Ep. 599: "Speculative Heights"
Merlin:Hello.
Merlin:Hi, John.
Merlin:Hi, Merlin.
Merlin:How's it going?
Merlin:Merlin.
Merlin:John.
Merlin:I think I would have thought up another one by now.
Merlin:I was saying that in 2011, so why wouldn't I still be saying it now?
John:Yeah, 10 years.
John:11, 12, 14.
John:However many years it's been.
John:15 years.
Merlin:Roderick on the line.
Merlin:Now that one, I would have to ask your permission for that.
John:Oh, right.
John:That's a little bit of an echo.
John:That's a interpolation, they call it, I think.
Merlin:Interpolation, yeah.
Merlin:Or a sample.
Merlin:I give you a blanket permission.
Merlin:Blanket permission.
Merlin:Interesting.
Merlin:To the whole melody or just to that?
Merlin:To my entire catalog.
Merlin:Okay.
Merlin:You know this is now a legally binding instrument.
John:You understand that, right?
John:You can repurpose the entire Long Winters catalog in any way you see fit.
John:Hmm.
Merlin:I'm leaving you all my car parts, but it's not as good as this Carl's Jr.
Merlin:Sandwich.
Merlin:I didn't say it'd be good.
Merlin:Says Merlin Man.
Merlin:Raves Merlin Man.
Merlin:The ghoulish corpse fucker of John Roderick's entire catalog.
John:that satisfies get that body time to cool off i had a coffee cup in one hand right and a microphone in the other and i went and i and i went to talk into the coffee cup
Merlin:Oh, no.
Merlin:That's where we're at.
Merlin:I think that's totally understandable.
Merlin:That's totally understandable.
John:Because they're both important to your mouth.
John:They are.
John:I held the microphone off to the side so that I could talk into the coffee cup.
Merlin:That's the kind of thing a psychology major or aspiring psychology major says to you.
Merlin:You know, you have an oral fixation.
Merlin:That's your problem.
Merlin:An oral fixation.
Merlin:A moral fixation.
Merlin:That's right.
Merlin:You're very interested in ethics, morals.
Merlin:No, no, no.
Merlin:No, no.
Merlin:You know.
Merlin:The people who were like, that's why you smoke.
Merlin:That's why you have a microphone.
Merlin:That's why you're always putting it into a cup.
Merlin:It's because of your oral fixation.
John:Yeah.
John:Have you seen the pictures of the atmospheric river that's coming at Seattle right now?
John:Looks like a dong.
John:No kidding.
John:Yeah, it looks like a dong.
Merlin:I thought I saw a dong in something last night, too.
Merlin:Do you mind if I look it up?
John:I'm going to use my computer.
Merlin:So I'm looking for Seattle atmospheric river.
Yeah.
Merlin:yeah seattle atmospheric river looks like a dom okay really looks like a dom i mean they all kind of do yeah i mean it's like parodelia or whatever like where you start looking for it let's see um well you're not getting it huh i don't think i'm getting it
Merlin:I love those videos about all the Saudi projects, the Neom projects.
Merlin:Of course, I think we've talked about the line, which is incredible.
Merlin:And have we talked about the Octagon City?
Merlin:Go on.
Merlin:I'm always on board.
Merlin:So the really short version is that MBS and his retinue are looking to use their vast oil money to be able to start building businesses that aren't all about oil.
Merlin:Simply, I'm putting it nicely.
Merlin:It's just not everything is everything anyhow So he's got these wackety projects and because of the way they've restructured the whole Saudi government You know his dad's basically just like all weekend at Bernie's I'll shake at the top but we but so basically he's running stuff He's moved so that all the Aramco oil now goes through his PIF inside of Saudi Arabia and that's how he's funding Neom which includes the line which includes It's an octagon
Merlin:And it's got a funny pun name, but it's basically an octagon where they're building out into water.
Merlin:And it's an octagon shaped city where half of it's going to be floating and half of it's going to be land.
Merlin:And there's a shipping lane in the middle.
Merlin:Have you seen this?
Merlin:What can go wrong?
Merlin:What could possibly go wrong?
John:After you introduced me to The Line, I did a deep dive.
Merlin:Oh, my God.
Merlin:I could watch stuff about The Line.
Merlin:I'm like, please hurry and either succeed or fail faster.
Merlin:I need more progress on The Line.
Merlin:I know they're working on the King's Palace at the Northern Stretch, and they've got in some of the basic stuff.
Merlin:But, John, would you like to tell our listeners about The Line in case they've forgotten?
Merlin:Yeah.
John:Yeah, The Line, as I understood it, is a Saudi project to build a giant city underground-ish in a canyon that is multiple stories tall.
John:And it's called The Line because it's in a line.
Merlin:The short version is it's a city that's a line.
Merlin:It's over 100 miles long and about a few blocks wide.
John:And it's got a super train that's running through the middle of it.
Merlin:It claims it can get you from any part to any other part.
Merlin:I'm not sure why you'd want to go to any other part.
Merlin:But in 20 minutes.
Merlin:It basically sounds like living in a very wide dying mall.
John:Yeah, that's right.
John:A dying mall.
John:Many commentators, commententors, have suggested that maybe building it in a circle would be more efficient because the train could go around in circles instead of like up and down.
John:Like at Disneyland.
John:But that's been poo-pooed.
John:And then at one end of the line, it actually opens onto the coast...
John:And it has like a, like a oceanic component.
Merlin:A tiny, one of the tiny little areas.
Merlin:Well, now I'm confusing.
Merlin:I'm conflating my different stories because there's someone involving Kuwait too.
Merlin:But Saudi Arabia has been, well, Iraq has been wanting a ton more access to the sea.
Merlin:Saudi Arabia, but there's only so much, you know, waterfront land.
Merlin:So they've got to build more stuff.
Merlin:And now they're making fractals so they can, it looks like a fern leaf so they can make enough oceanfront property by making new ocean.
Merlin:It's crazy.
Merlin:It's a very ambitious project, John.
John:Because there are some films, as you have indicated, or some promotional materials.
John:But the last I heard, they were scaling back the project.
John:Much to my disappointment.
Merlin:It's still going to be a line, but it may not be as long.
John:It's not going to be 100 miles long, maybe?
John:Maybe it's going to be like five miles.
Merlin:The last element last I heard, and I've just sent you a video.
Merlin:This is a channel I like a lot called Neo.
Merlin:And this is called Why Saudi Arabia is Building a Floating City.
Merlin:And it's called the Oxagon.
Merlin:Oxagon.
Merlin:And seen from above, I think that shipping channel looks a little bit like a dick.
Merlin:If I'm being honest.
Merlin:That's how it came up.
Merlin:Did you get my... Oh, look at that.
Merlin:Oh, my God, John.
Merlin:I know.
Merlin:On the other side of the pond, they call it a bellend.
Merlin:Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Merlin:That's a penetrating cock.
Merlin:It's coming.
John:This looks like an MRI of an unfortunate...
John:continent i know it does and everyone is everyone's you know it wasn't long ago that none of us had ever heard the term atmospheric river i feel like it's only been five years since i heard it for the first time i thought it was the new el nino
Merlin:Yeah, that's it.
Merlin:Where suddenly everybody talks about it like we've always talked about it.
Merlin:Oh, sure, El Nino.
