Postcards on the Edge

[don]

trends in dysfunctional America blow in and they blow out. Here's a few that recently blew in (feel free to add) . . .

Room To Let


Lisa Marion, in one of two rooms in her Toronto apartment that she rents out using Airbnb, a San Francisco start-up.

When Lisa Marion’s roommates moved out of her apartment in Toronto in February, she scrambled to find replacements. But instead of finding one or two, she found 30.

Ms. Marion, 26, has been using Airbnb, a Web site that streamlines the process of renting out her extra bedrooms to travelers. The service has unexpectedly turned her into a bed-and-breakfast owner, bringing in roughly $1,800 a month, a nice cushion as she works on starting her own business.

“It pays my rent with a little left over,” she said. “I’ve been able to upgrade my place, paint and get new furniture, which in turn means I can charge more.”

But those who choose to welcome strangers into their homes in this way must be prepared to deal with more than just changing towels.

Hosts may run into trouble if their neighbors, or worse, their landlords become aware of their rotating houseguests and disapprove.

Such short-term rentals are considered illegal in some New York City buildings, according to the Buildings Department. The city says that this year it is on pace to more than double the 483 complaints about such activity that it received last year.

Then there is the unpredictability of the guests themselves.

Geeks Aglow

Airbnb, which says it is handling 10,000 guests a night, is at the center of a boom in new companies that are creating a market for places to stay — a spare room, a house when the owners are on vacation or even a backyard treehouse.

Some of these businesses are riding the surge of interest in all kinds of Web ventures; Airbnb plans to announce on Monday that it has raised $112 million from investors. Last month, Wimdu, a similar venture in Europe, raised $90 million. Smaller competitors like 9flats, Roomarama and iStopOver are also hoping to take a bite of the short-term rental market.

These companies say they are helping hosts like Ms. Marion become microentrepreneurs, while giving adventurous travelers insights into how local residents live, whether they are visiting Japan or Los Angeles.

“We started realizing there is a growing trend of people who are doing this and making a living on Airbnb,” said Brian Chesky, who founded the company in 2008 with Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk. “That’s what turned this into a movement and tipped it into the mainstream.”

Nathan Blecharczyk, left, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia founded Airbnb in 2008.

To use Airbnb, site visitors search for listings in their destination city. Once they have found a place, they can send a message to the host with any questions about the room or its location. They then pay for the stay in full using a credit card or PayPal. Airbnb holds the money until a day after guests check in, ensuring that they are not swindled out of their cash. The site makes money by charging a transaction fee for each reservation.

Much has been made of the Internet’s power to eliminate middlemen, like travel agents or real estate brokers. But in easing transactions, short-term rental sites are useful middlemen in a market that would not otherwise exist on a global scale. Similar sites are popping up to rent other goods; NeighborGoods and SnapGoods list things like ski equipment and power tools, and Getaround, a start-up in the Bay Area, connects car owners with people who want to rent cars.

Fans of Airbnb and its competitors say the drawbacks of staying in a stranger’s home, or letting one into yours, are offset by the advantages. Hosts can make money to help with or even cover the cost of rent or mortgage payments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/te...tml?ref=global

Bummed About the Long Drive to Your Kid's Summer Camp?

For decades, parents in the Northeast who sent their children to summer camp faced the same arduous logistics of traveling long distances to remote towns in Maine, New Hampshire and upstate New York to pick up their children or to attend parents’ visiting day.

Now, even as the economy limps along, more of the nation’s wealthier families are cutting out the car ride and chartering planes to fly to summer camps. One private jet broker, Todd Rome of Blue Star Jets, said his summer-camp business had jumped 30 percent over the last year.

This weekend, a popular choice for visiting day at camps, private planes jammed the runways at small rural airports.

Officials at the airport in Augusta said 51 private planes arrived between Thursday and Saturday; on a normal day, they would expect just a few. The airport was so busy that one of its two public runways was closed so all the incoming planes would have someplace to park, said Dale Kilmer, operations manager for Maine Instrument Flight, which operates the airport.

