dog. What about 2 dogs?” (This one is my favorite!)

Civil War Inventions.

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Mark

Every year around this time, I teach Civil War history at Orinda Intermediate School, and I’ve been doing this for a long time. A lot of modern weapons were invented or first used in the Civil War, including repeating rifles, land mines, iron battleships, submarines, and machine guns. However, a lot of other inventions came out of the Civil War besides weapons. Some of them might surprise you.

1. Can openers. Union soldiers ate a lot of canned food during the Civil War. Although canned food had been around for 50 years prior to the Civil War, strangely, nobody made can openers prior to the war. Prior to the Civil War, people opened tin cans with hammers and chisels or hatchets. Opening tin cans made a huge mess and frequently injured the person trying to open the can. After many soldiers were injured opening tin cans, the Union army started ordering and distributing can openers to soldiers in 1862.

2. Home delivery of mail. Prior to the Civil War, people picked up their mail at the post office. During the war, the number of letters being mailed increased dramatically, as soldiers wrote home to their families and families wrote to soldiers. In 1863, the post office started delivering mail to people’s homes, but only in cities where the cost of the postage was less than the cost of delivering the letter. In other words, the post office began home delivery of mail where and when it was profitable.

3. Left and right shoes shaped differently. Prior to the Civil War, right and left shoes were interchangeable. During the Civil War, experiments conducted by the U.S. War Department showed that soldiers could march much farther without exhaustion when wearing boots cut differently for the right and left foot. Union soldiers were given boots shaped for the right and left foot, but Confederate soldiers continue to wear the old style interchangeable boots. That proved to be a big disadvantage on long marches, like from Virginia to Gettysburg.

4. National paper currency. The U.S. government did not start printing paper money until the Civil War. The U.S. government made coins, but not paper money. Most paper money was made by state chartered banks. The U.S. government quickly ran out of gold and silver coins early in the war and began printing paper money in 1861. Counterfeiters were not far behind. By the end of the war, the U.S. government estimated that about 1/3 of all the paper currency in circulation was counterfeit.

5. Standard premade clothing in sizes small, medium, and large. Prior to the war, stores carried clothing in one size only. If something didn’t fit, you had to take it to a seamstress to make it bigger or smaller. The army found that it was cheaper and more efficient to buy clothing in different sizes.

6. Absentee ballots. Northern politicians knew that Union soldiers were likely to vote Republican, so Republican-controlled state legislatures passed laws allowing soldiers to vote by mail.

7. Income tax. The U.S. government needed money to finance the war. Prior to the Civil War, the federal government had very little income, most of which came from liquor taxes and import duties.

8. Military aircraft. The Union army used hot air balloons for reconnaissance. They would send a soldier up in a balloon with a telescope. He would look down at what was going on behind Confederate lines and write down on a piece of paper what he saw. Then he would tie the paper to a small rock and drop the rock out of his basket. A soldier on the ground would remove the paper from the rock and take it to headquarters. This was observed by a young German military officer named Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. He was sent to the U.S. by the Bavarian government during the Civil War to observe and report on new weapons. Zeppelin was fascinated by the hot air balloons being used by the U.S. army. He returned to Germany, where he invented the zeppeli

Machine Gun World, Orlando, Florida

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Mark

Florida has always been playing catchup with California when it comes to amusement and theme parks. Disneyland in California opened in 1955. Disney World in Florida opened in 1971. Universal Studios in California opened in 1964. Universal Studios in Florida opened in 1990.

Well, with the opening of Machine Gun World in Orlando, Florida has finally got a kind of theme park that we don’t have here in California. At Machine Gun World, children as young as 13 years of age can shoot military-grade machine guns, and with no prior experience or gun training required. (See photo of a boy with a machine gun at Machine Gun World. Isn’t that cute?) Machine Gun World is located 6 miles from Disney World in Orlando, so families with children can visit both theme parks on the same trip. Visitors to Machine Gun World can choose from a wide range of weapons, and they can pick personalized shooting experiences, including Special Operations, and a ‘007’ license-to-kill game, all using live ammunition. Machine Gun World says that they will not give loaded machine guns to people who are obviously intoxicated, and people show up drunk fairly often. In other words, sober children can have machine guns, but drunk adults cannot.

There are no machine gun theme parks in California, and it is highly unlikely that one will ever open in this state. Gun laws in California are very different from those in Florida. There is no way that a theme park could get a license to operate in California in which 13 year old children with no prior experience using firearms are given loaded machine guns.

So I guess we are going to have to concede this one to the Sunshine State, also known as the Sinkhole State. Congratulations to you, Florida! You finally got a kind of entertainment that we don’t have here in California.

