MCT: Thursday, August 29, 2019

• Dry Thunderstorms
• Flea Market
• Legal Expansion
• Strike Tour
• Cauckwell Show
• Slow Down
• Outdoor Grows
• Old Kitchen
• Holly Denied
• Tellie Case
• Lengthy Commute
• Silverman Show
• Ed Notes
• Navy Victims
• Rethink PG&E
• Loved Woolworth's
• Quizless
• Yesterday's Catch
• Foreign Policy
• Medical Expenses
• Repent
• Threatening Officials
• Trump Matchups
• Staying Home
• Change Lawmakers
• Chez Eggplant
• Found Object

ISOLATED DRY THUNDERSTORMS will remain possible through this evening across northern portions of the interior. Cooler temperatures are expected for the end of the week, with no precipitation in the forecast from Thursday through Labor Day weekend. (National Weather Service)

MENDO’S SOVIET-STYLE POT PERMIT PROGRAM

by Mark Scaramella

Last Tuesday, the Supervisors spent a couple of hours discussing the recommendations of the recently appointed ad hoc committee of Supervisors Ted Williams and John McCowen. The two Supes were assigned to address economic development in the “cannabis industry,” your basic oxymoron.

Essentially, the Supes want to allow bigger pot grows than the last Environmental Impact Report (EIR) allows, which in theory would produce more legally marketable pot, aka “economic development,” aka "industry." Supervisor Ted Williams was for the idea because, as he and virtually everyone else sees it, the current pot permit licensing process is so onerous and costly that pot growers need to be able to grow more pot to be able to cover the huge costs of going legal. But to allow more pot to be grown on bigger garden sites (or indoor?) the County would have to prepare a new EIR at a cost estimated at — and here we pause again to fully appreciate how breathtakingly ridiculous this program has become — $1 MILLION.

The County doesn’t have $1 million sitting around for another EIR so they want to charge pot permit applicants on the dubious assumption that they are so eager to make even more money that they are ready to submit to another round of permit fees and associated state agency rip-, er, sign-offs.

Via an as a yet undetermined formula, the County will charge the new suckers, er, applicants, their “fair share” of the $1 million because, you see, the suckers, er applicants, are the ones who will benefit from the $1 million expenditure — and if they don’t realize how much of a privilege it is that they get to pay the $1 million then they can just go jump in the black market.

Supervisor Williams at least seems to understand that the pot permit program is a costly obstacle course cum torture regime that can’t be cost-effectively navigated without at least the prospect of more pot sales revenue.

Williams opened the discussion by noting, “I imagine, What would the Soviet Union’s cannabis ordinance look like? I think it would be a lot like what we have today! We have a very arduous process. We have a Planning Director who says that it’s the worst or the most difficult ordinance he’s ever seen when you combine it with the state’s requirements. We’re trying to get the small folks through. We’re worried about economic development. But it’s completely rigged. It’s rigged like AIG or Enron — too big to fail. In Mendocino County you just can’t get through the process and if you do you can’t grow enough to cover your cost and provide living wages as the price plummets. Imagine if Factory Pipe was limited to 50 mufflers a day — that’s all they could weld. And we’d still be saying we want quality welds, we don’t want you to weld more than this. He would leave, right? It’s not a good business model, he would cross the line…”

Williams' wit of course went unacknowledged by so much as a chuckle, but he continued trying to describe what he thought would be just good business in the cannabis “industry” and that allowing more pot to be grown would somehow make for a better business model and everyone could benefit. O hell yes. Obvious as the bong in front of your face.

The board spent above mentioned two hours nitpicking the fine points of the idea, lead by the dependably obtuse Supervisor John McCowen, the man who has almost singlehandedly made local licensing impossible. That was followed by a small parade of local pot growers in attendance who mostly decried the idea, pointing fingers at the newbies, big and small, and who worried about the looming impact of Big Pot (several of whom were also there saying they were all for the idea). The Board then voted 4-1 to direct staff to work up the new expanded program, prepare a convoluted roadmap to increasing the grow limits, and develop some way to charge the new applicants for the whole mess which theoretically would repay the County for the million-dollar EIR (another budget busting dream).

