patrick.net

No. Why do you ask? I have never hunted, although I was quite interested.

Oh, I thought you were pro-hunting. I may be interested too. It is probably a good sport.

GC Says:

> I don’t know if it’s just me . But I’ve noticed that a man’s
> perception of a woman is heavily influenced by his relative
> social background (vis a vis the woman’s). A man of the
> same upbringing tends not to view the woman as a sexual
> object. He more or less views her as an intimate friend.

I’ve noticed that most guys with a Dad that dumped their Mom for a younger hotter wife when they were a kid and (and is currently married to their 3rd or 4th hot young wife) tend to view women as sex objects, while guys with parents happily married for 35 years (and grandparents happily married for 65 years) tend to be looking for a life partner and intimate friend.

Then Doug H. Says:

> I agree…….Flat chested women are NOT sex objects.

Most guys forget that (almost all) girls that are “curvy” with a “big rack” in their 20’s become fat and gross in their 40’s. You won’t see a lot of slim classy looking women working as strippers, but many guys considered Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Kennedy and Grace Kelly “sex objects” and they were all A cups…

I dunno, I still think she's hot.

Maybe she's unhappy, maybe she's had Botox injections (the picture surfer-x linked to is more than a little scary), and maybe my appreciation for her is the product of subconscious feelings of inadequacy...but I still think she's hot. Or I would, if I were a single man.

The idea that rich girls are often unhappy because they can never find a guy who measures up to dad (and almost inevitably have to accept a lower standard of living once they leave the nest) is very interesting. There is some truth to that. I know several beautiful rich women who are still single. They are in their mid to late 30's and do not appear to be headed toward marriage. They are all from broken homes, too, and I suspect that also plays a role.

Poor parenting probably has something to do with it as well. Their parents are probably wrapped up in a materialistic, self-indulgent life. They have not taught their daughters to focus on someone's character instead of their material possessions. So the girls are confused, on the one hand they are instinctively attracted to ordinary guys, but the values instilled by their parents cause them to reject regular guys as unworthy working stiffs. That's sad.

astrid,

Sometimes the shiny skin is caused by microdermabrasions. When I was pregnant with my second child my forehead broke out, so I went and had microdermabrasions every other week for a couple of months until it cleared up. I thought my shiny skin was pregnancy, until I noticed that all of the other, non-pregnant women having it done also had really shiny skin. It goes away a few weeks after you stop.

I have asked a couple of dermatologists and plastic surgeons why botox makes you shiny, and none really knew. One told me he just assumed that the tighter skin had a smoother reflective surface.

Why do people Botox their foreheads and then leave the rest of their face alone? Ah, your forehead looks 28 but the rest of your face looks 45? I see that all the time. It's odd looking to me.

Does anyone know where to buy Spanish magazines in SF? My son is taking Spanish as his third language, and I got him a Mad Magazine in Mexico a few weeks ago. He loves it, and actually looked up words from it. He actually said 'I need to learn to read Spanish better.' I'd love to get him more.

SP :

Thanks. I was a bit perplexed at the outburst myself. Sometimes people get up on the wrong side of the bed.

Eliza, thanks for the nostalgic post about the dot.com days. I still choke up when I see old Webvan vehicles on the road (sans logo) -- dang, some of their warehouses WERE profitable. Okay, still haven't totally let that one go :-)
Had a lot of funny (read: options now worthless) money when I bought in 2000. Thankfully I bought based on real cashflow, and parental advice that I carried around in the back of my mind -- buy a house you can afford on one income. As it was I ended up pretty stressed out but my marriage survived and things that mattered came out intact. Unfortunately, I think the current housing meltdown will make the dot.com bust look like a picnic for those who bought above their means...

I hate to break from the gossip/society pages (great insider coverage, BTW), but here is an article that answers the question "How much does it cost to heat a McMansion?"
Netta Conyers Haynes and her husband paid $700 to heat their five-bedroom Benicia home last month, compared with $200 to $300 in a typical January. They've resolved to leave the heat off in February and cut back expenses to hammer out the dent that their heating bill left in their finances.

"The trips to the bowling alley, eating out just to eat out -- we're not doing that," said Conyers Haynes, 33, a marketing executive for a technology company.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/02/BUGV1NTD3E1.DTL

SQT Says:

What amazes me even more is how people seem to have forgotten that $500k is a lot of money. It’s a half-million and yet people act like it’s just the standard home price now, even if you make less than $100k a year. There is this sense of unreality where people don’t have any concept of what the value of money is anymore. I think our area is particularly vulnerable, so I think a lot of people will be forcibly reminded in the near future that $500k is in fact a lot of money.
_____

Yeah.

I look forward to the day when, once again, $500K commands some respect from the middle class.

Maybe then things will start to balance out...

It’s similar to Manhattan in this sense - it’s just tech instead of finance, law, and media.

