The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.
I will be there, and I invite you all to join me for a beer or two.
Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!
freaking montlake. have it in South King!
Windie–
Goldy likes it at a Gay Bar in Mountlake where he can wear his Tommy Hilfiger shorts, his Polo shirt with the collar turned up and OF COURSE his little size 4 Deck Shoes and feel at home….all while pounding down a couple Cordials!!!!
Goldy is a real FANCY BOY!!!
Cynical…er, I mean, Mr. Irrelevant – I know a good song you would like. I’ve been meaning to recommend it to you for a while, but I keep forgetting.
It’s called Feel Good Inc. by Gorillaz. Buy it on iTunes. You’d love it!
Hiccup…
MOH–
I love yankin’ Goldy’s chain dude.
I dish it out…I can take it.
With a name like Mount Olympus Hiker, I can only imagine you with your finest Patagonia garb, an ice ax, bear spray, a Swiss Army Knife, your Timberline hiking boats and of course your compass, backpack filled with dehydrated foods etc. as you sit impatiently in Seattle rush hour traffic looking for a fucking glacier to begin engulfing the Alaskan Way Viaduct!!!
Cynical @ 2:
The Montlake pub is a gay bar? I had no idea!
Do you have some reason for saying this, or do you just like the sound of the keys echoing in your study?
See you there tonight.
MOH–
Do you drive a Subaru…or a beater Volvo??
jsa–
If you are going to the Mountlake Ale House….then I guess it is a Gay Bar.
Cynical,
Outing me now! I thought after that tryst we had together you promised it would be our little secret.
FWIW, Cynical is a good bottom. Willing and obedient, just the way I like ’em.
Better get some skunk repellant if you see Mr. Cynical lurking around.
The cute fluffy bunny was in hospital last week and will be convalescing in his burrow for several weeks before hopping in to the Montlake again.
it’s actually not a gay bar. In fact until recently it was owned by Republicans.
“In fact until recently it was owned by Republicans”
Let me guess, some liberal got drunk, fell down, cracked their head the sued the former owners becuase they shoould have protected them from themselves…And were awarded the bar in the ensuing lawsuit?
@12
Sounds like the former owners hired the same legal team as Rossi.
prr @ 12:
Actually, running a bar in Seattle is generally not a big money-maker. Rents are high, competition is insane, and if you fill the house two days a week, congratulations! You’ve won! Having talked to one or two people who own sucessful bars, an owner is going to have to be on the premises 10 to 12 hours a day, and even then, you’re not going to make bank. If you expect to come in at the end of the night, collect the profits, and walk off, you will be sorely disappointed.
Republicans who lose money over and over again don’t fuss with little things like bars. Energy companies and baseball teams provide much better opportunities for financial gain while posting losses.
jsa–
You are absolutely correct about how difficult it is in Seattle to make money running a bar….to make it, you have essentially bought yourself a 10-12 hour per day job. If you aren’t there all the time, you will likely get ripped off….even if you have the dough to invest in sophisticated inventory control and accounting systems.
But jsa, you conveniently failed to disclose that “the rents are high” because of the LEFTIST PINHEAD factor….you know, costly regulations, fees & licenses, Health Dept. and other bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo to “PROTECT THE PUBLIC” from some little guy trying to make a living selling beer and drinks!!!
Oh, you neglected to also discuss your prune-faced Governor’s “Sin Tax” increase on liquor and smokes. That has really helped the bars too!!!
Ah yes, the LEFTIST PINHEAD factor.
That’s why I get so much for rent! It has nothing to do with the fact that people keep lining up to rent places when I put up FOR RENT signs.
It’s the LEFTIST PINHEAD factor!
Tell me how the LEFTIST PINHEAD factor is forcing you to jack your rents to the sky, and how you’re crying to the bank over it.
jsa–
YIKES…I hit another “sore spot” with you.
The LEFTIST PINHEAD factor includes permit fee, inspection fee , real estate tax, sales tax, environmental regualation cost, mitigation fee, impact fee, Critical Areas Ordinance impact on supply of available land INCREASE INCREASE INCREASE INCREASE….all by the KingCo and Seattle LEFTIST PINHEADS!!!
jsa–you are not so stupid that you fail to understand that as the cost of construction goes up, the cost of doing business goes up, the supply of available land goes down…..THAT RENTS GO UP???? Economics 101 Supply & Demand
Economics 101–Landlords pass on cost increases to tenants.
WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The LEFTIST PINHEAD factor is real and stiflingly ALIVE in Seattle and KingCo. We folks who are always RIGHT can only hope that the massive traffic burden factors of excessive carbon monoxide & high stress will eventually result in a harvesting of excessive LEFTIST PINHEADS….of which there are tens of thousands!!!