Supervisor John Haschak dissented in his usual rambling way which seemed to have to do with the proposal undercutting the existing smaller “legacy” growers trying to go legal. But he's correct; it does, although his meandering style didn’t win him any converts.

You may be excused if you doubt that the additional permit application fees for the new larger grow permits won't cover the $1 million that the County has to front because Supervisor Williams — who voted for the proposal in the hope that expanded grows will somehow magically result in “economic development” — is obviously right about how onerous it is: What (already struggling) pot grower in their right mind would pay their “fair share” of a diminishing number of applicants who are supposed to share the cost of reimbursing the County for a $1 million EIR on top of the already high existing fees while jumping through another round of county and state hoops in hopes that there won’t be a glut and a price drop while the black market continues to undercut the over-regulated legal market?

The whole new expanded permit program idea reminded us of that old Wizard of Id joke where the King comes into the Royal Car Dealership and sees a sign that says “Cadillacs on Sale: $750.” The King asks the Royal Car Salesman, “Aren’t you going to lose money charging only $750 for a Cadillac?” The Royal Car Dealer replies, “Oh sure, sir — but we make it up with volume!”

CAUCKWELL THE UNFUNNY COMIC

by Bruce McEwen

(This one calls for both drama masks, the tears and the laughs.)

Cheer Up All You Inmates At San Quentin — A Great Comedian, The Inimitable Richard Cauckwell Is On His Way With The Laughs!

“They love me at San Quentin, Judge, so gimme life, I don’t care, I just want a few more days to find my dog Spot — she’s had puppies, I’m pretty sure — and then I’ll turn myself in, gimme a surrender date and I’ll be there.”

Judge John Behnke noted for the record that Mr. Cauckwell had been late for his judgment and sentencing on Wednesday morning, so it was put over until the afternoon, and he was still late, peddling in at the last moment on a bicycle borrowed from Philo where he’d walked in search of his dog. Judge Keith Faulder had let him out of jail on his own recognizance as Judge Behnke had allowed.

Mr. Cauckwell’s lawyer, Public Defender Jeffrey Aaron, was asking the court for a minimal sentence of only 16 months, but he couldn’t get a word in as to why because his client just talked over him, interrupting anyone who tried to say anything, with a catalogue of his virtues and troubles.

He had three prison priors — “I served time for somebody else, but I don’t talk, I don’t rat, and I won’t say who” — eight felony convictions, 14 misdemeanor convictions, 20-odd violations of probation and parole, and 20 more failures to appear. He swore he never steals or lies — “all I ever done is try and tell the truth” — and right there DA David Eyster spoke up, “That’s a lie.” Eyster went on to read several convictions for theft from Cauckwell’s rap sheet. The DA had more to say on the subject, but of course the defendant interrupted.

The Public Defender tried to point out that the thefts were 20 years ago, but Cauckwell yakked right over his own lawyer, probably his only friend, trying to wring the judge’s heart — Behnke has a notorious weakness for dogs — and Cauckwell produced a flood of sobs, to good effect because it choked the judge up, but failed to weaken his honor’s resolve to lock Cauckwell up.

The Probation office was recommending the aggravated sentence, the Public Defender asked for the mitigated, and Judge Behnke split the baby, chosing the mid-term of two years, noting that the fire Cauckwell started in an abandoned building would have ended in his own death, and his dog’s, if a rookie CHP officer had mistaken the location for Sunny’s Donuts as being on North State Street, instead of South State Street, “had Officer Root not been in the area for culinary reasons,” as the judge characterized it.

A last ditch effort to look for Spot and her puppies failed — “I would never beg for myself, judge, but I’m begging for my dog Spot and her puppies, I don’t care if you give me life — they love me at San Quinten ‘cause I make ‘em laugh, I’m a retard, sure, but hey” — and Cauckwell was remanded into custody for transport to the California Department of Corrections and “Rehabilitation” (CDCR).

But it wasn't really two whole years, and not even the 16 months his attorney asked for. No, not even. The DA had graciously struck out Cauckwell's prior strike conviction, and with the 4019 credits along with 96 days actual time already served, Eyster pointed out that The Great Comedian and Tear-Jerker Cauckwell will only be at San Quentin for a limited engagement of about eight months.