“We have 50 to 60 jets up here in just that one day,” Mr. Kilmer said. “It’s a madhouse because they all leave at the same time, between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.”

At Sullivan County Airport in Bethel, N.Y., roughly 40 percent of recent flights have carried families heading to summer camp. Officials at Laconia Municipal Airport in Gilford, N.H., and Moultonborough Airport in Moultonborough, N.H., reported similar numbers.

At Robert Lafleur Airport in Waterville, which is close to many of the private camps in the Belgrade Lake region of Maine, the assistant manager, Randy Marshall, brought on two extra people to help handle the traffic last weekend.

In Augusta, Mr. Kilmer usually creates a temporary lounge on parents’ weekend for the pilots and flight attendants who must wait for their clients to return from their children’s camps, so that they can depart later that afternoon. He has already received catering orders for return flights, which include fruit and sandwich trays for adults and sandwich boxes for younger siblings. One flier has already requested a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a fruit cup with a single strawberry, a juice box, a banana and a cookie or brownie.

The popularity of private-plane travel is forcing many high-priced camps, where seven-week sessions can easily cost more than $10,000, to balance the habits of their parents against the ethos of simplicity the camps spend the summer promoting.


But some parents have already tired of this private-plane status infiltrating the simpler world of summer camp. “It’s a crazy world out there,” added Nancy Chemtob, a divorce lawyer,. She now sends her children to camp in Europe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/ny...ef=todayspaper

[GRG55]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

[I]trends in dysfunctional America blow in and they blow out. Here's a few that recently blew in (feel free to add) . . .


...But some parents have already tired of this private-plane status infiltrating the simpler world of summer camp. “It’s a crazy world out there,” added Nancy Chemtob, a divorce lawyer. She now sends her children to camp in Europe.

Two things came to mind when I read that second item;

1) Our resident civilian jet jockey, BiscayneSunrise, who flies B Triple Sevens when he's not hanging around with us, is going to enjoy that story, and...
2) Does Ms Chemtob use a Gulfstream or US Air to get her kids to Europe?

Seriously, people are becoming more and more intolerant of the security nonsense at civil airports, and those that can afford to avoid it are doing so. Most of my travel is international so I have to keep putting up with the crap, for now. But I am working on my own solution to the North American air travel hassles, and will divulge the details if and when I am successful...

[don]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

Two things came to mind when I read that second item;

1) Our resident civilian jet jockey, BiscayneSunrise, who flies B Triple Sevens when he's not hanging around with us, is going to enjoy that story, and...
2) Does Ms Chemtob use a Gulfstream or US Air to get her kids to Europe?

Seriously, people are becoming more and more intolerant of the security nonsense at civil airports, and those that can afford to avoid it are doing so. Most of my travel is international so I have to keep putting up with the crap, for now. But I am working on my own solution to the North American air travel hassles, and will divulge the details if and when I am successful...

Bifurcation seems an appropriate word . . .

Best of luck with your travel solution.

[GRG55]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

...Best of luck with your travel solution.

I've been a member of the Oshkosh, Wisconsin based EAA [Experimental Aircraft Association] for 26 years. There's no limit to what these people will attempt when it comes to anything aeronautical...especially if it helps avoid airport body scanners. :-)


http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/...ating-house-14

[don]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

Following the Mariachi Index



Mariachi Bands Hit Hard Times, Leading to Rifts Over Their Fees

LOS ANGELES — Alejandro Cisneros calls the newer arrivals “pirates.” They simply put on a costume and trick customers into thinking they are mariachi musicians, he says, but they know nothing of the history of Mexican music. Juan Ariso calls the old-timers “the businessmen.” They are too focused on charging more money and pushing out those who they believe are taking gigs they do not deserve, playing at weddings and quinceañeras and the occasional backyard cookout.

The two groups cannot agree on many things, but the most important is this: How much should a mariachi charge?

