^^a bus ride to and an Uber/Lyft back is a good move.

 

^if a Cincy cab even comes to get you. Pre Uber/Lyft I've been stood up by cabs in Cincy more times than I can remember.

 

Uber and Lyft are far more valuable to places like Cincy with underdeveloped cab networks than places like NYC which have more developed ones for exactly the reason you state above.

Warning, this is long and may offend anarchists and coke dealers...

 

This planned Uber headquarters is huge news in Oakland. Uptown is already getting San Francisco-ish. The truth is Oakland is a much better place for start-ups than San Francisco (ignoring anarchists and coke cartels). Quality office space is cheaper, there is heavy rail transit with BART, Oakland is central for commuters in the Bay, and it has year-round perfect weather that is almost on Santa Barbara's level. It's usually in the 70's and sunny in Downtown Oakland while SF is dealing with cold, howling winds and dense fog. It's amazing it took Oakland this long to land Uber...and I expect this will unleash a tidal wave of pent-up office demand. Oakland is one of the only major cities in North America with perfect weather (LA and San Diego being the other ones). SF is an awesome world-class city, but it is hella cold. Oakland is markedly more comfortable. Oakland should not be a refuge for mid-2000's throwback hipsters and 1960's anarchists. It should be one of America's greatest cities too.

 

And unlike San Francisco, Oakland has thousands of empty lots that could hold tens of thousands of new housing units. It could easily add 100,000 people overnight and still be half the density of San Francisco. Oakland is built like Toledo and Buffalo (just more intact), not San Francisco. All population growth should be occurring here. Oakland is Detroit crossed with Beverly Hills. What's holding back Oakland is rioting and crime, period. And I've noticed something peculiar about the Bay's protests lately...

 

Nobody is protesting the Salesforce Tower. They're protesting all the housing towers around the Salesforce Tower. Nobody is protesting Google's offices. They're protesting Google busses and the employees who use them. Hell, the mayor of Oakland even said Google should move to Oakland! I agree with Libby Schaaf. Google should build a big skyscraper in Downtown Oakland so busses don't have to clog the freeways here and workers can cut down on their commutes. Everybody's quality of life declines sitting for hours in smog-choked Bay Area traffic jams that are starting to put LA to shame.

 

How can people support office towers while protesting housing towers? Where are those workers supposed to live? This in a nutshell is what's wrong with the Bay's politics. It's the same attitude in Oakland, San Francisco, the Peninsula, Berkeley...hell, just about everywhere in this metropolitan area. "We want your tax revenue, but stay the hell out of our city!"

 

Most attacks in Oakland fall on the workers themselves, not their employers. People aren't surrounding Pandora and attacking their HQ...are people going to protest Uber itself or just the thousands of workers who are going to move here? Hell, find me one Oaklander who doesn't use Uber. Uber has dramatically cut down on drunk driving on the Bay Bridge. You used to see Prius-loads of hipsters swerving across the lanes late at night. It's good for people to live where they work, regardless of their wealth. It cuts down on traffic and reduces BART congestion.

 

Housing needs to be built in Oakland for everybody regardless of their job. People want to live in the city again, and nothing can stop that demand. America is going from a suburban society to an urban society. Oakland has become one of the world's most competitive and most expensive cities because protesters have blocked housing construction at every turn while thousands of people keep moving here every year. Oakland is not Brooklyn (a place much denser, more impressive, more urban, and with better transit). Oakland is Newark with hipsters and millionaires. People that want Oakland to remain a sleepy under-developed backwater to San Francisco are ignoring the crushing urban demand occurring in Oakland. In reality, Oakland should have been the bigger, more impressive city from the start...it has the bigger port and more buildable land.

 

It was a mistake to build up San Francisco while Oakland stalled. That's why these cities are not brothers and do not support each other. St. Paul supports Minneapolis. Akron supports Cleveland. Newark supports New York. Toledo supports Detroit. Long Beach supports Los Angeles. Dayton supports Cincinnati. Providence supports Boston. Why can't Oakland and San Francisco have this same relationship? They're much closer together...Oakland and San Francisco are stronger when looking at them together.

 

San Francisco and Oakland have the same dysfunctional relationship of DC and Baltimore, but there's a big key difference. San Francisco and Oakland are just a few miles apart while being linked by a heavy rail subway. BART should have made this a stronger relationship, yet these cities act like enemies.

 

I'm sad to say it, but I expect some serious riots before this HQ opens. Uber will not be welcomed with open arms in Oakland. Nobody from San Francisco is...

 

Uber will open East Bay HQ in Oakland’s Sears building

By Carolyn Said Updated 1:42 pm, Wednesday, September 23, 2015

 

Uber has purchased Oakland’s moribund Sears building and will open an East Bay global headquarters there in 2017 after a major rehab, the company said Wednesday.

The imprimatur of the world’s most-valuable private technology company should boost Oakland’s efforts to attract more major employers and add cachet to its burgeoning

Uptown neighborhood, experts said.

 

Uber bought 1955 Broadway from developer Lane Partners, which purchased the seven-story property in late 2014 from Sears for a $24.25 million. Uber’s purchase price was not disclosed. Now known as Uptown Station, the building sits atop the 19th Street BART station.

 

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Uber-will-open-East-Bay-HQ-in-Oakland-s-Sears-6523178.php?cmpid=twitter-desktop

^ Because democratic politics should have never been allowed to restrict property rights to the extent it has been allowed to.  This is what happens when factional politics trespass on what is a much stronger right than our current constitutional takings jurisprudence has interpreted it as.  The Bay is asphyxiating itself.

I was just in Portland.  The Mayor said they are also being flooded with startups leaving SF because prices are too high. Now if only Cincinnati could get some of those people way out here...

