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San Francisco Uber Protest

It was a small but rowdy crowd outside Uber's corporate headquarters on Market Street for the October 22nd Worldwide Uber Protest. 

Uncle Uber was there: 

With a rat on his head:

There were reporters:

Several town cars and SUVs drove by with horns a-blazing:

There were impassioned speeches:

Even kids:

Where were you?

Rideshare Chump

I’m idling in the bike lane on Valencia with my hazards flashing. For the past five minutes, I’ve been pulled to the right as far as I can so I’m not disrupting the flow of traffic anymore than I have to. I cringe each time a bicyclist has to swerve around my car. I watch a cab pull up to a couple. They climb in the back and the driver takes off. He glances in my direction as he passes me. He’s probably thinking, what a chump! And he’d be right. Rideshare drivers are total chumps! No self-respecting cabbie would wait longer than a few minutes to pick up a fare. If the passenger isn’t ready to go when they show up, fuck em! I’m inclined to split, but I’m giving Glen the benefit of the doubt. Cause I’m a chump. I just called him and he assured me that he’s on his way out. So I wait, like a chump, grateful I’m not in a worse position.

What’s wrong with this guy? I swear, some passengers can be real assholes. Not only do they request a ride and then make you wait, they don’t want to take more than a few steps to get in your car. So you have to make sure you get as close to their pinned location as possible while you block traffic waiting for them to mosey outside. Otherwise… otherwise, what? They rate you low. 

Uber passengers are definitely worse than their Lyft counterparts. Uber passengers make you flip a bitch to pick them up on the opposite side of the street. They send you into awkward driving situations without a single concern for what it’s like to drive a car in this city. And they make you wait. It’s an epidemic.

Fuck you, Glen! You fucking scumbag dickhead cocksucking motherfucker!

Oh, is that him with the girl?

I look at them imploringly. Please be my passenger...

They walk past me.

Fuck! I fucking hate Glen! I wish I hadn’t called him and had just canceled. Now, because I’m such a chump, I keep waiting. Another Uber car pulls up behind me. Hey, fellow chump. I wonder how long you’ll have to wait.

Well, fuck! His passengers are ready to go. Lucky bastard.

Just as I’m about to hit “cancel-no show,” dickhead Glen shows up with his chick. They climb in the back.

“Sorry for the delay,” the girl says.

“No problem.”

As I take them downtown, listening to them discuss their lame-ass jobs, I hate myself just as much as I hate them for playing along with their self-entitled douchebaggery. 

I think this is the last time. From now on I won’t wait longer than two minutes. Three at the most. Maybe four, if it’s not a busy street.

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Driving in San Francisco is the Worst

I’m an LA native. Say what you want about LA, but at least we know our way around a traffic jam. Driving in LA is a part of life. We take it seriously. Newcomers have a learning curve, but they quickly get indoctrinated into the LA style of driving or face dire consequences. LA drivers are like wild animals trapped in cages. If you poke at us with your crappy driving, we will strike back viciously and get you in line. Road rage is the equivalent of an ape throwing his shit at a contemptible visitor to the zoo.

LA drivers know all to well the primal animosity that surges up through your body and overwhelms you to the point of violence when you have to deal with some moron’s shitty driving. I once stopped my car in the street, got out and banged on this asshole’s window for tailgating me when I was looking for parking. The terrified look on his face may or may not have been worth the potential assault charge, but it made me feel better.

As a Lyft and Uber driver in San Francisco, I traverse almost the entire city over the course of a weekend. It’s a small place. That doesn’t mean it isn’t perilous. The narrow streets of San Francisco are full of buses, bicyclists and pedestrians. They're much more difficult to navigate that LA streets, which are just clogged with other cars. Many passengers ask me how I’m able to deal with driving in San Francisco. I tell them it’s like mastering a video game. You’re always trying to get to the next level. But honestly, it’s really not that difficult. The hardest part of driving in San Francisco is San Francisco drivers. They are the absolute worst.

I have a list of grievances I log daily in my Moleskin. I don’t know if longtime residents drive as crappy as the new transplants, if it’s just the tourists who are to blame or what, but these are the most egregious examples of horrible driving I see on a daily basis:

1. Always asleep at the wheel when the light turns green.

What the fuck? Pay attention! You’re in traffic! Be prepared to drive when the light turns green. Step on the fucking gas! I wanna get through the light too. It never fails, if I’m three cars behind the one at the light, I know I’m not going to make it.

2. Four way stops.

Some basic shit here, folks. The first person to stop is the first person to go. It’s not every man for himself. As you approach the four way intersection, pay attention to who gets there first. Look at their wheels. Have they stopped before yours? Yes? Then let them go. If not, you go. Two people stop at the same time? The one on the right goes. Three people? The one on the right still goes! This isn’t rocket science! I know throwing pedestrians into the mix makes it a tab bit confusing. But even though I have to skip my turn to let somebody cross, I’m still in the queue, goddamn it!

