Monthly Archives: August 2016

Riding Dangerously

Aside from our LA Lyft drivers being super chatty, I also noticed that they were rather agro in their driving style. One woman in particular drove a tiny little Ford Fiesta, and in our brief five minute ride, she twice committed illegal maneuvers blatantly in front of LAPD cop cars! I mean, I’m not a rigid law-abiding ninny like my dad, but she was pushing the boundaries!

In the first instance, a cop car was immediately in front of her turning left on the left green arrow. Mind you, the light was already yellow when he pulled forward into the intersection. Then, the light turned red, and she clearly did not give a fuck. Home girl proceeded, pulling straight into the intersection and turning left in front of oncoming traffic. All while the light was red. WTF?!?

Less than two minutes later, to drop us off in front of our destination, she decided to do an illegal u-turn, again right after a cop car in oncoming traffic passed by. Again, no hesitation. I mean, like I said before: the people we talked to describe former DTLA as really rough and tumble. Admittedly, I’m a suburban princess, so I don’t have a true understanding of what that entails… beyond like what I saw with the LA riots and shit on tv. But I definitely noticed a stronger police presence (compared to SF or DC) when we walked around. We passed a police station, and there was an entire multi-level parking garage filled with cop cars. I mean, how big is the police force for a legit US city? I have no idea.

According to the interwebs, the LAPD (at over 10,000-strong) is the nation’s third largest police department, behind NYPD (over 34,000 uniformed officers) and Chicago PD (over 12,000). Yeah, that’s a lot of cops. Thinking about it more though, I guess the LAPD has bigger fish to fry than unruly Lyft drivers. Huh.

Good Day, LA!

Let me tell you something: DTLA (downtown LA) is something else. First off, the Lyft drivers here are oddly fascinating. I mean, I’ve never done speed dating in my life, but I feel like riding in the Lyft cars with these characters is probably a good representation of what speed dating might be like…

Lyft drivers are super chatty. They always initiate conversation. Thankfully, I have an awesome go-to conversation piece: the Magic Castle!! And I swear, that topic is a winning starter every. damn. time. Initially, the first driver M didn’t seem that impressed or interested, but I persisted. After all, the castle is on my bucket list and to my surprise, the place is ridiculously exclusive, requiring a formal invite from a member magician AND having a very rigid dress code (dresses for women; suit/ties for men). The driver was totally stunned. Yup, stick with me kid and I’ll teach you things you never knew! That said, according to him, anytime he hears about anything in LA being “invitation only,” he immediately thinks sex orgies and wild parties. Say what, dude? Don’t be adulterating my innocent goals of hitting up the Magic Castle!

So in the last few days, we’ve had about four drivers and pretty much all of them are motormouths. A lot of them talk about traffic, places to see, foods to try. Apparently, it wasn’t that long ago when DTLA was a very dangerous area. Only recently has it become safe enough to be a “destination.” I had no idea.

Last night, our driver, who was Georgian,  got talking about eastern European politics and then when that topic got too far over our heads, he transitioned into The Rake, some paranormal creature that’s been sighted in various places, including in his hometown by a family friend. OMG, I am such a scaredy cat. He was totally freaking me out.

Nonetheless, it’s kinda fun practicing my social skills on random people in short bursts. Haha, you know me: always training up for something. Gotta maximize those learning moments and all.

As for the BlogHer conference, eh, it’s been so-so. I mean, interesting and inspiring talks with Sarah Michelle Geller, Sheryl Crow, Kdash, and Mayim Bialik, but outside of that, kinda a disappointment. The attendance is notably lower than years past and the exhibitors and sponsors have been super lame– with brands that just aren’t that compelling. I even brought my big ass suitcase, thinking I would pick up a ton of swag, but for some reason, even the free stuff isn’t appealing enough for me to pack up and take home. The sessions too have been rather rambly and disorganized. I sat in on two today that were better than yesterday, but still: nothing super insightful or helpful. To be fair though, I do need to start making some important decisions with my blog, namely, do I want to monetize or not? Bc if so, I need to adjust my content accordingly. Ugh. I dunno. I waver back and forth all the damn time about it. What can I say, I wanna write what I wanna write.