SCHOOL IS BACK IN SESSION. For those of you that are unaware, the speed limit through Comptche is 25 MPH. PLEASE SLOW DOWN!

FROM SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS:

"A RESOLUTION WILL LOOSEN ACCESS ROAD RULES FOR OUTDOOR GROWS"

We'll investigate feasibility of same.

LAKE COUNTY: "The resolution, adopted by the Lake County Board of Supervisors in an unanimous vote Tuesday, affirms that while outdoor pot cultivation is considered 'commercial' in many contexts—especially due to the fact that its crop is still a Schedule 1 illegal drug in the eyes of the U.S. government—for purposes of fire safety under California state law, growing a field of cannabis is an 'agricultural activity.”

THE OLD SAN FRANCISCO KITCHEN:

AUGUST STUCKEY is now Holly Stuckey, but either way he/she has been denied parole. The link below tells the rest of the story:

Here is the link for the whole story: www.theava.com/05/1221-perezcase.html

A shorter version: counterpunch.org/2004/05/29/is-l-wop-truly-forever-the-awful-injustice-to-tai-abreu/

And here is a link to another shorter version (scroll down for the items on Tai Abreu): www.theava.com/04/0526-otr-tai-abreu.html

COLD CASE MENDOCINO:

"Tellie Jo Simmons came home for Christmas 2013. Soon after leaving, the family noticed her cell phone went dark. No one has heard from her since."

kymkemp.com/2019/08/28/cold-case-mendocino-mother-of-missing-woman-alleged-daughter-was-murdered/

HOLA, FRISBIE!

Dear Mr. Frisbie (Caltrans PR guy),

Re: Highway 128

It has been an arduous commute lately for myself and my wife.  I regularly commute from Navarro to Willits via Highways 128 and 253.  It's usually fairly brisk in the wee hours of the morning, but, come 5 o'clock, it gets downright stagnant.  I'm used to the normal slidework on 253 and 101, but the paving work on Highway 128 is really taxing.  I get to follow the asphalt trucks all the way over Highway 253 from Ukiah (some are gracious enough to pull over), then we all pile up near the Navarro Store and sit… for a while. My wife, on her way home from Philo last night, sat in line for 45 minutes!  On the one hand we do appreciate the attention being paid to our neck of the woods, but it is perplexing that many of these segments were already paved recently. Just hoping there might be some way to keep the traffic moving a little more rapidly during the rush hours.

Thanks,

Kirk Vodopals

from the Deep End in Navarro

THE SILVERMAN SHOW IN HUMCO, NOW PLAYING IN MENDO

johnchiv.blogspot.com/2017/12/if-you-have-narcissistic-personality.html

ED NOTES

IF YOU WERE TO ADD UP the helping professionals of Mendocino County, excluding the police departments who do all of mental health's heavy lifting, you'd find many more helping pros than helpees. And a lot of unhealthy stuff goes on beneath all those smiley-faces the pros slap on for the unwary public. Just recently, for example, a helping pro set up shop on South State Street, hooked up with the Ukiah-area helper's apparatus, and proceeded to help himself to his female "clients," taking them for long rides to remote places to therapize them. Rather than file a criminal complaint against this guy, the apparat simply stopped "referring" people to him.

---

ANDERSON VALLEY is first in line for a resident deputy from among the five new lawmen freshly sworn in by the Sheriff's Department. Is AV a wild and crazy place? Do we need a full-time policeman? AV is not anything like it used to be, that's for sure, and for years we definitely needed the amazing Deputy Squires who singlehandedly maintained law and order round the clock. Whatever Squires was paid he earned twice over. Our contemporary wilds and crazies pretty much keep it indoors.

BUT, YES, we do need a resident deputy. Navarro needs a cop all to itself. We had Deputy Walker until recently. Walker was a suitable successor to the legendary Squires, diligently keeping The Valley's criminal element looking over their meth-thin shoulders. But Walker moved on to Moraga where, incidentally, he recently helped round up an armed teen trio who not only stabbed a store clerk while holding him at gunpoint, led the police on a high speed chase before they crashed their stolen vehicle. Count the felonies, but we understand two of the punks are already out of custody, the gunman soon will be.

