daily timewaster: August 2020

Now that's a heavy exit fee. San Fran must be such a fine place to do business.

The company blames working from home as a result of the pandemic as the reason for abandoning the lease - but we're sure the state's rising taxes, impending real estate market crash and conversion of the property to a temporary homeless shelter in March likely helped contribute to the decision making.

Either way, Pinterest wanted out of the lease so badly they were willing to fork over a hefty sum to ensure they would not be held to it. The company's total lease obligations for the property would have amounted to $440 million.

Pinterest's CFO told the San Francisco Chronicle: “As we analyze how our workplace will change in a post-COVID world, we are specifically rethinking where future employees could be based. A more distributed workforce will give us the opportunity to hire people from a wider range of backgrounds and experiences.”

Pinterest appears to be following in the steps of companies like Facebook, who has also embraced the idea of remote work for its staff. Facebook aims to have half of its company working remotely "within a decade", CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said.

To us, it appears to be more of a statement about San Francisco's real estate market than about Pinterest. After all, the company was the first and only lease commitment "in San Francisco’s 230-acre Central South of Market district, where numerous large commercial and residential projects have been approved after the city raised height limits last year," the Chronicle said.

They were to help contribute to 30,000 new jobs and 20,000 new residents in the district, which the city hoped would fuel more than $2 billion in public benefits. The project is "now in doubt". The proposed 88 Bluxome project was supposed to start construction this year, but current plans for the project are now "unclear".

Not good for any Democrat run city.

Question. Which metropolis will be the first one to see the light and expel its Progressive political class? And will they do it in time?

So, Saturday we decided to get out from under the smoke from all the fires going on here in California. Gassed the Orange Car and set out on a three hour trip from here to the coast, and specifically Arcata and Eureka.

It's a winding, lonely mountain road all the way, and especially the last half passes near multiple Indian reservations and towns with reassuring names like Burnt Ranch, population 280.

We didn't hear banjos, but we didn't stop very long either.

Arcata is a college town, very hippie and organic, and they were having a farmer's market in the main square. Walked all around and spread some sweet cash among the organic farmers selling good stuff.