God did not plant the seeds of this Arcadia- Dropbox did.

When the neighborhood resents you because you're using economic power to displace them, telling them they have to leave the field because you paid money to play on it probably isn't going to make them happy.

How long have these fees to reserve the field been in place, anyway?

Dude,

http://missionlocal.org/2012/10/petitioner-fights-pay-to-play- in-mission-soccer/

provides some backstory. It looks like someone stuck some sort of deal with the city after rennovating what was an ad hoc soccer spot. It also seems like you could always rent it out, but people just never did since it was asphault.

I don't know, I can understand the frustration of the conversion of an ad hoc free space and resent the "app"ing of it all (I would guess the city needs to provide methods of reservation for more than those who own mobile devices).

But it isn't as if leagues don't regularly rent public fields all the time, and it sounds like all the guys did was use the correct muncipal methods to reserve the field; that doesn't deserve the kind of jerkiness you see here.

This is why cops exist; to taser and beat the shit out of the un-moneyed masses.

Moral of the story: should have brought more cops.

The problem here is that everyone isn't armed. Gmork, where have we failed the youth of America!

Okay, speaking as someone who grew up in a family that didn't have a lot of money and who lived in mostly poor neighborhoods, let me tell you how the long-time residents of the neighborhood are more likely to perceive this situation:

1 -The soccer field used to be a big asphalt lot. It was shitty and not as much fun to play on as a real field, but it was theirs to use any time they wanted.

2 - Suddenly, the field is fixed up with Astroturf and becomes a much better place to play. Looks like someone finally cares.

3 - Oh, wait, they only fixed up the field because rich people are moving into the neighborhood and someone wanted to find some way to make the "public" park only for people who could pay for it.

It may or may not be accurate, but that's how they most likely feel.

And the newcomers, instead of reaching out to the longtime residents, only show up to exclude them. Diplomacy is a two-way street.

No one can reserve a /hour field because there are economic classes, you're saying?

The real problem is that there's not enough field space in San Francisco, I'm sure.

Also, given the conflicts, prices and bureaucratic cronyism over sports fields in Santa Monica, CA, this is laughable.

"The real problem is that there's not enough field space in San Francisco, I'm sure."

Bingo.

Dude, my 10 friends and I have exactly ##CONTENT## between us, how are we supposed to find a place to play soccer, even with the combined economic power/empty field locating power of 11 folk?? Are you some sort of fucking mong or something? It's IMPOSSIBLE, MOTHERFUCKO!!

"...allowing individuals to rent out the park’s public soccer field on Tuesday and Thursday evenings."

“SF Pickup Soccer is an organizer which has contracted with us to utilize the site on Tuesdays from 7 to 9 p.m."

"On Thursday nights, when the field is also available for hourly rental, often no request is submitted."

Sounds like a way to allow people in the community to play at a park they don't have the time to "claim". Also sounds like its only available to rent a few hours a week, and often isn't booked. Boo Hoo.

The kids, who probably don't have all that much to begin with, are worried a thing they love and enjoy is being taken away from them and they feel powerless to prevent it.

It doesn't matter to them that the cost to reserve the field is (to many people) a small one. It doesn't matter that the guys who reserved the field followed the rules. It doesn't matter to them that those guys live in that area and pay taxes. Those are all perfectly logical and valid defenses of paying to reserve the field. The kids, though, are not operating on logic, here.

I also have to admit I'm a little bothered because it looks like this system is vulnerable to abuse. Each and every person in the group of techies can probably afford to lay out thirty bucks each. Hell, they could probably lay out way more than that. If they really wanted to be assholes, what's to stop them from coordinating their efforts and reserving the field every hour of every day for a week or two, or at least reserving the prime hours when those kids can get on the field to play?

I understand that feelings might be hurt, you aren't making any sense. Reservation systems are needed when you have a limited resource that needs to be shared.

The fact that a techie can afford 30 bucks to rent a field doesn't make any difference. Reservation systems are often setup and monitored to prevent abuse like that. What simple sign system isn't at least vunerable to this sort of thing? What alternative is there?

It wouldn't be totally crazy to think that someone might startup a league for that field that will mix across all the groups that use it.

The field can be rented two days out of seven...

GENTRIFICATION!!!!

Hey look, idiots.

You say that in jest, Mr Wildcat, but one of the most important aspects of the right to bear arms is giving the underclasses a means to directly resist oppression.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Sic soccer tyrannis?