Merlin:And I always did enjoy the way that people called it the El Nino, or the La Nina, pin number.
Merlin:Shrimp scampi.
Merlin:Shrimp military intelligence.
Merlin:But this is a hell of a cock, and it hasn't implied, are those vas deferens, or what is that down below, probably?
Merlin:I mean, there's a lot going on.
Merlin:I think that's Portland down there.
Merlin:Quijones.
Merlin:I'll just make this the show art.
Merlin:It might get us demonetized, as you say.
Merlin:But tell me where the different places are here.
Merlin:And feel free to discuss this as a big red cock.
John:Right at the very tip of it, it's going right into Seattle.
John:Like you could not point it at Puget Sound more directly.
John:Did it buy you dinner?
John:It has not, because it hasn't arrived yet.
John:It's a sunny day today.
John:I'm looking outside.
John:It's all sunny.
John:I don't know where this thing is.
Merlin:Atmospheric rivers.
Merlin:Didn't that used to just be rain?
John:Yeah, it used to just be rain.
Merlin:John, you follow these things.
Merlin:You and your saint, your benighted mother, follow the climate and the weather.
Merlin:What's different about an atmospheric river, John?
Merlin:It's high up water in the clouds that comes down as rain.
John:Yeah, it's got those high pressures up in the north.
John:You can see that Alaska is pushing down on the top of it.
John:You see that?
John:It's called reverse cowgirl.
John:Yeah, then there's the warm air is doing this, and the cold air is doing that.
Merlin:A lot of the blood is rushing to the glands.
John:That's right.
John:Is that Puget Sound, John?
John:Is that what that is?
John:Puget Sound, right in the center of it.
John:And then toward the bottom of the head, you'll see Oregon there, all of the coast of Oregon.
John:That's the most sensitive area.
Merlin:Well, that and Bellingham.
John:That was funny, right?
John:I mean, to you that was funny?
John:Okay.
John:I liked it.
John:I liked it.
John:You know, but you and I both are usually circumspect about dirty time.
Merlin:I'm very careful with my dick jokes.
Merlin:Dick jokes, puns.
Merlin:You got to be careful with wordplay.
John:I know.
Merlin:I know you roll it out really...
Merlin:Well, because you think it makes you sound smarter, but it really just kind of makes a person sound a little annoying sometimes.
John:And I get shy.
Merlin:I can't do too much.
Merlin:No, I feel the same way.
Merlin:I'm looking at this right now, and believe me, if this were not going to be transposed into a Ben Day dot black and white illustration, I would not be putting this on our program, John.
John:Oh, right, because the color, for those who are only seeing it in the illustration, the color is really dramatic.
John:The colors they chose, the reds.
Merlin:It's kind of implied a little bit of a scrotal sack.
Merlin:It for sure does.
Merlin:It's the bend of this thing.
Merlin:I mean, this is the erection of a teenaged river.
John:Yeah.
Merlin:This is like a stand and do the pledge type erection.
Merlin:I mean, on the one hand, it's going to get a lot of snow in the mountains.
Merlin:Do you take it?
Merlin:from the side a silhouette you don't think it's you don't think it's a i almost said george clinton i think that's the guy from p funk this is not a bill clinton cock that we're seeing from above this is uh this is another kind of uh this is a 13 year old rivers cock that we're seeing from the side correct from the side yeah okay and then the boy is facing east
John:and the boy is facing east correct correct and yeah yes and puget sound you know it's one of the only natural harbors uh on the west coast along with san francisco oakland bay area and uh what long beach but anyway long beach that's a big one you know yeah well it's a big port i don't know that nothing in central park is natural
Merlin:I learned that there's one rock.
Merlin:There's one rock in Central Park that's an original boulder.
Merlin:And it has one of the survey bolts from like, I watched a really good Architectural Digest video about this.
Merlin:And I even sent it to my goddamn family because I learned so much about Central Park from that video.
John:So you're talking about all that bedrock that's kind of sitting around?
Merlin:Well, there's like one area that's like, I think it's called the Ramble, that has a little bit of rocky stuff on it.
Merlin:But, you know, that used to be all streets.
Merlin:And I didn't know that.
Merlin:I didn't know.
Merlin:I guess I just, I don't know.
Merlin:I have a very incomplete education.
Merlin:I'm just sharing with you, and I'll send you this video because I think you would enjoy it.
Merlin:And you love it when I send you videos.
Merlin:I do very much.
Merlin:But what I learned was that there were streets and there was, I think, a Seneca encampment there.
Merlin:And everybody got thrown out, including the local indigenous peoples.
Merlin:And then they turned it into, I think, an extremely successful park.
Merlin:And another thing I'm going to tell you about this video, this is very bad for an audio medium to be describing this.
Merlin:When they talk about how unusual Olmstead and, what's the guy's name?
Merlin:Doesn't matter, the architect.
Merlin:His name's, he's got a funny name.
Merlin:They, when they designed this, like, they were the only design.
Merlin:Do you know what I mean when I say like an English garden versus like a French garden?
Merlin:Like, this is the only design for this park that was not gonna look like, like something from the Prisoner.
Merlin:The Prisoner.
Merlin:I was gonna say the Prisoner or Versailles is literally what I was gonna say.
Merlin:And except for that gorgeous angel fountain by the Shakespeare and all of that.
Merlin:Anyways, I'm going to send you that video.
Merlin:I think that's fascinating.
Merlin:Now you're saying Seattle, they just show up, they realize that it's there as opposed to having to like blast it out line style.
Merlin:Looks like this atmospheric river is about to blast.
John:Well, did you know that we had... You remember.
John:Oh, maybe you don't.
John:See, this is the thing.
John:I don't know if people outside see I don't know this story.
Merlin:I need all the help.
John:In the 90s, Paul Allen had become the Microsoft billionaire that we all know and love.
John:And he went down into a neighborhood in Seattle that was all kind of run down warehouses and just like broke.
John:It was the area where there were a lot of black box theaters.
John:There was a lot of... What's the area town called?
John:It was called South Lake Union, or that's... We didn't call it that.
John:It was called... I don't know.
John:Some people called it the Cascade neighborhood.
John:Okay.
John:We just called it Lake Union, I guess.
John:But it was just... There was a Denny's down there, but it was mostly...
John:unused railroad tracks and kind of like, um, maybe industrial cleaners.
John:There was a news, the newspaper got published.
Merlin:Sounds almost like the way, um, you know, I don't know if you know when I say Soma, South of Market, like it got super fixed up in the eighties, but even to this day, Soma is still like, it's where you can like, you know, uh,
Merlin:Well, I mean, there's a lot, but it used to be like where you go to get your car fixed.
Merlin:You know what I mean?
Merlin:And it's still kind of a little bit like that in parts, you know?
Merlin:Yeah, this was very much like that.
Merlin:Light industrial working class.
John:Yeah, no buildings were more than about two stories tall.
John:Just sprawling and gross, and there was no... The streets were all kind of broken down there.
John:And it was a great place for clubs, right?
John:There was dance clubs, and there were...
John:There were like alternative theater, but it was basically a dead zone.
John:So Paul Allen went in with his billions.
John:While nobody was looking kind of, nobody had their eye on the prize.
John:He just started buying up everything.
John:He bought this old warehouse.