Regardless, I’m happy to have my new site back up just in time. A few weeks ago, I’d set up my new domain name and imported all my posts from Giddy Go Cowgirl. The new site worked fine. Then, for some strange reason when I woke up on Day 1 of the BlogHer conference, the site suddenly stopped rendering. WTF. So I spent like 30 minutes before breakfast getting it back up and running.

Why the name change? To be honest, I came to the realization that GGC just wasn’t catchy enough. Not to mention, I haven’t been on a damn horse in about two years. I came up with AAH several months ago but some of my friends and Bubs didn’t seem to like it, so I procrastinated a while longer. Ultimately, I just decided to go with it, bc I like it and that’s all that really matters. Fortunately, the response so far has been good! I chatted with several random people in the food line and in a few sessions, and they really liked the name. And the Asians got it. A little lady in the lunch line told me how her mom always brags about having weighed 95 lbs back in her day. Omfg. My mother pulls that shit about my weight and her old weight all the fucking time!! So bizarre.[FAG id=7468]

Being Dismissed

I get frustrated sometimes being a woman. As you know, my family has a townhouse back East that’s currently on the market. The agent with whom I’m working was recommended by the previous agent J and I used to sell our first home in Virginia. Anyway, so far the process with this new agent was working out well: on his suggestion, we put in about $10k in renovations prior to putting the property on the market. He’s been very good about driving and staying on schedule. Long story short, we received two offers on the house in less than ten days. The good news is that the house seems priced right enough to solicit offers. The bad news is that the offers feel low.

I mean, I’m not a realtor but at the same time, I’m no stranger to data nor is my family a stranger to real estate. There are so many online tools now for you to see comp properties and figure out market prices. My point is, even though my father and I have access to “experts,” we don’t just follow them blindly. That has never been our style. Even with the Houseboat, I had a realtor whom I trusted THE MOST out of all realtors I’ve dealt with, and I STILL backed up her recs with my own independent research.

Back to the offers: they felt seriously lowball, like $10-15k off after factoring in their request for buyer credits at settlement. I understand that real estate transactions are all about negotiations, and I’m fine to negotiate but I still want a price that I feel is fair. I won’t go into all the numeric details, but for the second offer, we countered twice and ultimately, it came down to $2k. And my agent basically pressured me to take it, based on his predictions for the market and the type of interested buyers we were getting. I had consulted with my father and with J. I decided to hold firm and let the buyers walk away.

The conversation with my agent bugged me though, bc I really felt like he scoffed at my decision. Like when I said I wanted to hold firm, partly bc the offer is too low and partly bc the property has ONLY been on the market for a week, I swear I heard him laugh in disbelief. He kept saying that it was ultimately my decision (yes, I know!), but his response felt really unsupportive. The thing is, my position is the same as my father’s, so I really wonder how the agent’s response might have differed had the decision been verbalized/relayed by my father. J says it’s not necessarily a gender thing, that maybe it was bc I had wavered, like my voice/tone allowed for the possibility of coming down more… Perhaps. And at the same time, the point of experts is for them to share their honest opinions so I certainly don’t want to fault him for his frankness…

That said, I’m trying to be more business savvy. Like J always warns me to look for the other party’s angle and what’s in it for them. For example, all my real estate books say that the agent has fiduciary responsibility to the client, meaning the client’s financial interests are supposed to be above the agent’s. But that’s textbook, and this is real life. As J pointed out, the agent gets the same commission whether he hustles to sell our property at that price in eight days or in one month. Of course, for him, the faster the better so he can move on to selling others. In the end, I explained my position to the agent as this: the house just went on the market. I’m willing to come down, but not that much right now. Maybe after a few weeks, we’ll end up lowering the price anyway. Maybe not. Maybe we’ll get a better offer. I’m willing to take the risk by holding on a while longer.

Needless to say, it was an uncomfortable exchange, and I felt somewhat bullied. And then all that night, I kept replaying that shit over and over in my head. I imagined John or my father delivering the same decision, and I’m certain they would not BELABOR the conversation in their heads afterwards. Is it a confidence thing? Was it a mansplaining thing? Is it me? Is it woman vs. man? Is it my fear of being wrong?

The whole scenario is an interesting experience bc as much as I believe that I’ve seen a lot in my lifetime, there are still so many pockets of naivety and inexperience. I always strive to be more street smart and more business savvy. But I guess those are things that only come through wider exposure. So all I can do is just keep learning. Hopefully, with more experience, I can be faster and surer in my decision-making.