July 13, 2007
Oh Yeah, Bricky Baby, Your Facadism Gets Me Hot
Yes, making fun of the wealthy is a tired and easy target -- if anything we totally want to befriend the ultra-rich with the hope that they might pay our always-late rent and maybe for the occasional Kobe beef dish. You know, for kicks. And we sort of dig the new Ritz-Carlton residental and club and whatever building on Market and Third Streets, and kind of wish we could stow ourselves up on the top floor in a fit of luxurious and eccentric agoraphobia.
But check out their PR's garish and surprisingly epic promotional video for the new pads. The best part? How they seamlessly weed out your more unsavory tax bracket dwellers (i.e., you, us) by offering the hovels as merely “a second home...in the Ritz-Carlton tradition” for those who need a place to stash the mistress or second family.
To watch the video, if you dare, go to their italic-happy site here and click on "Watch The Ritz-Carlton Club Video." Our apologies for not having its access easier for you to reach.
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Brock, it's just a time share. :-) You can only buy a "fractional" share of the residence. 21-35 days a year (depending on what? get the membership kit.)
I hope whoever buys these places likes the theme from the Godfather and Take Five. Because that f**kin' talentless ass clown of a sax player will be there every day at 4pm, belting out his limited repetoire right under their window.
OMG. That opening music makes me want to cut off my ears--or my penis. I kept cringing, wondering if Celine Dion or Sarah Brightman was going to start warbling some nonsensical ballad.
And most aurally upsetting is the easy listening bit in the middle. Holy Shit, that's bad stuff. I had to stop listening at that point. Really.
No way would I live somewhere whose marketing department condoned such terrible music. I don't care if the doorman sucks me off or not.
Do they have a bar?
I think the video you want (of this actual location, rather than the corporate wierdness) is on this page:
http://www.ritzcarltonrealestate.com/fractional/san-francisco/sanfrancisco-virtual.jsp
I, unfortunately, walk past there every day, and just about every time I look up, I am bewildered by the decision to pair old world red-brown brick with contemporary cubicle tan. It's not terribly easy to see in this photo, but it is fugly.
Yeah, baldguy, I wondered about that color combo, too. Would not have been my choice. At all.
Is there anyone in our unsavory tax bracket who can afford a house / living space as a "first home"?
p.s. the new "SFist monitor" ad spammer is evil.
My favorite part of the video is the fleeting reference to the "Ritz Kids Program." (Or perhaps, and preferably, "Ritz Kidz"?) Can't you imagine a group of little children sitting Indian-style in a circle, being taught how to hold a knife, and the subtleties of acting imperious-yet-patronizing to the help? -greg
too funny (2)fizz and pop, I work by there also, and the sax player is so bad,
how funny...you must have been taking pictures in the same spot I was the other day....a shame they had to butcher a Burnham building like that without at least making the new part fit in a little better....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gdewar/729034908/
Oh goody - another precious timeshare for carpetbaggers!!
"Ritz Kids" - wasn't that an 80s TV ad for the cracker??? "sittin' on a ritz"
Umm, I think tourism is a pretty big slice of San Francisco's economy ...
It's exactly like an SNL spoof .... No, an endless, ill-conceived movie based on an SNL spoof.
As ugly as the pairing is, I like the brick part a helluvalot better than those garishly ugly condo buildings that the upwardly-mobile seem to love so much.
The lower section---the old, original section---is a spectacular improvement from what was there before: the same structure covered up in a hideous attempt to make it "modern." That said, what were they thinking by adding that ugly, uninspired tower?
And LOL, I work at Montgomery and Market and thought I was the only one who was ready to do almost anything to get that sax player to stop. The sound travels upward and even in our sealed building on the 10th floor, his "music" is way too loud and annoying. Ugh.