John:He bought that old warehouse.
John:And I think most of the city was like, sure, whatever you're into.
John:But then all of a sudden he owned 70% of the buildings in this area.
Merlin:This is what this is what the Disney Corporation did around Reedy Creek, you know They buy them in separate parcels you're real quiet like so you don't know the mouse is coming to town That's right.
John:You're talking about a Florida story.
John:This is a Disney World story.
John:Yeah, yeah So this was basically that so then Paul and Paul Allen was not a super great communicator But he unveils this idea he's gonna build in Seattle
John:A central park.
John:He's going to tear down.
John:A park that is central to the city.
John:It was going to be central to the city.
John:And, you know, there's a lake, a huge lake right in the middle of Seattle.
John:And this was the neighborhood between the city and the lake.
John:And it was nothing.
John:It was just nothing.
John:Crumbling ruin.
John:And he was like, I'm going to build this giant park, a promenade, a huge.
John:It's going to be, you know, 20 blocks wide and 50 blocks long.
John:And it's going to have a ramble.
John:and it's going to have an atmospheric river and it's going to have this and that and it's going to it's going to be the most beautiful park ever made and it's going to open up the city to the lake and they had all these architectural drawings and it was like wow i what a vision yeah yeah yeah and all the rich people in the in the region
John:were like this is it you know and they all threw their support behind it and everybody was like all we need to do is buy up the last 20 of the property and and of course we'll get the you know we'll get the city to pay for this and we have to reroute the roads but but the the meister burgers and burger meisters were behind it like this is one of those things that makes us a little more of a world-class city kind of thing right isn't i mean is that the thinking 100 everybody's like world-class city which seattle loves to say about itself
John:Yeah, set away.
John:It's going to be a world-class city.
John:And, you know, for the last hundred years, it's like, not yet, not quite.
John:And they're like, next thing, next thing we're going to do, we're going to build a space needle.
John:It's like, well, it didn't quite make you like Beijing, but yeah.
Merlin:Yeah.
Merlin:Anyway, you guys still got Grey's Anatomy.
John:We had Grey's Anatomy.
John:We had Grunge.
Merlin:That's still on, believe it or not.
John:It's a thing still?
John:My family still watches it.
John:I've never seen an episode.
John:Meredith Grey is 84 years old.
John:It's set in Seattle.
John:Set in Seattle.
John:Yeah.
Merlin:It's a hospital.
Merlin:It's called, yeah, yeah, it is.
Merlin:It is.
Merlin:Yeah, but no, it comes up.
Merlin:It comes up.
Merlin:They have an extraordinary, as you probably know, living in Seattle.
Merlin:There's an extraordinary number of very upsetting medical incidents there.
Merlin:One time Christina Ricci was an EMT that had a bomb in her.
Merlin:They had to take a bomb out of Christina Ricci on the table.
Merlin:That wonderful actor from the Adam Smith movie.
John:Isn't that a, that's the plot point of the Batman movie.
Merlin:And Frida Kahlo.
Merlin:What, Freya Callow had a bomb in her?
Merlin:Sort of.
Merlin:I mean, she had part of a bus through her, but then she was also married to Diego Rivera, so come see, come saw.
John:You know, I've been to every hospital in Seattle in some state of emergency or other.
John:And I can say... It's like a pub crawl, but for injury.
John:I can say they're all top class, but some are better than others.
John:Oh, doctor.
Merlin:So Paul Allen has a vision and he's getting everybody.
Merlin:How's Paul?
Merlin:Paul Allen comes up a lot.
Merlin:He is, I believe, the, I don't know which one called the co-founder of Microsoft with Bill Gates, right?
Merlin:So they came up with DOS and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin:I don't know a ton about it.
Merlin:I think of him as being more of the was than the jobs, just in the sense that he's the guy who got out a little bit earlier and like had a different life.
Merlin:Yeah.
Merlin:And he did the rock and roll thing, right?
Merlin:He did, but he spent on a lot of stuff.
Merlin:What, before he passed, what was the feeling about Paul Allen amongst other wealthy or influential people in that area?
Merlin:Were they into it or were they like, oh God, here comes Paul Allen again?
John:He got out of Microsoft really early.
John:Like weirdly early.
John:But somehow because he co-founded it, he had 100 million percent of it and it made him for a while.
John:This is the crazy thing.
John:You could get out of Microsoft in 1983 and still be the third richest man in the world.
John:Yeah.
John:At a time.
John:oh yeah and so paul is very absolutely on the spectrum and very much like classic sign classic signs of someone who is what we would have said as burgers you know high functioning but um but just a kind of like maybe some kinds of interactions come to him more naturally than others that's right and communication was for sure a thing where you couldn't he's very hard to get a read on
John:He really loved what he loved right.
John:He loved rock and roll.
Merlin:He loved technology He was and it sounds like he had he do you believe he had a good heart in terms of the stuff?
Merlin:He wanted to do was he trying to do it for the right reasons?
John:So in the end he did like a lot more than a lot of other people Did see that he had a responsibility and
John:Noblesse oblige.
John:He was a hometown boy, too.
John:He didn't want to go to New York or Paris.
John:He was like Seattle all the way.
John:And he saw his responsibility to improve Seattle as he saw fit, right?
John:He wasn't a bank account for everybody.
Merlin:He wasn't asking other people what they wanted to do.
John:Right.
John:And so he did a lot of curious things.
John:He did start a foundation.
John:He started the EMP, which was... Experience Music Project.
John:Project with all the Jimi Hendrix guitars that he bought.
John:Like he bought all of the rock stuff.
Merlin:He was like somebody that said... Has anything... Remind me, has anything that Jason Finn, anything that he's ever used, was that in the EMP?
John:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin:Is it his van or his shoes or something?
John:Yeah, I think Chris Ballou's shoes, but I think they bought everything.
John:I think they bought everything.
John:Didn't they buy like a van, like a Pearl Jam van?
John:everything they own they have warehouses that have so much stuff i even talked to them about selling them some long winter stuff but a deal never went through that was not not that long ago i figured i'd get the right of first refusal on that or first right if you do what you do you have you have any of those white castle shirts left the blank ticket no you know the other good shirt that's a really good shirt i think that was not a rogue shirt right that was a fan shirt right
John:No, it was a shirt I had made because it said, don't yell at me on it.
Merlin:Yeah.
John:And that was an echo of, I passed a woman on the street one time, a little old lady who was walking along with a hand knitted sweater that said, don't yell at me.
John:And I was like, that woman.
John:That's it.
Merlin:That's Bar Souk Records in a single garment.
Merlin:But it was.
Merlin:It touched me to my core because I didn't realize it came from a sweater.
Merlin:I I forgot I thought it was just how you refer to death cab for cutie.
John:It was don't yell at me music But this woman had lived a life such that she took the time and spent the time to design and and make for herself a sweater That said there must have been times she wanted to give up, but she just stuck with it
John:She was like, this is my statement to the world.
John:And I saw her walk by me.
Merlin:And each time she gives up, somebody yells at her, and she pulls out her needles again.
Merlin:Each time I think I'm out.
John:She gave me a big smile, and I was like, don't yell at me.
John:Oh, my God.
John:And it became my motto.
John:Well, the other day, I was up on Broadway.
John:And the very block that I saw her, there is now a store called Don't Yell At Me.
