#and i made the city chicago cause i wanted to use the sear's tower so there

[michals]

Can i please kindly request something with klaus and diego? ✨

Klaus is being antisocial, which is strange for him, but then again no one seems to have noticed. This one time though he’ll let it go, everyone’s got a lot on their minds these days what with the whole world being rearranged. So he’s hunkered down on the fire escape outside of the run down boarding house Allison rumored the landlord to get, smoking and listening to his thoughts echo through his head that’s emptier than it was a day ago.

“We might not technically exist anymore but those things will still kill you,” says a voice from the open window. Diego’s head appears, giving him that disapproving look like he’s chiding a kid. Jokes on him though, Klaus is officially second oldest at this point.

“Well, considering the laundry list of things I’ve put in my body a cigarette might as well be a Tootsie Pop, mi hermano,” Klaus says, trying to sound teasing but he can hear the futility in his voice. He’s hoping Diego doesn’t.

Diego frowns harder at him, looks like he’s about to give another health class lecture but after a beat he just lets out a breath through his nose, the frown softening. He looks out across the city, studying it for a long moment. Klaus watches him out of the corner of his eye, hoping he doesn’t do exactly what he ends up doing. Diego hefts himself up over the window frame, testing the strength of the ancient fire escape before settling down with his back against the brick wall.

Klaus tries not to sigh. He’s not really the ‘sit in silence and reflect’ type, even all those years in the 60’s he’d rarely had a moment of peace with the cult around, but right now he just wants to be alone. Everyone else gets to brood, dammit.

“It’s all exactly the same,” Diego says, still looking out over the skyline. He shrugs like he didn’t just say something kind of stupid, “I mean like, the city – so far – it’s just like I remember.”

Diego would know, he’d stalked these streets for years; so did Klaus but he usually saw them through a drunken haze. “Guess our Sparrow friends also kept Valex Valex from blowing up the Sears Tower.” Klaus tries to remember that mission but doesn’t put much effort into it. If anything’s at the back of his mind it’s their old missions.

Diego’s mouth twists at the mention of the Sparrow Academy. Klaus hates that whole thing too, sort of. It’s more he hates that one specific person is in it. He blows out a smoke ring.

“It’s sunny though,” he says. Was sunny anyway, it’s 6 p.m. so the horizon’s getting dark.

“Yeah, wonder how that works,” Diego says, eyebrows furrowed. “It’s supposed to be raining.”

Klaus wonders where his umbrella is right now. “Oh, sure Five’s got the answer somewhere in that quizzical little brain of his. Any grand ideas from our young old man?”

Diego shakes his head, “Naw he’s down for the count. Finally ran outta steam.”

“Aww, poor little guy.”

Diego shoots him a look that says ‘don’t let him hear you call him that’. Then he pauses, says in a curious voice, “He was asking all of us our favorite colors.”

Klaus’s turn to pause. “…unexpected. Why? He knitting us all sweaters?”

“Somewhere between the second and third whiskey – before Allison took it away – he said something about-” he stops to think about it, like he’s not sure he heard right, “how the last time he saw us we were kids and he doesn’t really know us. This version of us.”

“Huh,” is all Klaus can say. Now that the thought’s in his head it actually makes sense. Five doesn’t really know them as adults. Even though 45 years is longer than 17 that’s still 17 years between the siblings Five knew and the ones he’s come back to. Makes sense too that this new wrinkle in their situation would make him realize that.

“What’re the results?” he asks, “What’d everyone say?”

“Allison likes pink-” Klaus hums cause that’s not surprising, “Vanya likes green. Luther likes yellow.”

“Yellow?”

“Yeah I wasn’t expecting that either. Five likes blue.”

“And? What about you?”

“Orange,” Diego says like he’s waiting for Klaus to make a comment.

But Klaus just thinks it’s funny, and fitting, that’d they’d all be different. He takes a drag on his cigarette.

“Well?” Diego asks, eyebrows raised, “Come on, what’s yours? Five passed out before he could get out here.”

“Oh ya know frère, I like all the colors of the rainbow, I can’t possibly discriminate against the others just to pick one,” there, that sounds more successfully flippant.

He purposefully keeps his eyes on the horizon cause he knows Diego’s staring him with some kind of look on his face.

“For real,” he says, his tone as gentle as it gets for him, “you’ve got one don’t you.”

Klaus breathes out more smoke. Dave’s eyes had been light blue, his dog tags are slate gray, Klaus’s favorite shirt had been yellow, that umbrella had had a pink stripe, but no, those are all wrong.

“Purple,” he says. He points over the railing towards the sunset at the melting decrescendo of the sky, at a dark royal purple strip, “that shade specifically.”

Diego stares at it with him for a while, they watch as it disappears as it gets darker out.

“We really don’t know shit about each other do we?” Diego says. He sounds annoyed by it, frustrated. “Any of us.”

Understatement of the year brother, Klaus thinks but it suddenly widens the hollow part in his heart that lingers there now. He had someone who knew him. He had someone who’d been there with him his whole life. Ben knew all his likes, his dislikes, all his secrets both dark and stupid. Klaus had taken it all for granted, more obvious now more than ever when Diego says that. The cherry on the big beautiful cake of a mess that this is is that Ben does exist, and he’d looked Klaus in the eye and had no fucking clue who he was.

Diego breaks the silence: “First year I started going out, doing the solo hero thing-” Klaus is tempted to interrupt with ‘illegal vigilante thing you mean’, “got this sucker.” He points to the scar running from his cheekbone past his hairline. “Mafia enforcer. Took him down, got him arrested, 14 stitches and 3 staples. Walked away like it was nothing. Got back to my place and fell down the stairs. Broke my leg.”

Klaus is very much full of grief and malaise but he laughs out loud.

“That night was when I met Patch actually,” Diego gives a wan smile, but none of this is lost on Klaus. Probably took a lot to admit to any of that but he looks like some kind of weight – a small one – just fell off his shoulder. Probably wanted to tell someone that stupid story for a long time, probably ever since the idea of Team Zero popped into his head.

“Allison’s gonna wanna hear that one.”

Diego blanches. He turns to Klaus. “Alright, your turn. What d'you you got?”

That is a very, very loaded request. Klaus isn’t ready to answer it. He could be glib, like always, he’s got plenty of stories like the chocolate pudding one. He can’t give anything big right now but he knows what he can say to Diego.

“You’re the only one I told about what happened with Hazel and Cha Cha.”

Diego’s brow knit together again in surprise. “Yeah?” Klaus nods. Diego goes quiet, looks at his knees like he’s taking this in. After a bit he nods.

“Thanks,” he says, all macho sincerity in his voice and eyes. Klaus gives into a smile. All different aren’t they, like their favorite colors.