Florida News Update: Last week, Disney raised adult admission to Disney World in Orlando to $105. a day, and Disney considers anyone age 10 or older to be an adult. Disney’s Park Hopper, which provides transportation between Disney attractions, hotels, and restaurants in the Orlando area will cost you an additional $60 a day. Gee! For what it costs a family of 4 to go to Disney World for 1 day, you could buy each of your kids a brand-new machine gun as a souvenir of your trip to Florida! Plus, there is no minimum age in Florida for the purchase of ammunition, so even a 5 year old child can legally purchase unlimited quantities of armour-piercing bullets in Florida! So its hats off to the Stand Your Ground State – Florida!

Do You Make $79 An Hour?

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Mark

The real estate web site Zillow recently calculated how much a single renter has to earn in order to afford the average apartment in 20 cities across the United States. Landlords typically assume that a tenant can afford to spend up to 30% of his pre-tax income on rent. Assuming that, and assuming that a tenant is working full time (40 hours a week), Zillow says that a person would have to be getting paid $79 a hour in order to rent the average apartment in San Francisco. The median priced apartment in San Francisco is now $3,950 a month.

Now, I am pretty sure that most people living in San Francisco make less than $79 an hour. The minimum wage in San Francisco is now $11.05 an hour. It scheduled to rise to $15.00 an hour by 2018. I can’t figure out how people who work at minimum-wage jobs can afford to live in San Francisco or Berkeley, but I know that many do.

Inflation and Aunt Bessie

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Mark

Whenever people ask me for investment advice, this is the #1 thing I tell them:

Think about inflation!

The single biggest mistake that investors make is ignoring inflation. Whenever people who invest in the stock market tell me how much money they made on an investment, they always talk as though they thought that the inflation rate was zero. People say things like: “I bought this stock 20 years ago, and it has tripled in price!” People say that as though they thought that they had tripled their money, even though they know – as everyone knows – that a dollar was worth a lot more 20 years ago than it is today.

Aunt Bessie’s Silver Dollars. Most people grossly underestimate just how much inflation has eroded away the value of the dollar. When I was a kid, my Aunt Bessie used to give me one silver dollar every year on my birthday. These were real – 90% silver – silver dollars. I wish I had saved the silver dollars that Aunt Bessie gave me, but I spent them. Aunt Bessie bought silver dollars at her bank once or twice a year for use as gifts. Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, you could buy one silver dollar at a bank for one paper dollar. Today, you need 20 paper dollars to buy one silver dollar. Now, let me be clear about this. I am not talking about rare or collector-grade silver dollars. I am talking about common, worn silver dollars that are only worth a little more than their silver scrap value.

20 to 1. It isn’t just silver dollars that have gone up 20 fold in price. A lot of things are now 20 times more expensive than they were in 1960. In 1960, with just 5 cents in your pocket, you could buy a Hershey bar, a bottle of Coke, or a daily newspaper. Today, each of those things costs a dollar. In 1955, the average movie theater ticket in the U.S. was 50 cents. Now it is $10.00. And it isn’t just small-ticket items that have gone up 20 fold in price. The cost of tuition at many universities is now 20 times more expensive than it was in 1960. When I went to the University of Maryland in the mid-1960s, tuition for in-state undergraduate students was $500 a year. Today, it is $10,000. And consider the biggest big-ticket item of them all – the Federal debt. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, the Federal debt was just under $1 trillion. It is now almost $20 trillion. See that 20 to 1 ratio again?

Paper vs. Tangible Assets. I have never known a single person in my entire life who made money investing in the stock market on an inflation-adjusted basis. I really don’t know a single one, and I know a lot of people who have been investing in the stock market for decades. Paper assets like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and certificates of deposit all lose a lot of their value over time due to the eroding effect of inflation. This explains why people who put inflation into their investment calculations don’t invest in paper assets. People who put inflation into their investment calculations (like me) invest in tangible assets, like real estate.

I have often wondered why so many smart people never take inflation into consideration when making their investment decisions. It doesn’t make sense. I’ll tell you what I think the reason is. I could be wrong, but I think that most people ignore inflation simply because inflation is depressing to think about. People don’t want to think about what inflation has done to their life savings, so they put it out of their minds when making investment decisions. I think it is really just that simple. Yes, that is irrational, but people make irrational investment decisions all the time.

Conclusion. Inflation destroys the value of people’s life savings. When people get old and think about how much their money was worth when they put it away for their retirement and then compare it to what that money is worth today in real buying power, they get depressed. However, that is not a good reason for ignoring inflation. Inflation is not going to fade away or disappear. Inflation will be worse, much worse in the future. The Federal government’s debt is now so huge that they will have to inflate the money supply for decades to come just to pay the interest on the debt. It will not matter at all whether Republicans or Democrats control Congress or the White House. The interest on the government’s debt will get paid no matter which party is in power. So you better think about inflation when making your investment decisions. I think about what happened to my Aunt Bessie’s silver dollars when making my investment decisions. You should too.