A few dozen supporters showed up for Saturday’s decidedly unironic “March for Billionaires” protest, which was evenly matched by several members of the press and a group of activists one-upping the sympathizers with a satirical “March for Trillionaires” rally.

As Mission Local reports, a small contingent of billionaire supporters, who claim they’re not actually billionaires themselves, held a “March for Billionaires” protest at Alta Plaza Park in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights Saturday morning. Naturally, the event drew a crowd of onlookers, including several journalists and about a dozen animated protestors dressed in formal wear, proclaiming they were taking part in a “March for Trillioinaires,” per Broke-Ass Stuart on Instagram.

As SFist reported earlier this week, many assumed the original march was some sort of joke, but the organizers confirmed their intention was to spread awareness about their grievances against the billionaire tax. Per the LA Times, the pro-billionaire crowd thinks Californians should be grateful for the billionaires who hoard their fortunes here.

“We must not judge billionaires as a class but by their individual merits,” said organizer Derik Kauffman Saturday, per the Times. “There are good billionaires and bad billionaires, just like there are good people and bad people. California is extraordinarily lucky that this is where people come to start companies and build fortunes and we should do our best to keep it that way.”

As the Chronicle reports, about a dozen nearby counter-protestors dressed to the nines — including a Mr. Monopoly lookalike and a couple nicknamed “Oli Garch” and “Trilly O’Naire,” per the Times, held signs with messages such as “Let them eat cake” and “Defund the poor,” per the Chronicle. Per Broke-Ass Stuart, one participant sported a chef’s hat and bushy mustache while hoisting a stuffed “Chef Bourgeoisie” puppet into the air.

Meanwhile, the pro-billionaire participants boasted signs with messages, such as, “We *heart* you Jeffrey Bezos,” per Mission Local, and “Gains from trade,” per the Chronicle.

“I would say we were horrified that they’ve been talking about taxing billionaires to pay for Medicaid, to pay for hunger prevention, to pay for kids’ education. That is not a good use of my money,” quipped a counter-protestor, per the Chronicle. “You want to know a good use of my money? I’ve got this other island I’m looking at.”

Per Mission Local, a pro-billionaire protestor named Annie provided some choice quotes, including the notion that journalists should be eliminated.

“It is the intention of journalists to lie, which is why we need to not do anything to the journalists themselves, but we need to simply remove them as a class,” said Annie, per Mission Local. “Just like Germany does to the extremist organizations.”

And of course, the poors are “just jealous.” “People are just jealous that they are poorer and weaker and uglier,” said Annie, per Mission Local. “We are beautiful. We’re smart. We’re strong… We are supporting the billionaires, here.”

Artist Razelle Swimmer, the counter-protestor who brought the Chef Bourgeoisie puppet, pointed out the absurdity of the pro-billionaire stance to the Chronicle. “There are people literally on the streets that don’t have anything to eat in the place where we’re ending this march,” said Swimmer, referring to the Civic Center area.

“It’s sad,” Swimmer said, per the Chronicle. “They represent a group of Americans who still believe in this concept that if you just pull yourself hard enough by your bootstraps, you’ll have $8 billion.”

Image: Our Revolution/Threads

Previously: A ‘Pro-Billionaire’ March and Rally Is Coming to SF Saturday, and Apparently This Is Not a Joke

Fans of the Google brand and mythology, as well as the architecturally curious, will be able to check out a new visitors' center at the company's "Gradient Canopy" office complex in Mountain View starting next week.

"We’re excited to announce that we’re opening the Google Visitor Experience at our headquarters in Mountain View," the company said in a blog post. "This new destination will give you the chance to experience Google and our hometown community — from a public cafe and a Google Store to an events space and pop-up shop featuring local businesses. Doors open to the public on October 12, 2023."

Those doors will be at the company's futuristic, circus-tent-like building at 2000 North Shoreline Blvd — a building that was first envisioned back in 2015 by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and London-based Heatherwick Studio, and began construction in 2018.

