Search Results for: California

The Tech Boom, Then and Now

In Guernica, Nathan Deuel visits the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and daughter and writes about how the recent tech boom has changed the city. Here, Deuel recalls being in college during the first dot-com boom when working for a website felt like a novel idea, and before, as he later writes in his essay, “income inequality in San Francisco [became] reportedly on par with Rwanda”:

For me, the Internet in the mid-’90s was a place for email. Later a place to download songs. I suppose I did buy some stereo equipment, using up the last of some money I’d earned working on a fishing boat in Alaska. But the idea of working for a website—like as a career?—this felt to me like deciding to drop out of college to play a video game.

I remember watching the Super Bowl—at the geeky fraternity next to the one that had the secret pot-smoking chamber with the amphitheater seating—and all the commercials were for these fanciful new websites. Pets.com would sell you items for your…pet and it was worth $82 million, far less than grocery delivery service Webvan.com, which earned a valuation of $1.2 billion, despite having made only $5 million in revenue. That spring, in an English lecture class, someone had a Snickers bar delivered to his seat by a service called Kozmo. The delivery person had this orange messenger bag. It cost nothing extra to have a candy bar delivered to your desk.

Then 9/11 and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. For a while, we didn’t care much about valuations of websites. I flew out of SF a few times en route to Asia. The airport felt unloved and the city once again ranked in my mind among our nation’s second tier. We had eight years of a Bush presidency and then the massive financial collapse of 2008, followed by the inauguration of our first black president. From a great distance, California was Schwarzenegger and Boxer and Pelosi. My family had moved to Saudi Arabia, and homesick one afternoon, I surfed the Web, trying to remember what it was like in 2000, and I felt the rush that comes from encountering icons of an older age, in this case a Kozmo messenger bag, which you could buy on eBay. In 2013, we moved back to America, and judging purely on the sort of ambient feeling I could sense—Democrat in power for a second term, prosperity returning, for some—the nation felt primed, ready again to allow for the lightness (and the irrationality and the exuberance) of another boom.

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See also: A full chapter from Friday Was the Bomb, the new book by Nathan Deuel about moving to the Middle East with his wife in 2008.

Photo: Frank Vervial

Heart of the Emerald Triangle

Longreads Pick

The illegal farmers of California’s Humboldt County brace themselves for marijuana’s legalized future:

And yet California, long the marijuana movement’s pacesetter, and a haven for high-capacity growers, finds itself in the perhaps-unwelcome position of losing outlaws like Ethan. Should the state follow Colorado’s and Washington’s leads in legalizing recreational use, as is expected, already-fragile economies in the north—specifically in the “Emerald Triangle” of Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity counties, home to some quarter of a million people—could be crippled. The “prohibition premium” that keeps marijuana prices, and those economies, aloft would fall, possibly so precipitously that many growers would lose their incentive and (perhaps ironically) leave for more-punitive regions. In recent years, many growers have reportedly left California for places like Wisconsin and North Carolina—markets where a pound of marijuana might fetch double what it does in the Golden State. Legalization helps keep growers out of jail, but regulation slashes their profit margins.

Author: Lee Ellis
Source: The Believer
Published: Jun 5, 2014
Length: 27 minutes (6,914 words)

The $100 Billion Antioxidant Market, and Why You're Having Fish for Dinner

Health food trends continue to grow because they are a cash cow. It’s estimated that the global antioxidant market will generate nearly $100 billion in a few years, even though most of us have no idea what an antioxidant is, and their long-term benefits are far from certain. But that doesn’t stop the California Walnut Board, the pomegranate hucksters at POM and assorted vendors of sugar drinks (from Vitamin Water to 7-Up) from proudly slapping “antioxidant” on their packaging and ads, while subtly pushing the narrative that it might possibly be the cure for cancer.

On my last night in Los Angeles, my wife and I offered to cook dinner for our friend Josh, whom we were staying with. “That would be wonderful,” he said, but the meal could have no meat, dairy, eggs, white grains, sugar or salt. “Fish is great, though,” he added, as though we had another option. There was no dessert.

David Sax in the Los Angeles Times, on the futility of health food crazes.