Except that Manhattan is generally accepted to be the Center of the World(TM)...

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Holding on to Apple stock was the right thing to do. The stock is worth now more than twice what it was worth even at the peak of the bubble. Many Cupertino folks have done well for themselves thanks to this.

I know someone who just retired after 9 years at Apple. :(

Except that Manhattan is generally accepted to be the Center of the World(TM)…

... outside of California.

Unless I missed something, it looks like you get all the way down to #15 before you see a Silicon Valley name (Ellison) in that list.

You did not miss anything. There are wealthier people in Mexico and China. :)

Except that Manhattan is generally accepted to be the Center of the World(TM)…

... outside of anywhere but Manhattan.

Lucky me. I was raised in impoverished graduate school housing, so my material standards are quite low.

On the other hand, I'm not very tolerant of stupid people. Maybe I would be more tolerant if I was raised in a trailer park.

Is Manhattan even on a leyline?

Lucky me. I was raised in impoverished graduate school housing, so my material standards are quite low.

Astrid, it takes no time for you to get spoiled. Trust me.

On the other hand, I’m not very tolerant of stupid people. Maybe I would be more tolerant if I was raised in a trailer park.

I am very tolerant of stupid people beause I am one of them.

Counter to the social conditioning argument - maybe not. I'm quite intolerant of stupid professors and stupid graduate students - and there's quite a few of them. Extreme right wing economics professors and ditsy left wing ethic studies professors tend to be the worst.

RE: Manhattan

I tried looking for a Manhattan name on the Forbes global list and I could not find one in the first page.

Center of the 'Verse indeed.

I’m quite intolerant of stupid professors and stupid graduate students - and there’s quite a few of them.

I am tolerant of them when them are holding what I want.

Extreme right wing economics professors and ditsy left wing ethic studies professors tend to be the worst.

In short, there are no good extremists. Even those who are extremely good must be bad.

Peter P,

You're many things, but you're not stupid. Your approach to life is actually quite similar to my college Buddhism instructor, with a couple superficial differences.

You’re many things, but you’re not stupid. Your approach to life is actually quite similar to my college Buddhism instructor, with a couple superficial differences.

Really? :)

Perhaps I should look into Buddhism. Is vegetarianism optional?

It is in Tibetan Buddhism and amongst Mainland China's official classes. I know waaaay too many "devout" Buddhist Communist cadres.

You know, religion is an interesting subject. Well, philosophy is just amazing.

I always wanted to get a degree in philosophy but I do not want to end up selling souvenirs in a shop.

GC said: "But personalities, natural grace and other mental qualities are much more important in intimate relationships."

You are correct....if you are in to that type of stuff. :)

Just so you know, my tongue is firmly in cheek. Married my HS sweetheart, two great sons, and happily married for 8 years. Of course, my wife and I have been married for 34 years total.....but a week here and a week there.....after 34 years it adds up!

Only if you go to Brown. U of Chicago philosophy majors probably become embittered conservative economist/lawyers. Princeton philosophy majors (it IS still okay to bash Princeton philosophy majors here, right?) probably become evil megalomaniac intent on taking over the World.

But personalities, natural grace and other mental qualities are much more important in intimate relationships.

Very true. Looks (and the preference of looks) do not last. Personalities (and the preference of personalities) are more permanent.

I guess it could be microabrasion and not botox…though if I understand FAB's earlier comment, she's already in her 40s, in which case she looks like she had something done.

She's obviously a very well formed woman and takes good care of herself. But just something about her eyes looks a bit off.

SP,

Unlikely. I looked her up on several unassociated sites (social pictures) and her eyes always looked funny.

Elizabeth Taylor definitely didn't age as well as Audrey Hepburn. She's such a parody of an ungracefully aging female celebrity nowadays that people forget how gorgeous she happen to be in her teens/early twenties.

Interesting photo of Gavin with his (probably ex) girlfriend as they watch his Uncle's Sister in Law take over as Speaker of the House:

http://tinyurl.com/24rj4o

So.. um.. about that housing….

More tangents please. Housing is a dead horse. We have prevailed!

I wonder how many of those botox injections and boob expansions were paid by the housing bubble...

Well, boobs, bubbles, there are some vague similarities.

I wonder how many of those botox injections and boob expansions were paid by the housing bubble…

Bubbles for bubbles. I bet they can do 1031 exchanges. :)

Not tax advice

To clarify my Apple comment:

A lot of dot.com folks with stock options tended to compare randomgadget.com or whatever it was they were holding to Apple stock when making decisions. That's what I meant when I said that it was "all Apple stock."

Had they actually been holding Apple stock, well, holding onto it would have been the right choice. Since it was actually just random tech stock from a company in its nth round of layoffs, maybe letting it go for $500K or $250K or whatever pittance the market was offering would have been a good idea.

