shatto
10-01-2011, 05:44 PM
The Greater San Francisco Bay Area is pretty much central California, from Monterey in the south to Sacramento in the east.
Millions of people live here and there are many roads connecting the housing developments shopping and business parks in this megalopolis.
I am a courier and regularly traverse the entirety of this geography and, I observe. Businesses we used to deliver to and for are gone as are places I noticed in transit.
Here, businesses like Apple have campuses, Cisco has a campus of more than two dozen multi-story buildings and some of their competitors and suppliers are closed.
We all know about Solyndra who built a factory and immediately closed in bankruptcy. Shops in strip malls, on city streets and in neighborhoods everywhere are closed.
The old Codding Mall in Santa Rosa is remodeling and is half empty, but has the salvation of Sears, and Macy's as strong anchor tenants so they should pull through. Maybe.
As of this writing, America's GDP, the measure of how much business we are doing, is around 1%, nowhere near what is necessary for the economy to grow and thrive again.
But I see work taking place as I travel.
The rail yards at the Port of Oakland, three times that I've seen this year, have been full of stacked lumber indicating that, somewhere someone is building.
Highway 80 in the mountains has been repaved; it was worn to the foundation and was so rough it was damaging trucks as well as cars,
and there are paving projects along the rest of 80 in the Bay Area as well as most of the rest of the freeway system.
The new Bay Bridge seems to have all the parts here and installed, the final steel roadbed pieces were just lifted into place by 'Left Coast Lifter' the giant floating crane and the concrete connection to the tunnel is coming right along.
All the major hospitals have not just added-on, they have built entire buildings on their sites and there are brand-new hospitals under construction.
Housing tracts, that were 'in the pipeline' when the economy turned south are being built.
There were three cruise ships docked at San Francisco last Wednesday. There seem to be almost as many cargo ships as before.
Semi trucks help clog the Oakland freeways.
But is it just me? All the jobs seem to be union.
What kind of jobs do you see where you are?
Millions of people live here and there are many roads connecting the housing developments shopping and business parks in this megalopolis.
I am a courier and regularly traverse the entirety of this geography and, I observe. Businesses we used to deliver to and for are gone as are places I noticed in transit.
Here, businesses like Apple have campuses, Cisco has a campus of more than two dozen multi-story buildings and some of their competitors and suppliers are closed.
We all know about Solyndra who built a factory and immediately closed in bankruptcy. Shops in strip malls, on city streets and in neighborhoods everywhere are closed.
The old Codding Mall in Santa Rosa is remodeling and is half empty, but has the salvation of Sears, and Macy's as strong anchor tenants so they should pull through. Maybe.
As of this writing, America's GDP, the measure of how much business we are doing, is around 1%, nowhere near what is necessary for the economy to grow and thrive again.
But I see work taking place as I travel.
The rail yards at the Port of Oakland, three times that I've seen this year, have been full of stacked lumber indicating that, somewhere someone is building.
Highway 80 in the mountains has been repaved; it was worn to the foundation and was so rough it was damaging trucks as well as cars,
and there are paving projects along the rest of 80 in the Bay Area as well as most of the rest of the freeway system.
The new Bay Bridge seems to have all the parts here and installed, the final steel roadbed pieces were just lifted into place by 'Left Coast Lifter' the giant floating crane and the concrete connection to the tunnel is coming right along.
All the major hospitals have not just added-on, they have built entire buildings on their sites and there are brand-new hospitals under construction.
Housing tracts, that were 'in the pipeline' when the economy turned south are being built.
There were three cruise ships docked at San Francisco last Wednesday. There seem to be almost as many cargo ships as before.
Semi trucks help clog the Oakland freeways.
But is it just me? All the jobs seem to be union.
What kind of jobs do you see where you are?