SF Chronicle recipe for Avocado Toast, April 8, 1927 https://t.co/UMnH7YCnLM pic.twitter.com/AZ4NI2MZky

— Eric Fischer (@enf) July 20, 2017

Though avocado toast — the complicated culinary concoction in which mashed avocado is placed atop a piece of heated bread — is used as shorthand for everything that's wrong with the 2010s* boom time bubble, a Bay Area history buff reminds us that 90 years ago, the local paper of record was recommending it as a dish.

We can thank San Francisco Exploratorium programmer and visualization artist Eric Fischer for the Throwback Thursday memorandum. Fischer, a lauded social mapper and one of the only human beings on Twitter still worth following (it's basically just him and Officer Edith these days), is no stranger to archived print products, but his interests typically skew toward the urban-planny.

It appears, however, that he was driven into food tweeting by a Bon Appétit article entitled "Why Are We Still Talking About Avocado Toast?" In the piece, reporter John Birdsall traces present-day avocado toast's roots — again, let's be clear, we are talking about the process of smashing some avocado onto toasted bread, not the cure for smallpox — to Australia.

"There’s little doubt that modern avo toast—the Instagram kind—can trace its existence to that continent," Birdsall writes, as

In 1993 Sydney chef and restaurateur Bill Granger put a sexed-up version of avocado toast—with lime, salt, and chile flakes (the modern foundational recipe)—on the menu at Bills in Darlinghurst, near Sydney. In the new millennium, it jumped to New York City via Chloe Osborne, another Aussie, who became the consulting chef of Cafe Gitane in Greenwich Village. Her version was similarly Australian: a pebble-grained slice from a square loaf, toasted and covered in mashed avocado, diamond-cut and confetti-covered with crushed chile.

But, as Birdsall ably notes, avocado toast was actually consumed by SoCal residents sixty years before Australians started stealing all our acting jobs and starting present-day food trends.

A 1931 column in the Los Angeles Times announced that in the coffee shop of the swank Clark Hotel downtown, ladies “tired out from shopping” could refresh themselves with one of the “delightful luncheons,” only 50 cents. These included avocado on toast and “delicious coffee, iced or hot.”

But even in 1931, avocado toast wasn’t new. In 1920, in the Covina Argus, a newspaper from a town in the San Gabriel Valley, a writer named Martin Fesler gave his recipe for Avocado on Toast: “Remove the skin and mash with a fork. Spread thickly on a small square of hot toast. Add a little salt and pepper.” He called it one of the nicest ways of serving avocado.

By the time Genevieve A. Callahan wrote the Sunset All-Western Cook Book in 1933, avocado toast was worth describing in her section on avocados (she strains and seasons the pulp), though it didn’t warrant a formal recipe. The dish was just something you needed to know as a Southern Californian to deal with the excess fruit from your yard or with the bags the neighbor lugged over from hers.

Here's that Argus recipe, if you need even more instruction on how to add items to a slice of bread:

And here's another one, reportedly from 1885!

That last one makes the Chron recipe fairly old news even by 1927, eh? So you've gotta wonder, will Fischer's much-retweeted reminder that avocado toast is nothing new somehow make people think twice about using "avocado toast" as a representative of all that is wrong with the present-day boom of Instagrammable coastal prosperity? Probably not, as the turn of that century had their own version of glossy but shallow prosperity: See The Great Gatsby, a 1925 novel about a mansion-dwelling millionaire whose fortune was a sham and who dies in the end. Yes, the same book that has recently inspired numerous tech company parties. What is it they say about people who don't remember the past?

*What are we calling the 2010s, anyway? I asked Jay, and he said "the 2010s, I guess." Is there a clever name for the period between 2010-2020 yet? In other news, I have a credit card that expires on 4/20 and that always makes me laugh. TGIF guys!

Related: The Irony!: Three Big Tech Companies All Had Great Gatsby-Themed Holiday Parties This Year

When asked about reports that transportation network Lyft has been losing as much as $50 million a month, company President John Zimmer could have denied that amount, or offered another figure. But at a conference Monday he confirmed the massive monthly leak, saying that he preferred to think of the drain as an investment.

