Gentrification and it's Discontents

As I noted in my last blog post, the world is swiftly changing from a previously rural/ suburban cheap energy form of living to a more urban expensive energy form of living. I don’t think it’s possible to comment on the morality of this change (we are simply changing one form of living for another) but how we respond to this change will define our immediate existence. At this moment in time, will our community invest in the lower-cost forms of transportation and save ourselves time and energy or will our community ignore the coming change and continue to do the things we’ve always done?

The Mid-Century City is ending, so far we’ve done a somewhat good job of responding to this change. Measure R was passed in 2008, the Street Car was passed in this past election and Measure J barely failed in this election (albeit, it failed with a 66% approval vote, this is more due to Proposition 13 Constitutional Requirements than voter apathy).  The one thing that hasn’t changed in the City is the reluctance of some residents to support higher density or mixed use development along transit lines.

Here’s a relevant article:

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2012/12/more_expo_development_hate_pols_attack_sepulveda_mixeduser.php

NIMBY-ism (Not In My Back Yard-ism) is a common critique of people who are rabidly anti-development. NIMBYs are the bane of developers, they are usually, but not exclusively, higher-status established property owners who live near sites of prospective development. In the case of the Expo Line, the Cheviot Hills HOA, Rancho Park HOA, and the Beverly Hills HOA have all sued the Expo Line stating that the Expo Line light rail did not adequately address traffic mediation in their Environmental Impact Report (the fact that the HOAs are suing an environmentally clean Light Rail’s EIR is ironic in itself). Their goals is to sue the Expo Line into oblivion, there’s no other reason for these law suits.     

There’s no way to measure NIMBY-ism. At times it feel random, the Gold Line in Pasadena (a similar wealthy inner-suburb) face little opposition from local home owners while the Expo Line is facing huge resistance. It’s also not something the wealthy have an exclusive hold upon, the residents of Inglewood successfully blocked a Walmart from buying the vacant Great Western Forum and building a new superstore (while Mass Transit and Walmart are about as related as Cats and Dogs, I think, the main take away is that both deals are ground up developments of under-utilized space).

Tracing the root cause of NIMBY-ism is incredibly difficult to identify, each issue is local, and hence, not given to polls or testing. From what I can tell the root causes of NIMBY-ism are twofold:

-Home Owners trying to protect property values by limited supply of higher density housing (condo buildings and multi-family apartments). This does not extend to development of additional Single Family Residences (your typical house).

-Residents trying to protect the ‘Character’ of a neighborhood.

Taken together both of these causes are insidious and point to a larger problem in our culture.

Due to our history, home owners tend to be older people. Often times, in Los Angeles, these people are first or second generation owners in a neighborhood. They managed to purchase their property when it was relatively cheap against what it costs today. Case in point, I’m a first generation owner in Downtown. My condo is a part of the first wave of residential properties that went to market. In 40 years, my property will be very expensive. But today, it’s cheap compared to the rest of the city. One way to keep your property value high or to maintain the ‘character’ of your neighborhood is to practice supply-side restrictions on new housing. No new houses, no new developments means that in an expanding market your property or development can be sold at a premium. This is insidious because it acts a market prohibitor against new buyers who tend to be 1. Young 2. Not white. I point you to Beverly Hills’ opposition to the westside Subway as a case in point, their opposition to the subway is tainted in racist and classist terms

Conversely,  this same is true of development in lower income areas. Their fear is gentrification, article in point:

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2012/12/la_has_approved_huge_the_village_at_usc_retaildorm_project.php

New development will bring in ‘upperly’ mobile white folk who will drive the poor from their rented homes (side note: this is a reason to promote home ownership for the poor, it allows everyone to benefit from gentrification from equity appreciation).

Opposition to development is not new, it will continue. I think it’ll be important to focus opposition on things that need opposing (walmarts) and promoting things that improve the city (light rail). In a democracy everyone can voice their opinion, right or wrong. The voters will have to choose the right course of action.