The design allows for extreme flexibility for the office areas within the main two buildings of the campus, as well as green energy power throughout, with the building's running on solar and wind energy 90 percent of the time.

"The result is a campus where the striking dragonscale solar canopies harvest every photon that hits the buildings; the energy piles store and extract heating and cooling from the ground, and even the naturally beautiful floras are in fact hardworking rootzone gardens that filter and clean the water from the buildings," said Ingels after the complex was completed in early 2022.

Google is promising a few different attractions for tourists and visitors, including the company's first-ever public cafe, and something called The Plaza, which will feature outdoor art, events, and programming. Also in the center will be the first brick and mortar Google Store on the West Coast, for shoppers seeking Google hardware products and shwag.

Presumably, there will also be some kind of tour of the buildings themselves, for the architecture nerds, but that part is unclear.

The opening of the visitors' center continues the company's celebration of its 25th anniversary. Google was founded in September 1998 by then-Stanford University PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Photo: Iwan Baan via BIG architects

Remember the innocent days of 2011 when a YouTube meme took off and spawned a hundred iterations covering most U.S. cities and a variety of cultures and subcultures, even baristas?

Yes, that was the "Shit ____s say" phenomenon, and the "Shit San Franciscans Say" video was a late arrival in 2012, a creation of Annie Sloan — who incidentally started her own company last year that "puts the mini-bar, concierge, and gift shop in your Airbnb." See it below.

I'm not sure if all of San Francisco needs to see itself through the lens of the young tech executive/entrepreneur. But that is what we have in comedian Alexis Gay's 2021 version of the same concept, published this week on Twitter.

She captions it "every single park hang in San Francisco," but, I mean, I've lived here quite awhile, and I've done my fair share of park hangs, and none of them sound like this because I don't hang with people who talk like this.

But hey! For a certain segment of the park-hanging population, perhaps you will get a chuckle out of this. Otherwise, it seems like we've had this conversation before about tech cliches, and Silicon Valley ended two years ago, and we're all tired of hearing about someone's air-quotes "angel investor" or "raising a SPAC."

The line about Souvla is kind of funny, though.

San Franciscans like to think of themselves as an enlightened bunch — from the love-parading nudists to the techno-utopian seasteaders, we know what's up. However, in recent years, the reputation of the quintessentially Bay Area technology industry has taken a beating as those employed within it seemingly do their best to be as clueless, sexist, and generally compassion-less as possible. And so, with an out-of-touch misogynist running for president, we braced ourselves for the possibility that campaign contribution numbers would reveal the tech industry and its nerd libertarians as a bastion of support for Donald J. Trump. Well guess what, the tech sector delightfully surprised us.

"We couldn't find any high-profile tech execs who have donated to Trump's campaign," reports Business Insider, "but according to Crowdpac, Trump ranked last among presidential candidates who have raised money from the technology sector. Trump has raised only $14,000 from tech, compared to Bernie Sanders' $3.2 million."

And that's not just because we're all a bunch of lefties here — indeed, the publication notes that "[despite] Silicon Valley's reputation for liberal politics, much of the money spent this election is going to the Republican Party." For example, Oracle founder (a.k.a. America's Cup guy) Larry Ellison gave $5 million in support of Marco Rubio, and PayPal founder Peter Thiel (really into seasteading) gave $2 million in support of Carly Fiorina. Angel investor Scott Banister gave $2 million to Rand Paul but now supports Ted Cruz. And Chicago-based venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker of the Pritzker family has given $1.9 million to the Hillary Clinton-supporting Super PAC Priorities USA Action.

It seems that despite the Donald's borderline obsessive love for iconic tech services like Twitter, the industry is just not that into him.

Related: SF Ranks 2nd In Highest Per Capita Campaign Contributions To Bernie Sanders

Does everyone remember Soylent, that local startup that makes a bland nutritional shake geared toward techies who don't want to leave their computers even to eat? Well, in an amusing recent development, the makers of Soylent are releasing a version 1.1 of their powdered beverage that will hopefully cause fewer, um, "digestive issues."