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More from the L.A. Times

Yes, All Women: A Reading List of Stories Written By Women

This week, a lot happened. A misogynist went on a violent rampage. #YesAllWomen took off on Twitter. Dr. Maya Angelou, feminist author and all-around genius (and don’t get me started on her doctor honorary), died at 86 years old. This week, I present a long list of essays, articles and interviews written by women. Many are about women, too. Some are lighthearted; others reflect on the events of the past week. I included a variety of subjects to honor those who might be triggered by the deadly violence of last week’s shooting, because women do not only write in the wake of tragedy—we write, we exist, for all time. So in this list there is reflection and humor; there are books and music and religion; there are all kinds of stories, fiction and non. Read what you need. Engage or escape.

1. “Summer in the City.” (Emma Aylor, May 2014)

Aylor, author of Twos, uses #YesAllWomen to write about about the sexual harassment she experienced as she researched her dissertation on the work of Wallace Stevens.

2. “In Relief of Silence and Burden.” (Roxane Gay, May 2014)

The author of An Untamed State and critically acclaimed badass gives her “testimony … so we can relieve ourselves of silence and burden” in the vein of #YesAllWomen, sharing stories of harassment, abuse and more.

3. “Not All Women: A Reflection on Being a Musician and Female.” (Allison Crutchfield, Impose Magazine, May 2014)

A wide range of female musicians react to a depressingly misogynistic article in Noisey about how to tour in a dude-dominated band. They share what they’ve learned on the road, emphasizing self-care, communication with bandmates, and doing what you need to do to feel safe and be your best self.

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On Going Back Home: A Reading List

We are expats and nomads. We are products of multiple countries. We run away from places that don’t feel quite right, only to never find where we belong. These stories celebrate the journey of returning to (or discovering) our roots, and the elusive, ever-evolving concept of home. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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Stairway to Heaven

Longreads Pick

Did Led Zeppelin write the greatest song opening in rock history—or steal it?

For live audiences, Stairway’s power starts with its introductory notes. “Can you think of another song, any song, for which, when its first chord is played, an entire audience of 20,000 rise spontaneously to their feet, not just to cheer or clap hands, but in acknowledgment of an event that is crucial for all of them?” Observer critic Tony Palmer wrote in a 1975 profile. Dave Lewis writes in Led Zeppelin: The Complete Guide to Their Music that “Stairway has a pastoral opening cadence that is classical in feel and which has ensured its immortality.”

But what if those opening notes weren’t actually written by Jimmy Page or any member of Led Zeppelin? What if the foundation of the band’s immortality had been lifted from another song by a relatively forgotten California band?

Source: Businessweek
Published: May 15, 2014
Length: 16 minutes (4,150 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * * Read more…

How the Father of Claymation Lost His Company

Longreads Pick

The story of Will Vinton’s Vinton Studios, which found success in the 1980s with commercial hits like the California Raisins, then struggled to keep up with its massive growth before getting sold to Nike CEO Phil Knight:

In the course of two years, a severely mismanaged Vinton Studios blew through more than $7 million in funding, largely due to their unwillingness to scale back the team even more. There was only one hope to salvage the company, and it came with a swoosh.

Farnath, Vinton Studios’ new CEO, approached Phil Knight “with his tail between his legs,” and asked the businessman to put in more money – just a few years after Knight had put up $5 million. This time, Knight had leverage to be a controlling shareholder.

Source: Priceonomics
Published: May 10, 2014
Length: 20 minutes (5,113 words)

The Real House Candidates of Beverly Hills

Longreads Pick

Inside the race to represent California’s absurdly wealthy — and sometimes just absurd — 33rd District:

A few days later, I was sitting in Marianne Williamson’s home in Brentwood, a luxury apartment just off Wilshire Boulevard. It is a warm and vast space, filled with books, art and frantic activity. “Can someone hand me my glasses?” Williamson called out, and an aide quickly fetched them. She was sitting in her living room, Googling around for a quote from Thomas Jefferson that she wanted to share with me. “You know the one,” she said. “It’s on the monument.” She said she would email it to me.

Published: Apr 24, 2014
Length: 16 minutes (4,175 words)