DEPUTY WALKER kept the lid on the tweakers and petty criminals who plague the Navarro area, especially on weekends when they're reinforced by undesirables from Comptche and Fort Bragg. When Walker left for the job in the Bay Area, the fun-loving rover boys quickly reasserted themselves, driving customers away from the Navarro Store and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Specifically? Buying and selling drugs and stolen goods, roaring through the store's parking and picnic areas on unlicensed vehicles, chorusing shouted obscenities, and generally engaging in the full range of low-rent public behavior that makes life difficult-to-impossible for all the people forced to endure it. And not tolerated anywhere else in the county. Help is on the way. Under-Sheriff Matt Kendall told us last week we were about to get a full-time resident deputy. Navarro will be his first priority.

USED TO BE… oh no, here we go with another old guy talking about the good old days that were never all that good. Hey! You wanna be an ageist about it, scroll on by. But the law enforcement diff between, say, 1955 and now is this: So, I'm 11 or 12 and walking home after school with a delinquent named Al Boland when Nolan the cop drives past. He was a very large man, an ex-fighter who was something of a legend in the area for his short fuse. So my pal Boland flips him off. I can still feel the dread I felt at what was sure to follow. Nolan stops his patrol car in the middle of the street, walks up to us and smacks us both in the face. Hard. "Why did you hit me, Mr. Nolan?" I said, trying hard not to cry because it hurt and I was shocked at getting hit for what seemed like no reason. "Because you laughed," Nolan said, "at your dumb friend here." I hustled home to complain to my mother. She said, "You're known by the company you keep. That's what you get." Up until the hippie onslaught of '67, the cops were routinely hands-on, and continued to be hands-on through the protest era as I and many others can personally attest. Now, of course, the cops simply absorb the gamut of disrespect as part of their impossible job. I've seen local cops deal with people I would not have had the patience to endure without doing a Nolan on them. Would there be less street turmoil if the cops simply started beating the shit out of the impertinent skells they deal with all day every day? We're in the lull before some huge disturbances blow up, but I expect an armed return to hands-on policing.

HISTORICAL PHOTOS often show us things that we don’t want to see, but that we can’t look away from. Shots like this show moments that are hard to look at, but are important historical records.

RETHINK PG&E

Editor:

In the first decade of this century, a friend of mine had a job as a PG&E power line monitor. He traveled through the county checking for trees that threatened lines, removing any that did. In four years, he cut 38,000 potential fire-starting trees. That’s more than 9,000 fire threats per year. After four years, PG&E decided that removing those trees was too expensive, and his position was eliminated.

Fast forward 12 or 14 years, and PG&E’s power lines have been implicated in many of the wildfires that burned neighborhoods and cost billions in property damage.

Now that increased heat and drought (climate change, anyone?) have doubled down on the wildfire risk, PG&E has doubled down on protecting its shareholders by threatening blackouts lasting two weeks and more. We’re facing weeks without phones, computers, water, refrigeration, gasoline, grocery stores. Our local economy will revert to the mid-19th century, and there will be no responders to mitigate this intentional disaster.

As the consequence of a “cost-saving” move, PG&E is holding the county hostage. It is time to rethink our dependence upon corporations and examine their place in our county and our country.

Diana Schrader

Sebastopol

MY AUNT LOVED WOOLWORTH'S — they seemed to have everything. We used to catch the cable car and go to Fisherman's wharf from there.

NO BOONVILLE QUIZ THIS WEEK. Tonight is the fifth Thursday of the month so there will not be a Boonville Quiz. We shall return for two Quizzes in September on the usual 2nd and 4th Thursdays. The first of these will take place at Lauren’s Restaurant on Thursday, 12th September. Hope to see you there if not before.

Cheers, Steve Sparks, The Quiz Master

CATCH OF THE DAY, AUGUST 28, 2019

GLEN CASH, Atlanta/Ukiah. Parole violation.

JOSE CORNEJO, Hopland, Domestic abuse, stolen property, evasion, probation revocation.