The discussion went down Monday, at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference. Zimmer, who is also Lyft's co-founder, was asked if rumors that Lyft had told investors that the company operates at around a $50 million monthly deficit, "Zimmer said they were," according to the SF Business Times.

What Zimmer took issue with was the idea that the company was losing that money, saying "I would use the word ‘investing.’”

"We're in a position now of building up scale," Zimmer said of the four-year-old company's losses, as he argued that $2 trillion is spent annually in the US on car ownership, but "we believe, in cities, that the majority of that spend will transition to transportation as a service."

(Perhaps that's the thinking behind the company's new "Premier" offering — is a fancier option more likely to convince us city folk to ditch our cars than the company's typical rando in a pink-mustached Kia?)

"The $50 million monthly "'investment' is well worth it for that future opportunity," Zimmer says, "and we have more than enough money now to get through it to break even,"

Breaking even, that sounds good, right? Especially for a company that after the close of its ninth round of funding was worth a rumored $5.5 billion.

But when asked when that break even point might occur, Zimmer hedged a bit more (perhaps thinking about all the rumors that Lyft is actually trying to get itself sold). "I'm not going to say a specific date now," he stonewalled. "Obviously, things change month-to-month."

"But, yeah, more than enough money."

While Mayor Lee introduced for approval the largest San Francisco budget to date — $9.6 billion — at the end of last month, more privately, city officials are making contingency plans for falling markets. Bloomberg reports that municipal officials are at work on an "economic resiliency plan" to avoid, for example, a situation like the one where, in 2010, a projected $460 million shortfall led to 1,600 job cuts and reductions in spending on crucial public services.

As Lee put it: “The impacts of the last economic downturn resulted in near double-digit unemployment with thousands of residents out of work and our small businesses left struggling... We must not take for granted the vibrancy of our economy. Now is the time to plan ahead.”

Todd Rufo, director of the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, added that, "We haven’t forgotten what 2008 was like and that’s why we want to be as prepared as we can be.” In his words to Bloomberg, “There are things that you need to do to prepare your house so it doesn’t fall down."

Moody's analytics senior economist Dan White appears to applaud the effort, which isn't just rare among cities: It's unheard of. “I haven’t seen many cities or counties focusing on this, especially from a stress-testing perspective, which scares me a little bit,” White told Bloomberg. “Cities, states and all manner of local governments should absolutely be preparing themselves for a downturn.”

San Francisco's economic resiliency plan is due to be released in about eight months. So, yeah, the tech economy should be good till then, right?

Related: How Many San Franciscans Are Rooting For The Tech Economy To Tank?
Life After The Boom: What Will Happen When This Bubble Bursts

In a job listing that sounds part Gosford Park, part Devil Wears Prada, and part total parody, a staffing agency says they're offering "$175,000 +" to the Higgins/Holloway hybrid who has what it takes to be the "BEST Personal Assistant for an extremely creative client in Noe Valley."

According to the listing on The Help Company, "a premier staffing and placement agency serving Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco," "This client has recently remodeled their 10,000 sq foot home and is looking for an Assistant/House Manager who can help run their day to day lives. You will be responsible for calendar management for this family of 5 (plus a puppy!), help with travel planning, restaurant reservations, to running local errands and organizing closets and pantries."

Please tell me the puppy has a calendar. Please!

"We are looking for someone who can set up systems for this new home and organize everything from a gift database to cleaning routine for the housekeeper and groundsmen," the ad reads. Groundsmen! That certainly is a fancy term! You're right, these people are creative!

Froofy liberal arts degree-holders, take note: "Anyone with a background in architecture or art would be a bonus to this client - as they have an extensive art collection comparable to a museum!" So in between OpenTabling and pantry organization I guess you're expected to talk art with your boss? Or something?

