Well There's Your Problem | Episode 149: Ghost Ship Fire

folks ACAB does not include building inspectors
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[@cursedGalataea]

Hey just to be clear. The Houthis have historically never given an actual **** about Palestinians and are just using the situation as a convenient excuse to be antis*mitic. Assuming Houthis care about Palestinians because all Muslims are the same to you is really messed up. And even if they did care, the Houthis haven't stopped a single ship bound for or from Israel. The joint US-UK operation is bombing pirates, not heroes, and they are supported by the UN because no country wants their civilian ships being hijacked by religious extremists.

[@sampagano205]

The way that the us and uk could prove that the houthis don't care about the Palestinians, and that they are not doing this to support that genocide, is by getting Israel to end the genocide and seeing whether or not the piracy continues.

[@GoredonTheDestroyer]

Top Gear Top Tip: Don't want people to dislike you? Don't be terrible. Also - Being critical of the government of Israel for doing a genocide is not antisemitism, that's called _basic decency._

[@williambecker6577]

Sorry I couldn’t hear you over the cruise missile hitting all these ships! Maybe you should get out of here with this shit

[@shantisingh4336]

the statement "Muslims are not all the same" does not logically lead to the corollary "no Muslims can have solidarity with other Muslims"

[@kyleleehufnagel]

So it’s not working but it’s also disrupting trade. They aren’t doing it for any reason but they just started doing it right now? You are awful at this

[@adams3627]

I'm training to be an electrician right now, and I have a new goal of never failing in my responsibility so badly that WTYP learns my name.

[@iamjustkiwi]

That's a pretty good aspiration

[@taxirob2248]

Safety Third is not aspirational

[@JZG13]

I’m an engineer on things that are very expensive and very newsworthy if they fail, and same goal

[@loadeddice4696]

@@JZG13 Hotel fish windows, huh?

[@Sylvie_without_surname]

@loadeddice4696 I heard about one guy who designed his own fish window for a million dollars. Though possibly it's more expensive in a lair context.

[@mackenziebean379]

My current roommate said the other housing option she considered was the Ghost Ship, a month before it burned down. The room in my house was only open because my other roommate died suddenly. It says something about the renting crisis in Oakland that one person was saved from disaster because someone else died.

[@Anghellik9]

*clicking on the episode* "a ghost ship fire? That sounds kooky" *90 minutes later* "Jesus fucking christ."

[@satoribomb]

Oakland Resident here - gotta give the WTYP crew props for handing this with the perfect mix of sympathy, respect and RIGHTEOUS OUTRAGE. Only way to live in Oaktown now is to be lucky, rich or homeless.

[@iamjustkiwi]

It's one of the things I love about these guys, they respect human life in all cases except for the very appropriate exceptions, which is sadly becoming rare. I hate that mentality of "if they weren't me or mine, fuck em"

[@TheSmsawyer]

Yep, I used to live in Richmond. Same deal.

[@fauxpinkytoo]

Left Oakland for Austin in 2015. Left Austin for Oklahoma City in 2021. I'm getting so tired of having to move cities just to keep a roof on. I'm old, weary and poor.

[@lewt187]

You should look again, I've been looking actively for about a year out here and there's 18 homes for under 400k in Oakland. Things are improving. Or the housing market is crashing, I can't tell any more.

[@TheSmsawyer]

@@fauxpinkytoo sounds like me minus Oklahoma. Where did you live in Austin?

[@ferlessleedr]

"Generally mysticism does not improve an evacuation situation" Roz I want to get this tattooed on my body that is such a just insane sentence to have to say out fucking loud. What a line.

[@ferlessleedr]

I wrote this before you mentioned the guy offering to tattoo the names of the victims on himself... Also, with regards to the multiple agencies that failed to act, would there have been anything they could do beyond condemning the building? I wonder if to some extent each individual who failed to act was weighing the risk of fire vs. the certainty of pushing all of these people into homelessness. Essentially, the individuals choosing not to put these people even further at the mercy of a merciless system.

[@cbecht]

@@ferlessleedr I've worked at a venue that got cited by the fire marshal for violating fire code. The citation included what remediation was needed and a re-visit date. We fixed what needed fixing, they came back and inspected the changes, and everyone carried on as per normal. AFAIK, there wasn't a fine or anything, but I may be wrong about that. I just worked there.

[@trioptimum9027]

@@cbecht Yeah. Plus, apparently the fire department was buddies with the residents, so even if they didn't have good formal options for citing them in a way that didn't make people homeless (which they probably did, but maybe not), they certainly had lots of informal opportunities to go to the barbeque, find the main guy, hand him a beer, and chat about smoke detectors and obstructed evacuation routes.

[@Kinzokugia]

"Thank God there was no one sitting next to the door that blew off, otherwise they surely would have been sucked off to a fatal end." There's worse ways to go

[@LifesNeverHumDrum]

Getting sucked off by the airplane window sounds infinitely worse

[@williammoriarity7411]

I mean, goals right?

[@me2people]

Pianos make a lot of sense in a situation like this given how many are available for the price of "If you can remove it from my house it's yours"

[@iamjustkiwi]

Seriously. We have a piano in our house...we didn't buy it, and we don't want it, but also don't want to spend a grand moving it out. Guess that's why piano moving can be a business unto itself.

[@taxirob2248]

Surprised there weren't any hot tubs. Check your favorite resale site right now, there's probably one within a 30 min drive from you.