^Judging by what I'm hearing, Uber is going to face intense riots in Oakland, and all housing construction is going to continue to be protested by people who don't want any population growth here. Oakland's protests are leading to much faster rises in rents than in SF. SF is leveling off. Rents only went up 14% last year in San Francisco. They still went up 23% in Oakland. Both cities will be even very shortly (they already are even on a pound-for-pound basis). If you compare nice, amenity-rich areas of San Francisco with transit to comparable areas of Oakland, they are almost dead even. Say, compare Rockridge to Noe Valley. Both are very solid neighborhoods (though sleepy) with similar amenities. In either place, you're going to need to win a bid war for a tiny studio that is going to end up at least $2,000-$3,000 a month. A standard two-bedroom could end up $5,000 a month. These aren't even the most expensive neighborhoods in either city, but represent a middle zone where transplants would be lucky to end up. Oakland's overall average comes down just due to ghettos with low quality housing that don't even have grocery stores. Rich kids generally don't move to those neighborhoods (although they are moving to West Oakland since that's a hot spot for Burning Man). In some respects, Oakland is even more expensive when you factor in transportation costs on BART and Uber once BART shuts down at night. I've also found a lot of Oakland restaurants to be more expensive than in San Francisco. Oakland only has high end and low end. There is no middle market in Oakland, and retail is limited due to crime and riots. Insurance rates are high and security is costly, so businesses have to pass this on to consumers. San Francisco has a lot more restaurants that own their buildings or are locked into long-term leases, which makes high quality food cheaper. SF is also a much lower crime city with limited security. There aren't nearly as many guards in grocery stores in San Francisco. Retail is extensive in SF due to tourism. You might pay slightly more in market rents to live in San Francisco, but you get a lot more in return. It's really a wash between the two cities. Today, both cities will take you to the cleaners and leave you broke.

 

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/rent-in-san-fran-oakland-sacramento-and-fresno-up-14-23-in-one-year/

 

This is why I think bigger tech companies should move to Rust Belt cities. The small ones are here because they need access to venture capital. The Bay has the kind of discretionary wealth that no other place in the world can offer. That makes it ideal to fund a start-up. Once a company gets big enough (like Uber), they can move to a cheaper environment as long as enough vital staff is on board. I think the pushback comes from people who are established in the Bay. If you have rent control for example, you obviously never want to give that up. San Francisco and Oakland reward residential seniority before anything else, and that encourages people in power positions to never give up their housing. It's hard, if not impossible, to convince someone with rent control or who owns a home to move to another city. If they like the Bay, they can never move back and get comparable housing.

 

Rust Belt cities are much cheaper all around and don't have to deal with all the rioting of Oakland. Those are their big sell points. While crime is also high in the Rust Belt, it's not as bad as Oakland. Oakland is the second most dangerous city in the country behind Detroit. The problem is the Rust belt is competing with other cheap places like Portland and Austin for tech. Portland has an excellent light rail system and extremely mild winters while Austin never gets remotely cold and has excellent nightlife.

 

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/FBI-Oakland-Dangerous-City-282469281.html

 

Uber should have moved its HQ to Cincinnati or Cleveland! I am bit shocked by the move to Oakland, but it's a smart real estate play. It is great news in Oak Town, but anybody who lives here knows there is going to be a backlash. We've got a lot of sociopaths and politically self-destructive interest groups in this city. We've seen what happens to Google busses here, and this very building had a warning tagged on it during the annual May Day riots this year. It read, "If you build it, we will burn it." Anarchists targeted this building knowing a tech company was looking to move into it.

 

http://sfist.com/2015/05/01/broken_windows_and_smashed_cars_as.php

 

http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_28027676/oakland-ac-transit-buses-detoured-around-macarthur-bart?source=infinite-up

 

These riots happen about half a dozen times a year in Downtown Oakland. Rioting lasted for weeks last November and December, and shut down BART and all freeways in Oakland. Uber is entering hostile territory, and there are nowhere near enough cops on the incredibly short-staffed police force to protect that headquarters. Oakland has half the police force of Cleveland with a larger population.

 

*Uber building an Oakland HQ should be awesome news, but due to the city's radical, destructive anti-housing politics, it's going to cause problems. It shouldn't be this way, but Oakland has proven in the past it's not friendly to tech companies or population growth. Hopefully this time will be different since this company is so big and everybody uses it.

 

**Portland and Los Angeles are where most of the Bay Area tech is moving. They are both fantastic cities with higher quality of life, and I hope to move to one of them too. Portland is still dirt cheap by West Coast standards, and while its lack of diversity is shocking, it's a really nice city with low crime and decent mass transit. I totally get why so many SFer's and Oaklanders are moving to Portland. In the United States, it has some of the nation's highest quality of life. PDX is also a cheap flight to SFO or OAK, so companies can frequently send people down for important meetings and events.

Are any SF tech companies moving to Sacramento? It's less than 2 hours, offers really cheap housing, and still has a lot of nice amenities. You would think being in the State Capitol could also be helpful.

 

It actually reminded me a lot of the Midwest when I was there. But with palm trees.

 

I think the only real downside is that the weather isn't as good. It gets much hotter in the summer and colder in the winter.

^Not if they can get to LA, Austin, or Portland, but yes, some have moved there. I think Sacramento's tech scene is still smaller than the Silicon Beach tech scene in the Venice area of Los Angeles. LA is just a lot cooler place than Sacramento. Amazingly, San Diego doesn't seem to be landing much, which boggles my mind since it's cheaper than both LA and the Bay. San Diego is often overlooked in California for unknown reasons. I've heard quality of life is very high in San Diego compared to the Bay and LA.

 

The problem in the Bay is people tend to hate on Sacramento. It's a decent city with great people, but it lacks the sex appeal of the coast. It's also pretty suburban (most of that cheap housing is not going to be downtown). Austin is not the most beautiful or urban place either, but its nightlife and cultural amenities sell it for a lot of tech workers. Austin is not the best place in the world, but it's young, fun, and has a great music scene. Sacramento needs a 6th Street type of area. If it had that, it could easily compete with Austin. Also, part of the reason Sacramento is not a target for relocation is because it's about as expensive as Portland and Austin. It doesn't have any price advantage for urban properties, and also has much higher taxes than Portland or Austin. Factoring in CA taxes, I think Sacramento is more expensive. As business environments, Portland and Austin have done a lot to poach companies from the Bay. :|

 

The Central Valley is much cheaper than Coastal California for everything, but still has to deal with the state taxes. I do think taxes are an issue in California that is being overlooked. Part of the reason Twitter set up in the Tenderloin was because San Francisco gave them big tax breaks. There was a big push in that part of the city to gentrify the area, but due to crime, no companies were moving there without tax breaks. Square, Zendesk, Spotify, and Yammer also moved in:

 

Four years ago, tech companies like Twitter entered San Francisco’s Mid-Market, an area that includes the Tenderloin and South of Market, or SoMa, neighborhoods. As an incentive, these companies were given tax breaks, which are still in effect, on payroll and stock options. As a result, thousands of wealthy and educated young workers began working, and living, in one of San Francisco’s poorest and most densely populated areas.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/technology/blending-tech-workers-and-locals-in-san-franciscos-troubled-mid-market.html?_r=0

 

Honestly, if it weren't for these tax breaks, SF may have lost a lot of its start-ups to other cities. Had the Tenderloin and Mid-Market never gentrified, San Francisco would be a very different city today. Everything changed over the past four years.