That art collection's not the only glamorous aspect to the position, as your prospective employer also "loves to entertain HIgh Profile friends from around the world." OK, so, yeah, the way the ad is written makes it ripe for mockery (though to be fair it wasn't written by the family, it was written by the placement agency). But the salary they're offering is no joke: Dependent on experience, the art-expert-errand-runner will pull down "$175,000 +"

Applicants should have "a minimum of 10 years experience" and "a deep level of commitment to service and understand white glove service," which knocks me out of the running. But I'm sure one of you guys is qualified...and if you apply and get an interview, you'd better tell me all about it.

[h/t Leah Garchik]

It's not easy being a grocery delivery startup! Just ask Webvan, the dot-bomb-era delivery service that flamed out so spectacularly in 2001 that its name is synonymous with early 00s startup excess. Is SF-based Instacart preparing to join Webvan in the Bay Area grocery startup hall of fail fame? If the company's recent scramble to make money by slashing worker pay and raising user rates is any indication, we soon might be snickering at Instacart the way we once did at Kozmo or Pets.com.

According to emails acquired by the Wall Street Journal, "Contract drivers in the company’s hometown of San Francisco who collect prepacked bags from grocery stores will earn $1.50 a drop-off, a cut of 63% from the previous guarantee of $4."

The company is also cutting commission fees for drivers, "slashing by 50% to 25 cents the commission it pays for each item in an order drivers collect when shopping in stores."

The WSJ reports that drivers are still told that they can earn “$18 or even $20 or more per hour” if customers generously tip.

Delivery drivers for Instacart are contractors, and must pay for their own gas, insurance and related fees, with those costs presumably eating into that tip-contingent income.

It was about three months ago that Instacart raised fees for users, in December upping annual rates for unlimited deliveries from $99 to $149 and one-time delivery fees from $3.99 to $5.99.

The company also generates revenue by "charging more than retail prices for items at some stores and pocketing the difference or through commissions paid by the grocer."

But marking up groceries for delivery customers has apparently failed to net the company enough cash to continue business as usual, as the company also canned its entire recruiting staff right before Christmas last year.

And with this new change in driver payment, they can likely expect to lose more workers, as some say that the now-lower rates aren't worth continuing with the company.

“It’ll be a lot harder to make what I earn now,” one driver told the WSJ, which explained that to make what they're making before the cuts, drivers will now have to "nearly triple their deliveries."

“It was a good gig to earn some extra money, but I don’t think it makes much sense anymore."

Previously: Instacart To Raise Delivery Fees Following Layoffs
Are Caviar, SpoonRocket, And Instacart Doomed To Go The Way Of Kozmo And Webvan?

Though late-morning and afternoon trading on Wall Street has seen all four stocks bump up a bit, this morning looked really dismal for the local tech sector as the stock prices of Apple and Yahoo neared 52-week lows and both Twitter and Square were trading at just pennies over their IPO prices, as Socketsite and CBS 5 took note.

Furthermore, big tech stocks Facebook and Google both took a battering this morning, and both are down between 2 and 3 percent as of this writing.

As CBS reports, "The plunge coincided with the continued drop in the price of crude oil," and this is because "Investors worry that the global glut in crude will cause deep damage to oil and gas companies and lead to more bankruptcies and layoffs in the sector."

Also, more ominous figures: 1300 stocks hit new lows during morning trading, the highest number recorded since the dark days of November 2008.

Netflix has recovered from a big, 7-percent drop this morning, with it's stock near its closing price yesterday. Yahoo remains down 5 percent, 1.57 points below its Tuesday close; Square is down 3.8 percent; and Twitter is now up 3 percent, a half point above yesterday.

Needless to say, off in the near distance, we keep hearing that tell-tale pop-pop.

Related: Life After The Boom: What Will Happen When This Bubble Bursts

Our report that Yahoo was going to lay off 1000 staffers in the next month or so was met with a collective yawn from readers — a sign, perhaps, of the company's lack of relevance. And yet, here I am writing about layoff rumors again today! This time, it's because sources now say as much as a quarter of Yahoo might be packing their desks.