[@taxirob2248]

learn to play it, it's obviously put there by God.

[@aegea4661]

I am a cultural worker in the Bay, one of my very good friends was in a circus performance coop with a similar setup across the Bay in Balboa Park at the time. Thankfully one of the coop members had been in the air force before she came out and joined the literal circus and she had been an electrician for the air force. They didn't fuck around when it came to safety, even in the illegal performance space they had fire exits and emergency signs. But that was only because of that electrician, had it not been for her that place would have been a firetrap. The fact that in the Bay with places like SF Circus Center, dozens of well respected pole dance studios, a long tradition of alternative art and artists there is very little government support to help artists stay and do their work is criminal. The tech industry is actively trying to suck the soul out of the Bay, exiling artist and queer people (who are often both) to the fringes and margins while inventing mostly 'x but ignoring regulations' is probably one of the greatest untold stories of cultural loss in American history. Mainstream 'respectable' tech and its focus on the art they decide is valuable (often shit like NFTs) is doing profound damage. And the culture it created cost lives at Ghost Ship. While I am glad performance spaces like Ghost Ship don't exist anymore in the Bay for safety reasons, I am among the last generation to have spent many happy hours in these alternative venues. There is a culture lost with Ghost Ship, and I worry the next generation of artists won't have what my friend had while beginning their careers. In retrospect I am very lucky to have survived and had it be Ghost Ship and not another venue that caught fire. But I was also blessed to have been in the last generation to experienced the world of places like Ghost Ship.

[@HeyCupertino]

Growing up going to hardcore music shows at the local community center, to DIY shows, to seeing Turnstile at Los Globos in LA I appreciate and long for big groups in small spaces swarming as one. The group sense of picking one another up as soon as someone hits the ground is intense and valuable, but it's also a pressure cooker. Build up steam, get together and blow it off, then disperse. We can't continually exist in dubious battle, but we sometimes should for the sake of knowing togetherness. The commune ideal is interesting in thought but terrifying in practice.

[@CowMaster9001]

Why should the government step in to help queer artists continue to live in squalor? If fire hadn't swept through the ghost ship, it would have been Typhus or Cholera or tapeworms.

[@aegea4661]

@CowMaster9001 I am not suggesting that Ghost Ship and squats like it are the solution. But cities like Oakland and SF need to invest in their housing stock, invest in their arts and culture and not just devote the entire government to licking the boots of Apple and Google et.al. and make an effort to serve actual people not just the tech industry. Illegal venues and squats are places that I have a nostalgia for because they helped me understand culture outside of purely being for consumption. But they aren't good. Cities need to invest in public housing, arts grants, free post secondary education, support non profits that serve as open low cost or free venues.

[@CowMaster9001]

​@@aegea4661I think it's funny how alternative people claim to be so superior to us squares with your "cultures based on more than Consumption" but you're also coming to us with hand outstretched because without the financial support of us squares at Google, Apple, et al, you're building meth communes out of wood pallets and RVs. I'd like to know why Planned Parenthood doesn't seem to have a problem with _these_ unwanted parasites.

[@austincorbin8707]

a 3 minute response time for the fire department is absolutely nuts in a good way. Thats insanely quick

[@WaterMan416]

Supposedly 3 minutes from the first 911 call which is really good. They where on scene before the dispatch was even finished. I used to be a volunteer fire fighter in a suburban/rural township, and we wouldn't get out the door until 3-4 minutes after dispatch. Staffed departments have good response times. I've heard many aim for 90 seconds from dispatch.

[@Bazanadu]

Tbf, if you look at the map it's the next block.

[@ChristopherHallett]

@@Bazanadu Yes, and the people in the firehouse have to receive the order from dispatch, put their gear on, get in the truck, and drive the truck to the location. I bet you $20 internet funbucks you couldn't put on an outfit and drive your car to the next block over in under three minutes.

[@lmfsilva3000]

That landlord photo looks exactly like I would expect from putting into a plagiarism machine something like "California Arts Guy in his mid 40s who claims to have met his wife while doing crack with a member of the RHCP in the 90s (in spite of the lawyers of every member of the band sending letters to stop telling the story as it didn't happen) and also don't check how old she was at the time"

[@oopsallquiet]

I was living in the Bay area when this happened, friends of friends died in this fire. People were worried *I* might have died in it. This is the first episode that just seeing the thumbnail made me go "fuck".

[@timpadilla85]

Similar here, FB had recently introduced the “mark yourself as safe” feature, and one of those friend-of-friends I had added never marked safe. Definitely got the stomach-drop again just now.

[@bryanrhodes369]

Ditto - a freind of mine had moved out before the fire. He fell out with the selfabsorbed "artist" sh!tbag that "ran" the place...and tried to run away from accountability. Apparently he found noticing the dangerous conditions offensive

[@athena2824]

Same, a close friend was a ghost ship victim. I still miss him so much. And had the same reaction to the thumbnail

[@nailbunny2000]

This place looks so familiar compared to all the meth'd up artist event spaces my friends and I used to hang out in. I am surprised we made it through without horror stories like this.

[@eleo513]

This same thing happened to me with the FIU bridge collapse episode, I had just driven under it earlier that day and had people calling to check in. Then seeing the episode a few years later on here was such a bizarre feeling, like "hey, we made it...?"