Klaus’s cigarette is burning down and he takes a drag to take advantage of what’s left of it. He wishes he could just pass out like Five.

Diego seems to understand that’s enough for one night. He climbs to his feet, brushes rust particles from his pants. “Don’t stay out all night. You already lost out on the bed and couch by the way.”

Five in the bed and Klaus will bet Allison and Vanya are gonna sleep head to feet on the couch. Poor tall Luther never had a chance at either. “I’ve slept in plenty of tubs in my day. Including a nice clawfoot one in a senator’s mansion.” He points the nearly gone cigarette up at him, “There you go. There’s another one.”

Diego gives another approving smile but doesn’t ask for the story, not yet anyway. Allison will love that one too. He disappears through the window.

Klaus stays outside for another two cigarettes, after the sky’s gone dark. He thinks a whole lot and not much at all. He wishes he had something to take but he can’t bring himself to go out to find anything. Instead he picks himself up and meanders back to the room, says a half cheery goodnight and takes a throw pillow into the bathroom and settles down in the tub.

#tua fic #umbrella academy fanfic #the umbrella academy #klaus hargreeves #diego hargreeves #my fic #'drabble' i said 'mini fic' i said #i'm ridiculous #also yeah this is another one set right after the end of s2 but whatever #and yeah they're in two dif places in both cause one needed a pool and one needed a fire escape that's what the muse wanted #and i made the city chicago cause i wanted to use the sear's tower so there #i'm still convinced i got some kind of major detail from the show wrong like i have in every single thing i've written for it lol

[startwreck]

WizardWorld Chicago 2018

“I’ll never fly to a con.”

That was my self-imposed rule. See, I live in the Northeast US, so there are lots of major cities within driving/busing distance, and thus lots of cons, and other fandom-adjacent events, happen within a reasonable distance of me. (I realize this is a privilege, and one I’m quite grateful for.) Anyway, when I got into the X-Files fandom a couple of years ago, I was interested in meeting Phile Phriends / Tumblr Pals in real life, and in participating in fandom or fandom-adjacent events, which I have done (and have spent money on), but I told myself that there was no need to ever fly anywhere just for a con: the cost of airfare is too much of an investment, the talent’s schedules can change, and besides, there are a disproportionate amount of options that I don’t have to make the investment to fly to. So I thought.

When DD & GA were announced for WizardWorld Chicago, I had already committed to plans for the con weekend. I was a little bummed, but thought that it was probably for the best that I already had plans, because otherwise, I would have been very tempted to fly to it. Then, just a few weeks prior to the con, after hanging up the phone call in which my last weekend in August plans were postponed, I saw a note from Kristin @kateyes224 alluding to her intention to go to the con. She informed me that @sunflowerseedsandscience, who I had been hoping to meet earlier in the summer, would also be flying in for the occasion. I took this influx of information as a sign that I should get myself to Chicago for that weekend. I justified the cost by using airline and hotel points to subside the expense. I was going to fly to a con. The next few weeks were a whirlwind of madness at work, so I was very grateful to have the aforementioned pals, plus Carrie @carrie11 who would be joining us for her first con, in my pocket to countdown to the weekend with.

I flew to Chicago on the morning Friday, August 24, laughing internally at the absurdity of the situation all the way. I made my way to Rosemont, my eyes going wide when I caught my first glimpse of the convention center, and settled myself into the hotel room before heading downtown on the train to meet Carrie. There was a food truck festival right by the L station that I emerged from, and I realized that all I had consumed only an iced coffee so far in the day, so I remedied that. Carrie was nice enough to indulge in my desire to be a tourist, since I hadn’t been to Chicago proper in years. I had never made it to the Willis Sears Tower, so we did that, and she took some fun pics of Puppet Mulder. I think this is my fav:

We then did a bit of walking -- Grant Park, Lake Shore Drive path, Millenium Park, and the Chicago River, before the rest of the crew arrived and it was finally pizza time! Soon after Carrie and I secured a table at Giordano’s, Kristin, @sunflowerseedsandscience, and Amanda @all-these-ghosts arrived. I greeted them on the patio and had an epic reunion hug with Kristin in which we made a total scene and squeezed each other so tight while squealing that I choked on some of her hair. The five us then had a wonderful dinner that I don’t remember much about except that the pizza was amazing, the company was even better, and I’m pretty sure I was just still in awe that this was all happening. After dinner, we went to grab drinks down the street. There was Shiner Bock on the menu, so Puppet Mulder joined us and confused many of the staff. Amanda especially was tickled by Puppet Mulder, while I was fangirling over her (she wrote Then The Bomb, people!!!) Truly, the con could have been cancelled and the trip still would have been worth it for just hanging out with this crew:

Saturday morning, Kristin procured Starbucks and we all readied ourselves to be presentable for photo ops in the late morning. We met Carrie, Clarice @contrivedcoincidences6, and @albanyparkavenue in the lobby and headed to the convention center. The security line coming from the hotels was long but moved fast. At this point, I had only pre-purchased a dual photo op (and Saturday ticket) but while we were in line I accidentally-but-it-was-bound-to-happen-anyway purchased GA & DD autographs on the ticketing app on my phone. Oops! Once we got in and procured our wristbands, it was already time for those of us with dual photo ops to get in line, so we did. In the midst of a lot of line waiting, Kristin perfected Puppet Mulder’s hair (we decided on Season 4 / Paper Hearts classic floops aka Backstreet Bangs). Puppet Mulder also made friends with a tiny Supergirl, which Carrie captured in a couple pics, and my day was made. Soon, it was go time. I was to go first so that Kristin could do last looks on Puppet Mulder’s hair immediately before the photo. As we approached the final holding area, I situated Puppet Mulder on my right arm and was prepared to pose him in an arms-spread position using the armrods in my left hand (we had been practicing in line.) When it was my turn, I approached, and I was told by those in line behind me that Gillian gave an exasperated “Ohhhhhhhhh boy” while I announced “Puppet Mulder is here!” in an attempt to preemptively stave off any questions about who he was and prevent myself from having to make any awkward hand gestures like I did in Montreal. As we were getting in position I asked, “Can he get in between you? I don’t know that I want to be in it” since I didn’t really care about my face being in it, but also didn’t want to crouch down without warning and confuse everyone. But David insisted, “Ah, no, you gotta be in it!” to which I conceded “I do? Ok.” and stayed put. With that, the photo was taken, I said thanks, and moved out of the way. As the rest of the crew emerged from the Tunnel of Love Anxiety, we went around the corner to retrieve our photos, and I think everyone in the group was pleased with the results! I was pleasantly surprised by mine (even if Gillian is doing her nervous hands.)

