Predatory Sub-Prime Auto Lending is ruining people's lives
Ugh. This makes me so sad and angry. Everything about this just seems so wrong and it reminds me that there are scumbags out there who look for people to take advantage of so that they themselves can get richer. All of this, of course, done without any regard to the livelihood of the person who literally cannot re-allocate resources to pay off insanely high interest rates on a junk car.
When I hear people say that the rich are there to keep the poor poor, it's stuff like this that I think about.
If you are interested in all the ways the poor are often f*cked beyond belief, I would recommend the book, $2.00 A Day by Kathryn Edin.
Paving Tverskaya Street in Moscow
Watch this timelapse of a bunch of road paving trucks and equipment paving Moscow’s Tverskaya Street in one go. According to the video, about 300 trucks were involved in a concerted effort to keep the road closed for only one day. Looks like a wide road too, so probably a major thoroughfare.
Lexus yellow taxi (2T31)
Photo by Herman Yung
A pretty great day of biking around Governor's Island. Back in the city though and what do I see? None other than one of the very few Lexus yellow cabs. Followed this guy for a few blocks because I now feel like I have to live up to my new reputation as the "taxi enthusiast".
James Curran's LA Gifathon
Remember James Curran? He's the artist who created 30 wonderful animated GIFs of NYC which spread like wildfire a few months back. If you haven't been following him on Twitter, you should know that he's been doing basically the same thing -- one animated GIF a day -- of Los Angeles.
His animated GIFs are just fun to watch as they loop over and over again. I have a feeling he'll put them all into one big video at the end of this month like he did with the NYC GIFs, but for now, you can see them all separately on his Twitter.
KEZ5 tagged an NYPD van
Photo by Herman Yung
Just walked by this piece of work on 30th Street and 6th Avenue. This is a sure-fire way to get the NYPD all fired up to arrest you. Can't say this was the smartest move.
July 24, 2012 - My Ford Focus
Sometimes I am just utterly in shock at how quickly time passes. It seems as if one minute I'm actively engaging in the event that I am now remembering, and then the next minute we are 4 years away from that moment.
Here is my Ford Focus that I bought a few weeks after I moved to California in the late summer of 2012. Man, how much has changed since then. I feel like 4 years isn't a lot of time in the grand scheme of things but I think back about the time when I purchased this car and I wonder if I would have done things differently. Maybe buy a different car. Maybe spend a little less on some things. Maybe make some more time for friends. Maybe go on longer drives out of state (if only I wasn't living in California during $5/gallon gas!).
This car was one of those life milestones for me. Quite possibly the largest purchase I've ever made and one of the major things I still use often that reminds me of all the mistakes, decisions, fun, and memories I had in Los Angeles. Frankly, I'm surprised it's even here in NY with me because I honestly thought I was going to throw money to the wind when I decided to move back to NY.
Not sure where I was going with this post. I guess this being the anniversary of the actual purchase of this car made me reminisce a little bit about LA and how crazy different my life is right now. If this car could talk, I wonder what it would say to me (PS: Complain less).