[@2001Pieps]

The Grenfell Tower was the first episode I watched of this podcast and this episode is precisely why I still listen. These disasters just show the extreme callous disregard for human life from all sides when profiting off the vulnerable. This truly shows why slumlords should have a nice time.

[@TickTockTimeTraveler]

crazy to be listening to this while I'm sitting in a firetrap of a leased warehouse (that's already burned down once), getting underpaid to draw pictures and make art for a multi-million dollar Bay Area company. Thanks for another banger of an episode, much appreciated.

[@PanAndScanBuddy]

Try to work near the exit if not outside. If someone tries to stop you, ask them how flammable they think they are.

[@TickTockTimeTraveler]

@@PanAndScanBuddy They had us working in the very back of the building with the only exit about 50 feet away -- the whole space is full of 12' tall, not-secured sculptures (all flammable plastics) and loose wood/cardboard palettes stacked over 20' up around every walkway on elevated shelves. We share a wall with an autobody that regularly used a dyno on our shared power grid and does welding work on the daily. The server room also blocked the exit, and we'd need to run through it essentially to access egress. Did I mention every fire extinguisher was expired? I was the first person to check. I quit this week :')

[@fudgingteddy9481]

@@TickTockTimeTravelerHope you survived long enough to quit comrade 🙏

[@TickTockTimeTraveler]

@@fudgingteddy9481 thank you comrade 💪 I got a new job teaching art in public elementary schools!! Union repped 💅😤

[@catstorm26]

Glad you got out of there. Stay strong

[@Carlito_Sway]

at 1:40:45 Alice hits the nail squarely on the head. I can speak only for my experience, but in the US, every major city has at least a handful of "DIY spots" like this- combination housing, art collective, and venue spaces, all unlicensed and uninspected. These places are patently unsafe, and yet the reason that they exist is that there is no other affordable low cost housing or mechanism of support for working artists and musicians in these communities. DIY venues exist to host shows in an environment where it is often structurally prohibitive or cost-prohibitive to stage entertainment at a for-profit venue, and DIY venues almost ALWAYS have better "door deals" for performers than actual licensed venues do. The Faustian bargain is of course that a lack of structural support for working artists and musicians create the conditions for disasters like the Ghost Ship fire. If you support independent art or music in your own town, you have probably been in one of these places- for a gallery hop, for a small show, maybe playing in your own band or seeing your friends perform. That should feel chilling to think about.

[@botfug]

I've worked in one of these death traps, the brilliant owner decided a kitchen was what he needed to make more money so he built one in a closet, but forgot to install a hood system for about a month. He also had a fire pit in the back, as I was working one night I casually mentioned that the fire marshal would probably not like this, to which two gentlemen said "Well I'm the fire marshal of (town next door) and he's the fire marshal of (town), and..." "I'm off duty." The owner ended up running a go fund me to renovate the place, pocketed the money, ran off to Florida, came back as a born again christian or something. Wild shit. The venue itself now is run better and without illegal lofthousing, but the new owner is kind of a misogynistic pig from what I've heard.

[@crybernetics9007]

yup definitely ended up going to shows and visiting friends in DIY spaces like that it's terrifying

[@JamieElli]

To anyone who doesn't know, the random symbols in the safety third segment are a text encoding error. Sometimes those happen when you send an email, they were supposed to be apostrophes. (')

[@ariainlerah7771]

I lost a good friend in this. Still gonna listen but gonna be a rough one ❤

[@AllenSJ5]

So sorry for your loss. 😞💗

[@carinafreeman6432]

My condolences.

[@joearnold6881]

😔 💜

[@LifesNeverHumDrum]

Immense condolences to you for your loss ❤

[@jasonallman696]

I'M SO SORRY

[@rogerledgister7913]

Alice: ...is the deepest bleakest part of this entire event. DEVON: *Like, subscribe, hit the bell* Alice: It puts me in mind of a Werner Herzog quote...

[@choobs8511]

The ding noise reminded Alice of Herzog in some weird back through time type of way

[@laurapichon7623]

“Blow-up-the-Sun” -Feral Pines who died in this tragedy This was her catchphrase I hope it doesn’t get flagged again

[@taxirob2248]

still here

[@boundbythecurve]

The daisy-chaining of power strips will forever make me angry and sad

[@myowlhasantlers]

As a weirdo artist myself and someone who at times has spent time in fringe communities I remember the horror and heartbreak of The Ghost Ship fire distinctly. There was a pit waiting to find out if there was anyone I knew who lost their lives. I spent my teen years in Oakland and SF in the 90s hanging out in sketchy places like this run by even sketchier people. I've been in Los Angeles for almost 2 decades now still hanging out with weirdos in DIY spaces. Some are still sketchy some are really lovely. While I was renting space at one we went through and updated the way our lights and power strips were setup to make sure things were up to fire code. What happened to the victims of Ghost Ship is a tragedy born of callous interference by people who knew better and chose to do nothing.

[@sorrelkinton8047]

I grew up in places like this and oh BOY. One of my friends nearly died like five times - the most horrific was when she fell down a composting toilet (aged about 7) and got her hand caught on a nail and was hanging there till the fire engine came. I had to be thrown out of the second floor of a squat when I was two because it lit on fire during a party. I can SMELL those pictures 😅

[@HeyCupertino]

Damn. That's an autobio.

