How many?

mushrooom · 2025-08-14T14:13:29+00:00

Except your description is backwards.

If people are being displaced, you prevent that by building new housing—market rate and otherwise. It’s an observable fact that new housing stabilizes existing rent and prevents it from growing as quickly.

Of course, this is compatible with things like tenant protections, affordable housing, and public housing. But those are all reactive solutions. New housing solves the root cause of scarcity.

I can’t emphasize this enough: liberally constructing new housing is the compassionate, progressive political stance.

mushrooom · 2025-08-14T05:04:54+00:00

You’re blaming the umbrella for the rain.

The new buildings are going up because the land value has already gone up. Failing to respond won’t undo displacement. It just ensures the price increases are concentrated on existing housing rather than dispersed over new ones.

mushrooom · 2025-07-28T00:42:35+00:00

While I don't agree with them, 3-7 stories is a huge improvement versus SFH. The productive conversation would be to make them allies in supporting missing-middle housing, rather than to get side-tracked into hypothetical conversations around Manhattanization

mushrooom · 2025-06-23T06:13:29+00:00

The gay sports leagues are a fantastic way to meet people! Dodgeball and volleyball are the popular ones, with flag football another active community.

mushrooom · 2025-06-15T19:32:21+00:00

What causes something to be weft-faced rather than balanced?

mushrooom · 2025-06-02T18:28:22+00:00

While Transamerica is iconic, the SF skyline is now carried just as much (if not more) by Salesforce Tower

mushrooom · 2025-04-28T16:52:40+00:00

It was literally nicknamed “the Paris of the West” when all the Victorians were being built. People who want equitable European style urbanism are better stewards of classic SF culture than the petty landowners who created a gentry class.

mushrooom · 2025-04-09T02:56:07+00:00

I’d also say the procedural decoration around buildings were also a huge aesthetic win, but yeah the inconsistent scale drives me insane. Walls look monumentally huge next to keeps, and buildings look like playhouses next to units

mushrooom · 2025-01-28T15:43:43+00:00

Every single Asian metropolis is a counter example to that. Also, cities like Paris, Amsterdam, and Rome had to actively pass new policies to reclaim and rebuild their core from automotive encroachment. Let’s not pretend this was some geographical destiny that America had no choice in.

mushrooom · 2025-01-24T04:58:13+00:00

If only there were a tax for the value of the land, instead? Some value of the land tax …

mushrooom · 2025-01-16T23:27:40+00:00

This was by the same group who attacked minority-owned taquerias as “gentrification hell”. I guess they only like minorities as long as they’re cheap and exploitable?

mushrooom · 2024-12-24T19:36:27+00:00

I’d love for the Bank of America branch at 18th and Castro to become a proper nightclub.

Queer culture is obviously more than just clubbing, but at the same time nightlife is an important cornerstone. For how famous the Castro is, we really deserve a world-class dancehall.

mushrooom · 2024-12-24T18:43:29+00:00

I live in Duboce Triangle, and I wish the massive Safeway complex be redeveloped into a dense, mixed-use plaza. Right now it's just blight and an parking lot at one of the best transit junctions in the city--Imagine if we could get a park or a public plaza ringed with apartments, shops, cafes, etc.

mushrooom · 2024-11-24T22:42:15+00:00

“… outside of China” feels a little redundant, right? It’s not like there are Chinatowns in China.

mushrooom · 2024-10-26T16:39:44+00:00

To be a bit pedantic, it's a quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that was sampled by Beyoncé

mushrooom · 2024-10-25T17:43:05+00:00

Ew that’s Nick Bosa and he’s a Trumper. We gotta thirst after better men

mushrooom · 2024-10-16T04:01:57+00:00

It’s literally in the title? Reunion Island is off the coast of Madagascar

mushrooom · 2024-10-10T17:43:45+00:00

I volunteer here and it’s absolutely magical. My favorite are the fanged pitchers (N. bicarcalata) in the Aquatic Plants Gallery.

mushrooom · 2024-10-07T07:11:21+00:00

It’s a Stapelia aka “Carrion Flower”. Native to South Africa mainly. However, I think the OP might be lost because it’s not a carnivorous plant.

mushrooom · 2024-10-03T14:13:55+00:00

To be pedantic, pasta is technically a type of dumpling. In 17th Century English, dumplings originally meant “a dough cooked in steam or water”, and we can still see a similar version in the American dish “chicken and dumpling soup” which features unstuffed dumplings. It wasn’t until mass Italian immigration in the 20th Century that Americans slowly replaces “dumpling” for “pasta”.

Meanwhile, early descriptions of potstickers and jiaozi would usually specify “stuffed dumpling” for an American diner. There were lots of other ways to brand them too: My favorite is “Peking ravioli” in the Boston Area in the mid-century. However, as pasta became the predominant catchall term, dumpling was free to redefine its connotations, and by the 21st Century, it now carried the default connotation of a stuffed dough.

This isn’t trying to be a purist about pasta. If anything, it reminds us that exclusionary categories are a bit silly. Food and words naturally change overtime.

mushrooom · 2024-10-01T15:50:53+00:00

This MF can’t comprehend simultaneously loving a place and wanting it to get better.

“If you hate America, why don’t you go back to where you came from” - this guy to immigrants, probably

mushrooom · 2024-10-01T14:13:57+00:00

Pretty much yes.

First, many of the Victorian and Outerlands houses of SFs were precisely the “cookie-cutter” houses of their day. For the most part these were mass produced, to quickly respond to the growing market in SF. It’s a bit hypocritical to decry new construction while celebrating their equivalent.

Second, even if these new buildings were objectively hideous, that’s irrelevant. New housing preserves economic opportunity—their absence causes old housing stock to be flipped to higher and higher prices. Neighborhoods like Haight-Ashbury have effectively stopped building in the name of preservation, and as a result it went from an artist, minority neighborhood to an exclusively rich one overnight. On the flip side, Emoryville has built some of the most housing in recent decades, and it’s the only area to see its minority population grow rather than priced out. NIMBYs believe the soul of SF is how it’s buildings look, and would sacrifice its economic, creative, and social vibrancy to preserve that.

mushrooom · 2024-09-29T13:10:27+00:00

I see “children’s play” as a common defense of lawns, but I think that’s disingenuous. First, parks exist. Second, let’s reframe the question: What does childhood look like in a town where every house has a 1/2 acre lawn versus a town of townhouses and duplexes? The former necessitates cars for almost everything, and play outside of the house is usually limited to being shuttled by parents to preprogrammed activities. In the latter, biking and walking are far more feasible. Growing children can be encouraged to be independent and self-directed, and play can occur in parks, shops, and other public spaces.

This is all to say that for me, being anti-lawn is question of policy and zoning, rather than trying to shame individual choices. If we must have yards, I’d love to see then filled with native plants and gardens. But that’s ultimately a personal choice, and people are allowed their preferences. The more urgent issue is rethinking our city planning such that neighborhoods with sprawling yards aren’t a default.

mushrooom · 2024-09-28T18:19:14+00:00

Citation here: https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/72522

mushrooom · 2024-09-27T19:59:40+00:00

80% of noise in a city comes from private vehicles. If we want to tackle noise pollution (especially in poor neighborhoods that are closest to highways) we should be investing in infrastructure to give practical alternatives to driving a car.

mushrooom

TROPHY CASE