 

Amazingly, I don't think Oakland gave up anything for Uber. Oakland's new mayor, Libby Schaaf, is very convincing and has been instrumental in landing tech companies. She is an ex-cheerleader and ex-sorority girl, so she is about as far from the stereotype of Oakland as you can get. She is good at navigating Oakland's radical waters while assuring businesses they are welcome to move here. Her invitation for a Google HQ was seen as a watershed moment in the city. Libby Schaaf has been instrumental in Oakland landing new businesses. Before she became mayor, the city was landing tons of SF transplants and real estate investors, but not many new companies. The change in business in the last year has been astounding since her election. Oakland really is SOMA 2.0 now. I think Schaaf deserves most of the credit, and certainly a lot of credit for landing Uber. There are already talks of starting back up all the stalled office tower projects. Maybe Oakland can nab Lyft too! Downtown Oakland could easily double in size due to its three subway BART stations, and it still would be sleepy compared to San Francisco. Currently, only about 80,000 people work in Downtown Oakland. I think 150,000 workers is a very realistic goal. That's still less than half the size of Downtown San Francisco. SF's downtown is just gigantic for a city of only 850,000 people. Once BART was built, almost all business growth went to San Francisco. Oakland has been snubbed for decades. Oakland's downtown is undersized for an historic city of 425,000 people. It's basically Downtown Toledo or Downtown Buffalo back in the 1960's. It feels quite a bit smaller than Downtown Detroit or Downtown Cleveland. Though overall, it has a lot of similarities with those Lake Erie cities. The urban structure of Oakland is a more intact version of a Lake Erie city. The key difference is Oakland's perfect year-round weather...though I suppose that's a pretty damn big difference. When Lake Erie is frozen over and it's 20 degrees outside, Oakland will be in the 60's and sunny. That's the sell of all of coastal California.

 

*Weather in Sacramento is crappier than the Bay, but in terms of winters, it's nothing compared to the Midwest. I actually think the summer is worse with the intense heat, and then also the smog from the Bay.

Bakersfield!

Uber will change Oakland, but will Oakland change Uber?

By Joe GarofoliSeptember 23, 2015 Updated: September 23, 2015 8:31pm

 

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf called Uber’s decision to move 3,000 techies to a renovated downtown department store a “game-changer” for the city. Perhaps it will be for Uber, too. The San Francisco ride company has emerged as tech’s poster child of disruption, gleefully flouting regulation as it has crushed the taxi industry on its way to a $50 billion valuation. It is running in cities around the world — with and sometimes without the support of local governments — and is growing so fast that it has hired 60 percent of its workforce in the past few months. When Uber moves in, it won’t just supplant Pandora as Oakland’s largest tech employer; it will be the city’s largest employer that isn’t a government entity or a hospital.

 

But Oakland isn’t San Francisco — and many won’t welcome the company.

 

While some city leaders are thrilled to have a major employer in town, they’re worried that its arrival will worsen the city’s skyrocketing housing costs. Oakland is home to an entrenched protest culture and some of the nation’s strongest unions, and has a history of labor strikes. The city’s tech scene, though growing, is still a small player culturally and politically, constituting just 3.1 percent of jobs in the city.

 

CONTINUED

http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-will-change-Oakland-but-will-Oakland-change-6525373.php

^That's behind a pay wall, but being from Ohio it's unimaginable to me for people to be complaining about 3,000 jobs. Just that intro alone is enough to turn me into a frothing at the mouth conservative. These companies really should consider the Rust Belt...

Hahahahah  -  "The San Francisco ride company has emerged as tech’s poster child of disruption, gleefully flouting regulation as it has crushed the taxi industry on its way to a $50 billion valuation."

 

Those monsters!!!

Possible insurance mandate for rideshare drivers is in the works.

 

http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/ohio/2015/09/29/ohio-senate-consider-statewide-regulations-ride-sharing-companies/73020866/?csp=nbcnews

Uber throws a multi-million party in Las Vegas for its employees -- yes for the office employees from privileged backgrounds, not the "partners" out there tearing up their own vehicles and being insulted and denied tips from their many passengers from privileged backgrounds:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3256259/Luxury-hotels-night-partying-posh-clubs-endless-freebies-Uber-hosts-SECRET-Sin-City-team-building-junket-4-800-employees-world-no-drivers-please.html

If tipping was expected, it would be built into the app. It wasn't, so it isn't. Lyft offers the ability to tip in app.

If tipping was expected, it would be built into the app. It wasn't, so it isn't. Lyft offers the ability to tip in app.

 

I think this would be a reasonable addition to the app that most Uber users would acclimate to, as long as it wasn't automatic and could be delivered via the app after the fact (much like the Starbucks app allows).

Uber throws a multi-million party in Las Vegas for its employees -- yes for the office employees from privileged backgrounds, not the "partners" out there tearing up their own vehicles and being insulted and denied tips from their many passengers from privileged backgrounds:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3256259/Luxury-hotels-night-partying-posh-clubs-endless-freebies-Uber-hosts-SECRET-Sin-City-team-building-junket-4-800-employees-world-no-drivers-please.html

 

This type of thing happens in corporations all the time. Just imagine a similar scenario with Kroger instead of Uber. I'm sure that Kroger has spent of ton of money on "team building exercises" for employees in their national and regional offices, but when it comes down to the employees working in their stores, they get hired at minimum wage and only have the ability to earn a 5¢ raise every six months. (It might be better now, but that was the policy when I worked there in high school.)

 

That's also why it's funny when companies say that a $15 minimum wage would bankrupt them. No, it wouldn't. Take the money that you would've spent on 1 team building exercise for your office employees and use that to pay your low level staff better.