[@LifesNeverHumDrum]

Jesus Christ, congrats on living through all that

[@ellaguro]

i feel like i've achieved the hat trick for this episode because i've a) flown on Alaska airlines multiple times, b) live in the neighborhood where the Eastern Parkway Chabad tunnels were, and c) used to live in Oakland and had friends of friends die in the Ghost Ship fire. i had a friend lose their home in a warehouse fire in another part of Oakland before the Ghost Ship fire - where one person died - also.

[@jasonallman696]

So very sorry for you.

[@megatrocious]

Thank you for this episode. My husband went to Cal and an acquaintance of his died at Ghost Ship. If anything has radicalized me, it's shit like this and seeing how ineffectual our systems are at protecting people's lives. Something catastrophic like this WILL happen again unless we have a massive shift in the availability of affordable housing everywhere, like, NOW.

[@sephivedewlap746]

I'm an artist living in a city where rent is nearly as bad, and have been into places like this on numerous occasions. I have a lot of friends in the art and music scene who are regulars at these sorts of places, all of whom are some of the most genuine and creative people I know. I've listened to every episode of this show and this is the first that has made me cry. like I cannot properly convey the scope of the hole this would leave in the community here, nor the one it undoubtedly left in Oakland. These places are where young people - people who have so much to offer the scene - go. Cash Askew of Them are Us Too was 22. I can only feel rage and sadness over an entire lifetime's creative potential being robbed from someone in such a horrific way by greed and callousness.

[@laurenr1087]

As as Jew I sympathize with all Liam's points on the tunnels thing. Also, thank you for "The masculine urge to dig"! That phrase brightened the hell out of my day.

[@raesifers]

sucked off to a fatal end is the quote of the ep

[@gonzoengineering4894]

Early call but that's gonna be hard to beat

[@s4nari]

Welcome fellow hogs to our regular altar of slop.

[@pBIggZz]

Oink Oink

[@maybemablemaples2144]

Lady Gaga's Swine intensifies.

[@deeznoots6241]

Slop for the slop god

[@Dancingonthesun]

Hogs for the hog throne

[@emilyadams3228]

I still say, if we're hogs, then this should be on Ham Radio.

[@T61APL89]

1:13:05 Preach! I've been homeless and would've definitely stayed at a place like this, once you're down its hard as hell working ur way back up. Shelters are packed and living in a tent makes working a job constant anxiety worrying everything will be gone by the time you get back.

[@ayemessdee]

The union-enjoyers out there will be pleased to know that there has been a lot of picketing activity at Australian ports to stop Zim ships from being able to unload their cargo of Sodastreams

[@thomasdjonesn]

You're right, this does please me.

[@pleasant_asymmetry]

It's so sad how designing the entire built environment for profit leads to so much cruelty and inefficiency. I feel like that just permeates through this whole video, whether it's the lack of housing in Oakland, the negligent behavior of the landlords, and the fact that so many of these buildings were initially built just to pay their own property taxes.

[@seanhall8686]

In New York this type of hoarder property is known as a "Collyer's mansion", after the famously eccentric Collyer brothers and their brownstone full of garbage (which would make for a fun episode, the story is wild).

[@teecee1827]

There's always Fred Knudsen vid on it for a well produced documenting of what happened

[@SixArmedSweater]

@@teecee1827Yeah, but Knudsen rubs shoulders with some fashy circles.

[@RyuakiraX]

​@@SixArmedSweaterWhat's that mean?

[@YouWinTheAward]

My friend used to babysit the kids of the people who owned this place and they sounded like truly terrible people

[@get_bentley]

As someone who lived in San Francisco for 15 years, and had a good friend's brother pass away (he was just going to the concert), I feel like you guys did right by this. It was a real gut punch to the Bay Area, and even thinking about it now, I just feel sad and really angry.

[@tdjx]

Ah this is new, an episode on a disaster that killed people I knew.

[@grantus_pax]

Liam's new drinking game: is this apple cider(US) or apple cider(UK)?

[@mysteryshrimp]

That game should not be (sunglasses) . . . hard

[@redroC171]

it's an easy game because they don't look alike

[@philipmalcolm4550]

If it's clear and yella', you've got juice there, fella. If it's tangy and brown, you're in cider town.

[@Sveggo]

If it keeps you awake for a month and makes you talk about your grandmother's pubic hair, it's Canadian.

[@philipmalcolm4550]

@@Sveggo rhyme scheme needs work

[@emhartford5948]

You can see pre-fire street view shots of this - when you have street view open, the info box near top left says "See other dates", and they have a few years of older imagery there

[@cascara5607]

54:48 this is the average burning man attendant, this is him, slumlord art guy

[@RossParkansky-tt1zv]

I had a roommate die in that fire, also a lot of acquaintances , it was such a sad tragedy, the aftermath was mass eviction of a lot quasi legal warehouse living spaces, like the one my girlfriend was living in, it was one of the factors why I left the bay area and eventually California all together.

[@AbsolXGuardian]

I can totally relate to the borderline hoarding instinct. Yesterday my college library was giving away microfilm, presumably because all big papers have their archives online. I am now the proud owner of the New York Times microfilm archive for my month and year of birth- and no way to read them. On a more serious topic, it's very nice to get a full context rundown of this disaster, as I primarily know it through my uncle being a city planner for Oakland, so it was a lot of "gddamnit the press is mad at me but if we don't get the resources to build affordable housing this will keep happening". The warehouse specifically wasn't a known issue to his department (although the general situation of dangerous illegal communal housing was), which furthers the lack of interdepartmental communication.