According to a New York Post report from this morning, earlier reports of a 10 percent layoff at the company were too low, and "the number is actually closer to 20 percent or 25 percent."

Numbers like that make for a nervous workforce, so perhaps they could be calmed by a little comedy? How about jokes from their well-known raconteur of a CEO about their firings? Hilarious, right?

Well, that's reportedly what happened this week. According to the Post, in what was possibly (?) a misguided effort at levity, CEO Marissa Mayer began a recent companywide meeting by saying "there are going to be no layoffs 'this week.'"

Though the remarks drew "nervous chuckles from workers who fear for their jobs," the mood wasn't a rollicking one.

"This is the reason employee morale is so low" an anonymous Yahoo source said, suggesting to the Post that "most workers took the scary remark as twisted confirmation that Yahoo’s embattled chief executive is sharpening the ax."

Or perhaps it was an effort to comfort worried workers? Naaaah, says an unnamed "insider" who spoke with the Post. Instead, the anonymous person said, it's "the latest example of a chronically tone-deaf CEO in a crisis."

For their part, Yahoo refused to comment, telling SFist by email that “We don’t comment on rumors or speculation."

Previously: Yahoo To Reportedly Ax 'At Least' 10% Of Its Workforce Over Next Few Months

Oh, Yahoo. The long-struggling tech giant has been having wave after wave of layoffs in the last few years, with 14% of its workforce dumped over the course of 2015, alone. According to a new report, the bloodletting is going to get even worse over the next few weeks, with around a thousand staffers expected to be cut from the Silicon Valley company in the first quarter of 2016.

Business Insider cites "sources familiar with the situation" as saying that the troubled company will experience "major layoffs" across its over-10,000-person company, to the tune of "at least 10% of its workforce."

The cuts, which are expected to hit all the sprawling company's business units, are expected to impact their "media business, European operations, and platforms-technology group" most strongly.

Of course, 1,000 layoffs is a far cry from the 9,000 proposed by activist shareholders just last month, when New York hedge fund SpringOwl sent a 99-slide presentation to Yahoo's board demanding that the company cut $2 billion a year by giving 90 percent of their employees the boot, and staffing with a combination of 3,000 full-time employees and contractors.

Though Yahoo has failed to comment on the reported layoffs, they have said that they will announce "additional plans for a more focused Yahoo on or before our Q4 earnings call," which is expected in the next few weeks. That jibes with the timeline presented by Business Insider's sources, one of which said that "A team is working on [the layoff plan] and they want to do it this quarter."

Previously: Yahoo Shareholders Propose Plan To Cut 9,000 Jobs
Marissa Mayer's Yahoo Severance Would Be Way Less Than Reported

The stock market's first day of trading for 2016 did not go so well for several local tech companies, with Alphabet, Facebook and Netflix all taking big hits in a trend that left analysts feeling pessimistic about the future.

Wired reports that "a worldwide stock sell-off sparked by a weaker-than-expected manufacturing report in China" caused markets in Asia, Europe, and the US to close far lower than expected, with Alphabet and Facebook down 2 percent, and Netflix down 4 percent.

Those might not seem like big enough percentages to get worried about on the surface, but Wired warns that "any softening in tech shares could mean bigger problems for the market as a whole."

"The question is how buoyant the tech sector can remain if the global economy as a whole drags," they ask, the same question raised by Ken Rosen, UC Berkeley's Chair of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, in November.

In fact, it was Rosen who rang the alarm regarding the culprit behind yesterday's troubles, China. At a November event in San Francisco, Rosen cautioned that if the Chinese economy collapses the way some analysts believe it might, we could see "a global downturn that leaves no region safe, including the United States," and spurs "investors to dump risky assets around the globe."

The result, the SF Business Times said at the time, would be "pullback in investors' risk appetite, and thus their willingness to write big checks to Uber and other profitless startups at lofty valuations," all of which would "spell trouble for the regional economy."

So was yesterday the beginning of the end? Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at Jones Trading, tells Wired that "Throughout the past few years, if you think about how each year started compared to this one, the prospects for this year are less optimistic than most.”