“This is our profession, our job, our passion,” Mr. Cisneros said. “We don’t want to have it ruined by these people who do not know what they are doing.”
For Mr. Ariso, it is a simple business calculation: “I charge what they are willing to pay. That changes all the time.”

For generations, musicians have gathered each day in a corner of the Boyle Heights neighborhood, just east of downtown. The sprawling square has been called Mariachi Plaza for as long as anyone can remember and has served as a central band-gathering spot since the 1940s.

The players come with their violins and trumpets and guitars, like roaming minstrels offering to play their traditional ballads for anyone interested, and especially for those looking to hire a band. A few dress in traditional charro outfits, elaborate dark suits accented with chains and embroidery, topped with ornate sombreros.

Mariachi Plaza is a sort of day-labor center for musicians, and the mariachis will quickly gather around passers-by, a horde of them jostling to get their business card into the hand of the would-be customer. The leaders encourage the customer to hire the full band, typically six musicians, and will belt out a tune or two as an enticement.

The going rate here has been about $50 an hour per musician for more than a decade, but when business began to dry up and newer musicians moved in a few years ago, competition became far more intense. Some were willing to drop their price to $30 an hour, and shouting matches over who would get the infrequent jobs would occasionally turn into fistfights.

Now, roughly 200 mariachis have joined the United Mariachi Organization of Los Angeles, a group that formed to set a minimum price in the plaza. To join, musicians must pay $10 a month and pledge not to charge less than $50 an hour. In return, they receive a gold-colored picture identification card, which leaders hope customers will recognize as a badge of authenticity.

Customers have come back to the plaza to complain about mediocre bands or musicians who did not show up on time, said Arturo Ramirez, the president of the organization and the leader of Mariachi Los Dorados De Villa.

“We want to have a standard,” Mr. Ramirez said. “There are good and there are bad, and it is difficult to tell who is who when you just hear them play one song. If you buy a pair of pants for $20 and another for $80, it’s not the same quality. The same is true for music. For this to work, we need people to understand the difference.”

Mr. Ramirez, who has worked out of the plaza for more than 25 years, said he had always charged for travel and setup time, something unquestioned by customers until recently, when the lower-price groups began undercutting by charging only for the time they played.

Jose Luis Avenas said he began coming to the plaza about five years ago, first on the weekend to supplement his income as a contractor. Then as that work began to dry up, he came more often.

“This was good work, easy work and honest work,” Mr. Avenas said. “I get it myself, and nobody should be able to take it away from me because of the rules. This is America, where there is freedom and a free market.”

Rimmed with cafes serving strong coffee and Mexican food, the plaza serves as a social gathering area as much as an employment center. The Mexican state of Jalisco, also known as the birthplace of mariachi, donated a concrete bandstand and iron benches several years ago. A community development group is now renovating a crumbling hotel that has housed musicians for years, many who traveled back and forth to their Mexican hometowns with their earnings.

While the murals have faded and begun to peel, a new subway station at the plaza has revived the area, which now features a farmers’ market on Friday afternoons. Many of the mariachis worry about being pushed out of the square as the area has begun to gentrify with hip coffeehouses and wine bars. But for now, the shops selling the traditional instruments and outfits are still doing brisk business.

“This is ours, and we have to keep it ours, not let others tell us what to do,” said Martin Gonzales, who has been in the plaza for more than 20 years.

For now, Mr. Gonzales is ambivalent about the new organization. He wants to keep prices fair, but he is distrustful of new rules that do not promise to give him all that much in return.

“Do we need this?” he asked. “I don’t know. What we really need is more work.”

It was the second day in a row that Mr. Gonzales had stood for hours without getting a job. By 5 p.m., he gathered his bandmates in the van and took off. Like others, they had scrawled the band’s name and phone number on the window, in case potential customers might see them on their way home.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/us...ariachi&st=cse

[don]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

Hauling Cans and Bottles Through Brooklyn, for a Hard-Earned Extra Penny

Standing in the shade of the McDonald Avenue El in Brooklyn, John Culpepper was a good 45-minute walk from home, but he nodded at a sign dangling from a driveway across the street:

Thrifty Redemption Center

Recycle Cans Here for 6¢

“That’s why I come here,” Mr. Culpepper said. “Normally, it’s 5 cents a can.”