[@xashfrostx]

Can confirm, living in bay area, that its hellish and unsustainable here. A friend was supposed to be at this show the night of the disaster, she didn't go and she's safe but it's hard to comprehend regardless. For what my opinion is worth, i thought this was very well done and I appreciate you all and your work.

[@geoffreysmith3196]

We all commend Alice on her Sisyphean New Year's resolution. Everyone should have such aspirational dreams. Good luck with that Alice.

[@opalpersonal]

one must imagine alice happy

[@Jakeurb8ty82]

This channel is immune to the pressures of content farms.

[@WaterMan416]

Honestly, as much as I want a regular episode I love that they can exist outside of the norm and their content is still enough to keep us coming back. No pressure from the algorithm.

[@WaterMan416]

I use the lapse in time to catch up on 99% invisible and the rest of the Bethea universe

[@punxsutawneyphilofficial]

TikTok Tunnel Lady is the Second Coming of Grover. She says she's an engineer in her tiktok bio but she's a software engineer, she hits some water lines and floods her tunnels, AND she even built an extension onto her house. I would commit tax fraud to hear the gang talk about her.

[@BlackKat1112]

It was deeply fucked up to get off a plane at the Portland airport, get home and take a nap, then wake up to find out the Alaska airlines thing happened between me leaving the airport and waking up from my nap

[@rjohnson1690]

My coworkers wife was a flight attendant on that plane on the fight just before. Talk about dodging a bullet.

[@lewt187]

This place was a micro version of the much larger one in West Oakland called "Otherworld", we lost our friend Amanda in this one and what you guys don't mention is that this fire almost completely literally killed the Oakland warehouse rave scene. We went to SO MANY PARTIES in the 5+ warehouses that were built basically exactly like this. Otherworld was the most famous/largest, after this fire the realization kinda hit that we were risking our lives every time we partied. Fuck this is rough to listen to.

[@tarasaurus98]

Here I was hoping this was about an actual ship fire

[@vaska00762]

Or even an unseasonal Well Scare's Your Problem

[@dftp]

I always read your name as thesaurus, damn it!

[@sideways5153]

Yeah this one was sad. Where are the funny Catastrophic Engineering Disasters™️ with bundled Mass Casualty Event®️?

[@LavastormSW]

Same

[@bipbipletucha]

nope, just pure depression

[@queergeologist8207]

the door plug was found jn a teacher's backyard, i think he should get it back and be allowed to keep it in his classroom

[@relwalretep]

YAY LIAM!!!

[@sideways5153]

YAY LIAM!!!

[@anitalift7546]

YAY LIAM!!!

[@hotshot9076]

YAY LIAM!!!

[@aliensasquatch7485]

YAY LIAM!!!

[@tryste_mx]

YAY LIAM!!!

[@MegCazalet]

Since y’all talked about kids falling in a hole, I think an episode on “Baby Jessica” McClure would be pretty fascinating. In 1987, the 18-month-old toddler fell in a 8in well casing 22 feet deep, and the rescue effort involved a parallel shaft, advanced drilling techniques, and a guy born without collarbones who offered to try to slither in to get her. The moment they pulled her out is, along with the Challenger disaster are snapshots of 80s history seared in my brain from my childhood, examples of my burgeoning awareness of the wider world. And sources of immense anxiety, of course.

[@JosieJOK]

I remember that! Yeah, I’d love to see it get the classic WTYP treatment. Especially the aftermath-I remember at least one of the rescuers couldn’t cope with the infamy (or the lack thereof, once it went away) and committed suicide. A lot of people were screwed up afterwards.

[@NavigatorBR]

43:40 -An alternate term for this, is "Ground Cover", an easily erected and demolished structure intended to make some money while waiting for future development, such as self storage units, a billboard or similar. (From "A Field Guide to Sprawl", by Dolores Hayden)

[@ubermenschen01]

Is that why there are so many "self-storage" places popping up everywhere? Real estate speculation?

[@TheSneakyDuck]

Scooby Doo is one of history's most based cartoons because every other episode was about arresting people for trying to prevent housing development

[@pamdemonia]

As a former resident of another East Oakland warehouse/apartment complex/art place (luckily one that had been forced to install sprinklers and mark exits, etc.) I was very impressed with this episode. Both your understanding of why people live in these places, and your proper identification of the true villains. Not that I didn't expect that, as a subscriber from the jump and a patreon person almost as long, you guys are becoming one of my most anticipated podcasts!

[@PrincessMadeira]

My husband (we're both trans men) is a native San Fransiscan, lived there for 31 years. He moved out to Rhode Island with me in 2021. He thought this episode might be too much for him, but he said he's finding it really healing to actually know more about what happened there. He actually had a friend who had slept with Almena for awhile, and was taken in by his BS. I pre-listened to this episode by myself to check how ya'll would handle it because we knew people who lost people, and used to sometimes walk by the shell of the warehouse.