3. Merging.

Okay, the concept of two lanes of traffic merging into one seems to be mind-boggling to everybody. Even though, like a four way stop, there is a basic rule: one car from one lane, one car from the other lane. Like folding cards into a deck. This method keeps the flow of traffic moving and ensures everybody gets where they’re going without creating complete chaos. It’s fair and it’s the fucking law. But while drivers in every city fuck this simple method up, I have never seen cars in a merging lane perpendicular to traffic until I started driving in the Bay Area. East Bay drivers in particular seem to treat merge lanes as a free-for-all. And nobody respects a solid line! Solid means you can’t change lanes, asshole!

4. Double parking.

Sure, they’re nowhere to park in San Francisco and when you’re ridesharing, you have to pull over to pick people up and let them out in awkward situations all the time. But there are certain streets, namely the arterial thoroughfares, where double parking is not just impractical, it completely interrupts the flow of traffic. And yet it’s completely avoidable. Pull into a driveway. Let the person out on the corner. Do ANYTHING but don’t stop in the middle of the street. Arterial thoroughfares are the closest things we have to freeways in San Francisco. They are the quickest ways to cross the city. So don’t fuck it up for everybody else because you can’t be bothered to find a safe place to pull over.

5. Blocking intersections.

Again, it’s a simple rule of the road: if the car in front of you has not cleared the opposite crosswalk, don’t enter the intersection. You are going to block opposing traffic. Do you enjoy feeling like an asshole stuck in the middle of the intersection as traffic backs up waiting for you to move? You know we hate you, right?

6. Changing lanes on the freeway.

Do you really think that changing into the lane that is moving slightly more than the one you’re already in will get you where you’re going faster? If so, you’d be worng. And an idiot. Once you and all the other moronic drivers move into that lane, it will slow down the rest. There is no escape! Just accept the futility of traffic and don’t make it worse for the rest of us!

I could go on and on… I swear, the only thing worse than driving in San Francisco is dealing with San Franciscan pedestrians.

Drive for Lyft & Be More than a Number in 8 Easy Steps

The Onboarding Process

Lyft prides itself on creating a community between drivers and passengers. In the rideshare war, Lyft is the conscientious, friendly contender, while its main competitor, Uber, doesn’t seem to give two shits about who ferries their paying customers around town. It’s almost impossible to separate Uber and its founder, Travis Kalanick. In promotional videos and interviews with media, Kalanick comes across as an anti-social, libertarian scumbag who’d stab his own mother in the back to get ahead. Even the name, Uber, implies Kalanick’s ambitions, not a rideshare company.

During Lyft’s latest recruiting blitz, they emphasized this distinction by hanging banners outside the Uber offices in Potrero Hill, employing a sign twirler on the corner and a billboard truck circling the block, all declaring in bold type the mantra, “Be More Than A Number.” 

Everybody wants to feel appreciated. But what’s so special about driving for Lyft? Well, if you’re over twenty-one, own a car that’s less than fourteen years old and have a clean record, there are only a few simple steps standing between you and a promising career in ridesharing.

BULLET POINTS FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN SAN FRANCISCO

A very condensed and generalized take on the current economic situation in the Bay Area by an outsider who spends too much time reading online news articles…

• There is a class war going on in San Francisco. 

• Hyper-gentrification caused by the recent Tech boom is pushing out the middle class. 

• There just aren’t enough apartments and houses in San Francisco to accommodate the influx of Tech workers, who make more than $100,000 a year on average, without displacing regular working class citizens like teachers, firemen and city workers, as well as senior citizens and the disabled. 

• The lack of housing, affordable or otherwise, is due to the San Francisco city council prohibiting new construction in the city over the past few decades. This created a static housing market. And now, with the latest tech boom, basic supply and demand has caused rents to skyrocket and led to widespread evictions. 

• The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in SF is $3500. Even finding a room for $1000 is increasingly difficult. These insane prices encourage landlords to take advantage of the Ellis Act, a state law that allows landlords who want to “get out of the rental market” to evict tenants. Of course, most landlords aren’t getting out of the market. They are selling their properties for outrageous prices to speculators who renovate and flip the properties to new owners who can charge whatever rents the market will bear. 

• In the past year, there has been a 115 percent increase in total evictions. 

• Ellis Act evictions have increased by 175 percent in 2013.

• From 1997 to 2013, there have been over 11,000 no-fault evictions. 

• The population of San Francisco in 2010 was 805,235. The population in 2013 was 837,442. That’s a 4 percent increase, higher than both Los Angeles and New York. 

• With the population increase, the income inequality in San Francisco is growing faster than in any other US city. 

