Honestly, that seems like it was excessive for that property even back in 1984.
VanderleunFebruary 19, 2020, 1:56 PM
Well, it was new then but since then it has been overrun by owners and renters who were not, shall I say, of the first water.
Schill McGuffinFebruary 19, 2020, 2:27 PM
That certainly doesn’t help. But just the size and postage-stamp plot would have kind of limited the value. Of course, I live in suburban Philadelphia, where that price would have probably gotten a second story and a third of an acre back then. I suspect California prices, much less Oakland’s, have been pretty out of control for a long time. The 21st century is just stretching to redefine absurdity.
BillHFebruary 19, 2020, 2:43 PM
My ignorant, knuckle-draggin’ town in the deep south demolishes stuff like that, either with owner’s consent or using public domain.
ghostsniperFebruary 19, 2020, 5:44 PM
BillH is right. That thing is not saleable and is in violation of numerous codes, several pages worth, at least. It’s up to 92k views now, at 8:30pm.
I looked the address up on the map. Holy fuck. How do people live that way? Lab rats! All clustered together like that. One breaths out so that the next can breath in and nobody gets to breath at the same time. I zoomed out, and out, and out, and no matter it was all the same – a pacific of people, stacked up like cord wood. What mental condition brings people to that point?
MissyFebruary 19, 2020, 6:56 PM
Here, in the Pennsylvania hustings, this would be considered a property “demolition by neglect” worthy. And torn down.
VanderleunFebruary 19, 2020, 8:15 PM
I know what you mean, ghost. I couple of months back I drove from Laguna to Chico up, for the most part, the coast road. But then I decided to avoid the Bay Area and its congestion by cutting back behind the mountains thrugh the far side of what used to be the town of Walnut Creek. I soon discovered that the cancerous growth of the Bay Area had metastasized over the hills surrounding the west of SF bay and flowed thickly out BEYOND Walnut Creek. A pacific of people indeed.
WillFebruary 20, 2020, 7:15 AM
I think you mean the hills East of SF Bay out towards Walnut Creek. Which used to be a nice town back 10-15 years ago but traffic and draconian parking regs have made it unliveable. I avoid it like the plague. Further east is Concord, a town of over 120,000 and the largest in the East Bay. Traffic in general in the East Bay has gotten worse every year and with BART continuing to be a disaster many are forced to commute via car. 680 is generally a parking lot during rush hour. There are a few nice places to live in the East Bay but I’m not telling…too many people already.
Sam L.February 20, 2020, 8:56 AM
Can you say “That’s INSANE”, boys and girls? Yes, I KNEW you could.
Snakepit KansasFebruary 20, 2020, 6:38 PM
Quarter million bucks would buy you a pretty nice place on a private golf course in Kansas. Closest neighbor to the west across two fairways is well over 200 yards. Architects made it so that houses on either side of my perimeter have their back decks out of view from one another, using offsets and angles. Very clever. Sunsets are so spectacular that words would not do them justice. The weather here is very nice two weeks in the spring and two weeks in the fall.
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
Lament for the Rohirrim
Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
Ferreya
Song of Myself
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Search American Digest’s Back Pages
from Canto CXV BY EZRA POUND
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Hillegas
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
![The Illustrated Desolation Row [See "Streets of Phildelphia" Below]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/slumonwater-2-150x150.jpg "The Illustrated Desolation Row [See \"Streets of Phildelphia\" Below]")
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
Gerard Van der Leun
The scientists are in terror
Comments on this entry are closed.
Honestly, that seems like it was excessive for that property even back in 1984.
Well, it was new then but since then it has been overrun by owners and renters who were not, shall I say, of the first water.
That certainly doesn’t help. But just the size and postage-stamp plot would have kind of limited the value. Of course, I live in suburban Philadelphia, where that price would have probably gotten a second story and a third of an acre back then. I suspect California prices, much less Oakland’s, have been pretty out of control for a long time. The 21st century is just stretching to redefine absurdity.
My ignorant, knuckle-draggin’ town in the deep south demolishes stuff like that, either with owner’s consent or using public domain.
BillH is right. That thing is not saleable and is in violation of numerous codes, several pages worth, at least. It’s up to 92k views now, at 8:30pm.
I looked the address up on the map. Holy fuck. How do people live that way? Lab rats! All clustered together like that. One breaths out so that the next can breath in and nobody gets to breath at the same time. I zoomed out, and out, and out, and no matter it was all the same – a pacific of people, stacked up like cord wood. What mental condition brings people to that point?
Here, in the Pennsylvania hustings, this would be considered a property “demolition by neglect” worthy. And torn down.
I know what you mean, ghost. I couple of months back I drove from Laguna to Chico up, for the most part, the coast road. But then I decided to avoid the Bay Area and its congestion by cutting back behind the mountains thrugh the far side of what used to be the town of Walnut Creek. I soon discovered that the cancerous growth of the Bay Area had metastasized over the hills surrounding the west of SF bay and flowed thickly out BEYOND Walnut Creek. A pacific of people indeed.
I think you mean the hills East of SF Bay out towards Walnut Creek. Which used to be a nice town back 10-15 years ago but traffic and draconian parking regs have made it unliveable. I avoid it like the plague. Further east is Concord, a town of over 120,000 and the largest in the East Bay. Traffic in general in the East Bay has gotten worse every year and with BART continuing to be a disaster many are forced to commute via car. 680 is generally a parking lot during rush hour. There are a few nice places to live in the East Bay but I’m not telling…too many people already.
Can you say “That’s INSANE”, boys and girls? Yes, I KNEW you could.
Quarter million bucks would buy you a pretty nice place on a private golf course in Kansas. Closest neighbor to the west across two fairways is well over 200 yards. Architects made it so that houses on either side of my perimeter have their back decks out of view from one another, using offsets and angles. Very clever. Sunsets are so spectacular that words would not do them justice. The weather here is very nice two weeks in the spring and two weeks in the fall.
Is life there as corny as Kansas in August?