[@knotical689]

Thank you for tying this to California's nightmarish housing market. It's rough out here, I needed something fast and I'm paying 1800 a month for what's basically a studio right now

[@spyone4828]

I understand the issue of people who knew there was a problem and didn't say anything. But, When someone sets a couch on fire, we want people to call the Fire Department rather than try to put it out themselves. We want that couch put out before the building catches fire. When an argument turns violent, we want people to call the Police. We want that fight stopped before someone has to go to the hospital, or morgue. In both those situations we don't want people to worry that the help they want to call for might report building code violations. I can totally understand the Police and Fire Department adopting a policy of "we don't report anything not related to what we were called for" in an effort to encourage people to call for help.

[@darthbob88]

1:54:00 I'm not sure just what went wrong, but it sounds like the submitter's email got HTML-escaped, because "'" is the escape code for an apostrophe '. That should have been "I've" and "else's".

[@stingray1irwin0]

A good friend of mine lost someone in this fire. Thanks for bringing some well deserved attention to it.

[@Valkyrie9000]

What's sad is that very nearly all community spaces and post-industrial small businesses on the west coast are in this state, and the reality is it can't and won't change without a federal fire program and funding on the scale of the WPA, which will not happen. Fire protection systems and fire safety renovations are just too expensive and too unenforced on top of all the other costs. I can't go into all these downtown queer spaces, thrift stores, and artist collectives without looking up at the ceiling looking for a single sprinkler, smoke detector, or lit fire exit sign. It's just millions of people with a gun to their head, waiting for the inevitable 19th century disasters.

[@ppp3093]

This episode hits hard, not just how infuriating the whole situation is but how the people that let this shit happen were the kind to just handwave any and all necessary measures to truly prevent this It's heart breaking that so many people died, especially younger queer people. The moment that just fucked me up is when Alice brought up Them Are Us Too and I realized that's why they weren't around anymore or like this other electronic artist I was checking stuff out only to see that she had died in a fire, and realizing that this is the fucking fire where she died was the worst feeling I think I've had listening to these disasters. Humanizing this entire disaster only made it hit harder but also puts into context how it affects people like me and my friends and how easy it is for some asshole landlord to not give a fucking shit and for people to not do their job which is fucking awful,

[@Mickulty]

Timestamps: 0:00:00 Bacardi 151 Update 0:01:36 Intro 0:06:08 The GD News: Thankfully, Nobody Sucked Off 0:15:42 The GD News: You Do Have To Respect The Chutzpah Of It 0:22:55 The GD News: This Is Gonna Go Extremely Poorly: US Foreign Policy Since 1946 0:32:08 Background: What Is Oakland, California? 0:38:40 Background: The Taxpayer Building, Fire Death Trap 0:47:00 1305 31st Avenue, Taxpayer Building 0:52:00 Certain California Art Guys 1:00:27 The Mixture of Taxpayer Building and California Art Guys 1:11:47 The Actual Human People Who Lived There 1:18:12 Fire Department and Electrical Installation 1:24:55 The Secret Gig 1:30:24 Aftermath 1:44:50 Safety Third: Planes Are Ambush Predators Welcome back!

[@BiggestCorvid]

The real heroes are in the comments

[@cyanidebutterfliesx]

immaculate late stage capitalism vibe on the timing of the like subscribe animation there solidarity with those in unsafe housing everywhere

[@catladydimitrescu]

That opener was an old school WTYP cluster jam. So comforting.

[@derpallardie]

I was living in a warehouse squat in Baltimore when this all went down. Baltimore was in a similar housing situation to Oakland , but not nearly as extreme. A lot of local artists and art students would live together in communal art/living/performance spaces in old buildings to afford to live in the city. In the aftermath of the fire, the city sent the inspectors out in force. Thankfully our spaces weren't obvious deathtraps like Ghost Ship was, but a few places were shut down and a lot of folk ended up out on the street. Probably for the best, on account of hipsters getting killed, but RIP the Bell Foundry. Actually, now that I think of it, they did the same thing to Fort Thunder and the like in Providence after the Station Fire. Seems like a precedent. I wonder if every town with an art school has a similar story?

[@rowansinger3876]

Takeaway lesson, group squats need fire safety volunteers. This could have been such a different story if for a set of sprinklers, a few safety lights, and some exit signs.

[@taxirob2248]

it's actually pretty easy to turn the water on, but modern meters report to the system managers so they would get caught and thrown out but at least they'd be ALIVE

[@atn_holdings]

I love being the volonteer safety marshall at the group squat where I tell them that they need to get a sprinkler system and they tell me that they have a sefety budget of 14 dollars

[@WaterMan416]

​@@taxirob2248I work for a water authority, and people illegally bypass their meters quite frequently. It's harder when you have existing service and then your usage drops to zero. But if it's a service that's turned off, that'd be easier probably.

[@lindseyshort8852]

I remember this disaster because my friend's artsy daughter (and also sort of she's my friend) was living in Oakland at the time and her being there was my first thought. Boy am I glad I was wrong

[@falloutghoul1]

Reminder to everyone that social murder is real.

[@Madhouse_Media]

Not even 15 minutes in and Liam's laughter at Alice's "tr*nny scanny" joke was just the uplift i needed after the last two weeks of personal bullshit. 😁

[@CosRacecar]

My dad used to repair organs for a living. The vast majority of the organs I'm seeing are early transistorized organs - ie they kind of tinkertoys he would often be given and either sell for very cheap or immediately scrap.