John:Shut your mouth.
John:And I don't even know what they sell.
John:Is it pre-existing IP you didn't know about, Sean?
John:No, no, no.
John:It's just, I think, I'm the, this is one of those things.
John:Oh, you accept it.
John:Did you accept it?
John:Remember the story where I was sitting in the bathtub and I was listening to music and then a plane, or no, I was listening to the washing machine in the basement and then a plane flew over and the washing machine and the plane made a perfect chord.
John:And I was like, I'm the only person in the universe that's in the middle of this chord.
John:I'm the only one.
John:I have that happen about once a month.
John:I think I'm, I'm the, until now, until I'm telling everybody about it right this second, I was the only person in the universe that had been both on that corner with that woman and recognize the store that don't yell at me.
John:You're the monad.
Merlin:You're the, you're like, you're the original, you're, you're the OG.
Merlin:And so you think, I think you can't say, cause it would seem unseemly, but you might've manifested at least one of those things.
Merlin:Uh,
Merlin:I don't know.
Merlin:Or there's a portal.
Merlin:What kind of stuff do they sell, John?
John:There's a portal right there.
John:I have no idea.
John:I was driving by.
John:I was like, is that store seriously called Don't Yell at Me?
Merlin:That seems like something that can't be real.
Merlin:Isn't there a part of you that goes, I have to have hallucinated that?
John:Except that, as you say, the White Castle Long Winters t-shirt says, don't yell at me on it.
John:Absolutely.
John:And I don't have one, but I know they exist because I've seen them in the world.
John:I used to sell them at the merch table.
John:So I know that that part of the story is independently confirmed, at least by...
John:By 2003 standards of honesty.
John:Yes.
John:Anyway.
John:Yes.
John:So Paul Allen was somebody who for a long time people...
John:here were suspicious of and by by people i mean the progressive populist left was very suspicious of paul allen because he was a new kind of it's not like wire house or my billionaire right it's not like old stuff where you know at least those people are gonna you know where they live and you know what they want right it's like the gilded age i mean all this all this what is um uh what's the name of their community what's the city called
Merlin:Kirkland is Costco, and what is Microsoft?
Merlin:Well, so Bellevue, Mercer Island.
John:Oh, Redmond.
John:And that's real close, right?
John:Yeah, real close.
John:It's all real close here.
John:But yeah, Redmond money, nobody exactly knew what to do with it.
John:And the thing about the Gateses is his parents were old money.
John:The Gateses weren't poor.
John:No kidding.
John:So my Uncle Cal and Bill Gates Sr.
John:were good pals.
John:They used to be at...
John:uncle cal's parties all the time i never saw bill gates once but bill gates senior uh many many times ashed his cigarette in my uh in my fruity pleaser as you do so there was this and paul allen was a young guy he was a young billionaire and he had this kind of tech futurist vision of seattle at a time when seattle didn't see itself that way saw itself as still a gritty port town
John:And so Paul comes out with this plan and the progressive community of which I was a member, uh, where the stranger newspaper was kind of our, our little incubator.
John:And we were all still doing cool theater and we were smoking cigarettes all night and thought the world was this and that and this and that we turned against it.
John:The entire populist left said, we don't want your stinking park, you bougie, you know, blah, blah, blah.
John:We just like, and the editorials in The Stranger and the consensus in our community.
Merlin:On the basis of taste and trust, it's not so much like displacement or environmental.
Merlin:It's just more like, we just don't want you doing this because you're not allowed to have that influence over this city.
John:Yeah, the argument was because there was no housing in that area.
John:It was just abandoned warehouses.
John:So there was no kind of like displacement or gentrification argument.
John:It was, in fact, the opposite.
John:They're gonna bring all the bridge and tunnel people in and There's gonna be a bunch of you know, like condos Along and then I swear to you.
John:This was a big argument They're gonna build this park just so they can build expensive condos around the outside.
Merlin:That's how they get you That's how they get you.
Merlin:Well, they say they're gonna make a nice park for babies and then they make condos for those for the wealthy
Merlin:Yeah.
Merlin:That's pretty typical.
John:I could imagine that happening.
John:Oh, no.
John:They just want to make Central Park West.
John:They just want to sell buildings.
John:And so this park thing is a lost leader.
John:And...
John:There was a lot, there was just a, a huge like piss on this.
John:Who do these billionaires think they are kind of, you're not going to do this to our town type of thing.
John:And there was a vote.
John:It was necessary that the people vote in order to approve or not approve of this.
John:Sure.
John:And as I got closer and closer to the vote, the entire wealthy, like the whole of the top 20% of the moneyed, connected, all of the business community, everybody.
John:came just started panicking like saying listen you don't understand what this opportunity is like really making this appeal to the city as a whole this man is prepared to build so so which part is who is it that's saying you're so so somebody is saying hey don't don't look a gift horse in the mouth this this could be really good for us who is it that's saying that
John:of the establishment okay politicians the business community the newspaper you know the mainstream so they felt like he wasn't asking anything extraordinary especially given how much he was putting into it like it's actually a pretty good gig for the city it was the the consensus of everybody there what you would call the people that had the power was that this was a
John:Once in a lifetime once in it you never see this outside of a situation where there's like some crazy lunatic Dictator in Kazakhstan who builds a city like the Turkmenistan Yeah, like that like this was now on I would be the star I would be the Starbucks mermaid
John:This neighborhood had very little tax base.
John:It contributed very little to the city.
John:There was no more light manufacturing there.
John:It was just a dead zone.
John:And so all the people that understood those things were like, you're about to turn nothing into a thing that's going to make Seattle the...
Merlin:A world-class... Some of you think, has Dave done nothing but the kind of stuff you do to prep for building, like just the cleanup stuff, like in Parks and Rec, like just get the raccoons off these few blocks.
Merlin:You're better off than you were before you started, probably.
Merlin:There's less blight, right?
John:But this was impossible for us.
John:I'm talking about myself as a member of the youth.
John:It's the coalition, right?
John:The old coalition of like...
John:Union people, the old progressivism, people that wanted... We forget how conservative...
Merlin:uh liberals can be right we didn't thousand percent it's it really it puts a unfortunately it puts a lie to those labels um i mean there's a phrase that we've started hearing i feel like in the last you know oddly enough 15 years or so whereas we used to you might say that somebody was conservative by which you meant that they tried to keep things the same and all those things but then you would hear institutionalist
Merlin:Right.
Merlin:Where you say that somebody like, you know, Mitch McConnell, he's conservative, but he's an institutionalist.
Merlin:But the idea being like there's a distinction between like what the your political sort of escape velocity is versus like how much you believe in the system.
Merlin:And there are people who are very conservative that can find common cause with people who are very progressive about just keeping the new people kind of right.
Merlin:Yeah.
John:And this was like the unions.
John:There were 25 union carpenter jobs at some shop down there.
John:And so that made it.
John:But what it really was was about, like you were saying, taste.
John:It was about it was reverse snobbery.
John:It was ultimately a desire that Seattle never change.
John:And there was no acknowledgement or understanding that these companies, because Amazon was still just like seven people in a paper bag.
John:Right.
John:And Starbucks was, you know, blowing up, but who, you know, who could even tell what that was and Microsoft.