Look at it this way jsa…the Alaska Way Viaduct is to us in the RIGHT akin to what a “Buffalo Jump” was to the Indians in the Old West days. We can only hope enough of you LEFTIST PINHEADS leap off the Buffalo Jump!
jsa@15:
other bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo to “PROTECT THE PUBLIC†from some little guy trying to make a living selling beer and drinks!!!
Right – lobbied for by the big guys who want to lock out competition!
Montlake owned by a repub; nah, maybe Jilly’s long ago, not this place (was a weekly frequenter there, despite the reds in the neighborhood and in the bar.
Mr. Irrelevant:
No really, I do recommend the song to you…and it is a real song, dude. Find out for yourself:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillaz
Actually, Irrelevant, I do hike mountains…hence my nickname. Most particularly Mount Olympus. It’s my favorite. I do have a Swiss Army knife but I use it mostly for cooking. And I use GoreTex/REI equipment for hiking. No bear spray. I use a bear bag where necessary though. Depends on the location.
Oh and Irrelevant…I drive a Honda Civic hybrid.
A beer costs more at the Montlake Pub and the owner is losing money because of the CAO? Now I know for sure Mr. Cynical is insane. I wonder if maybe the reason it’s gotten so tough to make money in the tavern business is because the generations that used to frequent bars are dying off and the industry doesn’t have as big a customer base anymore? I don’t think rents were ever cheap in Seattle or anywhere else.
It was good seeing folks, and putting some faces to the names, esp. Goldy.
RR: I think several things are happening together. The generation that had a highball after work is gone, true. At the same time it’s a LOT easier to get a liquor license in Washington State than it used to be, so there are a lot more places trying to draw people in. (If you don’t believe this, go get a microfiche of the Seattle Weekly circa 1980 or so and see how many venues there were on the “what’s going on” calendar at the time).
Rents? Well, I can tell you rent has spiraled dramatically since I got my first apartment here way back when. Yes, we also all get paid a lot more than we did back in the day. I think the ratio of rent:take-home pay has been trending down (i.e. people pay larger shares of their income on rent for the same space), but proving that would require research and stuff.
I have never rented commercial space, so what I have to say about that is largely anecdotal. A lot of businesses, especially high-inventory or low-volume retailers have left Seattle simply because it is too expensive to keep shop here anymore. Remember all those funky shops up on Capitol Hill? Gone. Seattle Building Salvage put a big sign up on their (long departed) shop in the Regrade saying “Yes we are moving because of the rent”.
There’s not a lot you can do about rent. You can do rent control, and that’s fine for trying to keep working families in your neighborhood. Rent control does not apply to for-profit businesses.
Now Cynical has an agenda to push, and that is that Washington businesses are overregulated. If only all this LEFTIST PINHEAD regulation was whacked away, we’d all be fabulously prosperous like those bastions of deregulation Nigeria, or the Philippines, or Russia or what have you.
(Always keep your eye on the ball kids. “The government here is regulating businesses to death!” Ask for a case study of where it’s being done right. It doesn’t exist! The reason? Deregulation does not lead to mass prosperity. Your best case is Hongkong, and if that’s the best case, I’ll stay here thanks).
jsa@22–
RENT CONTROL you say???
Are you out of your fucking mind???
That is a rhetorical question…obviously you are.
More Mammouth Government is jsa’s perspective…
Folks like jsa think they can successfully tinker with the marketplace over & over again with more & more government control and somehow that’s a good thing.
I disrespectfully disagree!
Cynical,
Relax. Take your meds. I’m not even a big fan of rent control. I am just saying it is a tool that can be used if market rate spirals out of reach. Rent control in the traditional sense also has problems. You understand those problems. I understand them.
My main point is that you don’t talk about the cost of real estate here because 1) I think it conflicts with your personal interests, and more importantly 2) Other than shooting people to reduce the supply, and other similarly destructive methods, there isn’t much you can do about the value of real estate.
On the other hand, you can gripe all day about how horridly overregulated businesses are in Washington State. I just don’t see it. What is the yearly cost of regulation to a business? I can count ceiling tiles and tell you to the penny what the cost of rent is. Moreover, we were originally talking about bars. I hear bar owners talk about the cost of rent (a lot), I hear complaints about the liquor board’s capricious enforcement, but that usually doesn’t affect the bottom line too much.
Nobody has talked to me about being bound in red tape. I wonder if it’s because the LEFTIST PINHEAD mafia has bullied them into silence, or because it’s a problem that doesn’t exist?
Hey Guys!
Here’s more fun with those crazy Kool Kompassionate Konservatives!