I even bought a photo protector sheet after being called out by DD in Montreal for not treating our photo with the utmost respect and bending it a bit. After this ordeal, we realized that we needed drinks and to regroup, so we acquired alcohol (beer is a reasonable lunch, right?) and found a path of floor outside the main hall to make our own. We were joined by some more pals including @dahlia-ships, @observeroftheuniverse, and @perplexistan.

After this recovery period, it was time for Gillian’s autograph session. I had the pleasure of being behind Natalie for this and got to listen to Natalie give the most eloquent, heartfelt litany of thanks to one of her favs. Also, somehow margaritas came up and Natalie and I were like “Yesss we just drank before this!” so clearly my 20 seconds were much less profound, but here’s the rough transcript after that:

Me: Thanks for putting up with us. GA: This was one of my favorite photos of the day. Me: Aww, really?! GA: Yeah, it’s between this one and maybe one other. Me: Oh, what was that? GA: Someone had an alien. Me: Oh yeah, the big blow up thing? [Had spotted this in front of us in the photo op line.] GA: Yeah. Me: *nods* Thanks!

When I emerged from her booth and realized she inscribed “My favorite photo of the day” on the photo, I was both heart-eyed and in awe. See, I am a terrible multi-tasker and thus continually in awe of Gillian’s ability to have a conversation while simultaneously making a non-robotic inscription. Like, yeah, she’s pretty good at acting and contributes to humanitarian causes, but I’d like to give her an award for speaking and writing at the same time. Was this talent born from some crazy avant-garde theatre warm-up? Is this some kind of Mom superpower? Really what I’m asking is: Is there hope for me yet to learn this skill?

Anyway, after the crew got their Gillian autographs, some more drinks were procured, and then we decided to go wait in line for the panel (which was actually a solid 9 minute walk from the main hall.) At this point, I started bothering Kristin to come get a DD autograph with me before the panel, because I’m a bad influence like that. She was unprepared with what she would have him sign though, so we started brainstorming, and landed on possibly The X-Files: Earth Children Are Weird picture book that I had brought a copy of so that Kristin could do a dramatic reading. Since that was back in the hotel room, a few of us darted back to grab it (and to grab our leftover deep dish, which my growling stomach was very grateful for.) We brought the remaining pizza to the line-sitters, and at around 4pm, I successfully convinced Kristin to come grab a DD autograph with me. Shayla @thatredhead00 joined us and her tale of a DD interaction earlier in the day made me howl with laughter. We made friends with a couple of local guys in line, and I connected with a woman I recognized from a previous event, which was funny. Anyway, DD made it back from his afternoon break, the signing session began, and soon enough, Kristin went first with the picture book, and I globbed on to her convo. Here’s the rough transcript:

DD: [signing on the title page] What am I signing? K: The X-Files picture book! DD: [Turns to the front cover] Aww, it’s cute! [Genuinely, high-pitched] DD: What happens in it? K: They go camping in the woods. Me: And Scully’s parents are aliens. Me: Whoops, I gave away the twist ending. DD: Yeah, you ruined it for me. Me: Yeah, it was gonna take you so long to read… Me: Thanks so much!

For those keeping score at home, this brings my record of accidentally-but-lovingly making fun of DD to his face at con autograph sessions to an even 2-0. Interestingly enough, I’ve been to two of his book signings and complimented him (well, his writing) at both of those. Not sure what gives.

Anyway, we decided that we needed more drinks before the panel so grabbed those and then made the journey back to where that was. Our pals were already seated, and the question line had already started forming, so Kristin and Shayla hopped in that while I took a seat with the crew. The panel was perfectly fine in person. Per usual, a few cringey questions (thanks Natalie for letting me squeeze your arm through these), but also a few great questions and responses. Kristin got to ask her question (and, as predicted, Gillian couldn’t remember specifics, and the morgue scene in “Ghouli” was David’s answer, but it was still nice to hear it.) Other highlights included a thoughtful question and response from Gillian on how the show might have been different if written from a more feminist perspective. Also, there was a fleeting moment when I thought the tell-all book was going to be spoiled, plus the infamous “Who tops?” question. All in all, not bad at all, though this was the first panel I’ve attended with just the two of them, so I admittedly don’t have any equal comparison points. Soon enough, it was over, and it was time to drink (more!) with Philes. All of the aforementioned crew from the day joined, plus Amanda, @datanullyx, @redscully, @xfilesgeekery, and @anicepieceofash.  We started in the hotel bar but, in the interest of cost savings, eventually procured liquor and ordered (more) pizza and moved to our hotel room. There were lots of hugs and snuggles, lots of loudly wondering “What is my life?”, platonic handholding, one human/puppet makeout session, an impressive demonstration of Kristin’s ability to sleep through anything, and some amazing cheesecake brownies . As the evening got late, Puppet Mulder even changed into his red Speedo (and put on his to-scale legs.) Needless to say, it was a night both wonderful and strange. Here’s some of the crew at the after-after party:

I feel so lucky to have gotten to spend time with everyone I met or re-met this weekend, and if I start calling out the specifics of why you’re all so great, I’ll make myself cry, so I’m going to stop here. If you’ve read all of this rambling (whether you were present or not), I’m very impressed. Thanks to everyone who shared in this weekend with me from both near and far, and thanks to Gillian and David for giving us an excuse to meetup.

I said I’d never fly to a con, but I’m so glad I did.

Author's note: I always hate writing these because a) it means it’s over, and b) I can never fully capture the awesomeness that is meeting up with fandom friends. Also, I have a shit memory, but jotted down notes about stuff right after it happened on Saturday, so hopefully I’m not misconstruing anything too terribly. If you were present, feel free to correct me!

#wizardworld chicago 2018 #wizardworld #x files #david duchovny #gillian anderson #conventions #over a week belated but I finally finished! #long post #in case the readmore fails #also I hope tagging folks works #what a great weekend #I love you all #puppet mulder #chicago #I'll never fly to a con #<-- famous last words #personal

[brn1029]

Get those tin foil hats ready to go!

The 10 greatest conspiracy theories in rock

By Emma Johnston

In a world where fake news runs rampant, rock'n'roll is not immune to the lure of the conspiracy theory. These are 10 of the most ludicrous

Conspiracy theories, myths and legends have existed in rock’n’roll for as long as the music has existed, stretching all the way back to bluesman Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads in exchange for superhuman guitar skills, fame and fortune.

There are those who believe Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison live on, others who think the Illuminati control the world through symbolism in popular culture, and plenty of evangelical types with their own agendas trawling rock and metal songs for secret messages luring the innocent to the dark side.

Let us take a look, then, at rock’n’roll conspiracy theories ranging from the intriguing to the ludicrous, as we try to separate the truth from the codswallop.