And with that lack of optimism comes closing checkbooks, New York University business school professor Roy Smith tells Wired, saying that "investors may be worried that overvalued tech startups could subject markets to more less-than-stellar IPOs."

But anyone would be foolish to start freaking out based on one single day, right? Even if that day, as Reuters reports, had "the Dow marking its worst start to a year since 2008"? Oh, and "both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq had their worst starts to a year since 2001"?

John Lonski, the chief capitals markets economist at Moody’s Analytics, isn't saying you should freak out, but he's not saying you shouldn't, either.

“Look at overseas markets—not only China—but we are looking at deep declines in Europe, Japan, and other emerging markets," he says.

“We’re starting the year with a reminder to the financial markets that there’s a great deal to worry about.”

Related: Dot Bomb Oracle Predicts Boom Doom For Bay Area

Grocery delivery company Instacart yesterday announced that it would raise the minimum delivery fee it charges by 50 percent. This price increase follows shortly after the company, reportedly valued at $2 billion last year, laid off twelve recruiters earlier in the month.

Instacart announced the decision to raise prices in a blog post yesterday, painting the move as a natural result of company growth.

"We’ve partnered with over 100 retailers, we’ve opened operations in more than 18 cities around the country and we’ve welcomed thousands of Personal Shoppers to our community," reads the blog post. "To account for these improvements to our service, as well as changing market conditions, we’ve updated our prices," continues the post as it glosses over any possibility of trouble at the company.

But trouble there might be, as Re/code noted yesterday that Instacart laid off 12 in-house recruiters earlier this month.

"We’re continuing to hire for key roles in areas like engineering, data science and sales, but as we no longer need to maintain such an aggressive hiring pace, we’ve decided to reduce the size of our recruiting team to better align with our future goals,” a provided statement read.

SFist has previously noted similarities between Instacart and long-ago delivery outfit Webvan, which failed when the first dot com bubble burst. This comparison is not appreciated by Instacart investors, and Venture Beat took a moment to note that Michael Moritz of Instacart-investor Sequoia Capital has on more than one occasion spoken about the differences between the two companies. (Webvan used to warehouse their own merchandise, for instance. Instacart doesn't do that.)

The fee for 2-hour grocery delivery went from $3.99 to $5.99 ("in most cities"), and the annual subscription for unlimited 2-hour delivery rose to $149 from $99.

Related: Are Caviar, SpoonRocket, And Instacart Doomed To Go The Way Of Kozmo And Webvan?

It's not just unicorns that might be overvalued, ladies and gents. Now, more and more housing experts are coming out and affirming what some have been warning all along: we're in a bubble.

So say a third of housing experts surveyed by Zillow, reports the San Francisco Business Times, which goes on to note how the building consensus is especially alarming given the normal reluctance of most experts to make such declarative statements.

San Francisco was by far the big loser — or winner, if you recently sold your Bay Area home — in the quarterly survey that Zillow conducts with Pulsenomics. Of more than 100 panelists in Zillow's (NASDAQ: ZG), 66 responded to the questions about bubble conditions in 20 housing markets.

Other cities generating bubble talk in the Zillow survey were distant runner-ups: New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Diego. As usual, California is well represented on any list of possibly over-priced housing markets.

The Times further reports that an additional 20 percent of experts surveyed said the Bay Area housing market is "at risk of becoming a bubble within the next year."

As always, however, identifying a bubble is tricky business, and even those fancy experts don't always agree. And if even there is a bubble, it doesn't necessary mean a repeat of 2008.

"It's significant that some experts are starting to worry about bubble conditions, but in my opinion, there’s no real danger of a severe crash like the one we all remember from the last decade," the Times reports Zillow Chief Economist Svenja Gudell as saying.

Also, there's that hard reality that San Francisco has always been a pretty expensive place to live.

So, there you have it. We're probably in a bubble, but maybe not. Buy low, sell high, and stuff.