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Bush has lost interest in the relentless destruction of these black Africans because, as the June 7
Financial Times reported, “US officials say Sudan is [now] a valuable partner [with the United States] in the ‘global war on terror.’ ”
Accordingly, on June 4, Sudan’s maximum murderer, President Omar Bashir, said on state-owned television (there’s an independent channel?) that there has been “a positive change” in the American position on Darfur.
On the Sudan Tribune website, the same dispatch adds that when U.S. deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick met in Khartoum on June 3 with Sudan foreign minister Moustafa Osman Ismail, they “agreed for a Sudanese delegation to visit Washington soon to discuss bilateral relations in more detail in order to restore relations between the two countries.” (Emphasis added)
(attrib. Village Voice Nat Hentoff
July 5th, 2005 12:29 PM)
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What won’t those wacky kids think of next! Let’s stay tuned to find out.
I totally oppose rent control. This kind of market interference never works. Any form of price controls guarantees a supply-demand imbalance, and then you need rationing. Rents do not always go up. When the supply of commercial space exceeds demand, rents stabilize and even fall as landlords are forced to offer incentives to compete for tenants. The bottom line is that a property owner’s return is zero unless he has a paying tenant, and tenants can’t pay their rents unless their businesses are making money. The market forces it all into balance.
There is a lot of attention focused on rising real estate prices right now because Seattle (like the rest of the nation) is in a period of climbing real estate prices. Historically, Seattle residential real estate prices have followed a stair-step pattern: They go straight up for a year or two, then level off and stay flat for about 10 years. There are several things fueling the current hot real estate market: Low interest rates, disillusionment with stocks and other investments, growing population, and young people moving into the housing market. However, even after the price rises of the last three years, my home is worth only 50% more than I paid for it 15 years ago, which is about equal to general inflation over that time, so I hardly consider the appreciation in the value of my home to be exorbitant, even though nearly all of the appreciation has occurred in the last couple years.
Is there a real estate bubble? I think yes, because many people are buying for speculation, and are dangerously leveraged. Interest rates are artificially low and certain to rise. When the overextended people who have taken out adjustable-rate interest-only loans suddenly find themselves with much higher mortgage payments, the market will become flooded with properties offered by distressed sellers precisely at the time higher interest rates shrink the pool of buyers. Now suddenly you have an oversupply of real estate and desperate sellers who can’t fulfill their financial obligations, and prices will have to come down to move those properties. Unlike homeowners with conventional mortgages they can afford, these property owners will not be able to ride out a weak market until prices firm up. They will be forced to sell at any price they can get. In addition, real estate speculators must pay property taxes, maintenance costs, and utilities; and real estate transaction costs — buying and selling expenses — are much higher than for most other investments. How do these people with visions of quickly flipping properties for big profits think they’re going to make money? Rather quickly, the pool of buyers willing to pay ever-higher prices will dry up, and a lot of people will find themselves in the position of being the last person in, at the peak price, with properties they can’t sell except at a loss. The current real estate fervor is a recipe for a financial meltdown as millions of people who paid too much for real estate suddenly find they can’t make the payments.
R. Rabbit—
I can’t fucking believe it…for once, you make perfect sense.
This will be a bad night for me….for sure. I’ll be muttering to myself wondering what in the hell I’m going to do with all the dollars I have sitting around now that I have sold a bunch of stock a couple weeks ago and a couple of houses (no tax on the 1st $500,000 of gain on the sale of the residence Thank God!)but 15% on the rest of the long-term capital gains.
R.R.–
I too believe we will see the bubble burst in an unprecedented way but it may still be a year or two away. I’m not into over-reacting one way or another and like to AVERAGE my way out of various holdings….not just all in or all out. But the question becomes what to do with the cash. I suppose I can stagger it around in insured increments and look for banks that are offering special rates for new money also staggering the maturity dates. But that interest income is taxable when received. The muni-bond market pretty much sucks and has risk…I have a few muni-bonds but…
I think there are still some real estate gold nuggets out there…you just have to look very hard for them….hold them 1 year and hope the market is still there to get out at a profit.
I also think Mexico is a good real estate market. I bought a couple houses with 3 buddies on the Baja…some risk here too.
I’ve been self-employed for 15 years and max out my SEP-IRA contribution every year. My wife is employed and maxes out everything.
Life is tough!!
I wouldn’t put cash into long-term bonds or CDs. 1 year max. For the average joe the best return on cash right now is to pay off debt. Where else can you earn 5-6%? I’ve always liked stocks and my stock investing nest egg is up 800% over the last 15 years. Can’t say the same for my house. There’s money to be made in real IF you know what you’re doing but it takes a lot of knowledge to spot the values and avoid the pitfalls.
Wait about 3 years before you go shopping for a vacation home or 2nd home. Should be lots of good deals then.