Yes, as Valleywag points out, the new "digestibility" of Soylent 1.1 means it will make ambitious, life-deprived coders fart less while they continue to code and deprive themselves of the joys of life.

Here are Soylent's own words about the upgrade.

The enzyme blend that we added is a mixture of a few different enzymes, which break down proteins and carbohydrates into smaller, more easily digestible fragments. Preliminary tests have indicated that they may reduce the digestive issues reported by some Soylent consumers.

Please, Soylent drinkers. Let us know in the comments how your bowels are doing these days.

Previously: Regarding Soylent, The Nutritional Shake Invented By S.F.-Based Brogrammers With No Time To Eat

You know how all the big tech companies employ their own executive chefs and provide lovely lunch and dinner options to their employees every day so no one ever has to leave the office? Well now the IRS is saying those meals are a taxable fringe benefit, and they should be part of the withholding in employees' checks. This battle should be amusing to watch as it unfolds.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, "the IRS and U.S. Treasury Department last week included taxation of 'employer-provided meals' in their annual list of top tax priorities," and tech companies especially — who appear to be the inspiration for this new prioritizing — are expected to lash back with their own army of tax lawyers.

Of course, for everyone who doesn't work for a company who provides lovely food all the time and who has to buy their own lunch every day, eating into their already inferior non-tech-related income, this seems only fair. But for everyone who works for one of these companies and may or may not even eat in the cafeteria every day, having a chunk taken from their paycheck is going to make them very sad/angry.

The Journal says that the IRS has already been going after employees who receive such lavish free food, seeking "back taxes that can amount to 30% of the meals' fair-market value." And it seems that this all may have been the Journal's fault, bringing up the issue of the free meals as a fringe benefit in an article last year, which allegedly got higher-ups at the IRS excited.

But it's not like employee cafeterias are a new thing! People have been getting free lunch from their employers for decades, depending on the employer. And there is an exception in tax law that allows for this so long as the company is either in a remote place or providing meals is more of a convenience to the employer.

Apparently, though, when the IRS has conducted audits around this, they're typically going after the deep pockets of the company, who will often settle and then include the benefit in an employee's withholding going forward. Also, typically, they'll just adjust salaries across the board to cover the benefit, so that employees' take-home wages aren't affected.

It's not like Google can't afford it.

[WSJ]
[Business Insider]

Over at the Chronicle, Jonathan Kauffman did video interviews with a panel of tech-company chefs — Lance Holton of Twitter, Brian Mattingly of Dropbox, Shane Dykhuis of BandPage, and Matthew DuTrumble of Zynga — asking them what they liked about their jobs, the kinds of things they cook in these cafeterias, and what the companies get out of having chefs on staff. Dykhuis points out that it often means that people take shorter lunches and therefore are more productive, because it's "one less decision they have to make" in their day. Also, it probably encourages people to stay for dinner too.

DuTrumble also reveals that Zynga has its own in-house ketchup. DropBox has its own cookie cart that comes around the office. And, as this accompanying piece from the Chron reveals, DuTrumble is working on "a cookbook based on user-created dishes in Zynga’s signature game, 'FarmVille.'"

[Chron]
[Inside Scoop]

Yelp is one of the apps I use most on my phone as it has essentially become the modern yellow pages, but it's a somewhat guilty pleasure after learning that the company's business model may be based on extortion.

If you're not familiar, back in 2009, the East Bay Express revealed that Yelp's sales reps would harass local merchants with promises to move or remove negative reviews if their business would advertise. And that hasn't changed, according to a recent Los Angeles Times story, which says Yelp "makes money by charging to downplay others' negative reviews and to keep rivals' ads away."

Of course, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has consistently denied the accusations, saying that an advertiser can only pay to highlight a favorite review or have a clearly-labeled "sponsored result" that appears at the top of search results and a photo slideshow.