Related: Life After The Boom: What Will Happen When This Bubble Bursts

Ken Rosen, UC Berkeley's Chair of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, has a pretty solid record when it comes to predicting financial disaster: He called the 2000 dot-com implosion and the 2008 housing bust and subsequent economic crisis. And now he's sounding the alarm when it comes to the current boom. Should we listen?

The SF Business Times reports that Rosen's message of doom was expressed during the Fisher Center's Real Estate & Economics Symposium yesterday at the St. Francis hotel.

While speaking at the place perhaps best known as the site of actor Fatty Arbuckle's alleged sex-related slaying of Virginia Rappe, Rosen said that "This is the biggest boom we've ever had, and I have to tell you, 'Booms never end well.'"

According to Rosen, the pain point is China, specifically that "a hard landing there could spark a global recession," as Bloomberg described it last week.

If the Chinese economy collapses the way some analysts believe it might, we could see "a global downturn that leaves no region safe, including the United States," and spurs "investors to dump risky assets around the globe," the Business Times reports.

An event like this would hit the Bay Area hard, as "Any pullback in investors' risk appetite, and thus their willingness to write big checks to Uber and other profitless startups at lofty valuations, spells trouble for the regional economy," they report.

Citing Square's rock-bottom IPO price, Rosen says that when the investors stop writing checks, unicorns will start toppling.

"Unicorn layoffs are coming because they hired to scale and they're not all going to make it," Rosen predicted, saying he expected this to all go down within the next three years.

That said, Rosen didn't have an actual pop date in mind, just that it was going to happen.

"Bubbles never end well", he said, "but the timing is hard to say."

Previously: Square's Dismal IPO Perceived As Referendum On Unicorn Brethren
Life After The Boom: What Will Happen When This Bubble Bursts

Hey, guys, remember the halcyon days of January, 2000, when a bunch of dot com companies dropped scads of money on commercials that would run during the Super Bowl? One current-day dot com seems unwilling to wait until this year's big game, instead launching an ad campaign to run during the World Series. Will that strategy pay off better in 2015 than it did 15 years ago?

This time around, the commercial-buyer is Twitter, which had a hefty round of layoffs two weeks ago and yesterday announced slower-than-expected growth and lowered revenue predictions for next quarter. The ad, which ran during last night's World Series game, is part of an “integrated marketing campaign” that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced on Tuesday's earnings call. Here it is:

According to The Verge, the ad is entitled "Post-Season," and is intended "to let targeted segments of potential users see the stuff that's on Twitter every day." Which you'd think those folks might have already considered, but whatever!

The ad was created by TBWA\Chiat\Day, the ad agency that, according to Ad Week, created those Airbnb ads we all liked so much! (You know the ones I'm talking about.) So, I guess, it sure could be worse?

That same agency was also behind Apple's ground-breaking "1984" ad, which aired during that year's Super Bowl, thus bringing us back to Super Bowl XXXIV. I had forgotten that the St. Louis Rams battled the Tennessee Titans in the 2000 game, but I sure did remember that during the event, 19 online startups bought ads, and eight of those crashed and burned shortly thereafter. (Guess who made one of that game's most infamous ads, for Pets.com? TBWA\Chiat\Day, again! They're the Forrest Gump of tech advertising!)

Of course, the World Series isn't the Super Bowl, and their ad rates prove it: According to Advertising Age, "the going rate for a 30-second commercial in the World Series is around $545,000 a pop." Compare that to the $5 million-for-30-seconds Forbes reports Super Bowl 50 will ask, and a World Series ad seems like a bargain. (In case you're curious, rates for ads that play during the broadcast of high-rated comedy or drama series vary greatly, from $155,727 for a spot during The Simpsons to $521,794 during Empire, reports Variety.)

Though Twitter ran a TV ad during a NASCAR event in 2012, that was a one-off, making this the company's first full-on TV campaign. Though Twitter declined to tell The Verge how much they'd spent on the ad, they did say that they expect them to air "regularly in prime time," giving us all something new through which to fast-forward.

Previously: Twitter Stock Takes Another Dip After Earnings Call, And Square's Numbers Aren't Great Either