Oracle Is Moving Its Massive Conference Out of San Francisco (barrons.com) 116
An anonymous reader writes: Oracle has a huge commitment to the Bay Area. The software giant is based in Redwood Shores, a short drive south from San Francisco. It remains one of the largest employers in Northern California. And until recently, the Golden State Warriors were playing in Oracle Arena in Oakland. Just as the naming rights to that arena expired -- and the Warriors moved across the Bay to San Francisco -- Oracle bought the naming rights to the San Francisco Giants' stadium. For more than 20 years, Oracle has held its annual OpenWorld trade show in San Francisco, as well. The 2019 edition of the event, held in the Moscone Convention Center, drew 60,000 people to the already traffic clogged city, driving hotel prices to dizzying heights. But no more. Oracle today confirmed that starting next year it's moving OpenWorld to Caesars Forum, a new 550,000 square foot conference center in Las Vegas due to open next year. CNBC reports that the San Francisco Travel Association told members via email today that the decision reflects feedback from attendee complaints about high hotel rates and "poor street conditions."
Democratic utopia hellhole gets their just deserts (Score:1, Informative)
News at 11!
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure there's more than enough water, I don't think it's a desert
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
"poor street conditions." Translation - people don't want to see or step in other peoples turds in the streets.....
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
"poor street conditions." Translation - people don't want to see or step in other peoples turds in the streets.....
Turds, needles, homeless people smearing dirt and grim on your windshield at every stop light. Blue haired fat chicks in tight leather walking the streets getting mad that people looked at them.
SF is a timebomb waiting to happen. It's always been a joke, at least since the 70's but at least back then it was relatively safe to go there. Took my family there last year to show them around where I grew up. It was like stepping into an alternate universe.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a perfect example of what happens when people pervert liberty into license.
Not really (Score:2, Insightful)
The correct way is to have universal housing (e.g. "Council Flats"). This was what was supposed to happen in the 70s when we closed down the insane asylums but the funding was slashed after Reagan got elected.
But there's another way (which sadly is what my city does), whenever the homeless and the crazies show up the cops come in, burn their stuff and drive them to city limits.
Re:Not really (Score:4, Interesting)
THIS is why cities struggle with "The Homelessness Problem". They struggle because the homeless are not all homeless for the same reasons. The main categories are:
1) People just down on their luck, who need a hand up to become productive citizens. Government and private entities should invest in these people.
2) Genuinely mentally ill people. For their own protection, many of these should be moved to some more controlled facilities.
3) People with drug/alcohol problems. Some will respond to treatment, some will not. If they want to be helped, help them. If not, not much we can do.
4) People who just want to live by their own rules. Give them a home, they won't stay there, or they'll trash it. Nothing to do with those people but move them along.
5) Out and out criminals from thieves to sexual predators, who drift and victimize anyone and anything around them. Incarcerate them.
Dealing with the last 3 groups has the ancillary (and not insignificant) benefit of reducing petty and even violent crime, much of which is committed to get money for drugs.
Only when government recognizes the issue for the multi-faceted one it is will it have a chance of "solving" it.
NIMBY (Score:1)
I think the parent doesn't read history and is unaware of the government doing EXACTLY that in the not too distant past. They called it the War on Poverty and built untold thousands of high-rise units to house the poor.
They're all being torn down now because of the hellholes of crime they nurtured.
My suggestion has always been that all the people who are so concerned about homelessness to do the right thing and open their back yards to them. But the loudest advocates are likely young renters and just bask i
Re: (Score:2)
There are lots of people in San Francisco who do just that. Whenever there's a board of supervisors approval meeting for homeless shelters, there's lots of people who show up who are happy to allow people with these conditions to live in their backyard...and a lot of folks who are opposed. It's very contentious.
Addicts who don't respond to treatment (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's clear you've never studied psychology.
You should leave it to the professionals, because you're not very good at it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Homelessness is not caused by lack of affordable housing. You cannot force insane people to enter into care anymore. Thus you have insane people running around. The others are just drug addicts and other losers who just need to be arrested for vagrancy.
I never said it was (Score:2, Interesting)
Nor do you have to force them into treatment. Just give them a place to stay. This includes drug addicts. Decriminalize addiction, treat it as a medical condition and have government funded sites for addicts to get and use the hard stuff (heroine, crack, meth, etc) with treatment _options_ immediately available when they come down from their high.
All of this has been shown to be cheaper than our current system. There's
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Because the only thing cheaper is death camps, which I don't think you really have the stomach for.