 

Urban Economics

On Tuesday, downtown residents voted to tax themselves to build a street car system. The street car will be funded by ‘up to’ a $80 MM property tax on all building owners within 3 blocks of the proposed track. In addition, the street car expects to receive Federal matching funds. All in all, people voted to tax themselves in a very, very narrow way (owners within 3 blocks, no one else will be taxed) for a street car that could potentially benefit a large portion of the downtown area (if not the city).

I thought the street car campaign was waged expertly, narrow tax range, identified goals, with a small system that is easily fundable. In addition, the system blends in with the existing subway system.

The success of the Street car vote made me think of how the city has changed in recent years. I’m a fan of mid-century design, but I am no fan of mid-century urban planning.

The 4-Level Interchange

The middle part of the 20^th century was dominated by the personal automobile. The success of the United States after the Second World War was the major catalyst for our post war economy. The United States remade the Capitalist world economy into an image of its own design; for example the Bretton Woods System of 1944 tied all international exchange rates to the US dollar (thus saving the US untold trillions in transactional costs and thus creating the dollar as the world’s reserve currency),  in addition (and what really set the stage for the dominance of the car) was that purchases of oil on international markets was done in dollars (the famous Petrodollar). When you set the rules for international trade, how can you lose?

The post-war city was built to cater to individuals living in distant suburbs who drive alone into the city for work. We were permitted to do this because of cheap energy, if energy had not been artificially cheapened by the terms of international trade and emerging economies of scope and scale the suburb would simply not exist.  

The end of communism was the first herald of the end of the suburb. The entry of an extra 2 billion people in the capitalist system was bound to experience shocks. And, that it did. The price of gas in the last 20 years has exploded:

This is due to the emerging economies competing for energy. Obviously, if costs increase it makes driving more expensive. Living far from work in a suburb is swiftly becoming economically impossible.

Comparative Population per Nation

25 years ago China, Russian, Eastern Europe, most of South America and the Middle East were involved in the Capitalist world system. Today, nearly every nation is Capitalist, and they are all in competition for the same energy.

Our societal costs have been increasing rapidly, the greatest solution to this problem is a total overhaul of the urban core.  We need more mixed-use building, better mass transportation, and changes to local zoning codes,  these are the changes that can make a more efficient city. We are living in an age of cheap energy, that age is coming to an end.

So what about the street car?

Well, in my personal opinion, the street car is a blow against the use of a car in the central city. Downtown Los Angeles was built before parking codes and zoning codes made it impossible to start a business without a dedicated parking lot. Most of Broadway (the street where the street car will go down) does not have any curb side parking, which is an anomaly in most of the post-war city. By replacing the car with a transportation system we move closer to a unified central core. A place where people can live, and work in the same area.

The personal car shortens distances to be travelled, but conversely, it also requires a huge amount of built space

Roads, parking lots, and freeways are all dead space that have no real economic impact besides to house cars. The street car in downtown moves cars off the street in favor the economic space of people and buildings. This, and how it was passed, is why it’s so critically important to the growth of the urban core. 



For the sake of comparison; see the historic map of the old Pacific Electric Railway. In the era before the personal car, Los Angeles had a railway system that stretched from Woodland Hills, to Pomona, to Long Beach. 

Case Study House #22

Jessica surprised me with a visit to Case Study House #22. It was one of the best surprise gifts ever given to me.

The 3 readers of this blog will recognize man of my own personal design ascetics in this house. A lot of my personal taste was derived from the Case Study Houses.

 The Case Study Houses were a series of houses that were designed in the 50's to the late 60's. They became the embodiment of Mid Century Modern in the Los Angeles Area. The houses were designed to be 1. easily replicable 2. built with 'off the shelf' materials 3. affordable. Measured by those 3 criteria, the Case Study Houses were failures (CSH #22 was 3 times the cost of the average house when it was built), none of these houses became replicated on any scale.

Case Study House #22 became famous through a series of photographs by Julius Shulman. In fact, CSH #22 became the most iconic house of Mid Century Los Angeles. Here are the pictures from our tour:

Thoughts:
These images don't do justice to the house. It really is a special and unique house. The family room (the image with Jessica sitting on the couch) is completely surrounded by glass and it over hangs a fairly steep cliff. The views are panoramic from every room in the house. At 1,500 sq feet, the house is not that large, but it feels much larger due to the glass walls (there is only one solid wall, the wall facing the street, otherwise the thing is all glass).