[@roguetamlin]

On the subject of Liberal Bastions Failing: Logan Airport in Boston has a problem with families who are on the waiting list for emergency housing getting dumped there every night and having to sleep on the floor. People with babies. This situation has been allowed to happen by our new Democratic governor. Just heard about this today on the NPR and I'm a little pissed off.

[@HylianDefender]

Neither the Democratic or Republican parties are worth supporting anymore. Democrats just don't seem to do enough, and Republicans choose between moderate white privilege and American Hitler.

[@Goodall10]

After this I actually feel for the firefighters. I'm sure they knew there was a good possibility those people were going to die that way, but is condemning the building and forcing them all to live under a freeway any better? Especially when you probably see so many of these buildings in your job. Gotta be a tough thing to reckon with in your mind.

[@Malachamavet]

Learning that ghosts can burn is worrying

[@thomasgiles2876]

If this is true, then the EPA man in Ghostbusters was absolutely right!

[@Malachamavet]

​@@thomasgiles2876improperly venting ghosts without a flare stack is illegal

[@loadeddice4696]

@@thomasgiles2876 He was always right

[@zyavoosvawleilte1308]

What is the safety datasheet for ghosts? And its NFPA 704?

[@thomaspalazzolo5902]

How do you think they fuel hellfire?

[@tiffylis]

ah its finally happened. a disaster that killed a bunch of people i knew :/ hard to understate how if you were involved in Oakland arts+music, even tangentially, this touched your life. thanks for handling it with so much anger and bleeped actionable threats.

[@Thatonedude227]

Proud otterbox user here I’m with Liam. I also used to throw phones at walls because of mental illness. I have never had a phone break with an otterbox case on it despite me being incredibly clumsy and dropping it multiple times a week

[@ValerieEnriquez]

back when I did bike racing and tracked my stats using Strava on my phone, Otterboxes were absolutely perfect for my clumsy ass repeatedly falling over, flying over my handlebars, and otherwise putting my phone through the equivalent of being thrown in a dryer while in my back jersey pocket while I'm still wearing the jersey.

[@schtormm]

shame their Symmetry ones just break in a year because of the plastic/rubber

[@fauxpinkytoo]

I'm only hoping I don't drop my new phone between now and February 4th. OtterBox on order...

[@SixArmedSweater]

Guilty here too. I smashed my phone to the ground screen-first out of anguished frustration thinking I’d failed to talk a friend out of… yeah. She lived, thankfully.

[@Rinasoir]

Opening with Liam still hostile about Hard-Drives means I'm expecting a *fantastic* episode already :D

[@MatthewSmith-sz1yq]

Solution to the Boeing issue: doors can't fail if they don't exist. Assemble the plane around the passengers, then disassemble it at the destination. What's that, the plane is on fire? Well, good thing they issued the flight attendants with Boeing© brand Sawzalls, officially called "emergency door tool" or something equally as non-threatening.

[@trombonedude5312]

This is the only good idea

[@hayuseen6683]

We've had door-stay-on technology since the ancient days, there'a even a phrase for it: barring the door. You stick a couple solid steel bars that keeps the door from falling off, problem solved. Might have to get attendents to bulk up to lift them, there's a bonus.

[@WaterMan416]

They need a hole to start. Sure, you could keep something like a halligan around to punch a hole. But I prefer the demo saw/partner saw/k12 whatever your brand of choice.

[@seanhall8686]

I have personal experience with the bloated real estate and rental markets and its extremely hard to get by, even when the wages are good. The complexes here want over $2000 a month for a one bedroom, and the condos are all close to $400k, and even the derelict fire torched and moldy houses are going for $350k as "investment opportunities". I can't imagine being 19, earning minimum wage, with little to no savings, and facing these kinds of options.

[@grmpEqweer]

32:08 we desperately need affordable government housing, that isn't a dump, and rents on a sliding scale. Edit: The feds will have to do the building, although i think it's reasonable to also require all residential housing facilities with over a certain amount of capacity to be required to rent 5-10% of their units on a sliding scale, based on income.

[@pygmybugs]

I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but here in Minneapolis, some godawful overpriced condo junk will go up and they'll claim to have "affordable" housing, but they really mean "under market rate," when they themselves have made the market rate so that a postage stamp efficiency apartment is like $2500. So if you make it $2000/mo it's now "affordable," even though you still need to be making like $40-50k for that to be reasonable. (Especially since all the condos are the kind of places that do income verification and credit checks, so even if you're willing to pay 3/4 of your income in rent, you wouldn't be allowed to.) I know that's not nearly as bad as in real major cities, but the tactic is probably common everywhere.

[@atn_holdings]

why have "sliding pay scale based on income" when you have: progrsessive taxation. this is one of the few edge cases on here where I want to tell people to stop being liberal about it and just embrace socialism more

[@hayuseen6683]

​@@atn_holdingsRent scale can make something low enough to obtain, it doesn't matter how little tax you pay if you live on 10k and rent costs 14k, unless you mean subsidized housing via progressive tax on the wealthy?

[@atn_holdings]

@@hayuseen6683 what else do you think i mean?