It wouldn't bankrupt me. I'd quit because I refuse to work 75+ hours a week. And I don't make $15 an hour yet. Working 75+ hours a week would drop my hourly wage way below $15, so I would close my business and go get one of those $15 an hour jobs.

It wouldn't bankrupt me. I'd quit because I refuse to work 75+ hours a week. And I don't make $15 an hour yet. Working 75+ hours a week would drop my hourly wage way below $15, so I would close my business and go get one of those $15 an hour jobs.

 

Absolutely... I'm not making any sort of statement about the impact of a higher minimum wage on small businesses. Just saying that most big corporations could easily afford to pay their workers more and would barely notice an impact to their bottom line.

Again, Uber was paying UberX drivers a much higher per-mile fee in 2013-2014.  In Cincinnati the minimum fare dropped from $5 to $4 but much more importantly the per-mile has dropped 40%.  So the base per-mile fare in early 2014 was approximately what a 2X surge is now.  Nobody was complaining in 2014 about fares being too high, and nobody would have complained if an optional tip had been part of the Uber app at the beginning. 

 

Because of Uber's non-stop radio ad campaign that started back in May or June, there seem to regularly be 200-400 UberX drivers on the road at any given time in Cincinnati.  By comparison, there *might* be 20 Lyft drivers.  There is nothing stopping Lyft drivers from doing suburban pickups, it's just that for those who drive for both, they inevitably get a ride request from Uber first.  About two weeks ago I did see a Lyft minivan patrolling the UC area with a year-old, heavily faded mustache.  The thing had nearly faded to white and was comically shaggy. 

Right, but 99% of Uber customers have no idea how much the drivers' income has dropped. They shouldn't be expected to tip. I bet that most people would tip $1 if the option to tip was built in.

Uber throws a multi-million party in Las Vegas for its employees -- yes for the office employees from privileged backgrounds, not the "partners" out there tearing up their own vehicles and being insulted and denied tips from their many passengers from privileged backgrounds:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3256259/Luxury-hotels-night-partying-posh-clubs-endless-freebies-Uber-hosts-SECRET-Sin-City-team-building-junket-4-800-employees-world-no-drivers-please.html

 

This party coupled with the Oakland headquarters proves Uber is a way more fiscally conservative company than just about all other start-ups in the Bay. Not only are they moving to Oakland where office space is half the price of what it is in San Francisco, but this is a low budget party by SF standards. They don't give a crap what San Franciscans think about them. You can bet they will lose some of their talent if they're asked to relocate to the Oakland office (Oakland's image is still really, really bad, and it's mostly justified). It was an extremely bold move for them to invest so much money in Oakland, and I applaud them for it. It shows smart business sense and an eye towards the future when Oakland will be a safer, less destructive city. Random violence is still the typical daily news in Oakland (particularly West Oakland and East Oakland). This unprovoked, all too common street murder happened just days after the Uber announcement:

 

Mural Painter’s Killing Reminds Oakland That Revival Can Be Slow

By LAURA M. HOLSONOCT. 3, 2015

 

OAKLAND, Calif. — As little as two years ago, Oakland seemed to have escaped its reputation as the troubled sibling of its more glamorous sister, San Francisco. Guidebooks and media outlets eagerly described the Oakland Renaissance, in which eight-course tasting menus at the Michelin-star-rated Commis restaurant attracted international jet-setters, and housewives from Marin County wheeled Peg Perego strollers alongside artists with body piercings at the popular First Friday art exhibits downtown. Just the other week, Uber, the ride-sharing service, agreed to transform one of the city’s barren department stores into a gleaming technology beacon.

 

Oakland, it appeared, had finally arrived.

 

But the death of Antonio Ramos, 27, who was gunned down before lunch on Tuesday while painting a community peace mural, was a reminder of the stubborn grit and crime that still cling to the city despite the gentrification boom that has fueled its reputation as Brooklyn by the Bay. As of Friday, the killer, who walked away from the shooting, had yet to be found.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/us/mural-painters-killing-reminds-oakland-that-revival-can-be-slow.html?_r=0

 

*This is a great article worth the read that covers tech and gentrification in the East Bay. One nice thing about New York's obsession with the Bay is that it is bringing top notch national coverage to Oakland. New York City media watches San Francisco and Oakland like a hawk, and they are keeping close tabs on tech companies like Uber. Hell, the original party article is from London, which means Oakland is going international. The global obsession with the Bay's tech scene only builds up companies like Uber and increases their valuation.

 

Uber partying in Vegas is a sign of extraordinary fiscal restraint. Not only that, but they stayed at lower level hotels like Flamingo and Bally's. Flights from SFO or OAK, which is where most of their employees live, are very cheap to McCarran. Granted, they flew out nearly 5000 people, which makes for one hell of a party (I don't think any single nightclub in Vegas can safely hold that many people), but they could have spent way more money than this. It's not like the stayed at the Cosmopolitan, Aria, Vdara, Venetian-Palazzo, Mandalay Bay-Delano, Bellagio, or Wynn-Encore. The resort casino hotels Uber picked are mid-level strip hotels. The only cheaper stuff on the strip is sometimes the MGM Grand (decent and has the excellent Hakkasan), Caesars Palace (decent and has the excellent Omnia), New York, New York (OK), Mirage (OK), SLS (OK), Monte Carlo (OK), Treasure Island (eh), Tropicana (eh), Luxor (family-oriented), Excalibur (no), plus a couple of other aging properties like the ever-creepy Circus Circus, the overly dated Rivieria, and the borderline ghetto Stratosphere. Uber avoided the top hotels. All these hotels work out deals for large bookings, and I'm guessing Paris, Flamingo, Bally's, and Planet Hollywood ended up cutting Uber a great deal.

 

Generally speaking, fraternity/sorority tech retreats like this are in super exotic locations. Budapest is one of the go-to standards for SF tech. With flights, that would be magnitudes more expensive than Vegas. Uber was not out to impress anyone with this retreat...

 

The average SFer would clutch their pearls at the thought of staying at Bally's.

 

Keep in mind this trip is a fraction of what it would cost to do a retreat in San Francisco. San Francisco hotels are by far the most expensive in the entire world, and they're tiny dumps compared to good Vegas hotels. Just like with the housing, when you compare price per square foot and amenities, SF is the most expensive place on the planet for lodging. Top Vegas hotels obliterate San Francisco hotels in terms of size, quality, and amenities.