John:And there wasn't a sense that this city where you can still get a studio apartment for $350 is in 20 years going to be utterly transformed.
John:And you cannot keep it as it is.
John:This neighborhood will not be Vespa repair shops in 20 years.
Merlin:There's this quote I first heard from Syracuse that I think about a lot.
Merlin:And he's not the source of the quote, but he's where I first heard it.
Merlin:The best time to build a tree is 30 years ago, and the second best time is today.
Merlin:Right.
Merlin:That idea of like, and again, this goes for so many infrastructure projects, which is I think how we got onto this, which is like, there's a whole bunch, I'm always talking about Disneyland in particular, like what it takes to clear this area before you even have any idea of being able to sell hats with Johnny Depp on them.
Merlin:There's so much infrastructure stuff and preparation and all that stuff that has to be done.
Merlin:And that stuff's not inexpensive.
Merlin:And once you're committed, you're kind of committed and have somebody, you know, being willing to pony up for that.
Merlin:They probably just also didn't want him to have a win.
Merlin:I bet they just didn't want him to have a win.
John:There was so much of that, Marilyn, that they just didn't want... Because that's power.
John:That's soft power.
John:...this guy to have a win.
John:And...
John:What was interesting was all that establishment like there was this real push as the vote was coming up and they saw that this wasn't gonna be it easy There was this real push like hey everybody know I don't think you understand like we have to do this and the more people said that the more
John:our reaction was you think and it really you know it really reveals how much the establishment although they often just do whatever they want in some instances they can't just do whatever they want and they were losing their minds over it and more and more the press conferences were just kind of like
John:like wealthy women in pantsuits who were like over explaining things and, and, you know, and a bunch of like, just, we just scoffed them.
John:A lot of that, you know, like people who were vice presidents of this and that, who were like, you, you know,
John:they couldn't believe you don't want to piss off the junior league well it was very junior league and they couldn't believe that there was an underground in seattle that had the authority to stop this which was you know which they saw had no downside somebody else you don't want to let have a win
Merlin:Isn't that often what it comes down to?
Merlin:I mean, in some kinds of cultural and civic trench warfare, it's, again, learning about how, God, the Iraq-Iram war went on for eight years and no borders changed.
Merlin:It's just, it's so horrible.
John:Nothing good happened at all.
Merlin:Absolutely nothing good happened.
Merlin:And a lot of bad stuff can't kind of, you know, was certainly helped along by all of those things.
Merlin:But like sometimes your goal is just to let, like when I wake up in the morning, I don't want a German in my trench.
Merlin:Like that's my job is to like keep the German out of this trench and their jobs to keep me out of their trench.
Merlin:And that's what we do for two years.
Merlin:That's what we do.
John:That's our job.
John:And so the vote came and we voted against it.
John:And it was really, it showed the power of the stranger as a, as a voice for a catalyst and this collective idea of like what Seattle was going to be.
John:The vote came, we voted against it.
John:And it was really a kind of like all or nothing situation.
John:And so all of a sudden the, and there, the, the, the disappointment of the establishment here, the number of, of junior league people in pantsuits who just shoulders slumped with this look of like incredulous rage.
John:that we had that that we had done this and a lot of exude exuberant celebration on the left like we did it man we shoved that plan right back up the park yeah now it's gonna be warehouses forever and it's gonna be like
John:I'm going to mount my one man show and I'm only going to charge $3.
Merlin:But what everybody forgot.
Merlin:One man also describes the size of the audience.
Merlin:Yeah, exactly.
John:Sean Nelson's wedding is going to be the biggest thing that ever happened.
John:What everybody on the left forgot was that Paul Allen owned 80% of the neighborhood.
John:We didn't vote on that.
John:He just bought it for pennies on the dollar, and now he owns it all.
John:And he was proposing to tear all of his buildings down and turn it into parks.
John:But there's nothing keeping him from tearing his buildings down.
John:It's America, man.
John:It's America.
John:He bought it.
John:That building's empty, and it also is like a hazard.
John:And so in the next decade, two decades, we watched Paul Allen and his enormous multi-headed Hydra wealth corporation, Vulcan.
John:That's a terrible name for you.
Merlin:That's a better name.
John:I know.
John:Vulcan.
John:went in and one by one tore down all of those Vespa repair shops and black box theaters and raccoon Havens.
John:And instead of building a giant park built one after another,
John:Five-story tall, Redmond-style tech campus buildings.
Merlin:Oh, that's kind of a bummer.
Merlin:And that's a nice area, huh?
Merlin:I mean, that's a potentially nice area.
John:It was this area right between the city and the lake.
John:Why'd they never make it into a park?
John:That would have been nice.
John:The best park in the world.
Merlin:Hey, man, it would have been so much nicer if this was a park.
Merlin:One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
John:And so and in that same 20 years Seattle went from being well Seattle like dub basically doubled in size and became one of the richest places in the world where no one can afford to live and
John:a lot of those buildings when they first went in they were part of that culture of like you needed a key card to get in the front door and then you needed a key card to get a different key card to get into the elevator and a key card to get to the bathroom and so what happened was it went from one kind of dead zone to another where it was just like well now it's just just goes from an area where you wouldn't want to be to an area where you're not allowed to be
Merlin:Not allowed to be, right?
Merlin:We don't always foresee that kind of possibility, but that's a super bummer.
John:For a while it was, because it was like, I used to be able to piss anywhere I wanted down here, because nobody could piss on any wall.
John:And now, there's no place to pee within five miles where I'm standing.
John:Well, so during my city council run,
John:when the real argument was there's no housing in the city a lot of a lot of the conversation i tried to have with people was the housing that we're missing is the housing that we in some way voted against because we didn't want it to be around this park like a lot of the displacement you're seeing in other parts of the city are the people who would be living here
John:who then went into your neighborhood bought your house tore it down and built a big fancy house that now you're super mad about right that was that conversation i had at the stranger i was i said you know that 150 story building uh that's a city block wide has the same capacity as 10 five-story buildings
John:One 50-story building has the same capacity as five, as 10 five-story buildings.
John:And Dan Savage- And has a lot more economies of scale.
John:Right.
John:Dan Savage was sitting there, you know, this was like the editorial board, and he was like, what?
John:That can't be right.
John:And I was like, yes.
John:And they all kind of looked at each other like, how can that be so?
John:One 50-story building has the same, bear with me.
John:And I kind of like, he was using my hands like, and then they stack on top of each other.
John:That's how you get a 50-story building.
John:10, five-story building.
John:What's happened now in that neighborhood is they kept building buildings
John:in it and then they started building tech campus buildings that actually had restaurants in the bottom and then they started building apartments for young tech workers
John:And now when you go down there, it's the craziest place.
John:It feels like a very rich... Sounds almost like a campus.
Merlin:It is.
Merlin:As in, I mean, we say campus to me, like a Microsoft-style place, but it's a lot of young people all working at similar sorts of jobs.
John:They're working similar jobs, they're living in similar apartments, and they're eating in these really...
John:Pretty cool restaurants.
John:A lot of restaurants that have garage doors.
John:A lot of places.
John:A set of windows.
John:Yeah, where you sit at the bar and it's like, hey, your drink comes with an oyster in it.
John:And it's like, ha, ha, ha, yeah.
John:I make $350,000 a year and I'm 28 years old.
