Yeah, things have gone hog wild since then. I’m looking to refinance my mortgage right now and I was looking at sales comps to get an idea of what it might appraise for - there has been a marked jump even over the past year. A friend of mine just bought a studio a few blocks from me for nearly 300K.
There were studios for more than that when I was looking to possibly buy one for her, but also some for closer to 100k. I’m sure the latter are gone by now.
When dinosaurs, were still roaming the earth and I was waiting tables, albeit, a high end restaurant, with my tips and min. Wage worked out to about $40-60 an hour…cash and I kept my clothes on with no pole involved…
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With a population of 2.6 million, Brooklyn hipsters are decidedly in the minority, despite the disproportionate amount of press they receive. NYC’s crime rate is down significantly and many areas once considered unsafe are now attractive. Of course, that means they are also less affordable.
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The downsides of eliminating tipping
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“Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it!”
Thanks for the link. It was an interesting read. Change to any system has its downsides but I was pleased to see that not only did the writer conclude getting rid of tipping remained a good idea but also the comments that the momentum for change is growing. It will take time - it’s been a few years since the UK started to move away from old-fashioned cash tipping to an voluntary service charge added to the bill. It continues to gain in popularity and is almost exclusively the practice in London and in the “better class” of restaurants in the rest of the country. It’s been a good way to go, IMO.
What exactly is a “hipster”? I can’t figure it out. I had family take me to a restaurant where they were going to show me, but it didn’t work out… they promised that the place was usually full of “hipsters”, we just went on a bad day. From the term itself, I imagine a group of people doing cartwheels and dancing. I’m also curious why it’s okay to make derogatory comments about this mythical class of people. Are they responsible for hurting others?
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Here’s a pretty good representative photo of ‘one’
And I was being too sarcastic. They can be just a tad too cool 
A modern beatnik .
I’m gonna part with you on that one. Maybe in appearance. But beatniks (I’m a bit too young but not by much) were more about philosophy. I like this explanation:
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too funny
Living wage does not mean you get to raise a family in one of the world’s most expensive cities. You’ll be throwing in private schools and a horse-oriented summer camp next.
An anecdote. I was talking with a woman recently whose retired mother has lived in a rent-controlled building for decades. Pays $850/mo. Is a retired secretary. Recently the husband of the couple who own the building died and she’s worrying that the widow will sell the building. She will have to move far away from the city to afford to rent anything else.
I don’t see how one or two people could raise a family in SF on $15/hr. Wouldn’t rent alone eat that up and more? And while not all SF public schools are bad some definitely are and it can a real challenge to get your child into a better one.
Can you do the math here please?
The example of a retired mother is a good counterexample. One to think about.
I want to understand davidg’s argument further. Is there someplace I could read about this type of rationale? I always thought, if you can’t afford to live in a place, or you can’t find a job, then you move, like everyone I know has had to do. I can’t help but think there’s some major philosophical idea I’m missing here.
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Note- Certain posts of this thread have taken on a somewhat unfriendly tone- let’s not make it go the route of this thread:
Please feel free to disagree, but please try to keep this a friendly place for knowledge exchange. Please also note that the original question has to do with tipping.
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Thank you. IIRC, tipping threads weren’t supposed to be allowed here anyway.
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One of the problems I’ve had with “San Francisco” for a long time is people treat the boundaries of the “city and county of san francisco” like some kind of holy grail. You’ll not find that attitude in LA, or Boston, or a bunch of other cities ( NY is a bit clannish like SF ).
I would consider anywhere an hour commute to be reasonable. Hard? Sure, but you’re making a sacrifice to raise a family during the boomtown years. An hour - by car or transit - would include some reasonable parts of either “outer mission”, bayview, daly city, and the like ( further south is quite pricey, and past the east bay hills is both pricey and poor transit options ). The entire east bay, from Richmond to Daly City. There’s that pocket of Marin that’s reasonably priced and has transit to SF.
We had the key route feeding from the east bay to SF forever. There are still busses, bart, ferries, and casual carpool. Downtown SF is only about 15 minutes away from downtownish Oakland by public transit, and 30 minutes from other parts. It’s a long ride from Daly City and Richmond, but there are reduced price public transit tickets.
I have friends my age who are raising families in the bay area. Most of them have jobs in SF proper. Most of them live in the east bay. That’s the richmond hills, the berkeley flats, oakland around Park Ave. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.
To quote the prices for the City and County of San Francisco ( which has between 650k and 750k people out of the 4M+ in the region ) as “san francisco” has always struck me as torturous and a poor analysis. I’ve lived in the bay area most of my life, and that’s included Oakland, Berkeley, Mountain View, SF, Palo Alto, Menlo Park. Depending on circumstance, job, local conditions, I move. Kids can move too, it’s not this super traumatic thing I hear about from some parents.
Finally, America is in the middle of a change where people want time back, and don’t want to commute. That means changing transit patterns, changing where housing is, a million other things. Our system tries to balance agility with stability, but there’s lots of shift happening in every city in america. Go to Houston and hear them talk about the same issues. So it’s fine to keep talking, and I’m very concerned about the racial shifts in the east bay, and I’d like more housing on the peninsula ( RWC is building a lot but few others are ), but let’s get off our high horse about a political boundary that makes little sense.
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With tipping going away so will the servers . Their will be a lot of employee turnover . Why would you want to be a server making $15.00 with no tips . It’s a shit job . Run around serving people and taking their requests , No thank you . Better off working at a gas station .
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There are very few gas station jobs. Most only have one person who sits behind the counter selling slim jims and spice packets.
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