Lemmy was in league with the Illuminati

Few men have ever been earthier than Lemmy, but one conspiracy theorist claims that the Motorhead legend didn’t really die in December 2015, instead “ascending into the heavenly realm” after making a “blood sacrifice pact” with the Illuminati.

A “watcher” of the mythical secret society some believe are running the world – despite evidence that is at best flimsy, at worst straight from The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown’s discarded notebooks – told the Daily Star: “Lemmy signed up for the ultimate pact – he signed his soul to the devil in order to achieve fame and fortune.”

While we can only imagine what the great man would have to say on the matter, there’s one word, in husky, JD-soaked tones, that we can just about make out coming across from the other side: “Bollocks.”

Paul McCartney died in 1966

As you might expect from the most famous band that has ever existed, there are enough crackpot theories about The Beatles to fill the Albert Hall. From John Lennon’s murder being ordered by the US government, who, led by Richard Nixon, suspected him of communism (the FBI actually did have a file on Lennon, but the story is spiced up by the man behind murderlennontruth.com, who apparently believes author Steven King was involved due to, uh, looking a bit like Mark Chapman) to Canadian prog outfit Klaatu being the Fab Four in disguise, there are plenty of tall tales more colourful than a Ringo B-side.

The most enduring, though, is the notion dreamt up by some US radio DJs that Paul McCartney died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike. They came to this conclusion having studied the cover of Abbey Road – McCartney’s bare feet on the zebra crossing apparently symbolising death, while others found “evidence” in the album’s opaque lyrics. There were a lot of drugs in the 60s.

Gene Simmons has a cow’s tongue

It’s easy to see why all kinds of far-fetched stories sprung up when Kiss first took off in the 1970s. The fake-blood-spitting, the fire, the demon-superhero personas – middle America clutched its pearls and word spread that these otherworldly weirdos’ moniker stood for Knights In Satan’s Service. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

It was Gene Simmons’ preposterous mouth that got the nation’s less voluminous tongues wagging though. So long and pointy is his appendage, and so often waggled at his audiences (whether they asked for it or not), that eventually the rumour spread around the world’s playgrounds was that he’d had a cow’s tongue grafted onto his own. The bovine baloney is, of course, bullshit, but Simmons has admitted it's one of his favourite Kiss urban myths.

Supertramp predicted 9/11

The Logical Song may be Supertramp’s calling card, but one man in the US stretches common sense to the limit having come to the conclusion that the artwork for their 1979 album Breakfast In America gave prior warning of the terrorist attacks on New York on September 11, 2001.

Look at the album cover – painted from the perspective of a window on a flight into the city – in a mirror, and the ‘u’ and ‘p’ band’s name appears to become a 911 floating above the twin towers, while a logo on the back features a plane flying towards the World Trade Center.

So far, so coincidental, but when our intrepid investigator falls down a rabbit hole of Masonic interference, strained Old Testament connections (“The Great Whore of Babylon – Super Tramp”), and the title Breakfast In America reflecting the fact that the planes crashed early in the morning, things get really tenuous.

It’s fair to say it’s unlikely a British prog-pop band had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks 22 years before they happened. But maybe Al Qaida were really big fans.

Stevie Wonder can see

Stevie Wonder is a genius. That fact is not up for dispute. The soul/jazz/funk/rock/pop legend was born six weeks prematurely in 1950, and the oxygen used in the hospital incubator to stabilise him caused him to go blind shortly afterwards. But his love of front-row seats at basketball games, the evocative imagery in his songs, and the fact that he once effortlessly caught a falling mic stand knocked over by Paul McCartney (who, let us reiterate, did not die in 1966) has caused basement Jessica Fletchers to muse that he’s faking his blindness as part of the act.

Wonder himself, a known prankster, has great fun with his status as one of the world’s most famous vision-impaired musicians. In 1973, he told Rolling Stone: “I’ve flown a plane before. A Cessna or something, from Chicago to New York. Scared the hell out of everybody.”

Dave Grohl invented Andrew W.K.

When Andrew W.K. first broke through in the early 2000s, dressed in white and covered in blood, his mission was serious in its simplicity: the party is everything. He took his message of having a good time, all the time, to levels of political fervour. But rumours of his authenticity have been doing the rounds from the start.

Reviewing WK’s first UK show at The Garage in London, The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis wrote: “One music-biz conspiracy theory currently circulating suggests that Andrew W.K. is an elaborate hoax devised by former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl.”

As time went on, the theory gained traction – Grohl was believed to be the mysterious Steev Mike credited on the debut album I Get Wet. And as W.K.’s style changed over subsequent records, and his own admission that there were legal arguments over who owns his name, whispers began that he wasn’t even a real person – he was a character, played by several different actors, an attempt to create the ultimate Frankenstein’s frontman.

"I'm not the same guy that you may have seen from the I Get Wet album," W.K. said in 2008. “I don't just mean that in a philosophical or conceptual way, it's not the same person at all. Do I look the same as that person?" The jury is out, but if this is a great white elephant concocted just for the sheer hell of it, we kind of want this one to be true.

Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager

An early victim of the 27 club, the death of Jimi Hendrix was depressingly cliched for a man so wildly creative: a bellyful of barbiturates led to him asphyxiating on his own vomit, according to the post-mortem. But in the years following the grim discovery at the Samarkand Hotel in London on 19 September 1970, a different theory was offered by the guitarist’s former roadie, James “Tappy” Wright.

In his book Rock Roadie, Wright claims Hendrix was murdered by his manager, Michael Jeffery, who he says force-fed his charge red wine and pills. The motive? He feared he was about to be fired and was keen to cash in on the star’s life insurance. One thing we do know for certain is Jeffery won’t be able to give his version of events, as he was killed in a plane crash over France in 1973.

The 50th anniversary of Hendrix's tragic passing was "celebrated" with the release of Hendrix and the Spook, a documentary that "explored" his death further and was described by The Guardian as "a cheaply made mix of interviews and dumbshow dramatic recreations by actors scuttling about flimsy sets in gloomy lighting." Sounds good.

Courtney killed Kurt

Courtney Love is no stranger to demonisation from Nirvana fans. When Hole’s second album, the searing, catchy, feminist, witty, aggressive, vulnerable and unflinchingly honest Live Through This was released, days after Kurt Cobain’s death, rumours almost immediately started up that Love’s late husband wrote the songs. That was insulting and sexist enough, but nowhere near as damaging as the conspiracy theory that Love hired a hitman to kill Cobain amid rumours they were about to divorce.

After Cobain’s first attempt to take his own life in Rome, the Nirvana frontman was eventually convinced to go to rehab following an intervention by his wife and friends. He ran away from the facility, and the private investigator hired by Love to find him, Tom Grant, eventually became the source of the idea that Love and the couple’s live-in nanny Michael Dewitt were responsible for Cobain’s death shortly afterwards.