We spoke with one of the Stahls during the tour, he was mentioning all the repairs that he is going to do to the house in the up coming weeks (replacing the carpet, fixing the glass sliders, fixing the ambient heating element). It seems that the house needs a lot of attention. Also, Stahl said that the sun light chews apart the furniture and carpet. My place gets a ton of sunlight, I'm considering getting UV filter film to put on the windows just because of that.

As thanks to Jessica for the great trip, I took her to dinner at Musso and Franks in Hollywood.

New Work

Finally.

When I first got my condo, the main light fixture was a track lighting bar over the center kitchen island. I’ll attach a copy of the track lighting below. While, by all appearances, it should fit into my favored midcentury design, I could not stand to look at it. I made it a point that the light should be removed in a year’s time. Life got in the way from making that happen. But, last weekend I purchased a new light fixture and had the old one taken out.

I had to take the light bar down before the new one could be installed. The bar was bolted into the concrete ceiling, so in order to take down the bar I had to get on the island and use a ratchet wrench to unscrew the screws from the concrete. I made a point of not breaking any of the bars or screws (I’m going to try and resell the items on Craig’s list), they now sit in a very sad pile in the corner of my living room.

I had to hire someone to install the light. I’m missing a few items to actually be able to do it myself namely 1. A concrete drill and 2. A pipe bender tool. Since the power lines need to within a metal pipe, the bender thing is kinda important. Not to mention, that it is near impossible to drill into concrete with a normal drill and drill bit. The installation of the light fixture did not take much time.

This is what the light fixture looks like once it’s been fully installed.

Next up: the bathroom.

Finally: Operation Home Improvement

After a 6 month hiatus of doing any work on the condo, I broke that streak with a vengeance this weekend. I purchased a new dresser (Art Deco style).

I took a series of measurements to see if the new dresser could fit in the corner of my room, as it stands currently that space is not being used (dead space). The angles of putting a dresser in that space did not work out, so in lieu of angling the new dresser I thought of re orientating the bed room entirely.

When I first moved in the bed room looked like this:

 It was front centered, thus if you were looking in at the bed room, the bed was facing you. As I expand my furniture collection more room was demanded. Since I put in the roller shades a year ago, the two shades in my room are hardly ever opened. So, I decided to place the bed against the window to take advantage of the space, the dress will go under the 'Waiting-Watching-Dream' poster sequence.

(Ignore the cat). The orientation of the room has changed. I'll post full photos once the new dresser is placed.

My lovely GF, Jessica helped me put a 5th coat of paint on the red wall today. It finally looks complete and finished.

Notice the lack of roller streaks. Gaze upon this mere mortals and despair!

Conspiracy Theories

Neil Armstrong died over the weekend from complication related to heart surgery. The first man to walk on the Moon now belongs to the ages.

 

Just 3 weeks ago I got into a minor row with some of my friends over a stupid topic. One of my coworkers at Bank of America was a regular reader of the website ‘Prison Planet’ which promotes a series of strange and odd conspiracy theories. One of the more insidious theories that gets heavy play on Prison Planet is the 9/11 as a ‘False Flag’ attack (a false flag attack is when the Government attacks itself and places the blame on an outsider to consolidate political power: the burning of the Reichstag and placing the blame on Communists by the Nazis is the classic example of a ‘false flag attack’). At any rate, I mentioned that I have no respect for anyone who harbors any suspicions that the Moon landing was faked. One of my friends stated that she ‘could see how and I would not be surprised’ if the Moon landing was faked. Obviously, I took a position that anyone who believed that garbage was beyond dumb which then led to a minor argument about the nature of Truth.

 

Truth is objective and verifiable outside of your own mind. In the case of the moon, the flags, foot prints and the landing craft are easily identified on the Moon. Further, we have video and transmissions from the Moon landing from verified 3^rd parties. But yet, anywhere from 6% to 20% of the American population BELIEVES the moon landings were hoaxes.  That is an unreal percentage of people, and it speaks volumes in American’s lack of faith in humanity.