I even had stock options myself, as did my husband. Luckily enough for us, they never amounted to anything even for a minute, so there was no paper fortune and no sense of loss.

On the dating/prettiness bit: There was a brief time when I was maybe 19 or 20 when I turned heads. I was never model material, but I did get attention. I ended up attracting the most terrible awful weird unpleasant guys who had nothing in common with me but liked the way I looked. Eventually I got smart and started dressing plainly, wearing no make-up, etc, and ended up dating much nicer people, one of whom I married and many of whom remain friends. I was invisible to the former set of guys, and that was a little ego-deflating, but all in all the change was really, really positive.

Bubbles bubbles everywhere!

For this thread it's boobels boobels everywhere. (Not that I am complaining.)

I even had stock options myself, as did my husband. Luckily enough for us, they never amounted to anything even for a minute, so there was no paper fortune and no sense of loss.

Now that is something I can relate to. I was underwater from day one. When I left the stock was at the bottom of the SF Bay. It's still there.

SQT, can you write a thread?

I think we have to be careful to avoid tunnel vision. I am not that familiar with the BA, but here in LA, it's easy to develop tunnel vision. My guess is that this is also true of the BA.

Take Cupertino, for example. The LA equivalent of Cupertino is San Marino. It has the best public schools in the state and because of this it attracts many well-educated Asian professionals. I don't know how many of the families there have two incomes, but I'm sure the number is quite high.

At present the median SFH in San Marino is around $1.2mm, the cheapest SFH is currently $800k. (Unlike Cupertino, San Marino has no condos).

Let's assume that the "average" double-income professional couple has a pretax family income of $200k, and that people are willing to stretch to 4x their income in order to get their kids into a good school district. The first assumption seems a little generous to me, the second quite reasonable, but for the sake of argument let's assume that they are both true.

Are there enough double-income couples in LA to support a median price of $800-$900k in San Marino? Yes. Since the current median price is around $1.2mm, this means that we can expect prices in San Marino to decline by no more than 33%, right?

(Please note that I am oversimplifying because unlike Cupertino, San Marino was once home to the ultra-rich, and there are still some spectacular mansions there that sell for $4mm plus, the quality of the housing stock is quite high, it's not just a bunch of 1950's tract homes, so I would expect the median to eventually wind up somewhere north of $800k. The ultra-rich don't really live in San Marino any more, but some of the houses there are still awfully nice and will always command a premium. But for the purpose of this analysis, the $800k median is not unreasonable.)

The answer is yes. There are enough double-income couples in LA to support an $800k median in San Marino. Viewed from this perspective, that community will always be expensive and will never cost less than 4x a double income professional couple's income.

But there is a flaw in this analysis. San Marino isn't the only nice neighborhood in Los Angeles county. In fact, there are a shitload of nice neighborhoods in LA. Off the top of my head, I can think of Beverly Hills. Bel Air. Brentwood. Malibu. Pacific Palisades. Santa Monica. La Canada. Sherman Oaks. Studio City. Westwood. Manhattan Beach. Encino. South Pasadena. Parts of Pasadena proper. Many of these neighborhoods also have public schools that are almost as good as San Marino's. And of course, there is no shortage of good private schools here. Traditionally, people who lived in the nicest neighborhoods, where the public schools are amply funded and of outstanding quality, often sent their kids to private school anyway.

The long and short of it is this. Yes, there are a lot of double income professional couples here in LA. But not enough to populate all of these desirable areas. Not by a longshot. Even if there are enough of them to fill up San Marino, that still leaves a million other high-end communities with good schools.

This is why it is possible for the median SFH price in San Marino (or Cupertino) to decline below the double income professional couple support level. In fact, it could fall far below the $800k level. After all -- and this is significant -- you could buy the cheapest house in San Marino for $300k back in 2000. (It's now $700-$800k.) Of course, double income professional couples who earn a combined income of $200k today ($100k x2) weren't earning $84k seven years ago ($42k x2.) Not at all.

This is why it is possible for houses in nice neighborhoods with good schools to fall below the 4x median double income professional couple threshold.

Joe Schmoe,

Cupertino prices can indeed fall, no one (except maybe FaceReality) has called it immune . The reason it gets mentioned here quite often as it is a good barometer for the market. It's the Mecca for the Middle Class.

It may not be easy for non-BA people to imagine. But for someone working in IT here it's common to be surrounded by people of all ethnicities who consider it a privilege to have a house there. Again not for the truly rich - but for salaried professionals.

It's one thing to go ballistic and start cursing everyone and everything in Cupertino or BA. That's one solution and it works for some. It's another to consider Cupertino as an indicator of market psychology and speculate on its effect on middle-class localities of BA. To each his own.

Cupertino has a very good steak house. So it cannot be all bad.