• Due to the mass evictions, the influx of well-paid young tech workers, the income disparity and the loss of the general atmosphere of San Francisco, there is rampant animosity among those who are being displaced. Most of this anger is directed at real estate brokers and developers, who take advantage of the situation, the city government, which isn’t doing enough to resolve the crisis, and the tech companies who do very little for the city while their employees reap the benefits of living and playing San Francisco. 

• In reaction, people are protesting in the streets, marching on city hall and attacking “Google buses.” 

• Rather than helping improve public transportation (Muni), which would benefit all San Francisco residents, tech companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. hire private shuttles that offer luxurious seating and free Wi-Fi to transport workers to and from Silicon Valley, using Muni stops to pick up and drop off their passengers, even if that means blocking the city buses. 

• While many tech companies use shuttles, the white Google buses have become the most visible symbol of this income disparity and the forced migration of San Franciscans out of their homes and neighborhoods. 

• Statistics show that evictions around the vicinity of these shuttle stops have increased. 

• Due to these protests, the city eventually forced the Tech companies to pay a measly $1 per stop. Though it’s just a pilot program and may not be permanent.

• The fare to ride the Muni is $2. 

• Many people wonder why these tech workers don’t live in Silicon Valley. There have been studies to show that these workers would most likely move closer to work or use their own cars if the Tech companies didn’t offer the shuttles as a job perk. But unfortunately, there isn’t even enough housing in Santa Clara County, home to many of the tech campuses. The city leaders there want the jobs be there so they can reap the tax benefits, but they don’t want these companies to build housing because they don’t want the crowds and they want to protect their environment. So the major burden of housing the tech workers lies on San Francisco.

• It’s obvious that city hall, at least under the direction of Mayor Lee, isn’t going to curb the tech companies. Instead the city is offering them tax breaks to move into the previously, and still very much, impoverished Mid-Market and SoMa neighborhoods. This is where most of the homeless people in SF sleep and spend their days (though there are numerous encampments under the raised freeways along the edges of the Mission, Potrero Hill and Mission Bay). Twitter, Airbnb, Yelp, and countless other startups are now located in these areas of the city. Former warehouses have been converted into live/work loft spaces. New high-end boutiques and restaurants, clubs and bars have sprung up to accommodate the burgeoning youth culture. 

• And yet the street people are still very much present, a constant reminder of the massive disparity between the haves and the have-nots. Very little is done to help the homeless. In fact, it seems more likely that those in powers would be more than happy to get rid of the SROs and other affordable housing that exists in SoMa and the Tenderloin. Fortunately, HUD funds many of these properties. And powerful special-interest groups with their own teams of lawyers preserve the rights of the impoverished. So it’s unlikely that the Tenderloin will change any time soon, no matter how many apartment listings refer to it as “Tender-Nob,” trying to affiliate with the affluent Nob Hill neighborhood that borders it. 

• People of color are increasingly forced out of the city. In 1970, African-Americans made up 13.4 percent of the population. Today, they make up only 6 percent. (The majority of the population is 48 percent white and 33 percent Asian.) The rich Latino culture of the Mission is being threatened almost daily, but the street protests and marches have done much to publicize their plight. 

• Of course, San Francisco has always been a relatively expensive place to live. The city is only 47 square miles, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Bay. The density is mind-boggling. Even in the outer neighborhoods, such as the Richmond and Sunset districts to the west, and Ingleside and Sunnyside to the South, homes and apartment buildings are pushed up against each other, without even a strip of concrete between them to designate property lines. There is only one direction left to build, and that is up. And that’s what the previous city government had tried to prevent. Building apartment towers along the waterfront will forever alter the city’s skyline. It will bring even more people into what is already a congested city. But the real problem is that these units will cater mostly to the wealthy. The city always tries to include some affordable housing in these new developments, but there is never enough to satisfy the need. As with any business, the rich come first. 

• It’s not just the poor and the middle-class who are no longer welcome in San Francisco: artists, musicians, writers and other creative types are being pushed out as well. Soon, San Francisco will be a playground for the rich. Everybody else, the service workers, teachers, firemen, city employees and any other person who can’t afford to own property will have to live outside the city, relying on what’s left of the Muni system to get to their jobs catering to their tech overlords. 

• There doesn’t seem to be anyway to stop these changes. San Francisco is doomed. This recent tech boom is not going to burst anytime soon. And if it did, the results would be disastrous for not only the Bay Area’s economy but the nation’s as well. We are all dependent on tech. Tech has us by the balls. Yet, it’s still the responsibility of government to regulate tech’s development. Tech companies shouldn’t be allowed to run roughshod over the rights of everyday citizens. Regulate them like any other business. Just because they claim to mean no harm, and regardless of how much we may want the shiny gadgets they manufacture, tech companies are just like any other corporation. They exist to make money. Pure and simple. And right now, as everybody knows, tech is big business. It’s the wave of the future. But a reasonable government should protect its citizens from the machinations of capitalism run amok.