 

At times humanity is transcendent, humanity built the great pyramids and sent men to the moon. With the proper motivation and tools there is little mankind cannot do. These insane conspiracy theories underscore the deep psychological fear in most people that you are not as smart, strong or gifted as you think. All conspiracy theories are assumed that mankind cannot reach the moon, build the pyramids  or develop writing without the aid of an outside force (like aliens). Humanity can achieve great things, when some of the achievements feel like miracles, many people cannot locate the greatness in themselves that  produced the great event. And so, they invent a sophisticated series of lies to  show that the great achievement is a lie.

 

I have no tolerance for Conspiracy Theories, the truth is knowable, obtainable and logical, to believe otherwise is false.  

 

Gentrification

For the last year or so I’ve been thinking heavily about the phenomenon of gentrification in Los Angeles. Since I bought a condo in an ‘area in transition’ gentrification is major concern for me. Personally, I want the gentrification of the Fashion District to occur rapidly so that the value of my property increases faster than the rate of inflation (property ownership is an inflation hedge in finance). Gentrification raises property values based upon an improvement in the neighborhood’s quality of life; think of the difference between Silverlake and Pico-Union. In the 1990’s both neighborhoods had similar rates of crime, gang violence and property ownership. But 20 years later, Silverlake is considered a desirable neighborhood, while Pico-Union is, well, still gang infested territory. In 20 years the difference between the two neighborhoods is stark. Silverlake gentrified while Pico-Union did not.

 

I don’t know why Silverlake gentrified while Pico-Union did not, all that needs to be known is that one area gentrified while the other did not. The quality of life difference between the two is stunning. If you were lucky enough to buy in Silverlake in the 1990’s the property that you purchased for $100,000 could be worth over $500,000 now. From 1/5/2001 to today the DOW Jones Industrial average is up 71.54%, if you bought in Silverlake the money you put into your property would be up over 500%. This is a HUGE wealth benefit to anyone who purchased cheap in an area that Gentrified.  As you can anticipate, I hope this happens to me. I also hope it happens to other people as well, but, gentrification can be a double edged sword.

 

President Bush once spoke about creating an ‘Ownership Society’ in America, many of the topics he touched on was property ownership. His reasoning (which is sound) is that people who own property tend to be invested in their neighborhoods, thus they take an active interest in the schools, parks, more generally owners improve the quality of life in their neighborhood. As bad elements are priced out of the market that is in the process of gentrifying, many poor long time renters will see their rents increase and they could find themselves pushed out of the market as well. At this point, it should be worth noting that, in the long run, renting is much less economically beneficial than owning property (no equity is being earned by rent, since property is an inflation hedge as long as there is no rent control rent should be keeping pace with property values so you do not get the long term benefit of a long time low rent). As a matter of public policy, the CRA was placed to help low income borrowers buy property. As in my previous post, housing discrimination was once thought to be the root cause and barrier of minorities entering the middle class. The CRA addressed that issue (editorial side: many conservatives wrong blamed Fannie, Freddie and their low income borrower initiatives for our current mortgage crisis; this article completely disassembles that argument http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/fannie-freddie-and-the-foreclosure-crisis/ ).

 

A public policy which promotes ownership and conversion of apartment buildings into multi-unit buildings (ie. Condos) with financing options for the people already living there is absolutely required. How that can be obtained without infringing on the rights of the apartment building owner is an open question. I don’t even know if it can be done. I have some thoughts on this issue, however, I imagine that no investor would something so risky (perhaps I will explain my idea in a future post).

 

The flip side to gentrification is the NIMBY movement (not-in-my-back-yard). My favorite story of the year is an activist home owner in Holby Hills who is suing Metro over an Environmental Impact Report regarding a bike lane. A FUCKING BIKE LANE. NIMBY-ism is a huge problem in older established neighborhoods that have no increasing housing stock to oppose any development they feel threatens their property. People have a legal right to due process for  any property taking, but sometimes I think there should be a streamlined process for beneficial development that does not involve the seizing of actual property (the Metro is using an old right of way to construct the light rail to Santa Monica).