Unfortunately, but not surprising, the topic of extortion does not come up in this new Associated Press interview with Stoppelman, timed to mark Yelp's 10th anniversary.

When asked about the tech backlash in San Francisco, Stoppelman wavers between making light of the situation, in particular housing, and saying his Yelp employees are simply middle class folks just trying to get by like the rest of us (note: Stoppelman's estimated worth could be as much as $222 million).

Most cities would be falling over themselves to have the problems we have right now, which is like: "Oh my, we have too many jobs and people's compensation keeps going up, so therefore people can afford to pay more to obtain housing." It's not to say that we don't have very serious problems, but a lot of them are completely self-inflicted, which I find incredibly frustrating.

The other misperception is that everyone working in tech is a millionaire living in luxury condos and there is nothing left for anyone else. The reality is the vast majority of our employees are making anywhere from, you know, like $40,000 to $100,000. If you look at it, we are just like every other company. As rents go up, it hurts people here, too.

Then he avoids directly addressing tech's lack of diversity, blaming education instead of culture and hiring practices (also note: Yelp has yet to release its workplace diversity demographics).

If we are focusing on technology jobs, meaning software engineering jobs primarily, by the time you are talking about a company, you are talking about the end of the funnel. The funnel begins in high school, really, or even earlier maybe. If you want women and minorities to succeed all the way at the end of the funnel in a tech job, you have to increase the numbers starting at the top of the funnel, at the earliest age, and then make sure they stay in the funnel and get all the way through.

Certainly, tech companies should feel bad about it, and all the tech companies have been aware of this problem. They have been trying to address it somewhat, but there is a bit of a limitation of what you can do because fundamentally you know if women aren't entering into software engineering programs in great numbers, there's not going to be great numbers working at Google or Yelp or any tech company.

[Associated Press via SFGate]

Previously: Video: Defendant Alleges Yelp Extortion On 'The People's Court'

Update: There's already a Tumblr dedicated to illustrating the new Airbnb logo in compromising positions. NSFW!

Today Airbnb unveiled its new logo, which you can see above, and the consensus on Twitter is that it looks like a vagina.

The San Francisco company's 32-year-old CEO Brian Chesky tells Fast Company that the logo was inspired by "the Red Cross, the Olympic rings, and probably the most important symbol of all, Batman's." He said his team looked at "thousands" of mock-ups before settling on the new logo, which is supposed to be symbol for "belonging."

A lot of other people think it's a symbol of female genitalia — or at the very least something sexual.

And a few folks think it looks like balls or a butt or both.

With a $10 billion valuation, as reported by the New York Times in April, you'd think Airbnb would be more conservative with its brand. That said, we could have a lot of fun with this logo at next year's Pride Parade.

[Fast Company]
[Airbnb Blog]

If you’ve been avoiding San Francisco's private club The Battery because A) You're not a millionaire B) You have actual friends you don't have to pay for C) They won't let you in, there's another reason to stay away from the 700 block of Battery between Pacific and Broadway: The club's double-parking valet system is causing major traffic jams.

According to KPIX, afternoons are the worst time to attempt to pass through the fancy cars clogging up the street outside. Its cameras even caught a frustrated Muni bus driver who could not maneuver around the Aston Martins and BMWs. So you should probably also avoid the 1 California.

Supervisor Scott Wiener watched KPIX's footage and suggested that the club was exhibiting a major sense of entitlement, saying that they turned public street into “their private parking lot.”

Records show there have only been six double-parking tickets issued on this block of Battery Street so far this year. Four were given on the day The Battery opened.

When KPIX contacted the firm that runs The Battery’s valet service—after the club declined to comment—they said they would look into the problem.

See all SFist coverage of The Battery here.

[KPIX]

Angry young man Milton Bosch, writing for Complex City Guide, toured San Francisco in search of its "douchiest bars." Now, while I don't argue that our fair city has its share of asshole watering holes, I am going to have to take issue with a few of his choices. He spreads his hate around pretty well, though.