His claims, made in the Soaked In Bleach documentary, include the notion that Cobain had too much heroin in his system to pull the trigger of the shotgun, and that he believed the suicide note was forged.

People close to Cobain (and the Seattle Police Department) have refuted the theory, including Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg: “It’s ridiculous. He killed himself. I saw him the week beforehand, he was depressed. He tried to kill himself six weeks earlier, he’d talked and written about suicide a lot, he was on drugs, he got a gun. Why do people speculate about it? The tragedy of the loss is so great people look for other explanations. I don’t think there’s any truth at all to it."

The CIA wrote The Scorpions’ biggest hit

Previously synonymous with leather, hard rock anthems and some very questionable album artwork, West Germany’s Scorpions scored big with Wind Of Change, a power ballad heralding the oncoming fall of the USSR, the end of the Cold War, and a new sense of hope in the Eastern Bloc.

In a podcast named after the 1990 song, though, Orwell Prize-winning US journalist Patrick Radden Keefe follows rumours from within the intelligence community that the song was actually written by the CIA, as propaganda to hasten the fall of the ailing Soviet Union via popular culture.

“Soviet officials had long been nervous over the free expression that rock stood for, and how it might affect the Soviet youth,” Keefe is quoted as saying. “The CIA saw rock music as a cultural weapon in the cold war. Wind of Change was released a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and became this anthem for the end of communism and reunification of Germany. It had this soft-power message that the intelligence service wanted to promote.”

It's a convincing theory, but one that is disputed by Scorpions frontman Klaus Meine: “I thought it was very amusing and I just cracked up laughing. It’s a very entertaining and really crazy story but like I said, it’s not true at all. Like you American guys would say, it’s fake news."

There are satanic messages in Stairway To Heaven

The great comedian Bill Hicks had something to say about people searching for evidence of devilry in rock’n’roll: “Remember this shit, if you play certain rock albums backwards there'd be satanic messages? Let me tell you something, if you're sitting round your house playing your albums backwards, you are Satan. You needn't look any further. And don't go ruining my stereo to prove a point either.”

The memo didn’t get through to televangelist and stylus ruiner Paul Crouch, who in 1982 attempted to scare the Christian right into believing Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven was stuffed with demonic meaning, and that played backwards it revealed the following message: “Here’s to my sweet Satan/The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan/He will give those with him 666/There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.”

Guitarist Jimmy Page, of course, is no stranger to the esoteric, making no secret of his interest in occultist Aleister Crowley and the attendant magick, and there were even rumours the band made a Faustian pact to achieve fame and fortune. But hiding messa

[varietyofwords]

Ideal (Chicago P.D.)

Title: Ideal

Fandom: Chicago P.D.

Rating: T/PG-13

Author's Note: I probably watched one too many romantic dramas this weekend, but I was trying to make myself feel better after the announcement about Sophia's departure. To me, the best case scenario we can hope for after 4x23 (and given Sophia may be coming back for a few episodes in S5) is a follow-up to Erin and Jay's conversation in 4x21 about ideal living situations so this is what I came up with.

She will never get used to the hustle and bustle of this city - the constant honking of car horns, the way people push past each other on crowded sidewalks without the apology that comes with Midwestern nicety, the thin crust pizza being hawked by the slice at the same cart selling skinny hot dogs that don't deserve to be called sausage or bratwurst, the turf wars among precincts over which borough they serve, or the tunnel vision the highrises create making it is impossible to see city landmarks.

That last change was - is - probably the hardest to adapt to because it used to be she walk down the back steps of the District or swing by Firehouse 51 or chase down a suspect and be able to see Sears Tower standing up straight. Offering orientation as she floored the 300 or the Sierra or as she hopped over a fence in a foot chase. Now? Now she orients herself by the number of blocks to the FBI's headquarters, by the coffee shops and hole in the way restaurants that Lieutenant Benson pointed out to her the night she arrived in New York City with Hank's admonishment not to look back still ringing in her ears.

Advice Hank himself hadn't followed given that Benson was waiting for her at baggage claim, that the first person she saw upon arrival was someone from her past. It had been Benson who helped her find a place - one that was smaller than her condo in Chicago and without the floor to ceiling windows or the fireplace, but in a neighborhood that didn't feel quite so sterile or gentrified as the place the FBI set her up with. It had been Benson who took her out to the coffee shop around the corner from her new apartment and offered her a position in her own unit. Offered to open up doors for her at the NYPD that would let her out of a life spent in starched, white blouses and pantsuits.

But she had to pass, had to take Hank's advice that she not look back because she couldn't imagine facing the kind of monsters like Yates every single day. Couldn't handle the mental mindfuck that would come every time a woman was brutalized that way Nadia had been. And she had to keep the deal she made five months ago. Five months, eleven days, and six hours ago.

So much for not looking back.

"What can I get started for you, ma'am?" The questions startles her slightly as she had been mindlessly moving forward in line at the coffee shop. It is the same coffee shop that Benson had taken her to about two months after she arrived in the city, after it became obvious that the homesickness for Chicago wasn't abating with time.

The same, but different because it has been more crowded now, more inundated with tourists and the yuppies who bought the overpriced condos built on top of the hotel down the block. And now the barista moves down the line asking for orders before the customer can reach the cash register and pay.

"Can I get a large, black coffee and, uh, a large latte?" Erin questions glancing from the barista's smiling face to the board and back again when she sees the milk options listed on the righthand side. "Almond milk for the latte."

"Ok, I've got a large, black coffee and a large latte with almond milk. Anything else?" The barista questions nodding her head in reply when Erin replies in the negative as she scribbles the order on a paper cup. "Can I get an name for the order?"

"Lindsay?"

The callout of her last name comes not from Erin but from a voice - a male voice - further in front of her in the line, and both Erin and the barista turn to spot the speaker standing in front of the cash register. To see a redhead wearing a suit craning his head around the line to stare at her, to offer her a small, hesitant smile. And she offers him one in return as she tells the barista that Lindsay is the name for the order.

"Here you go, sir," another barista interrupts handing a coffee cup to the redhead. The grin on her face, the way she giggles over his charm causes Erin to roll her eyes because it appears that nothing has changed in the five months since she's been gone. That the eldest Halstead hasn't lost the charm that always got him in trouble, that always meant she had to listen to the youngest Halstead rail about how his brother needed to get his act together. Needed to focus on his career in New York and, then, in Chicago; needed to choose Nina or Natalie.

But he doesn't really offer her that boyish, charming grin as he moves to join her in line, as the two of them awkwardly dance around the question of whether or not they should hug because that's what they used to do. Quick hugs and/or warm smiles at Molly's when he'd join them for a drink after work or at their place - her place - when the game would end and they weren't so subtle about telling him that it was time to go.