Neighborhoods ebb and flow, gentrification is simply part of the process in which cities grow, destroy themselves and rebuild. I can only hope that I can invest in the growth part of that equation and avoid the destruction part.

Poor as a Culture

My girlfriend got me hooked on reading Gawker. It’s an entertaining website that mixes news with some social commentary. My favorite part of this website is the commentators, some websites have a lot of trolls (CNN and Yahoo for example). While other web sites have well thought out commentator with no trolling (The New Republic and Atlantic Cities are really good ones); but I digress…

 

Gawker has been running a series of letters from their readers about their unemployment experiences. To be honest, some of the letters seem far too fantastical to be true, example being an ivy league lawyer who was earning $250,000 a year who now can’t get a job. I don’t know what to think of that, it seems almost impossible to think that someone with an advanced degree and a long career could fall into long term unemployment without the aid of Alcohol or Drug Dependency.  

 

These Gawker unemployment letters frighten me. Unemployment is a scary thing, unemployment coupled with losing everything that you’ve built over the last decade is incomprehensible. Thinking about these articles has provoked another series of thoughts; what does it mean to be poor? In the case of the ivy league lawyer, she’s broke, but, I would venture to say that she is poor.

 

Being poor is a cultural issue. The libertarian noble prize winning economist once stated that being poor is a function of not having enough  money, which is like saying someone is wet because they are covered in water. The Atlantic Cities ran an interesting article about board game from the 1970’s called “Blacks and Whites” (generally, the game was about Housing Policies in the 1970’s known as Red Lining when a certain type of person could not get a mortgage in a certain neighborhood, these neighborhoods were marked in red ink in broker’s offices’), the game had no end, in fact if you chose to be ‘Black’ then you would have no chance to move out of the cycle of poverty.

 

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2012/08/discrimination-housing-and-board-games/2979/

 

Being poor is a cultural issue, a deep binding culture that is almost impossible to shake off. ‘Black and Whites’ ‘s main issue of housing discrimination was addressed in the mid-1970s with a law called the Equal Credit Opportunity Act which, among other things, banned red lining. Even with the housing discrimination issue fixed, African Americans still have not made great strides toward economic prosperity. Why?

 

Anecdotally, I know of two cases in which men from poor southern back grounds rose to become successful and wealthy. In both cases, they become lawyers; and, most importantly, they struggled to divest themselves of their Southern Accents. Their Southern Accent was a relic and a badge of shame of their poor rural backgrounds. If you are to lift yourself out of poverty, then you must release the symbols of your poverty. In this case, their Southern Accents would be looked down upon at a Northern Ivy League University.   

 

The culture of poverty surrounds us, it’s more than the food purchased with public assistance or rent stabilization checks received by land lords or energy coupons redeemed at gas stations. I’m fairly certain the only way to get out of the cycle of poverty is home ownership and gentrification (not wholesale redevelopment). I’m not sure there’s any other way to break the cycle…

Self Sacrifice and the Pursuit of the Unattainable Dream

We have Olympic fever. The Games are everywhere, previously obscure 'sports' like ping-pong are now news worthy items (North Korea is playing South Korea in the Gold Medal game of ping pong). I loves sports, it's war without the bloodshed, a liberal version of human competition where the winners are gracious and the losers win a piece of silver metal.

I was struck by a story that recently ran about a Chinese diver who was told (after she won a Gold Medal) that her Grandparents had died a year ago and that her mother had been battling breast cancer for the last 7 years. A couple of quick caveats, from the stories that I've read in the media, the diver in question was in a 'State Sanctioned' athlete school where she practiced or worked out for 10 hours a day (China is a fascist-communist government after all). And, from these media reports, it was her father's choice not to inform his daughter of these events. This is an important distinction for me, as it appears it was NOT a government order to keep her ignorant, but rather a conscience choice by her own father. The rest of what I say is based on that assumption.

