San Francisco went from ~1,000 to 25,000 people in a single year during the Gold Rush, with almost no chickens. Eggs were $1 apiece — a significant sum when a building lot in most American cities cost less than a dozen eggs here.
The solution was murre eggs from the Farallon Islands, 25 miles offshore. One company locked it down and was pulling 500,000 eggs a month at peak. Their quality-control method involved walking through every colony and destroying every existing egg before collection — so anything you found on the way back was guaranteed fresh.
When a competitor tried to break the monopoly, it ended in a gunfight. One dead on each side. Murder conviction, then acquittal on a technicality.
I know this is old news on this thread, but I created https://www.kinkbnb.com after AirBNB kicked one of my dominatrix friends off their site three years ago. Making a profit off AirBNB's posturing - they just posted a "dominatrix experience" too, making themselves look especially hypocritical.
I bolted this together in an hour with a VM from my friends at Applied Ops, a hosting company I use for most of my stuff. I won't go to a large service and if I am running things at load I will only run my own stuff. I actually have this on an actual box - a FreeBSD server they turned up for me, it's not even breaking a sweat with what Huffington Post threw at me yesterday. I like having the hookup.
It's marketing. This entire play is a marketing play, it's all about how well you can sell it to that subculture. That's one of the subcultural buzzwords. I can understand how the lingo might be confusing to someone outside that scene.
AirBNB specifically banned one of my friend's listings but I suspect it was more they objected to the photos she posted of all the equipment. They have listings that include dungeons, which I think is great. But if you go to kinkbnb.com you know exactly what you are in for. That has its own appeal.
I worked for Pincus at tribe.net when he was letting it circle the drain, The users petitioned me to create a subscription system to save the site and the first month it raised $30,000. Of course, that all disappeared and a short while later Zynga put out their first game. What do you think happened there? It's continually flabbergasted me that anyone would invest in his company when he has a long long history of ripping people off. Nowadays he's got multiple mansions, multiple private aircraft, and multiple high priced lawyers. Our only hope is that some of these Russian investors are actually mobsters that will kneecap him when the IPO flops.
Here are some good tips for self-employed apartment hunting in San Francisco:
1) Don't go to a rental company. Citiapartments sucks anyways, they are crooks.
2) Walk around and take numbers off of buildings. The best apartments never go on craigslist.
3) Network hard. You won't believe how many apartments I got because I knew someone. I'm in a place in Nob Hill because I knew a girl who was moving to CT. She'd lived here ten years, and I took the place over from her with her rent control intact. I pay $1300 for a two bedroom with a stunning view of the southern part of town. Of course, when times are tough I also know where to get a $250 office space I can sleep in because of my networking.
4) Bring your own credit reports.
That's really all I can say - I have been under- or self-employed for the better part of a decade, and I've never had a problem finding a place to live. I do have years of networking in this town too though so your mileage may vary.
The solution was murre eggs from the Farallon Islands, 25 miles offshore. One company locked it down and was pulling 500,000 eggs a month at peak. Their quality-control method involved walking through every colony and destroying every existing egg before collection — so anything you found on the way back was guaranteed fresh.
When a competitor tried to break the monopoly, it ended in a gunfight. One dead on each side. Murder conviction, then acquittal on a technicality.