Let me google that for you [lmgtfy.com]
Nobody shits on the street for fun, these people are mentally ill. You can throw them in jail but they're never going to sober up. So if you want to solve the problem you're choices are brutality or humanity. Pick one, or
That should've read "A or B less than C" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
"Death camp" implies me actively killing somebody, which is utter bullshit. Live and let live is the cheap and simple alternative, which does not tramp on anybody's rights. In a free country people choose their lifestyle — and are, of course, responsible for their choices.
Yes, you Google it and link to whatever you think best supports your argument. That's how debates work. Stil
Re: (Score:2)
b. I just did, do some reading. If you can't be bothered then you're beyond hope, and the people reading your comments can see that.
c. No, it doesn't.
d. You're not proposing anything, you picked the default choice, do nothing. Eventually you'll turn to brutality, and eventually that brutality will be turned on YOU.
e. Yes, we have a ruling class. It's about time you stop pretending we don't. Uncomfortable truths are still re
Re: (Score:1)
"Not immediately" we are all dead. Let's define terms, then — what's your definition of a death camp? How about this [lexico.com]:
I propose nothing of the kind... You claim, that that's the only alternative to your proposals — a fallacy of limited choice.
No, you didn'
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody shits on the street for fun, these people are mentally ill.
To be fair, some of them just have to take a shit, and can't find someplace to do it legally in time to otherwise avoid shitting themselves. It's often hard to find a place to shit without buying something these days.
Re: (Score:2)
Like a lot of people you don't seem to understand how death camps work. They don't start out as death camps. They start out as work camps. Then people complain about the cost of them, so you cut the food rations until people start losing weight. Eventually the prisoners are too weak to work, and people are still complaining about the cost, so you shove the prisoners into ovens. That's how death camps work.We all work until we can't work anymore
That's not how the Nazi camps worked - they started as prisons, then became work camps when Himmler decided he had a huge money-making pool of slave labour. The deaths happened because of baked-in SS viciousness which then accelerated to targeted and specific liquidation of various racial and identifiable groups such as Jews, Gypsies, the disabled etc. The whole Nazi camp story was designed from day one to be a vicious and violent environment with approval odf extra-judicial killings.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
We already have enough empty apartments to house everybody
Lets take the empty apartments and home away from those who own them and give them to homeless. That will do wonders for the economy.
The correct way is to have universal housing
lets build lots of low income to free sub standard housing. That will push the home investments of current home owners to all new heights! Jack who has a 1 mil mortgage on his home would love it if the cost of housing went down to 300k.
Re: (Score:3)
Cabrini Greens worked out great!
It was working fine until the funding got pulled (Score:2)
They got as far as building the houses and bringing the people and then Reagan got elected and pulled all the funding for the jobs programs. Then
"when the left was in charge" (Score:2)
Which is, surprise, surprise, ongoing.
Cite a city with "projects" that has NOT been in the control of "the left" continuously since the 1970s started. Some, it goes back decades further.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Cabrini Green [wikipedia.org] was a sh*thole long before Reagan. Reagan took office in 1981. CG had fallen into disrepair, dysfunction, and high crime by the early 1970s. Good Times [wikipedia.org], a TV show about Cabrini Green, and the crime and dysfunction, ran from 1974 to 1979.
Concentrating poor people in one place is bad policy. A better policy is rent vouchers, which allow people to make their own housing choices, and live close to jobs and better schools.
Like I said we did the first half (Score:2)
Vouchers are pointless when they're NO WORK. The reason we were bringing them to cities was to educate and employ them. Had we kept doing the social programs and trade policy to do that instead of sending all the jobs overseas because we'd rather vote for pro-gun anti-abortion GOP clowns or for "centrists" Dems they'd have been fine.
You got sold out,
Re: (Score:2)
Cabrini Greens was a massive failure and a national shame in the mid-70's - when Reagan was still the governor of California.
Re: (Score:1)
You overstate the willingness of some large portion of the homeless population to be housed.
A good chunk are the insane we let out of the insane asylum or no longer commit to insane asylums we no longer have. Mental health in the US just about doesn't exist.
Another good chunk are people that just won't cooperate. You can't have public housing without rules. The rules are usually along the lines of don't do drug, don't wreck shit, don't engage in criminal behavior (prostitution, fencing stolen goods, gan
A National Problem (Score:2)
I can tell from accents, clothing, and mannerisms that many "street people" in CA are from other states. Better weather is probably a lot of the reason. After all, if you are homeless, bad weather affects you dearly.