14 years ago HBO ran a mini-series called 'From the Earth to the Moon.' Simply put, it was about the American space program. One scene stuck out in my mind, in one of the later Apollo missions, an Astronaut returns home to his family after a successful journey to the moon. Little Johnny, the Astronaut's son, causally mentioned that his tonsils were removed 3 years ago. Little Suzy then chimes in to say that her appendix was removed 2 years ago. The Astronaut turns to his wife and said, 'You didn't tell me?!' His wife, says, 'No, it wasn't important' the Astronaut replies, 'thank you.'

I didn't understand that exchange; why wasn't the Astronaut upset that he was left out of his children's life? So I asked my mother what happened. She pointed out that the children's ailments were minor and would have served no other cause than to concern and distract the Astronaut from his mission. So his wife decided to not tell him. The Mission was what was important. Getting to the moon and returning safely was the Mission. Both people, the wife and the Astronaut made sacrifices to achieve that mission.

The ultimate question is an individual one, what is important to you? Are you willing to sacrifice everything, even your life (as the Astronauts of Apollo 11 did) to achieve the mission? I can not judge the choices of the Chinese diver, her family made the sacrifice to help her achieve the mission of winning gold. I think there's a lesson there, sometimes the goal that you try to achieve is more important than the people in your life. It's a harsh lesson, but, sometimes, and rarely, it's a correct lesson.       

Business

I switched jobs again, this time I moved from Penny Mac to Prospect Mortgage in Sherman Oaks. Prospect is much closer to home and the job opportunity is much better than at Penny Mac.

Besides the new job Business is booming. Year of the Water Dragon my friends. It's a very auspicious year.

I just bought a small piece for my bath room, it's a tooth brush holder from the 1940's. I found it at a vintage hardware store on La Brea. Operation Bath Room upgrade is close to fruition, my economic reserve is nearly complete so I can start on the bath room in a month or two. Pictures to be posted soon.

Reflection on 20 years

I meant to get around to posting an article on my thoughts about the 20 year anniversary of the LA Riots, but, work and life interfered with my writing time. Today, I had some free time so I've decided to do the post, it is especially relevant to talk about the riots today as the LA Times just reported that Rodney King was found dead in his home a few hours ago.

I was in the third grade when the riots occurred. My parents were divorced, every other weekend my Dad would pick up me and my sister from Thousand Oaks and take us to Long Beach. Some times, we would take the 101 to the 605 freeway to Long Beach. If you know anything about the geography of Los Angeles, these routes go through some of the areas hardest hit areas of the riots.

For 7 days the city of Los Angeles consumed itself. In 1993, a year after the riots the murder rate in the city was 21.1 per 100,000 this was the height of the crack epidemic. As a point of contrast, the murder rate of the city in 2008 was 9.6 per 100,000 less than half that of 1993.

The riots were an accident of history, they were nothing more than the perfect combination of an aggressive out of touch LAPD, a depressed post cold war economy and an idiot drivers piss poor decision. In 2002 the LA Times ran a 10 year retrospective on the riots. Many of the people interviewed were certain that a riot could happen again. Another 10 years down the road and I don't think that anymore. I live downtown, such a thought to my 3rd grade self would be nearly impossible. The city is on an upward path, I'm glad to be here.  

  

Curbed LA

In March Curbed LA put on a contest for the story of some one's worst home buying experience; the winner of that story could receive $1,800 (more than a month's mortgage payment!!!). As my avid readers know (Sandy, Monica) I did not have a terrible home buying experience, it was the reverse; easy with no pit falls.

Well, I e mailed Curbed (for those that don't know, Curbed LA is a Real Estate blog devoted to the big happenings in the City of Los Angeles' transit and real estate news. I read it religiously) and asked if they would take a story from some one who "didn't fuck up." They said yes.

Well, I wrote something and it ended up on their website

As a side note, there is a back story as to why I called myself Countrywide's #1 trashman. When I was interviewing for a position in Correspondent Lending the person interviewing me asked if I had any 'foreclosure or distressed asset experience' in reply I called myself Countrywide's #1 Trashman. If your file came across my desk you were already in a world of hurt. 

That has been the big event for this month. Things at the condo continue to not come along, I still haven't decided on what to do with that bath room of mine. But, I did buy a new cat box which looks more like a piece of furniture than a cat toilet; small miracles will never cease. 