 

San Francisco Hotels Are World’s Priciest as Rates Surge

 

San Francisco already is one of the priciest U.S. cities for apartment renters and companies seeking office space. Now the area has a new distinction: it’s the world’s most expensive place for visitors to spend the night. The average price for a San Francisco hotel room has jumped 88 percent in the past year to $397 a night, according to an index compiled by Bloomberg of the world’s top 100 financial centers. The city ranks ahead of Geneva, where rooms set travelers back $292 a night, and Milan, at $271. Chicago, with rates at $240, ties Miami as the second-costliest U.S. cities.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-30/san-francisco-hotels-are-world-s-priciest-as-rates-surge

 

Uber saved money by not flying people into San Francisco. Vegas was likely a cheap alternative to staying local. Hell, Google and Facebook have thrown parties in SF that were likely way more expensive than this retreat. I bet Vegas clubs are also cheaper to rent out than San Francisco clubs. Top Vegas clubs like Marquee, Omnia, Hakkasan, TAO, Drai's, etc. are all superior to San Francisco clubs, but they don't seem any more expensive.

 

*Where the controversy comes in is that this does literally sound like a fraternity/sorority retreat. Usually when companies go to Vegas, it's for trade shows and business development. They mix business with pleasure, and Vegas trade shows/conventions tend to have solid ROI. People from all over the world go there for business. It does sound like Uber was there just for fun.

 

Still, how does this differ from all the other start-ups in the Bay? There are thousands of people at these companies hired as "fun hackers," "social engineers," and other titles avoiding the term "party planner." A lot of San Francisco tech has turned into Greek Life for adults. These parties are precisely why these companies are such fun places to work. It's also why there is such a huge emphasis on "fit." Partying is part of start-up business...and can help with networking. I have friends pushing 30 who are exactly the same as they were at 22, yet their careers are booming. Many Americans would kill for the chance to never leave the college lifestyle while also making a ton of money. There is a reason tech has gotten so popular with Greek Life...the whole SF brogrammer thing.

 

But if Uber is moving thousands of people to Oakland, they are the aging frat star thinking about the future, not the undergrads drinking their faces off and skipping class. You can't be that reckless in Oakland or you'll get shot...

The SF Exodus Begins: Lyft Heads to Nashville and Seattle While Uber Goes to Oakland

By Carmel DeAmicis

September 30, 2015, 12:58 PM PDT

 

As Uber negotiated its purchase of the downtown Sears Building in Oakland, Lyft was planning an exodus of its own.

 

The ride-hailing company is keeping its current San Francisco headquarters but planning additional expansion out of state, shifting 20 people on its customer support team from the Bay Area to Nashville. It’s also establishing an engineering hub in Seattle instead of buying more property in the SF Bay Area at this moment.

 

Lyft’s move is part of a larger trend of growing outside the city. As real estate and talent become ever-more expensive, fast-growing companies in San Francisco are looking for new fertile territory.

 

Smaller startups like Product Hunt and Meerkat have hired part of their engineering teams abroad. Some, like Uber and Pandora, are grabbing spots in Oakland. Lyft decided the best course of action was to move some growth out of state for now, although it will continue hiring in San Francisco.

 

CONTINUED

http://recode.net/2015/09/30/the-sf-exodus-begins-lyft-heads-to-nashville-and-seattle-while-uber-goes-to-oakland/

Central time zone makes sense for customer service issues that happen early morning on the East Coast.  A west coast operation has the advantage for late-night calls from the east. 

 

And sure, Nashville is cheap compared to SF, but it is definitely *not* cheap by Midwestern standards.  Few apartments for under $1,000/mo anywhere close to DT Nashville. 

^Fair point. Nashville is overpriced for what it is and urban properties are expensive for the region it's in. I think Cincinnati and Cleveland beat it handily in basically any category. Ohio has really low state income taxes too compared to California. Do Ohio cities send reps out to recruit companies to relocate to their cities? Toledo's former mayor, Mike Bell, used to do that, and had he stayed in office longer, I think it would have paid big dividends. Kasich also brought in a Silicon Valley dude to his administration, but I'm not sure how many companies he has landed. Rust Belt cities need to aggressively go after companies in high-cost locations. They've got to change the negative perception people have of the Rust Belt. With increases in technology allowing for more remote work and secondary offices, you could keep a headquarters in San Francisco or New York, but have the bulk of your employees in Cleveland or Cincinnati. It would save an incredible amount of money, like is hinted at in that Lyft article. Say Uber pays a starting engineer in the Bay 150k base salary. That 150k salary means the Bay Area engineer still has to go through the craigslist gauntlet to find roommates or get in a bid war against hundreds of other wealthy applicants, and that engineer will likely end up in a roach-infested nightmare living situation (or a horrific 375-square-foot studio in the Tenderloin where neighbors shoot up heroin in public and defecate on the doorstep). Or they end up in a neighborhood in East or West Oakland where there are daily shootings and stabbings.

 

Offer someone in Ohio a 75k salary, and they will live like a king. They will be able to live in a choice neighborhood with nice neighbors. They can qualify for a mortgage on a Victorian and outright own their home. They may even be able to start a family if they want to. As long as there is an equity stake, there is still a good chance they become a millionaire when Uber IPO's.

 

There are a lot of companies looking to move right now, but they always seem to end up in Seattle, Portland, LA, Austin, Salt Lake, Denver, and now Nashville. Uber's Oakland decision is far from the norm. Oakland typically lands non-profits like Sierra Club, not private companies like Uber. It's a bellwether, but in a year or two, Oakland will be just as expensive as San Francisco. Uber may look to move again and lease their Oakland property to other start-ups.

 

*Nashville landing Lyft is more of a curse than a gift. Lyft probably won't survive and Uber won't buy them...this is a good video about how San Francisco's economy works:

 

Sacca: Lyft Will Not Survive

 

 

You have to have a car in Nashville because the bus system is totally horrible and there are few jobs downtown.  One of my brothers works in an office above one of the tourist bars on Broadway in DT Nashville and *skateboarded* to work from a nearby 1-bedroom condo he rented for $1200/mo. until he was evicted for getting a roommate.  Now he drives from 7-8 miles out and parks in the stadium surface lot, then walks across the river every morning.  Part of the reason Nashville gets away with such a horrible bus system is because the stadium lot is always there, waiting for your car with its bountiful $5 all-day parking. 