But right-wing pundits often imply all the homeless are "caused by the socialist policies of California". But this is a national problem, not a local one. Homeless from red states simply end up here. And, many socialist leaning democracies have found better solutions than what the USA has done (
Re: (Score:3)
San Francisco just has to build housing for the homeless.
[Mmmmany regulations and NIMBY lawsuits and environmental studies later] It's $700,000 per unit*.
(Backs away slowly) You're on your own.
* Actual number
Re: (Score:1)
Then more will come from other states, hoping to get one. Every state needs to provide housing for their homeless.
I do agree SF needs to build more, but that alone will not solve it. National problems need national solutions.
Re: (Score:2)
San Francisco just has to build housing for the homeless.
There's actually more empty housing units in SF than there are homeless people. So what's needed is to take them away from the people who aren't using them, and give them to the people that need them.
Alternately, place a 100% tax on second (etc.) homes, and use the money to build housing for the homeless. I'm not against people having multiple homes, I'm against them having multiple homes while others live on the streets.
Re: (Score:2)
It turns out that people who own these empty units don't want to house mentally ill people or drug addicts in them.
It's not unreasonable for a elderly granparent couple with a spare "granny flat" in their backyard in the outer Sunset in San Francisco to want to refuse to let a meth addict live there.
Re: (Score:2)
It turns out that people who own these empty units don't want to house mentally ill people or drug addicts in them.
Yeah, nobody wants to help anybody.
It's not unreasonable for a elderly granparent couple with a spare "granny flat" in their backyard in the outer Sunset in San Francisco to want to refuse to let a meth addict live there.
Then let them rent it to someone who's not a meth addict, and it won't be empty. I've known lots of people who have lived five or six to a two bedroom house in SF because all the empty housing drives up rental prices.
Re: (Score:2)
Raise the property tax a lot, but give tax relief to occupied properties. This is effectively a vacancy tax but it is much easier to show space being rented out than for the city to prove it is unoccupied.
Re: A National Problem (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Taking the units off the market would not help them. They would still have to pay the property/vacancy tax.
Re: A National Problem (Score:2)
Re: A National Problem (Score:2)
They don't all end up in California. (Score:2, Interesting)
Pete Buttigieg got in a bit of a row with the folks in his home city because he was busy campaigning for president instead of setting up homeless shelters for the coming winter. They had a couple days of harsh weather earlier than usual and the community had to scramble to save lives.
What problem? (Score:1)
What is the problem? This is a free country. Some people choose to live in the street. As long as they can do that without breaking laws (such as the sanitary regulations) — what's the problem?
And those, who defecate in the streets ought to be arrested — and locked up for increasingly large periods of time, just like any other criminals.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm not sure that's universally the case. Anyhow, it's generally a health hazard for everybody. Diseases spread faster among un-sheltered people and often end up spreading to the sheltered people around them, perhaps even going national. Shelters isolate the germs of the sick.
Re: (Score:1)
Of course, it is! Why else would they be there?
An interesting theory — do you have data to back it up?
And even if true, how can a free country force people, who don't want to maintain an abode into living in one? By giving them a "free" one? They would not maintain that one either — you'll have to do it for them (at the expense of everybody else).
Re: (Score:2)
That is not working in LA [roselawgroupreporter.com], why would it work in San Francisco?
"Council Flats" — a.k.a. "housing projects" or simply "projects" — are the least-desirable areas in any town. Something is seriously wrong about able-bodied people, who remain poor in a prosperous and reasonably free country — high concentrations of such people are ugly no matter how much money you spend on them.
Whether you spend a billion or a trillion on "helping" them,
Re: (Score:2)
Also doesn't help that we have a terrible, terrible mayor in San Francisco. Breed is the worst. She's good at publicity stunts but not actually solving any problems.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not her fault that folks in SF just voted in supervisors and a D.A. that have pledged to operate directly opposed to her priorities.
Re: Not really (Score:2)
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
"These problems are easily solved and largely overblown by right wing talk shows that don't want the problem solved humanely."
You're kidding, right? California is run by and for Democrats and the left wing, it has a super-majority in every level of government and it's not possible for these scary right-wing types to get any legislation passed. It has been this way for decades and out of every state in the union California is the absolute worst for the homeless issue and the extremes that are quickly becoming the norm, with the plague being a shining example of a disease that shouldn't be present in a modern first-world nation, yet manages to crop up in Cali. Flame on everybody...