All that way for an extra penny?

“Think about it,” he said. “Seven bags, 100 cans in a bag, that’s $42. Somewhere else, a supermarket, where you get a nickel, it’s like” — he paused for a moment to do the currency conversion.

“It’s 10 bags,” he said, then corrected himself. “No. It’s, like, nine bags or so in the places that give you a nickel. Nine bags to get to $42. Instead of seven to get $42 when you come here.”

The power of that penny shapes the day along McDonald and 18th Avenues. In ancient times, the Silk Road was worn into history by a parade of traders crisscrossing the known world. In our time, McDonald Avenue has become an aluminum alley.

By 7 most mornings, a line has started to form at Thrifty Redemption Center. At first, it is hard to pick out any human form as each nimbus of cans and bottles floats along the sidewalk, driven by hidden pistons of legs.

The grocery carts are packed with cases of empty glass bottles, and these are topped by stacks of bags of plastic bottles, like a bubble bath that rises over the edge of the tub but somehow does not spill onto the floor. The aluminum cans swing in bags from out-riggings on the sides of the cart, broomsticks or drapery rods salvaged from the street.

Among the first to arrive most mornings is a young Chinese woman, her hand curled into a hitch on the front bar of the cart as she steers it toward a curb cut. Luis, an older Ecuadorean immigrant, waves to her. In a few minutes, Frank arrives in a Toyota Corolla that is the automotive equivalent of the shopping carts: he drives with the trunk open so the bags of bottles can froth out.

Retired from the phone company, Frank works a few nights in a restaurant and brings the empties home to his garage in Bay Ridge. Once a week, he drives them to Thrifty Redemption. No full name and no pictures, he said, with an eye on the tax man. “This will be $50 to me,” he said. “Fishing money. I go out of Sheepshead Bay, half-day.”

The extra penny is not the lure of Thrifty Redemption for Frank. He goes there because he can unload all his empties at one place. Unlike many supermarkets, Thrifty does not limit how many it will redeem in a day. “I don’t take the extra penny. He’s got to eat, too,” Frank said. “I like that you can bring as many as you want.”

Vincent Cristallo, who runs Thrifty but is not the owner, says the business counts on getting as many bottles and cans as it can. “They don’t need to go into a supermarket and have people yelling at them,” Mr. Cristallo said. “We treat them like human beings.”

Under New York’s bottle law, a business like Thrifty returns the empties to each brand’s distributor, getting the original nickel deposit and at least 3.5 cents more. That makes each bottle and can worth 8.5 cents to Thrifty — but everything has to be sorted so that, for instance, empty Cokes don’t go to the Pepsi distributor.

“You’re basically sorting it for them,” Mr. Culpepper said. “If you want to shoot for 6 cents, that’s what you’ve got to do.”

Laid off two years ago from food preparation at La Guardia Airport, Mr. Culpepper, 35, said he had turned scavenging into a full-time job paying $400 most weeks, more on holidays. That goes toward the $1,159 rent on the one-bedroom apartment on Ocean Parkway where he lives with his wife and their 2-year-old son. He also does part-time work as a porter in his building, mostly for the stash space.

Mr. Culpepper says he goes out with his cart around 8 on the night before scheduled pickups, loading the cans and bottles left out for the morning. He wears a bottom layer of latex gloves beneath a pair of cotton gloves. By being tidy, he keeps peace with building supers; he slips a few dollars to one who gives him a hand.

“In your own neighborhood, people look at you and say you can do better,” he said.

“I figure, it’s $10 an hour, fast-food wages. My relatives don’t know. Everyone on this planet has pride.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/ny...wastematerials

[flintlock]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

[c1ue]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

The interesting part is the above article only speaks towards aluminum cans.