This was the marketing video for Uptown Station before Uber nabbed it:

 

I work in tech and live in a hip urban neighborhood and this is too much for me...

^There is no subtlety with anything in Oakland anymore haha...

 

It reminds me a lot of the Mission when it was in its last throes of hipsters. When the marketing works too well, it kills the existing culture it was trying to sell. Uptown Oakland very much feels like the Mission's scene in 2013 (Oakland skipped over the whole 2008-2012 phase, which actually did produce some fun bars and parties). Oakland is perpetually stuck at that time in the Mission right before the hipsters left...it's like 2013 on constant repeat. As an ex-San Franciscan, I feel like I live in "Groundhog Day" whenever I walk around Uptown Oakland.

 

But Uber's fraternity/sorority culture is going to change this immensely. There will be no hipsters left in Uptown Oakland by 2018. Temescal's scene could also be in rapid decline by then. Tech's push to Greek Life is going to turn everything in San Francisco and Oakland into Wrigleyville, Chicago...and hell, the A's even thought about building a stadium right next to this building on a nearby empty lot. :wink: The A's will probably move to Portland, but the bro-ification of Oakland will no doubt happen even after Oakland loses all three of its pro sports teams. I just hope more broettes move here, because the bars are all starting to get male-dominated just like in the Mission.

 

Uptown hopefully will end up as Oakland's Marina District, meaning much better gender parity and cute girls.

I saw the same thing happen to wicker park, though Chicago was in slow motion over the course of about 5 years.  Plus we never got as pretentious, Midwesterners are still fairly low key even in hip parts of Chicago. River North is the only hood that has that level of bullshit but it's more of a preppy yuppie variety

 

You have to have a car in Nashville because the bus system is totally horrible and there are few jobs downtown.  One of my brothers works in an office above one of the tourist bars on Broadway in DT Nashville and *skateboarded* to work from a nearby 1-bedroom condo he rented for $1200/mo. until he was evicted for getting a roommate.  Now he drives from 7-8 miles out and parks in the stadium surface lot, then walks across the river every morning.  Part of the reason Nashville gets away with such a horrible bus system is because the stadium lot is always there, waiting for your car with its bountiful $5 all-day parking. 

 

I think all of the employees asked to move to Nashville will take the severance package (I know I would). First off, there are no two cities that hate country music more than San Francisco and Oakland. Playing country is considered one of the most effective ways to clear a bar or end a party. Way too many people in Nashville listen to country, not to mention they smile too much and make eye contact on the street. It is a huge culture shock coming from the Bay, and I'd imagine it would be the toughest social transition imaginable for an SF tech worker. Second, the job market is too strong in the Bay for these people to not be able to find other equal gigs in SF or Oakland. Third, that roommate situation you just brought up. If any of these Lyft employees have rent control, they're never moving. You never give up rent control in San Francisco or Oakland since it sets you up for a lifetime of financial security and can even make you a millionaire. SF just nulled landlord imposed limits on how many people can live in an apartment, which means nearly all of the tech hostels, frat houses, and overcrowded Chinatown apartments just became legal:

 

S.F. supes move to make it harder to evict renters for ‘nuisances’

By Emily Green Updated 10:52 pm, Tuesday, September 22, 2015

 

Kim’s legislation would also give tenants the right to have as many roommates as allowed by the city’s building and fire codes, no matter the terms of the lease. Some supervisors were uneasy with that provision, but not enough to strip it from the package, and the overall measure passed unanimously.

 

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-supervisors-make-it-harder-to-evict-renters-6522947.php

 

No one in SF who is on a lease will ever give up their apartment again.

 

You can cram four people into a tight 2-bedroom apartment and then move to a beach in Hawaii. You can make $10,0000 a month off of those subleasers, and they'll never rat you out because then the original lease is broken, leaving them homeless or in a similar situation in Oakland. This is how you get rich in the Bay:

 

Inside San Francisco’s Newest Rentals, Bunk Beds For $1,800 A Month

September 9, 2015 11:53 PM

 

Heidi’s moving into her new digs. KPIX 5 asked her to go into a building in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District undercover to get an unbiased taste of a new kind of rental: It’s a bunkbed that she’s sharing with a stranger in a house with 30 other people.

 

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/09/09/san-francisco-mission-district-rentals-bunkbeds-vinyasa-homes-project/

 

Whoever owns that house is making $54,000 a month off of those subleasers. That's more than the yearly median income in the United States!

 

Any Lyft employee with a rent-controlled lease was just given a lifetime of financial security by the new SF roommate legislation. Nashville is not a sell to anyone in the Bay except for those who do not have rent control, are not master tenants, or do not own homes. Nashville does not have rent control, and while it's dirt cheap compared to the Bay, the culture shock is too great. Lyft should have picked Austin if it wanted a city with better live music than the Bay.

 

Lyft will be hiring new Nashville people for these Nashville positions.

 

*And this new SF legislation means hardly any company is ever going to be able to hire anyone in San Francisco again. Renters aren't stupid, and know they can exploit these laws for all their worth. Tons of people are turning their apartments into Airbnb rentals or doing short-team subleases. After a couple years of this, you can retire comfortably. This is going to make recruitment for any company incredibly hard, not to mention young employee retention is about to plummet. Lyft should leave the Bay entirely if it doesn't have the cash on hand to invest in property. By contrast, Uber is making one of the smartest property investments in the history of the Bay. They can lease that place out in the near future for double the price per square foot they bought it at. They made an incredibly smart investment....

Here's how much Uber paid for its new Oakland headquarters

Sep 24, 2015, 2:44pm PDT Updated Sep 29, 2015, 10:27am PDT

 

When Uber said Wednesday that it bought Oakland’s vacant Uptown Station, the ridesharing giant didn’t want to reveal the price. Well, it looks like it got a bit of a bargain, so it had nothing to be ashamed of. Uber paid $123.5 million for the 380,000-square-foot building, according to the sale document filed yesterday at the Alameda County Clerk-Recorder’s Office. That’s about $325 a square foot – about half the price of prime downtown office buildings in San Francisco. (As a comparison, Salesforce paid $629 million or $770 per square foot for the 50 Fremont office building in San Francisco last year.)