In all honesty, I don't see they can't follow Coming Of Age Comedy rules, and play a highstakes Kids vs Programmers game for control of the field. Maybe the kid group doesn't have its requisite Tough Girl and Asian?

That would be cool, EH! They could get an older, meaner kid from Team Google Drive (which kicks the shit out of dropbox even though its google) who can donkey punch them when they're not looking (like google drive does dropbox on a constant basis).

It's not just about the field or the hour the tech guys want to use it or the thirty bucks they paid to do so.

The longtime residents are worried about being pushed out by gentrification, which is a very real possibility. The newcomers are making zero effort to overcome the hostility directed at them.

They did say "We'd love to play together, let's play together".

Also, several of those kids are obviously first generation immigrants (easy to tell since English is their second language), and while I'm all for immigration and emigration, I feel they should also be making an effort to integrate and respect the rules (even mildly shitty ones).

This could have probably worked out better, but I don't think there is one party that is obviously and clearly at fault here, unless we're talking about the people who privatized or capitalized on a public space.

How can you not see that those breaking the established AND FAIR rules are in the wrong. If you don't agree, voice your opinion to whomever you vote for or FUCK OFF.

Adam,

One of the kids said that. The programmers ignored him.

I feel like this quote basically says it all:

Programmer Bro: Who gives a shit? Who cares about the neighborhood?

The booking system is relatively new. It completely ignores old arrangements and informal institutions in favor or a quasi-privatized money-making scheme that privileges those with money. Basically those with money are able to bypass the informal institutions in place and claim a monopoly on a common good. They don't have to negotiate or accommodate. They just go to City Hall and take.

I would have some (read: any) sympathy for the programmers if they acknowledged this fact or attempted to negotiate. However, their general attitude, encapsulated in the above quote is "Fuck being a part of this community. We're going to use our money and take from those who have less." Fuck them.

The guy said he lives there and has been for a year.

What sort of purity test do you propose for people to use if they want to book the field according to a (presumably) very standard set of rules to do that?

Should we pro-rate field booking time as some fraction of years lived in the neghborhood?

Common areas, especially sports fields, are fertile grounds for equal opportunity dickery across all ages and peoples. I don't blame the brogrammers for being fairly assertive here.

"It completely ignores old arrangements and informal institutions"


I'm sure that field had a rich tapestry and history before it was GENTRIFIED!!

Yes. The kids could play there anytime they wanted without someone coming up and telling them to clear out because they wanted to use it.

Binro, you'd have better luck shooting bullets at superman.

Here's an idea for a purity test: if you want to use the fucking field, care about the fucking community and show a willingness to be a part of the neighborhood. Don't go to City Hall and get a permit to get rid of the poors. Accommodate them. There is no fucking willingness to accommodate on the programmer side. The only one to show any willingness to play together is a kid and is fucking ignored by the bros in favor of an appeal to their resources.

Asian,
You seem to be suggesting they got the permit in some sort of SUPER SECRET way. I doubt that.

Maybe they could all just agree to sign up and reserve stuff? Will make sense as the field has been revamped and (hopefully) more and more people want to use it.

How should people show their "caring about the community" level? Maybe an NFC enabled app that integrates the amount litter that has been picked, the number faux spanish greetings etc. into an aggregate score?

Here are my problems with the situation:

1. The reservation system is another shitty attempt to quasi-privatize a common good. This (1) privileges those with more money in acquiring the good and (2) completely ignores existing arrangements that may have evolved in the community.

2. The brogrammers show no acknowledgement of this or any willingness to compromise. Please don't be obtuse. There is clearly a way to engage with the community and be a part of the neighborhood and kicking a bunch of children off of a soccer field and rhetorically spitting in their eye just because you are legally in the right is not the way to do it. I emphasize again that the kids were willing to share the field and play the game with them. How great would that have been?

I get that gentrification is a sticky dilemma and this throws that into sharp relief given that it is a competition for a shared but rivalrous resource. And I get that the brogrammers were legally in the right. But being part of a community means a willingness to compromise and engage other members. *Literally* saying "Who gives a shit? Who cares about the neighborhood?" to a bunch of children because you have more money and have been quicker to embrace a relatively new change in institutions does not put you in the right morally.

But they did try and compromise.

"Hey guys, we would love to play with you..."...presumably they had booked the field so they could all play a game at the same time.

