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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHM7_oZJwoc
Thanks Eric!
'The Finger' says it very well. It's too bad that Phillip didn't get a chance to go over the Bay Bridge to have a look at The Port of Oakland (the destination for all those one-way cargo ships). Had there been time, I think 'Finger' would have just been fascinated by all those humongous cranes, which just happened to have been MADE IN CHINA, and so thoughtfully
sent here (of all places) to make things so much easier to unload all those wonderfully packaged cargo ships with all those goodies destined for American stores. Thousands of Americans can now enjoy life more, thanks to those cranes that liquidated so many of those really nasty jobs at the Port of Oakland - that were also very dangerous too.
When the cranes arrived they were so huge that even in pieces they only cleared the Golden Gate Bridge by inches. We thought it was so lucky for the Chinese that they were able to export these cranes to us, at just the same time as the longshoremen in Oakland were having such a difficult time reaching agreements with the shipping lines about just how much the people working here ought to be paid to do the work of loading and off-loading in Oakland.
Finger could have discovered that the Cranes in Oakland solved that problem by eliminating the need for all those dangerous and nasty jobs that are no longer necessary here - thanks to the generosity of the Chinese. They've been being generous to Americans in the shipping trades for a very long time now - as the Finger might have noticed - given all the previous smaller generations of those same 'new' cranes that virtually are the whole skyline for the Port of Oakland, California.
In fact business is so good at the Port of Oakland they've had to cancel their Tours of the Port, and they have a massive new training program to deal with all the additional truck traffic
there.
I just think it's wonderful, the way the Chinese have been so helpful to all those Americans that get all that stuff every day from overseas; especially helpful when it comes to unpacking all those truck-trailer-containers for us, with their giant cranes that save us all so much time and trouble - you can see some of them on the sophisticated Port of Oakland masthead, at the site I included above.
San Francisco no longer has a port of its own, because Mayor Feinstein thought the ports were too dirty, and were bad for tourism. So she wanted to convert them to boutiques. That idea failed, but we have some lovely architecture along the
Embarcadero, with the rotting docks neatly concealed behind the wonderful facades. These structures from the nineteenth century make wonderful Kodak moments for the tourists to photograph, as they enjoy their tours of the remains of a once great, and formerly American port-city.
If Finger should get the chance to revisit the Bay Area, he should drop me a note. The Bay-Area is just a place filled with eccentricities and contrasts. The Asian's have been helping Americans in the arts here as well, which has also had an impact on the quality of business and life in this City by the Bay: however none of this could be happening now Eric, if it were not for the self-less interest of the America's fascination with cheap, cheap and every cheaper garbage.
We get the goodies, and they get our garbage; now doesn't that seem like a truly American kind of import-export policy? I'm sure that Phillip would just love it.
In fact next time perhaps Finger might get the chance to finally see what does leave the Bay Area, and actually does depart from the Golden Gate. He'd need a schedule because this is nothing like the frequency of the imports: in fact in might only be a few times a week: but the cargo is always the same, it's GARBAGE. That's our number one export, the "garbage" which comes mainly from all those container ships that Finger saw arriving; along with empty cargo containers that are being returned to be re-loaded.
In fact that's become another industry here that we have to thank the Chinese for. They send us so many cargo containers full of stuff, and since we don't have anything but garbage to send back so there was a huge problem of what to do with all those thousands upon thousands of empty cargo containers.
The numbers of these huge metal hunks were becoming staggering, and with Port-Space at a premium - well something had to be done! So some very creative, half-bright designers decided to create a whole new industry. Now Americans can own homes built out of the same empty cargo containers that brought them all their stuff in the first place! And thanks to the ingenuity of the new-designers, whole apartment towers can now be built from used shipping containers which, given the housing crash, might just be part of the answer to the thousands of tent cities springing up all over the USA . After all, people in the third world have been living in empty truck trailers and cargo containers, since they became part of the shipping industry: So why should Americans be denied that right? I'm sure that 'Finger' would agree that these things could be made into fabulous and trendy studios and showrooms etc. as well as serving the more pedestrian needs of families with nowhere else to go?
It seems that Mr. Finger might have a lot to do with his unemployed time, in the near future; if he could continue to bring the public some of the more interesting events of the day in small
segments?
Jim
Kirwan
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