John:And it's rad, in a way, because it's... They're probably pretty happy.
Merlin:I don't know if they're happy, but I bet they're doing better than some people.
Merlin:Well, because it's also very diverse, right?
Merlin:It's crazy here now.
Merlin:I mean, because of... Unfortunately, because of the AI boom, such as it is, is bringing... It's great that people are coming back to town, but there's now yet another housing crisis going on, and people are being priced out, and now we're chock-a-block with articles about how...
Merlin:This, you know, this Chinese computer savant lives in an SRO in the Tenderloin because there's nothing else available.
Merlin:And it's like, well, yeah, I mean, my house isn't available.
Merlin:Sorry.
Merlin:I've been here for 25 years and that's how old you are.
John:I mean, I have no idea actually what happens in this neighborhood.
John:I was down there one time and somebody said, oh, are you here for the party?
John:I was eating oysters off of a hooker's ass or whatever it was that I was down there to do.
John:And so they were like, are you here for the party?
John:And I was like, what party?
John:And they were like, oh, the party at the...
John:at loft 24 and i was like what's loft 24 and they were like oh oh sorry i was like well now wait a minute that sounds like a sex thing you don't get to know oh sorry me and they were like we'll see over there and literally it's in some you know one of these like it all feels like a
John:You know, the Los Angeles of blade runner suggested that there was once upon a time, an, a futuristic Los Angeles that was better that then fell apart.
John:You know, the star Wars universe where it's like, this was all nice at one point.
John:Can I tell you what I always think of?
Merlin:It's really going to sound weird.
Merlin:But you know what I always think of is... And maybe this is just... You don't get to pick your memories, right?
Merlin:But I think about... There's this thing that started happening in the early... Do you mind real quick?
Merlin:Not at all.
Merlin:I don't know if you had this where you were.
Merlin:But in the early to mid-80s, I guess you were probably in Alaska.
Merlin:But in Florida, there was a lot of growth.
John:Going down to Florida.
Merlin:Going down to Florida.
Merlin:There's a lot of...
Merlin:We don't do enough butthole surfers content on this show.
Merlin:You know, there's more to butthole surfers than being enjoyed by Kurt Cobain.
Merlin:Anyway.
Merlin:Oh, here's the thing.
Merlin:A lot of growth and a lot of retail growth.
Merlin:And it was the beginning of this era where, like, not to spoil it, but, like, there would just be so many strip malls built in a strip mall, a strip mall, a strip mall.
Merlin:But there was just this style, this emergent, inexpensive style in the early 80s that really feels of a piece with certain kinds of, if not postmodernism, at least kind of like inexpensive modernism.
Merlin:Like the modernism of the 60s in Tallahassee is weird because you can always, I always feel like, and you know more about this stuff than I do.
Merlin:It's my feeling you learn a lot about a town by like,
Merlin:Like, you always say, like, you know, is it near a river?
Merlin:Is it near in a pass?
Merlin:But also, like, when did the money come to this town?
Merlin:And, like, you can see that, like, I feel like a lot of, like, probably Johnson-era money, like, went into Tallahassee and turned it into this series of, like, dozens and dozens of weird...
Merlin:kind of brutalist monoliths.
Merlin:And you're like, oh, well, they got a bunch of their money.
Merlin:And you're like, oh, well, you know, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Merlin:They made that a fortress because they got that money in the 60s.
Merlin:You know, et cetera, et cetera.
Merlin:And like, I feel like you bear the scars of that.
Merlin:And then sometimes, like in Florida, a bunch of those places got built, and it was all about awnings, and it was all about solaria, or sunrooms.
Merlin:So they built a new racks room.
Merlin:Racks!
Merlin:Oh, I miss racks!
Merlin:There's a new racks, and that racks had a fucking solarium on it.
Merlin:The steakhouse where I worked, when the steakhouse where I worked got redone in 1984, they made a little, not a solarium, but you know, we don't want to make a solarium.
Merlin:It's almost like turning part of your dining room into looking like a greenhouse.
Merlin:It's a little greenhouse.
Merlin:It's got brass railings.
Merlin:But do you remember?
Merlin:Yeah, solariums.
Merlin:And do you remember...
Merlin:I don't know if you had this, but fucking all of these places with inexpensive ornamentation that often included things like awnings, all of that shit looked so nice for three months and then looked like shit for 40 years.
Merlin:The lifetime of those things greatly exceeded when it looked modern and interesting.
Merlin:And this is true for, I mean, it's not just brutalism.
Merlin:Brutalism now is, we're talking 60, 70 years ago with that stuff.
Merlin:I mean, this is in my post high school lifetime.
Merlin:This stuff went from, you know, inexpensive to just shit.
John:Yeah, because all that glass gets covered with mold.
Merlin:Oh my God, the solaria.
Merlin:I'm being fancy here.
Merlin:But even our racks, they couldn't keep it nice.
Merlin:It all gets all runny.
Merlin:And then, and like every, and of course every fucking, it's a running joke here.
Merlin:I have a collection of photos of awnings in our neighborhood where people, it still says grand opening, but the sign is mildewed because it's been up for so long.
Merlin:Classic sunset thing to do, outer sunset thing.
Merlin:I think whoever put that banner up is definitely dead.
Merlin:But then you, I guess I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say, but when you bring in certain kinds of things that feel fresh and new and a fresh coat of paint, a new broom, however you look at it.
Merlin:But then there's not really a plan for how that stuff happens in the future.
Merlin:So now you just live with all of these one-third to two-thirds empty strip malls everywhere.
Merlin:And then in the mid-'80s, there was a mall.
Merlin:You wouldn't know this, I don't think.
Merlin:But I was in Newport Ritchie, Newport Ritchie, Port Ritchie, Bayonet Point, up to Hudson, heading up towards Spring Hill.
Merlin:There was an entire finished mall, finished, built mall.
Merlin:That was never opened as a mall.
Merlin:Never opened.
Merlin:Because they just didn't.
Merlin:You know that place downtown?
Merlin:I'm sorry.
Merlin:Now I'm just being an old man.
Merlin:But I think you might remember.
Merlin:We talked about this a year or two ago.
Merlin:There's Westfield Center, that giant, beautiful mall downtown.
Merlin:Had the Nordstroms.
Merlin:Had the Bloomingdale's.
Merlin:That's where my kid and I would go for movies and Korean barbecue every Sunday.
Merlin:And that place is currently 93% vacant.
Merlin:Oh, my God.
Merlin:93% vacant.
Merlin:When Norties went out, I think that was 100 grand of square footage, like right there.
Merlin:But it's still, and then of course, London Breed had that wonderful idea to turn it into, I guess, a soccer park.
Merlin:But anyways, it's just, you end up,
Merlin:Living with the consequences of these kinds of things way beyond when it looked fresh and new.
Merlin:I'm not sure what my point is, but I think one thing that makes people a little, at least makes me resistant in some ways is all kinds of unintended consequences about what was in your heart when you decided to build this versus like what's in the budget for the rest of your life.
John:Well, and the purpose-builtness of things like shopping centers or office spaces.
Merlin:That could not, I mean, sure, you'll see a Taco Bell turn into a dentist's office.
Merlin:We've all seen it.
Merlin:You'll see a Shakey's turn into an accounting firm or a urologist.