The on kid says (I see the irony here) something like "if you can show me your papers no problem". I mean he is a kid, but at some point he will learn that it is important he kinda keeps his word here. He doesn't.

So is the problem here that the dictatorial city government forced a reservation system on the unwashed residents (probably while pissing on a homeless man)...or because it costs ?


Would you have the same spergerling reaction if reservations cost nothing?

Or is it really just some anarchy bullshit about how "'The Man' cant "OWN" a field, MAN!"?

SolRo, is a lot of money, even for a soccer team, if you don't have much. This would be much less objectionable if it was free and didn't privilege those with money. It still ignores local institutions in place and is unnecessarily obtuse.

Also "sperging"? Are you 10?

What local institutions? For a public soccer field?

Are you just making shit up?



Are you one of those idiots that romanticizes everything they don't know about?

I can't help but notice you stopped talking about the most objectionable part of all this--the cost to use a common good privileging those with more money.

it's not objectionable, you hippy.

There is no cost to use it, only a cost to reserve it during a small fraction of what is otherwise completely open and free access.


and you're an idiot if you think someone is getting rich off /hr for two days out of the week...likely a lot of it goes towards maintenance.

okay, so the one being totally reasonable and not calling anyone names is a "spergerling", "idiot", and a "hippy." got it.

and no two of those terms could be used as a description of the person employing them.

got it.

Also

http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/exile-h-street/

and the editorials to which it is responding.

Tinyurl how does it work?

Hispanics?

"PRIVILEGED WHITE MALES" The tern you're looking for is "white CIS Shitlord".

Check your appropriation. It's "cis het scum".

TRIGGERED

From the child's dazed expression, I'm guessing there's nothing post-ironic about it. You still see that shit in Appalachia and Mexicania.

no no that's why it's *post*-ironic. we have beaten the irony!

You never disappoint

How much is a "standard upgrade", and what conditions apply? I spent sixty bucks on a 2 TB harddrive, which I will own from now until forever, and which I don't have to worry about being stolen by hackers, spied on by the government, or mined for data by the very company that sold it to me.

The only possible reason you, the individual, would need one terabyte worth of cloud storage is if you wanted to share your entire porn collection with the world, and even then it'd be one of the worst solutions you could think of.

Millennials are getting old, and they're realizing they didn't waste their youth partying like fuckers and being outraged over everything, as is biologically normal, so they're making up for lost time.

Sad really.

It's a diversionary tactic. The NWO is ramping up the pressure, and they use social media psy-ops to sew civil conflict and keep us from uniting against the real issues.

Let's not forget the simple reality that this happened, someone shot it, and uploaded it, and that's why it's on the internet.

It's like people who complain that the Daily Show always picks on Sarah Palin, when she's such an easy target. It's not really an editorial decision, it's because there's always new footage of Sarah Palin saying something insane.

Yeah, come on guys, everybody knows that justice is immutable, lay off on trying to improve it, would you?

anyone else notice meme's omnipresent hate-boner and obsession with millenials?

No, because every time I try and express anything negative it becomes all about SolRo's love boner for my asshole.

(That and it was a joke based upon EvilHomer constantly saying that I'm old, because I have a sense of humor about that and thought it would be fun.)

Fuck, SolRo, do more drugs, oh wait, you can't, you're OLD.

What's the difference between SolRo and Vladimir Putin?

I'm Vladimir Putin and I don't love you.

Hey-O!

See?

Even just mentioning the word 'millenials' has sent him into a frothing rage.

I hope this answers your question, Tough American Bouncer. Right hyar, my man.

What's funny is when I try and get my millenyall friends to come here, they all say about the same thing : "This site is pointless, why do you come here? Seriously, why?" They just don't get it. Of course, when I show my gen x friends the site, they all say "what a stupid faggot website." I guess the millennials are nicer people, but neither understand my SolRo Fever.

Meme and SolRo:

http://media.nbcmiami.com/images/1200*800/Grumpy-old-men.jpg

"Mr Brogrammer, sir, my friends and I are using the field right now, and would like to finish our game... um, if that's alright with you."

That shit is ALWAYS going on.

If we stopped living our daily lives until all these big complex problems so far out of our power to control are resolved, we'd never get any living done.

Touché. In that light, my near-constant self-medication seems almost empowering!

call the cops or cry really hard