Now, though, they skip the hug, and she finds herself curling her wrists upward so she can tug on the sleeves of her starched blouse under her black jacket. So she can silently address the discomfort she feels as he explains that he didn't expect to run into her here, as she wonders how much he knows about what's transpired in the five months since she last saw Will Halstead.

The lanyard around his neck announcing his name and his hospital affiliation explains why he's in New York rather than at work in Chicago, but Erin asks about the conference anyways. Listens to him explain that Goodwin has either started to trust him, or she just wants a week where he isn't around to give her more grey hairs.

The laughter Erin offers in reply clearly isn't the answer that Will was going for because the smile on his face doesn't reach his eyes. Because he's still staring at her with the stoic impression that Erin is convinced is hereditary as she inquires how everyone else at Med is doing while handing over a waded up twenty to the barista working the cash register. Because his eyes flash with anger when one of the four baristas working today interrupts the exchange of change and the exchange of niceties to hand her two coffees.

The flash of anger dissipates, though, as his gaze darts from to the two coffees in her hand to her face, and the anger is replaced with resigned sadness so quickly that Erin doesn't have time to really register what he's thinking. To say anything in her own defense as he mumbles about it being good to see her before turning away and striding towards the door. To even say his name before he's turned back around and moved towards her, before his proximity and his gaze makes it feel like they are the only two in the coffee shop.

"He was gonna propose to you. Told me that he knew he blew it, but that you were all he thought about. Had me get Mom's ring out of the safety deposit box cause you were the right girl," Will informs her, and the knowledge causes her to stumble backwards a bit. To lose her footing on the high heels that she's never really enjoyed wearing because it is too difficult to stand up right after such a blow. "And you - you really hurt him, Erin."

Despite all the years she spent learning how to suppress her emotions, how to make sure no one ever saw her weaknesses, the tears still spring to her eyes. Leave her vision a cloudy mess and a lump in her throat so she can't find her voice when Will tries to explain that he doesn't mean to hurt her. That he just wants her to know how much his brother cared - cares- about her.

Except she does know. Knew with every look and touch; knew with the five missed calls on the night she left and the smattering of texts after that. And she manages to find her voice not to tell Will that, not to tell Will that Jay is all she thinks about, but to wish him luck with his conference and make a break for the door.

Her visions is still cloudy as she makes her way down the crowded sidewalk towards her apartment, and the coffee cups slosh in her hands as people bump into her left and right. But the lump in her throat has grown and her heart is racing too much to take on the New Yorker tactic of scowling, to do anything other than focus on getting to her apartment.

Apartment not home. Because this is New York not Chicago. Because this is where she's biding her time rather than living her life. Because it is hard to move forward when you're still looking back at your past.

It takes some maneuvering with the coffee cups to open the front door of her building - almond milk latte spilling on the stoop on her building - and then to unlock the front door of her apartment. Takes further maneuvering around the half-unpacked boxes stacked in the hallway and the living room to find her past looking back at her from the closet-sized kitchen.

To find her past wearing sweatpants hung low on his hips and bare back muscles flexing as he runs the spatula across the frying pan, as he announces that he couldn't find the waffle maker in any of the boxes labeled kitchen so scrambled eggs will have to do.

"You were going to propose?" The question comes out more strangled and weaker sounding than she meant it to be, and the tone clearly catches him off guard because his head snaps around so he can stare at her. So she can see those bright eyes dim with a tiny bit of sadness as he nods his head eyes.

"You were going to propose," she repeats again. This time the question is more of a statement. This time he reaches to turn off the stove, moves the skillet off the burner, and spins around to face her. To rub his fingers against the hairline along his forehead and refuse to meet her gaze as he verbally confirms what he had planned to do five months, ten days, and roughly twelve and a half hours ago.

"You were going to propose, and I just left," Erin says as though he needs the reminder of what exactly happened that night. Of waiting for her at Molly's with the ring box in his pocket; of calling her repeatedly and driving by the apartment they used to share wondering where she was. Of dragging himself into work the next morning hoping to see her sitting at her desk and being told by Voight that she was working with the FBI. Effectively immediately.

"And you came back," he interjects because maybe she needs the reminder of what happened three months ago. Of sitting at Molly's staring at his fourth drink of the night wondering if he should finally let himself fall over the edge; of ignoring the sound of the door opening and shutting behind him because the rest of the unit wasn't really into drinking with a guy who wouldn't even try to be the life of the party. Of hearing a 'hey' in her voice beside him and wondering if he'd lost count of his drinks already until he felt her hand on his bicep.

They had ended up back at his place, at the apartment he officially shared with Will but unofficially had to himself because his brother spent all his time with Natalie. They ended up with her pantsuit on his floor and her nail marks on his back and not a lot of words spoken between them in the next three hours. The touches and kisses and caresses saying what they both felt even when they were in between rounds. And then, in the morning, he took her out to breakfast at her favorite diner, let her steal bites of his egg white omelete to balance out the unhealthiness of her double stack of pancakes, and asked if she was back.

She wasn't. And it had nearly killed her to see the way his face fell, to see the mask she thought he was trying to break down fall back in place as she explained that she was in town just for the night. That she had to get back to New York. That she wanted to stay so badly; that she felt her resolve to leave weakening with every passing moment.

She hadn't said the last part, but she had texted him as soon as she landed in New York. Texted him multiple times a day. Texted him so much that he'd stopped replying for a few hours and then come back with an excuse that his new partner, Al, had become annoyed with all the texting. Had taken away his phone and locked it in the glove compartment of that police-issued car he wasn't allowed to drive. And then texts had become calls. Short chats on the nights they both worked late and could barely keep their eyes open; lengthy ones on the days when she found herself looking up one way flights to Chicago.

So much for not looking back.

And, apparently, he had been doing the same during those phone calls because he's standing in her kitchen cooking her scrambled eggs and she's buying him a latte with almond milk. His ticket is round trip; Chicago is still his - their - home. But he's here to drown her in kisses at night and mock her pantsuit in the morning and, apparently, there was a time when he was going to propose.

"Are you still plan-" She forces the question to die on her lips because she doesn't want to know. What they're doing right now - the showing up on each other's doorsteps, the sneaking around dad's back - is complicated and confusing and undefined enough as it is without throwing the ultimate definition of a relationship out there. Without asking him to tell her if she's wrecked things enough that he's no longer considering asking her; without asking her to tell him if he's blew it so badly that she no longer wants to be asked.

"Do you remember me telling you about that couple? The ones that lived in separate houses, but were together for like, forty-two years?"