CHRISTOPHER DOTY, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

HENRY GUASCH, Laytonville. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DAVID NIELSON, Laytonville. Domestic battery, false imprisonment, destruction of communications device, unspecified additional charge.

GLEN ROUNTREE, Ukiah. DUI.

DOUGLAS WHIPPLE III, Redwood Valley. Under influence, county parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Well, ladies and germs;

A fun fact about our medical costs.

Wife was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Currently sans a bladder but with two ostomy bags. She started her first round of chemotherapy today, an 8-hour infusion of toxins. Well, at the end of the session the RN comes to us with this little box about the size of a pack of tic-tacs. Its purpose is to auto inject, at a later (27) hour timeline, a medicine whose purpose is to help rebuild the body’s immunity, that which the chemotherapy destroys. It is a one time use, fire and forget device, attached to the skin with adhesive tape. Apparently everyone with cancer taking chemotherapy receives one of these each time they have a “session.” Perhaps a hundred thousand of them are used every month.

Oh…and the cost of the little one time use device (according to the RN)? $14,000. Each.

The wife is scheduled for six sessions — do the math.

IS THAT A THREAT?

Dear Editor,

Mr. Jerry Philbrick of Comptche might want to apprise himself of the case of a Tea Party nutball named Nigel Coleman in Virginia who suggested on a public facebook forum in 2010 that some of his nutball friends “pay a visit” to the home of Congressman Tom Periello after he voted in favor of Obamacare and “express their thanks.”

Staffers of Congressman Perriello considered the remark to be a veiled threat to himself or his family and a possible violation of government code concerning threats to government officials.

“A lot of us who are tea partiers, we communicate through social networks,” Coleman said. “One of the other tea partiers in another group put up an address and said it was Tom Perriello’s address and several others of us put it up on our Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.… We just wanted people to get a little closer to their congressman.”

The FBI investigated and Mr. Coleman subsequently removed the post saying his choice of words was “in poor taste.”

Mr. Coleman’s stupid remarks were actually kind of tame and pale in comparison to the veiled threats Mr. Philbrick has apparently made against Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Here are a few I have gleaned from the AVA’s webiste:

“…you have to get rid of people like Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi” … “Nancy Pelosi is a bad bad human being [who] we need to get rid of.” Pelosi “should be arrested and sent to a leper colony island as far away from the real people as possible.” … “She’s completely cracked!” “Nancy Pelosi and the House of Representatives are ridiculous idiots, or more than that.” On Ms. Pelosi and her allies: “Let's put them all in an airplane and send them to Siberia and when they get hungry they could eat their money. Then they could call it greenback diarrhea after they eat all their money. They are worthless dirtbags of the earth and should be shipped out of here.” “How can we tolerate people like Nancy Pelosi?” “Why can't somebody go into Nancy Pelosi's $10 million mansion and use a butcher knife on her like that illegal did to that poor woman in San Jose? They could get away with it because we are a sanctuary state. Right?”

I would like to remind Mr. Philbrick that threatening federal officials is a Class C or D felony, usually carrying a maximum penalty of 5 or 10 years under 18 U.S.C. § 875, 18 U.S.C. § 876 and such threats are investigated by the FBI. For such threats to individual officials to be treated as a federal crime, there must be 1) a transmission in interstate commerce (which there is via the ava’s website); 2) there must be a communication containing the threat (which there is as cited above); and 3) the threat must be a threat to injure (which the last quote cited above sounds like).

Best,

Harold Prendner

Willits

NEARLY 40% OF YOUNG ADULT CALIFORNIANS Live With Their Parents. Here’s Everything to Know About Them

by Matt Levin (CalMatters)

It’s a Saturday night at Patsy’s Irish Pub in Mission Viejo, a wealthy suburb in south Orange County.

Patsy’s looks like a lot of other California bars in 2019 — a young woman belting off-key Katy Perry karaoke, a crowd of patrons vaping outside in a strip mall parking lot.

And loads of people in their twenties and thirties who still live with their parents.

“I’m here right now getting drunk with my mom,” said Jacob Ostheimer, 24, who lives with his mother and step-father … and his wife. “The whole family’s here.”