[@hayuseen6683]

@@atn_holdings Allow corps/landlords to continue gaining profit and charge whatever price they can while lowering taxes for people with low income; Allow corps/landlords to continue profitting while taxing them so that they lose profit above certain levels to cut their motive to increase prices for rent but incurring loopholes like kickback expenses or shuttering housing property to take tax-breakable losses while pushing for developing it as non-housing; Progressively taxing to fund social services and bloated bueracracy to cover rent prices for people provably poor enough to be pitied; Other potential meanings behind two vague words My issue is the problem of the landlords/property market isn't being solved. New affordable housing not being developed. Plugging loopholes to profit off empty homes. Bad regulation that increases the cost of housing (like parking requirements rather than walkable city infrastructure). Twenty social service programs that make you wait years to get into housing while making you prove you're a specific sort and level of pathetic to get into programs and if you don't jump through their flaming hoops pull the rug out, rather than prioritizing meeting needs and worrying about overfunding at the back end (like taking back the costs of assistance in taxes if shown to be unneeded when granted)

[@capsjukebox]

00:01 seconds-dropped into a barely coherent argument and opining the loss of booze with moonshine levels of alcohol…damn, i love this podcast

[@saddestcats]

was in middle school in the east bay during this, i remember talking with my friends about this days after it happened in shock, even though we didnt know anyone who was there

[@henryglennon3864]

The user submitted story about THE BELT, had major Hunter S Thompson vibes, both in the prose and the recital. Well done all around.

[@goodluck5642]

This was a truly horrific and senseless tragedy which could have been prevented. Glad to see it getting some more recognition after some time has passed

[@selanryn5849]

For what it’s worth, Oakland’s minimum wage did increase to $16/hr on January 1st.

[@mcamp9445]

Yeah, and last year was 15 it’s been going up by a dollar for several years now. Also if you work in fast food it’s $20 an hour which I don’t quite understand but it’s a thing now and if you work in any kind of nursing field nurse assistant it’s 21.

[@TisTheDamnStickSeason]

Love the Arcade Fire reference in The God Damn News

[@chickenduckhappy]

This kind of building with kind of public access would be impossible in Vienna, Austria because the fire police would immediately shut it down for the public. We have norms and standards for so many things and wooden staircases must be *massive*. It's even more extreme in the earthquake regions of Greece. They still use timber but it's always comically massive 😅

[@alliebean3235]

roz's reading of this safety third was top notch, i could absoluitely tell the submitter capitalized The Belt throughout just from the way it was read

[@rosenotactuallylalonde1560]

reminds me of my childhood at unitarian summer camp which was constructed with probably a little more intentionality and a little less meth but evaded fire codes and safety regulations with the same sort of hippy schmoozing. main hall was a very cool building with a lot of VERY unsafe crawl spaces (one that could only be reached by climbing up a story-and-a-half tall shelving unit like it was a ladder) that you were allowed to just like, sleep in overnight if you wanted because there was no rule about actually being in your cabin overnight

[@nicklanders5178]

Damn I've been thinking about sending in a safety third with "Schrödinger's Guest" for a while now, shame somebody beat me to it

[@reishvedaur]

this one hits close to home. a friend of mine was there that night, and she lost two friends in the fire.

[@YYismyname]

35:00 The minimum wage in Oakland is actually $16/hr not $12.55/hr, so you would only need to spend ~88% of your income on housing, much more easily attainable!

[@dftp]

Capitalism is so good dude... 😮‍💨

[@megatrocious]

She's referring to the Oakland minimum wage in 2016, when the fire happened, which was in fact $12.55. Seems comically low, doesn't it?

[@YYismyname]

@@megatrociousoh that makes a lot of sense, thank you!

[@varglbargl]

commenting for engagement to make up for being completely unable to handle watching this one.

[@hailhorkos2327]

I think episodes about fires are the worst because they're always so completely preventable and I have nightmares about being trapped in smoke and flame. I love my weird arty rogue venues but people shouldn't have to die in them. While we absolutely live in a capitalist hellhole, I do also hope that you've all seen Poor Things because it's an excellent film, particularly for fans of Art Nouveau and beautiful surfaces. And you all deserve an art treat.

[@Iruparazzo]

literally posted 2 mins before i came here lookin for a podcast to doordash drive with lol

[@sideways5153]

Good luck with your DD today! Hope you get good tips!

[@Iruparazzo]

@@sideways5153 That's kind of you to say, thanks!

[@rowandoggo]

Every WTYP is an hour or 2 I can spend listening to while working

[@garymccammon6696]

But it has SLIDES

[@aliquotidian]

Yes, but they only change every few minutes, or the presenter on helm will call out a change

[@jeffhiggins4478]

Based solely on the number of times the words “sucked off” have been uttered, one can only conclude that this is the finest episode of WTYP ever.

[@zyavoosvawleilte1308]

Airbus: Die by wire Boeing: Die by screws

[@AllenSJ5]

Getting screwed and sucked off by Boeing (bad)

[@zyavoosvawleilte1308]

@@AllenSJ5 Getting sucked off by a Boeing, that´s what kids want these days!

[@silverXnoise]

The bolts weren’t loose-there’s no evidence they were even installed.

[@lindseyshort8852]

Shit, really?

[@louiswilkins2034]

Not installed is just the maximum level of loose.

[@dfko100]

R.I.P. so many wonderful artists :(

[@WizardExMachina]

This episode has reminded me watching someone, try to using a styrofoam cup as a funnel for petrol when trying to fill one of those airport belts, from the plane window

[@christianweagle6253]

What the what?

[@_oe_o_e_]

“Sucked off to a fatal end” there are worse ways to die

[@antoinetteherrera9026]

Sounds like the plot of a horror porno.