 

Marriage Follow Up

Pancho got married 3 weeks ago in San Jose. I think this picture sums up what happened at the reception:

 

Absolute chaos. 

In completely, unrelated, news: one of my favorite real estate blogs is having a competition about the worst home buying experience. For the two of you who are my regular readers (Sandy, Monica) you know that my home buying experience has been anything but negative. I guess this is a by product of me being a mortgage banking professional, I knew what I was getting into the moment I signed my loan application. 

Because I have nothing negative to say, I have decided to focus on Nick's home buying take-away notes for success. I'll share my entry here when I complete it.  

"Marriage is what brings us together today"

Marriage season 2k12 is in full effect. Pancho and Nancy's wedding is in the middle of the month and I am totally not prepared for the wedding. Why does some one who is not getting married totally unprepared? Well, two reason for this 1. I'm the Best Man (yes, I say that with pride, the fact that some trusts me enough to be the best man makes me feel honored). 2. It's a wedding.

Item 1: Nancy made it clear that I have certain obligations as the best man. Since this wedding is going to be half Catholic and half traditional Chinese (I've never been to a traditional Catholic wedding nor a Chinese wedding) I'm not entirely sure what my 'obligations' will entail. The mystery enthralls me.

Item 2: This is a slightly (ok, a lot more serious) topic. I'm in no position to get married, I'm flying solo at the moment and I'm surrounded by people in serious relationships (my sister included in that count) I can't help but feel that something, life perhaps, is slipping past me. It's not a good feeling.

I had my buddy Andrew (and his GF) over for dinner two weeks ago, I mentioned how I'm considering throwing a 'Mad Men' themed sushi party to 1. show off the improvements to the pad and 2. have a somewhat official first party. I told me that I would expect people to dress like they did in the 1960's

Classy. Dressing well seems to be a lost art in our society. In it's stead we have Ed fucking Hardy. I think, that as a society, we need to dress better.

Travertine Tile

In my new position with my new company, I have the pleasure of dissecting the lives of the borrowers whose loans cross my desk. I get a daily cross section of people in various stages of their lives; retirees buying their last house, a newly wed couple buying their very first house. A divorced man with two kids striking out on his own. I'm a nosy person by nature so this fits very well into my personalty.

So, what does any of this have to do with Travertine Tile? Well, if you recall back to basic underwriting, this consists of the 3 Cs: Credit (borrower's willingness to pay), Capacity (borrower's ability to pay) and Collateral (the property's ability to hold value). Of the audits I do on a daily basis I get the most enjoyment out of reviewing the appraisals and the properties that cross my desk. Some are nice, I saw a high rise condo in Seattle that had an amazing view. Some are not, I saw a beat down house 55 miles from Denver (I would have my cats live there). But, of all the various properties I've looked at there's one common denominator: Mother Fucking Travertine Tile.

Travertine is a lime stone rock that was once used to build the Colosseum, Basilica Sacre-Coeur and now every middle class boring bath room in America

Every new or redone property I've seen these last couple of weeks have all had at least one bath room in the house/ condo done up in gross travertine tile. I can't stand it. Why make your bathroom in ugly ass flesh tones? I'll tell you why, it's because of travertine's long association with classical architecture that made it so appealing in the first place. Couple that with it's natural beige-neutral coloring and then, BAM! Instant respectability. It's boring, it's bland and the middle class of this country eat it up because it's respectable and predictable. Their friends can come over and admire the owner's "good taste." 

 This is the opening salvo of the Bathroom Wars. I've decided to completely redo my bathroom, I've begun to plan out my financing for this war (after all, you can't fight a war on a budget). My sources of inspiration are

     
Art Deco. I love the use of aquamarine tile. The clean design and regular design appeal to my senses.

I also enjoy Modernism. It's going to be a challenge to synthesize the two design styles. Art Deco was the last major art styles based on ornamental elements, conversely Modernism is, by its very nature, a limited and subdued form.

I've given myself 6 months to complete the overhaul of the bathroom. I'm already excited.