Ostheimer, who said he was co-founding a cannabis company with his stepfather, is not alone. Statewide, roughly 37% of Californians ages 18 to 34 live with their parents, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

In this pricey part of Southern California, where the average home is valued at well over $700,000, about 55% of young adults shack up with mom and/or dad.

“(My wife and I) had an apartment here for two years,” said Ostheimer. “But I was spending like 30 grand a year in rent, and I could have had that in my savings right now.”

Despite a booming economy and sizzling job market, millennial, and now Generation Z, Californians are as likely to live at home as young Californians were a decade ago during the depths of the Great Recession.

“This has, I think, surprised many of us, including myself,” said Richard Fry, a senior researcher with the Pew Research Center, who says he expected multi-generational living arrangements to decline as the economy recovered.

“Clearly in certain areas rents have gone up, and the cost of living independently has increased.”

Here’s everything you need to know about the roughly 3.6 million Californians living with mom and dad into their 20s and early 30s. Yes, including the sex stuff.

The geography of living with your parents

California is not the only state with a high rate of young adults living with mom and dad. The living arrangement is equally common in high-cost states such as New York and Massachusetts. In New Jersey, an astonishing 46% of 18- to 34-year-olds stay with at least one of their parents, according to Census Bureau data.

Looking at where in California young adults are living with their parents explains a lot about the reasons why. Somewhat counterintuitively, expensive urban cores in places such as San Diego and San Francisco actually have relatively low rates of young adults living at home, owing to the large numbers of 20-somethings who shack up with roommates to defray housing costs.

Hotspots where stay-at-homers are most ubiquitous usually come in one of two flavors: affluent suburbs near the coast, or lower-income areas often farther inland and with a high concentration of Latino households.

Places like Mission Viejo, with a median household income of over $100,000, are a good example of that first flavor. So are expensive Southern California communities like Palos Verdes or Bay Area burbs like Cupertino and Saratoga, where more than half of young adults live at home.

On the other end of the income spectrum are places like Imperial County, in the southeast tip of the state, or portions of Fresno and Merced counties in the Central Valley. Housing prices are relatively low, but poverty rates are high. Here, young adults are often providing essential financial support to their families.

“The degree of help that young people are giving their parents, particularly among Hispanics, is important to keep in mind,” said Jessica Hardie, professor of sociology at Hunter College, CUNY, who studies transitions to adulthood. “I think it’s important to think about how it’s benefiting the parents, not just the young adults.”

Who are these young stay-at-homers, exactly?

Not all of them are so young. About 1 of every 4 Californians between 25 and 34 live with their parents — around 1.5 million people, according to a CalMatters analysis of Census Bureau data.

Stay-at-homers are more likely to be male than female, are more likely to be a person of color than white, and are more likely to live in an immigrant household than their counterparts who have flown the coop.

Beyond the financial benefits of living at home, cultural differences in the stigmas attached to staying with parents — and feelings of obligation to family — also contribute to the trend. Nearly half of California Latinos between 18 and 34 live at home.

“(Hispanic)] tend to have higher levels of what we call familism — high regard for family, obligations to family, closeness to family members,” said Hardie, who researches young adult living arrangements.

Stereotypes of unemployed, shiftless man-children playing X-Box in their parents’ basement aren’t really borne out by the data. More than 40% of California stay-at-homers are enrolled in school of some sort, often community college. The vast majority who are not in school are working at least part time.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, those who are working typically aren’t making much money. The median income for a working stay-at-homer over the age of 25 is just north of $22,000.

Love and sex, with mom and dad down the hall

Where do young Californians living at home get intimate with their partners? Some are resorting to a tried-and-true form of privacy.

A Hyundai. Sedan.

“(The car) is small. Very small. Compact, really,” laughed one 22-year-old college student who lives with her parents in the suburbs of Sacramento.

She and her 25-year-old boyfriend — both of whom requested that their names not be used for this story — have fond memories of a parking lot across from the football field at Sacramento State University.

He also lives with his parents, which made finding a place to have sex somewhat problematic, at least early in the relationship. Her parents forbid him from spending the night.