To Bosch's credit, he calls himself a douche in the introductory paragraph, but then again he's also conflating a bunch of annoying elements one may meet in a bar, all of them male, and putting them under the larger umbrella of "douche," which is sure to cause some objection. To wit, he refers to both brogrammers and techie douches, as well as "entitled frat boys, pervy old men, and self-important hipsters," all of which he takes aim at.

Hitting the bottom of the list at #25 is Dear Mom, and I'll call him out on his first factual error. He refers to their Buck Hunter video game, "Big Buck World," as the "number one douche game right now." Actually, the whole Big Buck Hunter phenomenon dates back well over 10 years, in bars in Brooklyn and beyond. And back before Gawker and the rest popularized the words "hipster" and "douche" for our urban nemeses.

He takes aim at other "hip" venues like Madrone Art Bar, Cat Club (for "dorky, plaid-shirted, newly-moneyed nerds-cum-hipsters"), Casanova, The Hemlock, and gay-hipster hangout The Stud — the latter I'll take issue with because a) he went there for SomeThing on Knife Tribute Night which may be a little pretentious but was also pretty awesome, and b) he sounds like he'd never been to this 50-year-old place before and therefore can not be trusted.

And a bunch of frat-tastic, drunk-entitled-white-boy bars make it (rightfully) on here, like Eddie Rickenbacker's, and the Marina's Campus, Tipsy Pig, and Stock in Trade (which clocks in at #1). He really hates it there. "It's impressive how these losers maintain their snooty front when they are so damn sloppy. I guess it's easy to fit in when everyone looks exactly the same."

And yes, the mostly character-less bar that took over from Marlena's in Hayes Valley, Brass Tacks, probably deserves its slot at #17.

But Bloodhound? The Cafe? Beauty Bar? How does one even compare these places with all of the above? It all starts to sound pretty arbitrary, is my point, when basically everyone could be called a douche.

Someone with a little more knowledge of the city, and expertise in the field study of douchebaggery, might have been better suited to this job.

[Complex City Guide]

Oh, for god's sake. The overlords at the Googleplex, not satisfied to have everyone wearing face computers that can easily attract shaming and be snatched off their faces, are at work on a camera can that can live in a contact lens "without drastically increasing its thickness," as the Patent Bolt reports. They've been filing multiple patents for a smart contact lens over the last few months, and the idea is to explore the various devices that could fit on a lens that could help with the collection of visual data, capturing images, spying (obviously), aiding the blind, and even treating diabetes.

The camera would be a teeny tiny device that would live, along with some kind of power supply and wireless functionality, on the lens below or beside the pupil.

Patent Bolt explains, via the patent apps:

One of Google many patent applications regarding future smart contact lenses generally relates to systems and/or methods for capturing image data representing a scene in a gaze of a viewer via a thin image capture component integrated on or within a contact lens, processing the image data, and employing the processed image data to perform functions locally on the contact lens or remotely on one or more remote devices. The term "images capture component" simple means a camera.

For example, a thin (image capture) camera component can be embedded on or within a contact lens such that it does not substantially affect thickness of a conventional contact lens. Furthermore, the camera component can be aligned such that it tracks and generates image data of an image of a scene corresponding to the gaze of the wearer, without obstructing the wearer's view.

As the wearer's gaze shifts, the contact lens will follow the shift in gaze, thereby allowing for generating image data corresponding to an image of the scene in the shifted gaze.

The etiquette questions, not to mention all the ethical and legal ones, of wearing a camera on your eyeball will need to be hashed out if this comes to pass. And it probably will.

And rather than focus on the myriad new privacy issues that such a clandestine "images capture component" could raise, Google has been quick to suggest all the many humanity-benefiting possibilities of such a device. For instance, there could be a tear-collection component that tests a diabetic person's tears for glucose levels and alerts them if they get too low. Or there could be a visual alert system for the blind that sees dangers in their paths, or alerts them when to enter a crosswalk.

Yes, and you can take pictures in the gym locker room without anyone knowing.

[PatentBolt]
[Chron]