She remembers, of course. Remembers wondering where exactly he was going with that story when he first told it to her and then wondering how they went from him asking her to move in together to him telling her the ideal situation was him coming over for dinner and sex and then going back to his own place to sleep and work on the motorcycle she wasn't - isn't - thrilled about him wanting. Remembers him correcting her and saying that it wasn't ideal.

"I'd rather have that with you then nothing at all," he informs her and she finds herself shaking her head. Reminding him that they live in separate states rather than houses across the road from one another.

"Yeah," he agrees folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the counter. His stare is unwavering much like his posture as he continues, "it's not ideal. But unless you're ready to stop protecting Bunny and come home-"

"Jay," she warns with the shake her head because they've had this agreement. Over text. Over the phone. And she doesn't want to rehash it all over again when he's standing in front of her and, according to his brother, may or may not have a ring in his pocket.

"So," he interjects with a sigh of frustration, "separate houses, separate states sounds like the best option right now cause, Erin, not being with you is far less ideal than cramming myself into those tiny seats on Spirit for a two hour flight."

There's a long, pregnant pause where she mulls it over. Where she wonders how they went from living together to being apart to him planning to propose to now contemplating long distance for foreseeable future. And then she finds herself nodding her head, offering him a whispered okay that she knows he heard because he breaks out in a wide, boyish, and charming grin. One that makes his brother's seem small in comparison. One that she sort of emulates - dimples appearing - as he crosses the room, as he pulls the coffee cups from her hands and places them on the table by the couch, as he plants a kiss on her lips and mumbles how he loves her.

Because, yeah, living in New York isn't ideal. Being an agent with the FBI rather than a detective with the Chicago Police Department isn't ideal. But the last five months and the weeks before that have shown her that not being with him also isn't ideal. And that's one thing that she can change right now, can let herself keep from her past even as she sacrifices for another portion of it.

"Do me one thing," she murmurs when the second - or, maybe third - kiss breaks, and she feels him pull away slightly from her. Watches her run her hand against his chest before tipping her head up to look at him, to offer him a stern look that clashes with the dimples she can't make disappear. "Don't propose to me. Not yet, anyways. I don't want it to be a rushed thing, okay?"

His gaze softens at the comment, and she knows it's because a part of him sees it as a dig, as a pointed comment about his past and how he made it to the altar the first time around. And there's a part of her that means it that way. That can't stand the idea of him ever describing them as a joke or a twenty-four hour thing or of their relationship being cobbled together in panic the way their decision to move in together last year maybe was.

"You know that I support you one hundred percent, right?" Jay asks, and the comment causes Erin's brow to furrow because, of course, she knows that. Has known that since their first ride along as partners, since he put on a suit and went to her high school reunion with her, since he waited for her to tell him about her past, since he pulled her back onto the force when she was falling down a hole, since he held her together when her world was falling apart, since he offered advice and support even when she didn't want. And when she tells him that, of course, she knows, he nods his head and says, "Then I can wait to propose when it's more ideal."

#linstead #erin lindsay #chicago pd #jay halstead #will halstead #fanfiction #cpdfic #mine #oneshot #youtried.doc #i like the idea but not the execution of this #but i couldn't work on anything else until i got this out of my head

[newssplashy]

Opinion: Piece by piece, a factory-made answer for a housing squeeze

VALLEJO, Calif. — California is in the middle of an affordable-housing crisis that cities across the state are struggling to solve.

Here, in a football-field-size warehouse where workers used to make submarines, Holliday recently opened Factory OS, a factory that manufactures homes.

In one end go wood, pipes, tile, sinks and toilets; out another come individual apartments that can be trucked to a construction site and bolted together in months.

“If we don’t build housing differently, then no one can have any housing,” Holliday said during a recent tour as he passed assembly-line workstations and stacks of raw materials like windows, pipes and rolls of pink insulation.

Almost a decade after the recession flattened the housing industry, causing waves of contractors to go bankrupt and laid-off construction workers to leave the business for other jobs, builders have yet to regain their previous form. Today the pace of new apartment and housing construction sits at a little over half the 2006 peak.

The United States needs new housing, but its building industry isn’t big enough to provide it. The number of residential construction workers is 23 percent lower than in 2006, while higher-skill trades like plumbers, carpenters and electricians are down close to 17 percent. With demand for housing high and the supply of workers short, builders are bidding up prices for the limited number of contractors.

Construction prices nationwide have risen about 5 percent a year for the past three years, according to the Turner Building Cost Index. Costs have gone up even faster in big cities and across California, according to RSMeans, a unit of Gordian, which compiles construction data. In the Bay Area, builders say construction prices are up 30 percent over the past three years — so much that even luxury projects are being stalled by rising costs.

“It’s reached the point where you cannot get enough rent or you cannot sell enough units to make it a viable deal,” said Lou Vasquez, a founding partner and managing director of Build, a real estate developer in San Francisco.

The surge in construction prices is coming at the worst possible time for booming cities like New York, Seattle and San Francisco, already dealing with an affordable-housing crunch that has increased the homeless populations and stoked acrimonious debates about growth and gentrification. City and state legislators have tried to tackle their housing problems with proposals to increase subsidized affordable housing, reduce building regulations and make it legal to build taller.

But even if every overpriced city suddenly overcame the thicket of zoning rules and neighborhood opposition that make it difficult to build new housing in the first place — which seems doubtful — today’s diminished building industry would lack the capacity to build at the needed pace. This affects the rich as well as the poor, because it raises the cost of high-end condos and affordable housing alike.

This year, Californians will vote on a proposed $4 billion bond to build more subsidized affordable housing. In San Francisco, where developers say the per-unit construction cost is edging toward $800,000, that would buy about 5,000 units, a relative blip. “Costs have risen so much that it is not possible to build homes where people want to live at the prices and rents they can afford,” said John Burns, founder of John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

All this has prompted developers like Holliday to go scrambling for cheaper and less labor-intensive construction methods — and investors to pour money into startups that promise to do just that. Katerra, a 3-year-old prefabricated building company in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park, has raised $1.1 billion in venture capital. A number of other building startups including Blokable, based in Seattle; Kasita, based in Austin, Texas; and RAD Urban, based in Oakland, California, have all popped up over the past five years.

“The current system can’t meet demand and that’s resulting in a lack of opportunity for some folks and a major hit to the economy,” said Stonly Baptiste, a co-founder of Urban Us, a Brooklyn-based venture capital firm that invested in Blokable. “These aren’t small problems, and they aren’t small markets.”

The technologies vary but generally involve simplifying construction through prefabricated panels that can be assembled like Ikea furniture and modular apartments that can be stacked together like Lego bricks. A recent survey by FMI, a management-consulting and investment banking company focused on the engineering and construction industry, found a third of respondents said they were looking at some form of off-site construction, a steep rise from 2010. The interest extends from housing to hotels to medical facilities, industrial companies and even fast-food restaurants.