So on weekdays after class, she would tell her parents she would be studying late — like 3 a.m. late.

“At times it would have been more comfortable or more convenient if we could go to like an apartment or a room in general,” she said. “But for a while it was fun.”

Three months into the relationship, they now typically get intimate in his bedroom at his parents’ place. He says his parents generally don’t care, or at least haven’t told him if they do. He chips in on the mortgage anyway.

“This is a new world for both parents and children,” said Helen Fisher, a researcher on sex and love at the Kinsey Institute. “In my day, one never took a boy home. Never.”

Fisher said parents are generally less concerned about their adult children having sex in their house than they are about their children saving up enough money to buy a house of their own one day.

And certain parents might actually prefer to keep their children and their partners this close.

“Some people might be pleased with it because they get to know their child in a new way, and they get to know some of the people they are going around with,” said Fisher. “They’re helicopter parents.”

But even while parents are more sexually permissive than they used to be, it doesn’t mean it’s a boon to your average young person’s sex life.

“It’s impacting their love life in an important way — they’re having less sex,” said Fisher.

Lots of ink has been spilled in recent years on the so-called “sex recession” — why younger people are having less sex than they used to. Researchers have hypothesized explanations ranging from the prevalence of online pornography to hook-up culture and dating apps.

And while some couples have resorted to a vehicular bedroom, a parking spot is actually the exception, not the rule. Public sex is likely down among younger adults, said Fisher.

Chicken-and-egg marriage questions

Lame dad jokes aside, people in long-term relationships or marriages are much more likely to be having sex than singles.

Which raises a head-scratching question for those who study multi-generational households: Are young people living with their parents longer because they’re not in long-term relationships, or are they not in relationships because it’s tough to attract a partner when you’re living at home?

“I don’t know which is the chicken and which is the egg,” said Richard Fry, the Pew researcher. “The evidence is pretty clear that young adults who live with a partner or spouse don’t usually live with mom or dad. But over the last 60 years, young adults are substantially less likely to be partnered or to be married.”

California’s high cost of living is complicating that reasoning. In south Orange County, where living with your parents well into young adulthood is relatively free of stigma, moving out is no guarantee your love life will improve.

Ian Baker is 29 and works two low-wage jobs, one at a bowling alley near Mission Viejo. He moved out of his mother’s place a little less than a year ago, and hasn’t been on a date since.

“Living with my parents, it actually wasn’t that hard to try and meet girls. Honestly it became harder when I moved out, just because of the fact that in order to move out I had to start working two jobs,” said Baker.

He now pays $700 a month in rent to split a two-bedroom apartment with three roommates.

The irony isn’t lost on him. But Baker takes solace in the fact that he enjoys a romantic step-up from at least one of his roommates. The one who lives in the living room.

“At least I have a door. He doesn’t,” said Baker.

(The California Dream series is a statewide media collaboration of CalMatters, KPBS, KPCC, KQED and Capital Public Radio with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the James Irvine Foundation. CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics. Clickable maps and charts and more pics at: lostcoastoutpost.com/2019/aug/28/nearly-40-of-young-adult-californians-live-with-th/)

STRAIGHT OUTTA PINOLE

Message from Pinole, California

Good evening postmodern America,

Am comfortably at the Pinole residence of Robert Eggplant, publisher of the Absolutely Zippo fanzine and chronicler of the hardcore-punk music scene, who I had the privilege of squatting with in Oakland many years ago at the notorious Hellarity House. Am set up in the back yard at a table, and have been writing profusely about the need to be spiritually centered and "bringing in the spiritual mojo" in these eco-apocalyptic end times. My observations have run to 15 handwritten pages thus far, beginning with the advantage of Self-realization prior to allowing the Absolute to make use of these body-mind instruments without interference, as this is now the only effective means of intervening in history. My plea for solidarity on the earth plane for housing and enthusiastic others to form a group with to go to the major nodes of political insanity and to do our collective spiritual work, has thus far gone unanswered. Feel free to respond. If being a part of an essentially spiritually motivated anarchist group performing rituals guided by the Divine itself interests you, then I ask you to contact me.

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

FOUND OBJECT