Re: (Score:2)
California is the absolute worst for the homeless issue
This is because bums from all the states in the country are moving to California, and to lesser degree to Washington and Oregon. This is an issue in California because of its permissive policies towards drug use, but CA is not the cause of this.
Somebody doesn't know what Blue Dogs are (Score:2)
Re: Not really (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I go into San Francisco reasonably frequently and I have yet to see a turd or a needle on the street. Even around the Moscone Center, I don't see turds or needles.
Have you ever been there?
The problem is vastly overblown by those who are envious of the economic success of San Francisco.
Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever been there?
I have been there and I stopped going to Apple's WWDC conferences for the last few years they had it in DC, because I did see feces and needles - right around Moscone. One block away from Moscone I saw a guy literally place his ass against a wall and take a shit, so he could rub it all over.
The problem is vastly overblown by those who are envious of the economic success of San Francisco.
And yet the "overblown" problem was apparently enough that guest complaints led Oracle to move a giant conference out of SF...
Maybe other people are just more observant than you. Or have a nose.
SF not DC (Score:2)
Huh, I didn't know Washington, DC, also had a Moscone Center.
They do not, I mistyped SF. Anyone but a complete idiot would be able to verify Apple's WWDC conference used to be held in SF and see what had happened there....
Or, (and this is more likely), you're full of shit.
I am because I choose to wait for a toilet instead of just dumping it on the street.
I have visited a lot of large cities all over the world and seen homeless all over, but what is happening in SF is a whole different level compared to pla
Re: (Score:2)
Really?? Economic success?? For the rich I suppose. Talk about offensive.
Economics is about the balance and distribution of resources. Housing is one of those. Your economy may be good with jobs but sucks when it comes to housing and living costs. You do not claim economic success when housing costs are among the highest in the country. For me it means nothing if I can't afford to live there to take advantage of your "good economy". Do not forget, when you have the government pay for something else, that mo
Re: (Score:1)
Out of the mouths of babes. Once upon a time in the 1960's through '90s Silicon Valley was the envy of the world based on the innovation and forward thinking that drove it. Hewlett and Packard, Jobs and Wozniak, Intel, Sun, Xerox Parc. Too many to name. The technical stuff that went on there was simply amazing.
Over the last 20 years it's transformed into a cesspool of megalomaniacal hucksters printing money through the private and public marketplaces via nothing but salesmanship and greed. A group that
Re: (Score:2)
I go into San Francisco reasonably frequently and I have yet to see a turd or a needle on the street.
I live in SF downtown. There are places that I avoid because of the ongoing zombie invasion. Try walking Market street from around 5-th street towards VanNess.
To be fair, there are areas not yet invaded so thoroughly that are almost nice, mostly concentrated to the west of 101.
Re: Translation (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Turds, needles, homeless people smearing dirt and grim on your windshield at every stop light.
Last time I was in SF was for the RSA conference. There were definitely a lot of homeless hanging around. We walked three blocks to a bar for one vendor event -- nice place -- but derelicts sleeping outside pressed up to the plate glass windows. Driving up into the Golden Gate avenue area yeah there were guys urinating in the gutter.
So yeah, bad. I didn't see anything as bad as some are making out but I have no reason to doubt their stories.
I live near the Tesla factory in Fremont and it is much b
It's getting worse in the Fremont too (Score:2)
I've seen a rapid increase in derelict RVs on Albrae (next to 880). It's obvious this street is shelter for people permanently living in their cars and RVs. At my son's school, the parking is lot is officially a homeless sanctuary where anyone can car camp overnight.
Re: (Score:2)
These are actually the more-functional homeless who would probably have a home in a more-sane housing market that allowed growth. Being able to maintain a functioning vehicle requires a certain amount of mental wherewithal. The folks living in those vehicles are probably working in the service industries that let the community continue to function. Fix the effective ban on new housing (i.e. the height limits, parking requirements, zoning, and lawsuits that make only the most expensive luxury housing viable)
Re: (Score:1)
Not where Oracle was (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
" people don't want to see or step in other peoples turds in the streets....."
So what you're saying is that Oracle was *forced* out.
Re: (Score:1)
More to a better city and enjoy better conditions.
Clean streets, less crime and less tax.
Sales folks (Score:1)
Yay! Oracle made SF into true Hell (Score:2)
Logic is Sound (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Logic is Sound (Score:3)
I enjoyed visiting San Francisco (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Moscone center was always in a bad neighborhood; I think the location was chosen in an attempt to improve the area but it really hasn't done it much. It's also relatively close to the Caltrain station which never managed to go all the way to Market. It has never been a touristy area either, which you sort of want even for a convention (I guarantee those people going to Vegas are going to be spending a lot of tourist money).