 

CONTINUED

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2015/09/uber-oakland-lane-partners-walton-street-capital.html

Apparently Uber's much-hyped driver strike floundered this past weekend:

http://recode.net/2015/10/17/uber-drivers-attempt-to-disrupt-the-disruptor-but-weekend-protest-fizzles/

 

Here we're seeing how labor loosely organized on the internet is no match for the power of a formally organized labor union.  Of course Uber is terrified of The Teamsters or another established union organizing its exploited workforce.  But Uber has the huge advantage of hoards of part-timers who don't sympathize with the full-timers -- something that never existed in the traditional factory model. 

^The "sharing" economy invented by San Francisco is never going to lead to unionization. In fact, most of these companies are extremely anti-union. This is an independent contracting economy. Travis Kalanick and many of the sharing economy leadership worship Ayn Rand without trying to hide it. Her books are considered Bible in the Bay, and the political upheaval in this region is incredible to watch play out. I'm really interested to see what the next major riot in Oakland looks like. Many in San Francisco and Oakland believe the Bay has become the world's ultimate meritocracy (of course it's pretty easy to score a run when you're born on third base or have rent control :wink:). Uber drivers are unlikely to unionize because of the inherent fear of unionizing in the United States. The sharing economy took off because of the recession and a perfect storm of economic conditions leading to the lowest private sector union membership in the post-WW2 era. In the Bay, the only unions left are public sector unions (and they are extremely strong, which leads to many people in the Bay hating unions more than in other parts of the country) or at the Oakland shipyards. There is a reason those 20,000 Bay Area drivers didn't strike. They could have crippled San Francisco and Oakland, but it just was never going to happen. They are not BART. Everybody is becoming an independent contractor, and in the Bay, there is growing acceptance of that. Grocery delivery is the big one to be looking at now...

 

Instacart is disrupting everything in the Bay...Uber is already considered old hat here. "Oh my God, they're moving Oakland! Uber is SO over!"

 

*But Uber is not over. It's a rock solid business model and one of the companies in this tech bubble that is going nowhere. It single-handedly changed the way Gen Y looks at car ownership. That's the real story here. With Uber, there is no need in most major cities to own a car anymore, even in cities with weak public transit. Call me crazy, but Uber may be undervalued at 50 billion dollars. This is not the next Twitter...

 

Uber is banking heavily on self-driving cars, because it eliminates the labor equation. All of Silicon Valley is an exercise in efficiency. It doesn't get any more efficient than not having human labor...

Drunk bro attacks Uber driver in Los Angeles, gets pepper sprayed:

http://abc7.com/1063029/

 

I had a few of these kinds of guys get in the car...bro-types with massive senses of entitlement.  I once had a guy start banging my dashboard because I wouldn't go inside and smoke pot with him.  That's the closest I came to kicking somebody out of the car.  But by far the worst demographic is white guys ages 45-65 who are in sales and visiting from out-of-town.  I had a carload of those fools yelling racist stuff at homeless guys once.  I called uber suport on those guys and another duo who was also yelling racist stuff out the window in broad daylight.  Luckily both times the Uber staff was pretty upset and seemed like they were going to ban them. 

^If you took away those guys' strong personal networks they'd be homeless too.

In SF, Uber & Lyft each have carpooling services which are pretty convenient to use there (the 4 days I was in SF both services were at surge pricing the entire time).  Lyft Line & Uber Pool each pick up two different requests (you can request the service for 1 or 2 people) from generally the same area, then drop them off in generally the same area (you put your destination in with the request).  It was great to use in SF as a cheaper way to move around.

In SF, Uber & Lyft each have carpooling services which are pretty convenient to use there (the 4 days I was in SF both services were at surge pricing the entire time).  Lyft Line & Uber Pool each pick up two different requests (you can request the service for 1 or 2 people) from generally the same area, then drop them off in generally the same area (you put your destination in with the request).  It was great to use in SF as a cheaper way to move around.

 

No doubt that with driverless cars there will be a premium cost to have a car to yourself.  If people don't like riding on a bus with strangers, they're really not going to like being in a tiny pod with up to three other strangers. 

 

This is where the whole driverless car speculation runs into such a quandary -- how much is it going to cost?  Will there be a subscription, or will people pay per ride?  Will the poor get subsidized rides?  Will subsidized rides come out of taxes or out of fares?  Where will roads get their funding if people aren't buying nearly as much gas if you have 2-4 people in every car instead of just 1?   

 

So people speculate that public transportation is dead, but we don't have any hard numbers to go by so far as the cost of a city teaming with 100,000 driverless cars.  The cost of a bus or train driver is obviously the main cost in operating those systems, but buses and trains will increasingly be able to operate without drivers as well.   

People aren't thinking that far into driverless cars yet. They're only thinking about it as a replacement for the way we use cars now. They're not thinking about driverless cars replacing transit and what sort of impact that might have.

People aren't thinking that far into driverless cars yet. They're only thinking about it as a replacement for the way we use cars now. They're not thinking about driverless cars replacing transit and what sort of impact that might have.

 

I have begun to hear some anti-transit folks use the future of driverless cars as an excuse to not spend money on infrastructure like rail. You see those claims on places like Reddit fairly often.

 

I think that even if you adjust for inflation, if/when driverless cars ever come around they will cost a lot more to operate per passenger mile than most personal vehicles do today, and significantly more than something like a streetcar (which could be made driverless much more easily than any car).  As you mentioned, people that make this argument are simply coming up with ways to perpetuate current suburban development.

 

People aren't thinking that far into driverless cars yet. They're only thinking about it as a replacement for the way we use cars now. They're not thinking about driverless cars replacing transit and what sort of impact that might have.

 

I have begun to hear some anti-transit folks use the future of driverless cars as an excuse to not spend money on infrastructure like rail. You see those claims on places like Reddit fairly often.

 

I have mentioned, perhaps on another thread, that many people who are into technology think that technology will solve all of our society's problems. And of course that simply isn't true. People on Reddit saying, "we don't need to build transit, we'll eventually have driverless cars," is a perfect example of this.

Moore's Law doesn't apply to meatspace.

Drunk bro attacks Uber driver in Los Angeles, gets pepper sprayed:

http://abc7.com/1063029/

 

 

 

Turns out he was a marketing executive for Taco Bell. The company fired him.