Merlin:But, you know, and there's, I could send you a million videos about these.
Merlin:The style of building that we have done in the age of the Strodes is not designed to be something that can be truly multi-use.
Merlin:Because of zoning, because of building, because of all kinds of reasons.
Merlin:And so when you make a giant square parking lot that has a chain restaurant in the middle, there's not a lot of other things that entire square can be.
Merlin:The square can always be a parking lot for something.
Merlin:But that thing in the middle, Chili's builds every one of their buildings from scratch.
Merlin:I think this is true of a lot of those chains.
Merlin:But in the size of that footprint on that strode, where you have that big square for, you know, Senior Frog's delicious Mexican arteria, like, what's going to go there?
Merlin:You couldn't have a Home Depot there.
Merlin:I mean, you couldn't have housing there, I guess the obvious one.
Merlin:It just doesn't work that way.
Merlin:And then you're just stuck with this, I don't know, just a future that can seem pretty depressing sometimes.
Yeah.
Merlin:Do you get stuff like that there?
John:We're seeing this in cities everywhere now with the collapse of the commercial real estate market.
John:Your Salesforce Tower, which I guess is also teetering or whatever.
Merlin:We've got several things here that teeter because this is a city based on faith.
John:But all those buildings were built with the idea that there would be one bathroom on the floor.
Merlin:When we were at the protest, I mean, sometimes it was really hard to see where we were because there were a lot of people.
Merlin:A lot of people.
Merlin:And also, I have to admit, since I used to spend, used to work downtown, like so much has changed.
Merlin:And the entire time, I guess, you know, first of all, now also there's no driving on market at all anymore, which I think is awesome.
Merlin:Hmm.
Merlin:But anyway, it's all closed off for the parade or the protest or whatever.
Merlin:But I'm like, wait, so that was Walgreens, which means that giant Walgreens is gone.
Merlin:And that means that GNC is gone.
Merlin:And that means if I'm triangulating right across the street, that used to be, and it's just fucking on Market Street, just empty.
Merlin:Yeah.
Merlin:Part of the city.
Merlin:It started with, there was a wonderful bookstore.
Merlin:What about our Subway?
Merlin:Is our Subway still there?
John:Well, you know, Bart is now.
John:No, not Bart.
John:Our Subway.
John:Our Subway sandwich restaurant.
John:Oh, the one over the sewer.
John:The one over the sewer where they serve it on a trash can lid.
Merlin:Not a problem.
Merlin:Across from the American Museum of International Art.
Merlin:Yes, exactly.
Merlin:I ate everybody's sub over a sewer that night.
Merlin:You remember that?
Merlin:Yeah, we went and we got one of every kind of sub.
Merlin:We've only got one Popeyes, I think, left in town.
Merlin:I was noticing as I look at DoorDash.
Merlin:Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I think about food for the day and I'll just like look at DoorDash for three or four hours and not buy anything.
Merlin:But I've noticed a lot of our shame industries, as always, are in the southern part of town.
Merlin:Kind of sort of like Ryan, but a little south here like Daily City and Coleman and stuff like that.
Merlin:A lot of the shame chains.
Merlin:Your shame industries.
Merlin:Well, we have a lot of laws about food.
Merlin:I mean, I can't cite the law, but there's a lot of laws about chains.
Merlin:Oh, you can't put an Arby's in the center of San Francisco.
Merlin:It was a huge deal when they built a crate and barrel in the Castro, which is now gone.
Merlin:Anyway, but like the Ikea, our Ikea rules.
Merlin:We have such a good Ikea now.
Merlin:But anyhow, but stuff like, you know, you don't see...
Merlin:Like, I used to see, I don't see color.
Merlin:I see golden arches, and that's it.
Merlin:Gold.
Merlin:No, but you just, you don't get chains so much here.
Merlin:You're not allowed to have, it's like there's all kinds of cockamamie rules about zoning and all that stuff.
Merlin:But, like, I've noticed that, like, Ocean View, Geneva, that area sort of east and a little...
Merlin:A little bit south of here, but like, you think of where the mall is and like east of there, all the way out toward Mission, and like all the sort of Dan White parts of town out there.
Merlin:It's kind of gotten stuck over there, and then we get to live in this little bubble over here where everything is the way somebody wants it.
Merlin:for better or for worse.
Merlin:So a lot of that zoning stays the same.
Merlin:It's not just my neighborhood that has a ton of empty storefronts and yet the same insane zoning.
Merlin:Like fucking downtown, it's crazy how much stuff is just open.
John:Yeah, well, it's going to be really interesting.
John:Did we finish up with Paul Allen?
John:I feel like I cut you off with your Paul Allen story.
John:It's going to be really interesting to see what happens to that neighborhood over time because Amazon decided to double, triple down on being a place where people had to go to work.
John:Oh, yes, yes, yes.
John:And they were going to make that happen in that neighborhood.
John:So Amazon followed on the heels of Paul Allen and built not right in that neighborhood, but in the neighborhood that would have been the neighborhood that was really nice because it was right next to the park.
Merlin:I think it's called Speculative Heights.
John:In Speculative Heights, Jeff Bezos was like... Is that funny?
John:That seems kind of funny.
John:Okay.
John:Jeff Bezos was like, you know, there are like nine old motels and Cadillac dealerships here that are all defunct.
John:I'm tearing them all down, and I'm going to build my own futuristic city with the spheres and these towers that also could never be housing in a million years, but I bet you they all have...
John:L5.
John:Right, right, right.
Merlin:And it's at least partly that, right.
Merlin:It's at least partly that it's not zoned for that, but it's also partly that like, you know, they wanted, did you ever see the giant building they wanted to build down by Sloat?
Merlin:Like down, sorry, you wouldn't know this, but like, you know where I live and you look out West, you look toward Fort Funston and there's this place called the Sloat Garden Center that everybody loves.
Merlin:It's where we buy our Christmas tree.
Merlin:And that's right down kind of by the water.
Merlin:There used to be like a motel there.
Merlin:They were going to build, like they were trying, somebody was trying to build what you described, like a 50 story building there.
Merlin:And of course there was this 10%, 20% part of me that's like, oh gosh, I hope this doesn't happen because that would be really weird.
Merlin:But also there's just like the bigger part of me was like, there's just no way.
Merlin:There's no infrastructure for that.
Merlin:The El Teraval cannot, will not be able to accommodate that many thousands of people.
Merlin:And where are they going to park?
Merlin:And if they park underground, how are you going to do that at the literal beach?
Merlin:I think we're already on sand.
John:There's no ground.
Merlin:Where are you going to put all of that?
Merlin:And so when I say stuff like it's not its own for that, I also mean that like it's, well, like you, like one of those things you taught me, like look at where, look at the towns that are on rivers.
Merlin:Look at where you can put a railroad.
Merlin:Look at where, like you don't realize how insane, amazing airports are until you've had to fly in or out of like, oh shit, what's the one, Palm Springs.
Merlin:You ever have to fly into one of those airports where you got to do like the George Bush
Merlin:Incline where you've got to like you've got to go like over a rock and straight down or off the runway and like straight up to get around things.
Merlin:It's a wonder how any of those places work.
Merlin:They weren't made for that.
Merlin:And you know what, dude, if you don't have if your place in Riyadh doesn't have any beach.