The CA - that I've seen - most places don't even count the cans. They weigh and then subtract a 'moisture' factor.

However, the biggest scam is in plastic bottles. Each bottle is assessed a 5 to 10 cent recycling fee, but people who bring in said plastic bottles for recycling get paid on weight - more in line with 1.5 to 2.5 cents per bottle.

The rest? CA budget.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

The Hitchcock movie Lifeboat starred Hedy Lamarr and was filmed on a sound stage. For every scene, the cast climbed up a tall ladder into the elevated moveable boat to film.

Hedy had a very bawdy reputation, she'd filmed the world's first nude scene as a young actress years before.

Apparently she didn't wear underwear. Every time she climbed up that ladder into the lifeboat, the cast and crew got full view up her dress at the naked goods. Finally someone complained to Alfred Hitchcock.

"Well," said Hitchcock, "I don't feel this problem is within the jurisdiction of the Director. You should bring your complaint to wardrobe. Or perhaps to the hairdresser."

[don]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

Great anecdote

I'll have to share that one with a few of my actor buddies.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

This one from last Newsnight here on the BBC. This a a long article so please use the link.

28 July 2011 Last updated at 14:22


In Steinbeck's footsteps: America's middle-class underclass

By Paul Mason Economics editor, Newsnight

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14296682

[don]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

I was lucky to be able to drive Route 66 from Texas to LA before the interstate was in. Never forget it. The concrete teepee motel, the town of Shamrock - a main drag, a residential block, and ... desert. What the hell did the kids do there? (I was 17)

[GRG55]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

I was lucky to be able to drive Route 66 from Texas to LA before the interstate was in. Never forget it. The concrete teepee motel, the town of Shamrock - a main drag, a residential block, and ... desert. What the hell did the kids do there? (I was 17)

Probably spent their time dreaming up new, quintessentially American schemes to keep the tourists coming :-)


Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, Texas

[don]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

Park Foraging: From Quirky Niche to Mainstream

Maybe it is the spiraling cost of food in a tough economy or the logical next step in the movement to eat locally. Whatever the reason, New Yorkers are increasingly fanning out across the city’s parks to hunt and gather edible wild plants, like mushrooms, American ginger and elderberries.

Now parks officials want them to stop. New York’s public lands are not a communal pantry, they say. In recent months, the city has stepped up training of park rangers and enforcement-patrol officers, directing them to keep an eye out for foragers and chase them off.

“If people decide that they want to make their salads out of our plants, then we’re not going to have any chipmunks,” said Maria Hernandez, director of horticulture for the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit group that manages Central Park.

Plants are not the only things people are taking. In Prospect Park in Brooklyn last week, park rangers issued four summonses to two people for illegal fishing. Although officials say such poaching is not widespread, park advocates say taking fish and turtles for food is not uncommon, and some have reported evidence of traps designed to snare wildfowl.

Foraging used to be a quirky niche, filled most notably by “Wildman” Steve Brill, who for years has led foraging tours in the Northeast, including in Central Park. (He now sells a foraging app, too.) But foragers today are an eclectic bunch, including downtown hipsters, recent immigrants, vegans and people who do not believe in paying for food.

While it has long been against the rules to collect or destroy plants in the city’s parks, with potential fines of $250, the city has preferred education to enforcement. “It’s listed in the prohibited uses of the parks, and the simple reason is that if everyone went out and collected whatever it is — a blackberry or wildflower — the parks couldn’t sustain that,” said Sarah Aucoin, director of urban park rangers for the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Officials have not gone as far as posting signs in Central Park that foraging is prohibited, for fear they would serve as arrows pointing to the most delectable areas. Ms. Hernandez of the park conservancy would take a reporter on a tour of edible plants only on the condition that their locations not be revealed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/ny...ef=todayspaper

[don]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

In prior recessions ducks have been harvested from Golden Gate Park. Never heard about the veggies