Surprised? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
San Francisco is it's own problem, it's essentially an urban core that has reached maximum density. Head to Santa Clara Convention Center not too far away and things are much nicer than it is around Moscone. Hotels still expensive of course, but transit is a bit easier.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not even close to maximum density. Plenty of major, successful cities in the world have more density, even other cities in the US (NYC being the other major city, but there are also numerous successful smaller municipalities with more density)! The problem is that the majority of San Francisco was frozen in amber in the early 20th century, and the rest was frozen in the late 80's. No more new housing, housing gets expensive as demand grows. It's not that fucking hard to understand.
Build shittons of hou
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
One good thing about Las Vegas for the conferences is that there are plenty of hotels and rooms can be often had cheaply on weekdays. Their prices go up only on weekends when large crowds of people from LA and other parts of country hit the place in force. The Las Vegas airport is not the biggest or a hub, but the airlines do tend to provide more direct flights there bypassing the hubs.
Re: (Score:2)
Hotels are relatively cheaper in Vegas because they know it helps make more money at the casinos.
Re: (Score:2)
Cities like Las Vegas are built for these types of events.
Arguably, all huge conventions ought to be in LV, or if they are not quite so huge, they can be in Reno instead. The only kind of convention it makes sense to have in SF would be for fog enthusiasts.
Pass a Law (Score:1)
I've been wondering about "peak BA" (Score:4, Informative)
Not just SF, but the Bay Area in general. I'm wondering if it compares to Detroit in 1960. That would have seemed like a real winner back then, but 10 years later you could see where it was headed. The topping out of the SalesForce tower might be the literal peak. You could say that when businesses leave, rents will decrease and market forces will make it attractive again. Trouble is, SF can fall a long way and still be over-priced relative to other cities. Also, once the trend sets in and gets momentum it's hard to attract tenants to a city and a region in decline. We've already had the establishment of baby Si Valleys in various places throughout the country. The BA is still a locus where a lot of VC money lives, but it's not a monopoly. The homelessness problem by itself might not push the BA over the edge, but once dynamic of "rats leaving the sinking ship" sets in, some other catalyst like "the big one" might accelerate a down trend.
Personally, I love the area for its intrinsic values of pleasant climate and attractive geography. It's just way over-priced. It could be a real steal to buy something there--but it'll have to get totally monkey-hammered first.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: Demorats for the Win! (Score:2)
Just curious. How would you solve the homeless issue there?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Make vagrancy illegal like it used to be. Force mentally ill people into treatment centers.
We did that in the 70s (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Correct. I didn't say it should be privately run.
Re: Demorats for the Win! (Score:3, Interesting)
The republicans were the ones who closed all the mental-health institutions.
Next clever idea?
Re: (Score:2)
Um, the Democrats should open them again? Why did you bring up your "team"? It makes no difference. I just answered the question on how to solve the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
errr, i didn't see any solution in your diatribe.
Re: (Score:2)
So the "need" was removed by the left
Re: (Score:2)
yes, actually. the federal mental health program was created by democrats and supported by democrats in US congress up until Reagan ended it. the California LPS bill was a republican bill signed by a republican governor.
stop trying to rewrite history.
Re: Demorats for the Win! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's a new wave of homeless that I haven't seen before, and that is from otherwise middle class people who've lost their job, got overwhelmed with medical bills, got divorced and kicked out of the house, etc. They're not mentally ill and not drug addicts. They're appearing in places where you don't normally see homeless people and they aren't out and about begging from everyone who walks past. Where I used to work there would always be several RVs parked around the block and it was obvious someone liv
Re: (Score:3)
The same way the rest of the country is solving their homeless issue: shipping them to San Francisco.
Re: Demorats for the Win! (Score:2)
Ok, you win.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Just curious. How would you solve the homeless issue there?
Stop giving them free shit. Take the ones that are legitimately mentally ill and put them in facilities where they can be cared for humanely. Take all the drug addicts and drop them in the middle of the ocean.
Re: Demorats for the Win! (Score:2)
wait, did you really just say âoestop giving them free stuffâ and âoegive them free housing and healthcareâ in the same sentence.
Next clever idea?
Re: (Score:2)
There are homeless who are not taking free stuff. They're homeless because they literally have no home other than their car, and their minimum wage isn't helping them get out of that rut or paying off their debt.
Re: (Score:2)
It's very hard because it involves coming up with cheap houses, and housing is a mess.