Today’s update on the house hunting process…. so I have found a place that I am REALLY excited about. They’ll be taking offers next week. I have an inside shot at getting it. But I won’t.
I met the guy who will outbid me, I just know it. To make things worse he and I share a few similarities that make me squeamish, and then again we have many disimilarities that give me the heebie jeebies (as in ewwww gross!)….. and leave me asking how much of a yuppie scum am I?
Here’s the place:
It’s 2 fabulous units “in the hip Valencia corridor!” as the marketing materials put it… I went to see it again on Sunday to see the bottom unit which I hadn’t gotten a chance to see. I also stuck around to chat with the two tenants who live there (& will do so whether I get it or not*). The tenant I talked to the most seemed really really sweet and very amiable – he refurbishes wheelchairs and gives them away to people who need them. In fact, his (beautiful) unit was stuffed with wheelchairs… VERY cool.
Anyway, as we were talking, a clean cut, tall, good looking, young guy sauntered in and proceeded to chat with the tenant while I was also talking with him. A few salient comments the new guy made:
– “I just want you to know I have no interest in kicking anybody out or anything, i just want a place to live for me & my girl. The upstairs is perfect.”
– “There is going to be a bidding war on this place”
– “I just want to live here, I already own a couple of apartment buildings in town.”
– “If I’m a little slow, its because the Union Street Fair is today, so I’ve been drinking for like 24 hours straight.”
– “If you want to put in a good word with the owner for me, my offer is the one from XXXXX [his first name], XXXXX@ebay.com”
And then, the coup de gráce: after a bit more chatting, he walked out, climbed into car parked illegally in the center median, and drove off. Guess what kind of car? An SUV. A BMW SUV no less.
We’ll see what happens. But my guess is that if we really do get into a bidding war, I lose. Having your email address be just your first name at a big successful dot com suggests a lot of money, and so does the “owns some apartment buildings” bit.
I’d like to say that the sense of dislike I feel for this guy has to do with the fact that he drives an SUV. Clearly wrong (planet? what planet? self-involved much?). Or that he parks in the center median lane. Pretty wrong. Or that he’s better looking than I am. Ok, that is a lame reason to dislike someone. Or that he’s a rich Silicon-Valley-type taking over the Mission. Well, um… Some would say I’m not that different**. Sigh.
Yeah, I can see how some people would look at me as uncharitably as I look at this guy. Damn you, self-awareness! To be fair, I’m not yuppie scum, in so far as my own definition is concerned: I give a lot back to the world, both in terms of time & money, and I try really hard to look out for others as much as I do for myself. But there is a note of truth in the critique no matter what I do to mitigate it.
About a decade ago, I was trying to decide whether to stay in software engineering or go to grad school in environmental policy or public policy. I thought I “should” do the grad school thing because I wanted to do work that was about the greater good, but I wanted to stay in software engineering because I loved doing it and I liked going to work everyday (which is incredibly fortunate). I ultimately decided that I could do work for the greater good but it didn’t have to be my day job, and that in a world that seems to be rapidly becoming more “have vs. have-not”, I could possibly do more good by being a “have”.
Well, it was a good descion, but I think I will always feel the tension between those options. And here are the fruits of that ambivalence. Obviously this is the hand-wringing guilt of relatively-rich person*** on some level. And I can hear the “Boo-hoo, poor wittle rich guy”… but it is nonetheless where I’m at.
Oh well. Let’s see what happens Monday when the bids are due….
‘deep
* The tenants are protected and thus will not be moving out. Of course, even if they weren’t, imagine how many pages of guilt-abatement I’d have to write to needlessly evict someone 🙂
** There are really MANY differences from the trivial to the significant, but there is no time to enumerate them all here… And I should add that I’m obviously being prejudiced about this guy in that i know nothing about his life or the way he moves through the world… luckily his SUV keeps me with at least some justifiable disdain 🙂 & besides he already seems to know & like Cow Hollow, his natural habiat! So why invade Deepistan?
And some of you may note that I have an email address that is deep at a large Silicon Valley company, but please note, I’m like the 50,000th Apple employee (over its history), so no huge early stockholder $$$ for me….
*** Just so no one gets the wrong idea, I’m not rich by local standards – certainly nowhere close by the standards of my co-workers and friends in Silicon Valley, but I’m definitely pretty well off by the standards of my friends in SF – a.k.a. “my people”. And finally, by the global scale – which I think is the one that matters, I’m pretty seriously rich.
UPDATE See the next post for the update….
At least he didn’t park in the bike lane like some of the other folks I saw at that open house on sunday. Grrrr
I love SF architeture. Drafty as hell, but I suspect that was the point. The soffits in particular look cool.
Updates?