 

http://abc13.com/news/taco-bell-fires-executive-suspect-in-uber-driver-attack/1065474/

 

 

In a statement, the company says:

 

"Given the behavior of the individual, it is clear he can no longer work for us. We have also offered and encouraged him to seek professional help."

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/11/04/exclusive-fired-taco-bell-marketing-manager-says-im-not-that-person-in-uber-driver-assault-video/

 

Predictable.  Former marketing guru now doing damage control.  These kinds of guys were always so good at saying just the right thing during job interviews, masterfully maneuvering through meetings, and were always the best at getting out of trouble. 

Song idea: "When a Meathead Cries"

People aren't thinking that far into driverless cars yet. They're only thinking about it as a replacement for the way we use cars now. They're not thinking about driverless cars replacing transit and what sort of impact that might have.

 

I have begun to hear some anti-transit folks use the future of driverless cars as an excuse to not spend money on infrastructure like rail. You see those claims on places like Reddit fairly often.

 

I think that even if you adjust for inflation, if/when driverless cars ever come around they will cost a lot more to operate per passenger mile than most personal vehicles do today, and significantly more than something like a streetcar (which could be made driverless much more easily than any car).  As you mentioned, people that make this argument are simply coming up with ways to perpetuate current suburban development.

 

It's not just suburban folks. Many people living right in the heart of San Francisco made this argument against mass transit too. Just a year or two ago, San Francisco and Oakland had a wave of millennial-driven transit hate (the rich kids were too good to share space with poor middle class folks and some were scared of sexual harassment in public spaces). The anti-transit political attitude in the Bay is dying out now. People in the Bay recognize the simple numbers equation. A bus holding 50 people or a train holding 150 people takes up less space than a bunch of individual cars moving all these people around.

 

There has been a political shift recently in tech. The Randian ideal can't work in a dense urban environment as well as mass transit can work. You're seeing this play out in dramatic fashion with corporate relocations. Apple leased space in San Francisco near BART. Google is looking at space in Oakland near BART. Uber is moving right on top of a BART station! Most of Uber's young employees will be using mass transit to get to the Oakland headquarters. Nobody wants to be stuck in a car on the Bay Bridge. Traffic is way too intense in a super commuting market like the Bay to think Uber will solve the problems that lack of investment in mass transit created. So even your most libertarian, anti-transit folks are coming around now.

 

And of course, just like Uber, BART and Muni will be driverless in the future too.

In SF, Uber & Lyft each have carpooling services which are pretty convenient to use there (the 4 days I was in SF both services were at surge pricing the entire time).  Lyft Line & Uber Pool each pick up two different requests (you can request the service for 1 or 2 people) from generally the same area, then drop them off in generally the same area (you put your destination in with the request).  It was great to use in SF as a cheaper way to move around.

 

Important note: This carpooling doesn't exist in Oakland and won't cross the Bay Bridge. So Uber is moving to a city where this service doesn't even exist. It can be downright dangerous to get in a car with a stranger in Oakland (though my scariest experiences have been with traditional cabs after landing at Oakland International). Even in a few parts of San Francisco, it can be dangerous too. Carpooling also slows you down, and the money savings usually are not worth it. Public transit may match the speed of carpooling depending on traffic conditions. You can also end up in a car with a bunch of obnoxious drunks or crossing paths with someone you never want to meet. On public transit, this is less of an issue because of witnesses around and policing. BART police do an excellent job dealing with violence on the train system. Uber drivers usually aren't armed in SF (a fair number of the Oakland ones are).

 

I quit carpooling. I wasn't saving much money and it always took a lot longer. I also don't think it's viable in the long-term. I didn't have any of the nightmare experiences I hear about, but just the potential of ending up in a car with an ex is awkward enough.

 

*Another note: cabs in San Francisco are negotiable for longer-haul trips and many times will match or beat Uber surge prices. If you're going to SFO or OAK, you can negotiate with traditional cabs at popular cab pickup spots in Downtown San Francisco. Lyft is way more expensive and traditional cabs almost always beat it on price. Lyft is likely on its last legs now judging by San Francisco-Oakland. For weekend nightlife, there are times when crossing the bridge on Uber is $35 while on Lyft, it's $60. Cabs are about $40. All of them include the bridge toll. As soon as surge pricing kicks in, cabs are cheaper.

 

Surge pricing is backfiring, and I'm amazed more people don't take traditional cabs during surge times. 90% of the surge time in San Francisco, cabs are cheaper.

Song idea: "When a Meathead Cries"

 

Don't get me started on the crappy music these people want to listen to when they get in your car.  Like they always beg to hook up their phone for the 6-minute ride from one bar to another.  I've had other people screw around with the radio without asking, including turning the volume all the way up.  The worst of all was three dumb NKU students who I drove from Mt. Adams to Highland Heights...two of them playing and singing along to different Taylor Swift songs.  It's like those really horrible people at Tuesday BW3's 9:30pm karaoke except it's Friday at 2:30am and they're in your car. 

 

 

 

www.crainscleveland.com/article/20151223/NEWS/151229932/ohio-to-regulate-ridesharing-services-such-as-uber-lyft

 

Ohio to regulate ridesharing services such as Uber, Lyft

 

Ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft will now be regulated by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

 

On Tuesday, Dec. 22, Gov. John Kasich signed HB 237, regulating the so-called transportation network companies, or TNCs, for the first time. The companies argued that regulation wasn’t needed because they consider themselves technology companies — not transportation companies, like taxi companies — since their business revolves around smartphone apps. Also unlike cab companies, they do not own cars, insure and maintain those cars and then lease them to drivers. They are just middlemen between a car and a driver, and someone who needs a ride.

...

“The existing system wasn't working,” he said in a telephone interview.

 

Way to fix something that wasn't broken. The current process has worked amazingly well. Nobody thinks the system needs more red tape and bureaucracy. Companies like Geico rolled out policies specifically for Uber and Lyft.

From what I heard Uber was happy about this regulation because it meant conformity for all Ohio cities. They didn't have to work with a patchwork of laws in difference municipalities.

Lyft declares that its drivers received over $40 million in tips during 2015:

 

Uber, $0 of course.  In my experience about 1 in 3 Lyft passengers tips, and that tip is usually $2.  It makes a huge difference over a year of driving.