Merlin:there's going to be some costly environment, costly and environmentally painful ways to make beach where there is no beach.
Merlin:It would have been easier to make the nice neighborhood in a place that kind of wanted to be a nice neighborhood or to make this place near the BART station or whatever.
Merlin:And so are there, are there second, third, fifth feelings about whether the Paul Allen plan should have been followed?
John:Do you think?
John:Nobody I know that's my age that was against the Paul Allen park.
John:Now.
John:Stands on that ground.
John:We're all so sad and it's the rare real that's the rare occasion because one of the things about about About my community is that it does not ever like to Reflect on our mistakes and by my community.
John:I mean the progressive everybody's got their reasons.
John:It's very hard your reasons
John:It's very hard to look at contemporary problems and want to tie any of it to choices we made 20 years ago.
Merlin:Partly because you have to admit you might have been wrong or that you might have reasoned poorly or you have to say like maybe I just wasn't right and people don't like doing that.
John:Ben the real challenge is if you could if you could reflect and say, huh, we kind of screwed that up It would actually really help you not do it again and again and again.
John:Absolutely, but that's not a state of mind not a one-time event and what we like to do is Deny that we ever made any mistakes in the past and then keep making the exact mistake over and over and over But in this case if you talk to anybody my age and you bring up and it was gonna be called the commons
John:The Commons.
John:Which is a very much, like, Redmond-style name for a thing.
John:That was probably part of why we hated it.
John:It was like, The Commons?
John:What is this, like, a housing development?
John:Fuck you.
John:It would surely not be called The Commons now.
John:We would have turned it into something else.
John:It would have had some more historical context, probably.
Merlin:Not named after a great man, but it would be probably named after something, you know, that was reflective of...
Merlin:There's a phrase, there's a thing that I learned in, I think it was in environmental, I forget where I first heard this, might have been in an environmental class in new college, but there was a rule of thumb people used to say, whatever, at least where I lived, central Florida, you know, west coast, sun coast of Florida, whatever, whatever,
Merlin:Whatever the subdivision or development was called, it was named after whatever was destroyed to put it there.
Merlin:So like you say, oh, I'm running deer lakes three and four.
Merlin:You know, I'm an Indian piece too, you know, or whatever.
Merlin:But like, no, we had to kill a bunch of deer in lakes.
John:He tried to build it.
John:or he did he built a trolley down there to serve his neighborhood it's it's not connected to any other public transit in the city it just goes from one end of what would have been his beautiful park down to the other end of his beautiful park and it is a trolley and they christened it the south lake union trolley and immediately everybody at the stranger was like you mean the slut
John:And they all made t-shirts that said the slut.
John:Oh, no, Paul Allen, you should have talked to somebody about that.
John:And then they had to scramble and say, no, no, no, no, no.
John:It was never called the South Lake Union Trolley.
John:It was called the Trolley of South Lake Union or something like that.
John:I don't know what it's called now, but everybody still calls it the slut.
Merlin:It's called the West Historical Organization Railroad Enterprise.
Merlin:Oh shit, that spells horror and fucked up again.
John:So right now in that neighborhood that would have been the Commons is now a neighborhood entirely occupied by Jeff Bezos' vision of the future.
John:Oh dear.
John:Everybody is 28 years old.
John:They're all multicultural, multi-ethnic.
John:Everybody, it's very liberal area.
John:Everybody is super progressive and cool and rad and their hair is all really cool.
John:And they all work in tech and probably now more and more in AI all the time.
John:And they have incredible taste.
John:All of the little stores and restaurants are so perfect and great.
John:And it's just like being down there just.
John:And I see people.
Merlin:Do tourists go there?
John:Is it a fun hangout place?
Merlin:Or is it more like.
Merlin:Because I'm imagining it being like.
Merlin:And again.
Merlin:Anything I fucking say about San Francisco is 20 years old.
Merlin:Because I don't fucking go anywhere.
Merlin:But like.
Merlin:I think about something like a place like Hayes Valley, where people would go, I'm going to go shoe shopping and get some lunch.
Merlin:Or, you know, you go to the Embarcadero for these kinds of things.
Merlin:What kind of a destination for locals and tourists is that area, or is it at all?
John:That's the problem.
John:There is no there there.
John:There's no big park in the middle of it.
John:There's no reason for anybody to go that isn't there already.
John:And so there's no store that you would get there or something.
Merlin:Maybe.
John:Well, that's the thing.
John:There's no like, Hey, that's where you get Louis Vuitton.
John:It's not like that either.
John:It's just an, it's actually a weird neighborhood for people who it's a, it's an urbanists dream in the sense that they live there, they work there, they play there.
John:But it's not, but it's kind of a walled city.
John:And you see people who are living there who have no idea.
John:They're too young to know any of this.
John:Yeah.
Merlin:And it just feels like this is their clubhouse.
Merlin:What if the city was over 100 miles long and about two blocks wide?
Merlin:Would that be appealing?
John:That's exactly what this looks like.
Merlin:Is that what you're thinking?
Merlin:You're thinking maybe because we straight, you know what they say?
Merlin:They say with batters, oh man, foul ball, what a bummer.
Merlin:It's a shame you can't straighten out that swing.
John:right so in this case what if we straighten out the commons and turn it into like a say a line that's about 100 miles long would that help at all what this feels like because all the buildings are about five or six stories tall there's no 50 story building yeah it feels like a 10 by 10 square of the line and what the line is is this times 10 000. if you just took the area that would have been the commons that is now the
John:And you just cloned it.
John:Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
John:In a straight like weird matrix line out into the desert.
John:You would have it.
John:There's your dream city.
John:There's your dream city.
John:Yeah.
John:Yeah.
John:And who do you pitch that to?
John:There's your dry white toast.
John:There's your four fried chickens.
John:There's your husband.
John:There's your husband, Kay.
John:The women.
John:How much for the little girl?
John:What?
John:I thought we were doing Blues Brothers.
Merlin:There's your husband, Kay.
Merlin:This one time, just this one time, you can ask me about my business.
Merlin:Paul Allen.
John:He was a hero.
John:He was a hero for our time.
Merlin:He was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me.
Merlin:That's right.
Merlin:Racist.
Merlin:That sucker was simple and plain motherfucking man John Wayne because I'm black and I'm proud and I'm hyped because I'm him.
Merlin:Unless my heroes don't appear on those stamps.
Merlin:You got it.
Merlin:You got it.
Merlin:Break it down.
Merlin:Yeah.
Merlin:You want me to do any other ones?
Merlin:I can also do the Humpty Dance.
Merlin:It's your chance.
Merlin:All right.
Merlin:Stop what you're doing.
Merlin:That's something I'm about to ruin.
Merlin:Anyway, et cetera, et cetera, Burger King bathrooms.
Merlin:Hey, everybody, get out there and just do what you can.
John:Yeah, get out.
Merlin:Commons.
Merlin:That was terrible.
Merlin:Make sure you vote.
Merlin:What?
Merlin:Vote for the Commons.
Merlin:Oh, vote for the Commons.
Merlin:If the Commons comes to you.
Merlin:Uh-huh.
Merlin:Oh, and then I said nothing because I'd already read the rest of the poem.
Merlin:Good night, everybody.
Merlin:Terrible ending.
Merlin:Funny show, though.