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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (41165)	11/27/2000 6:25:22 PM
From: AugustWest	Respond to of 436258

Futurists suggest that those fleeing will likely be the region's middle class -- teachers, plumbers, police officers and the like -- leaving an army of unskilled workers to pick up the slack. I wonder how many programers know how to unclog a drain? How many of them will take the time to home teach their children? More importantly, I wonder how many of them will ever be in need of an RN and not be able to see one? I love to watch the local real estate prices around here. I live in a semi-rural part of eastern US, about 5 years ago we were in the peak of our local urban sprawl. Anything immediately outside the city became a gold mine for developers buying fields off of old farmers and slapping up these cheap as shit houses on 50X75 lots. Packing them like sardines. Fast forward to the last six months....Lots of those new homes are for sale while developers continue to buile upper middle class range(180-300K) homes. There is going to be a glut of homes for sale here soon. The only thing that irritates me is that they have already built the homes in my open air. Hu! Enough ranting. sorry about that.

To: Les H who wrote (41165)	11/27/2000 8:07:17 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Sex for Rent The erotics of Bay Area real estate by Carol Lloyd, Special to SF Gate Tuesday, November 21, 2000 Oh real estate! Who would have thought you would have become the pornography of our fair city? You have made salivating voyeurs of us all. Some have succumbed to your earthly temptations, metamorphosing into rapacious hedonists. Others have resisted, becoming righteous scolds railing against your evil pleasures. Just think, after all those years that earnest MFA-armed, union-affiliated strippers worked to make San Francisco the sex-positive capital of the country, their lusty labors are lost to your number-crunching obscenities. Overreaching metaphors, you say? Yes and no. It's true that for most of us, the real estate market still operates according to legal tender not tenderoni. But for a few randy souls, the erotics of Bay Area housing is literal fact not literary figure. For the past year, I've noticed signs that the Bay Area's two most controversial economies -- property and impropriety -- are finally intersecting in a most unseemly way. There have been numerous postings on Craig's List in which housing is offered in exchange for sex or sex in exchange for housing. (Sometimes the requests were not sexual but no less obscene: Two young dot-commers said they had girlfriends so they didn't want sex, they just wanted a good-looking woman to act as a domestic and emotional slave.) Most of the postings have occurred in the "rooms/share wanted" and "rooms/share available" listings; others have popped up in the personals forum. I've held out on writing about this in hopes that a few brave, horny souls would take me into their confidence and tell me what it was like to barter bed for bed, nooky for nook. I exchanged messages with a group house of "hot twenties-somethings" who promised a beautiful room and reasonable rent in exchange for participation in their Thursday night orgies. They agreed to an interview only if I participated in one of said sex parties. In another era, I might have taken them up on this gracious invitation, but with a husband who has been taking a bodily backseat to my breastfeeding infant, I wasn't about to begin casting my pearly folds before strangers. So when I suggested that my leaky maternal vessel might dampen the fleshitivies, they vanished into cyberspace. I also exchanged words with a middle-aged Berkeley couple who was offering a charming backyard cottage in exchange for "experimental lifestyle arrangements." But after asking to read some of my columns, they too decided not to cooperate. Another "hot stud" who offered himself for a variety of corporal pleasures in exchange for a room never wrote back at all. At this point I became downright frustrated by interview interruptus. So I started to play dirty. In response to a millionaire dot-commer's offer of a luxurious penthouse for a young, petite female who will "help him with [his] needs," I wrote: I think I'm the one you're looking for: 105 lbs., five feet tall, a half- Japanese and half-Swedish dancer, open to anything and desperate for a place to live where I can maintain a lifestyle in keeping with my rather expensive taste. Let's exchange email and then talk on the phone and if every thing seems right, we could meet. I've never done anything like this but it seems like a great opportunity for both of us. I relished the idea of my approaching this guy at a cafe and introducing my fraudulent ass to his surprised face. But alas, I spent too much time composing my misleading missive. He assured me he'd already found someone who "met his needs." When I pressed him for details, he sent me this note: "To be honest I pretty much gave up because I got so many responses that said I was a pervert." In the Craig's List personals, I tried to contact one sweet and desperate dame called Stefanie who put her body on the block for a place to lay her head and her small band of cyber-suiters. Her offer of "intimacy for housing" ended with the plea: "please be nice and decent looking." But they were old posts and so I wasn't surprised when I didn't get a reply. Their created-for-the-occasion e-mail addresses were probably long since left out to ether. Finally, I decide to post my own little sex snare and see what kind of response I got. To be fair I sent out offers in both directions, mimicking what seemed to be the most common scenarios: women who were willing to give it up to get shelter and men who were willing to take in boarders that serviced their bodies. I could launch into a diatribe on the sexual politics of the high-tech economy that forces women to prostitute themselves for a basic necessity while male techies with a guest room can essentially buy themselves a sex slave, but I won't. It may be so, but I don't have enough data to posit even the flimsiest of journalistic theories. So I posted the following two messages on some popular housing bulletin boards: Under housing wanted: I'm a very attractive, petite blonde who can't afford most rents but I have other things to offer. I would be interested in exchanging sexual favors, intimacy, whatever for a nice room in the city. I'm gainfully employed downtown, a dancer and a parttime model so depending on the situation I could pay some rent. Email me and tell me a little about yourself and where you live. Under housing available: Looking for a beautiful woman to room for free in my luxury home. I live in a beautiful two-story penthouse in Pacific Heights but I'd like some companionship and maybe if it works out, occasionally more. If you have a spirit of adventure and a body to match and you need housing, please email me. Maybe we can work out an arrangement. Who will respond to my offers of real sex? Will my fair homeless lass find a place to sleep? Will my landed jerk-off find a chick to sleep with? Click back next week as my search for a teeming underground economy that mixes real estate and meat market continues.