“It’s one of those things that looks like an overnight success but it’s taken 10 years and hundreds of people toiling,” said Chris Giattina, chief executive of BLOX, a Birmingham, Alabama, company that builds hospitals with modular components.

Brokers of Risk

The global construction industry is a $10 trillion behemoth whose structures determine where people live, how they get to work and what cities look like. It is also one of the world’s least efficient businesses. The construction productivity rate — how much building workers do for each hour of labor they put in — has been flat since 1945, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Over that period, sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and retail saw their productivity rates surge by as much as 1,500 percent. In other words, while the rest of the economy has been supercharged by machines, computers and robots, construction companies are about as efficient as they were in World War II.

To understand this, consider how buildings are actually built. It all starts with the developer, who doesn’t actually build anything but instead secures a piece of land and a loan, and gets the project approved by the government. At that point the money is passed to the general contractor that made a successful bid to build the project, who passes it to subcontractors that won the bidding for things like plumbing and sheet metal work, which often pass it to even more subcontractors.

Contractors describe this handoff as “brokering risk.” What they mean is that while everyone in the chain has agreed to build a certain piece of the project for a set amount of money and in a given amount of time, none of them are sure they can do so as cheaply or quickly as they’ve promised. They broker that risk by paying someone else to do it for them, minus a small fee.

“Say you’re a general contractor and your subcontractor agrees to do a job. Once we have a contract I don’t care how many man hours you put into it because that’s your problem now,” said Randy Miller, chief executive of RAD Urban, describing the thinking behind the process.

The goal of prefabricated building companies is to turn this model on its head. Instead of offloading risk, the contractor assumes all of it. Instead of sending jobs to subcontractors, they hire their own factory workers. “The general contractor says, ‘Oh my God, construction is scary, let me broker all that risk,'” Miller said. “I’m saying, ‘Oh my God, construction is scary, let me plan and control it.”

The basic concept isn’t new. In 1624, Massachusetts settlers built homes out of prefabricated materials shipped from England. The pattern was repeated in Australia, Africa and India as the British Empire shipped colonists and structures wide across the globe, according to “Prefab Architecture,” by Ryan E. Smith, a professor at the University of Utah.

Over the next few centuries, new versions of the idea seemed to pop up anywhere people needed to build lots of homes in a hurry — during the California Gold Rush, after the Chicago fire, and through America’s westward expansion. In the early part of the 20th century, Sears sold tens of thousands of kits for Sears Modern Homes, which consisted of prefabricated parts and panels that buyers assembled.

Along the way, the construction industry absorbed manufacturing concepts such as the assembly-line techniques that were utilized by Levitt & Sons, the pioneer of mass-built subdivisions. But the idea of factory-built housing was never adopted long enough or widely enough to make an impact, at least in the United States.

One reason the United States has lagged behind Europe, Australia and Asia — which all have well-established companies doing modular and prefabricated building — is that it is a predominantly suburban nation, and the vast supply of open land has kept the cost of single-family-home building relatively low. Another is that the construction industry has slim profit margins and invests little in research and development.

The chances of being burned are high, and each high-profile failure leads to a furlough of the concept. In the mid-2000s housing boom, Pulte Homes, one of the country’s largest builders, opened a prefabrication plant that aimed to revolutionize how homes were built. The company closed it with the onset of the housing bust in 2007.

Now, instead of single-family homes, companies doing prefab building are focusing on higher-density condominiums and apartments. That’s because, while single-family home construction remains well below its level before the recession, multifamily condominium and apartment buildings have rebounded strongly. “Our goal is to be able to do a 40-story tower in 12 months, at half the cost of traditional construction,” said Randy Miller of RAD Urban.

Still, even if builders are able to reduce construction costs, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be successful. Behind each of these companies is a bet that they can build far more efficiently than current methods. That bet has yet to be proven, at least on a large scale.

Efficiency vs. Workers

Holliday of Factory OS started thinking about modular housing about four years ago, when he was struggling to build a project in Truckee, California. The idea was to build 800 to 1,000 high-density apartments and condominiums, but “the numbers wouldn’t work,” he said. “You couldn’t get the construction costs down enough.”

Holliday floated the idea of modular building to his longtime contractor, Larry Pace, from Cannon Constructors, who over the past four decades has built various projects from one-off homes to office towers. “I said ‘modular jobs have been a fiasco — we don’t need that in our lives,'” Pace recalled, adding an expletive for emphasis.

But Holliday persisted, and he and Pace used modular technology from two manufacturers to build four projects in the Bay Area. They are planning to do the same with the original Truckee development. Pace became so comfortable with modular that he suggested that they find some investors and build their own factory.

On a recent afternoon, Pace laid out the factory’s process. At the first station, just past the door, four workers toiled above and below a raised platform to build what would eventually become the floor. The two men up top laid down flooring while a man and woman stood below simultaneously installing pipes.

From there the unit would move steadily down the line, and, over 21 additional stations, would acquire toilets, indoor walls, outdoor walls, a roof, electric outlets, windows, sinks, countertops and tiling. It takes about a week to finish a unit, Pace said. The goal is to churn out about 2,000 apartments a year, which would be turned into four- and five-story buildings with 80 to 150 units each.

For workers, factory building seems to mean lower wages but steadier work. Factory OS pays about $30 an hour with medical insurance and two weeks of vacation. That’s about half what workers can make on a construction site, but the work is more regular and, for many, requires less commuting.

Tony Vandewark, a 51-year-old foreman at Factory OS, is OK with the trade-off. He lives a few minutes from the factory in Vallejo, where homes cost less than half what they do closer to San Francisco. Contrast that with a job he once had in the Silicon Valley city of Sunnyvale. He drove two hours to work and three hours home before deciding to rent a room so he could stay closer to work on weekdays.

“On a job site, you can go do piece work and make really big money, but then the job is gone,” he said.

In addition to not being rained on, one of the key differences between a construction site and Factory OS is that any worker can be trained to do any job. And for old-school trade unions, that is a declaration of war. “The business model is ‘Hooray for me,'” without regard for anyone else, said Larry Mazzola Jr., business manager of UA Local 38, a San Francisco plumbers union with about 2,500 members across Northern California.

Factory OS is not anti-union: It has a contract with the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, which has organized other modular factories and is banking on the technology’s continued growth. The issue is that builders are laid out like a Detroit auto factory, where one union represents all of the workers, and workers can be trained to do any job within the company walls.

That is a huge departure from construction sites, where unions representing plumbers, electricians, carpenters and various other trades each control their piece of the building process. Last year Mazzola wrote a letter to San Francisco’s mayor, Ed Lee, a month before he died, urging him to deny any city business — such as contracts for subsidized housing — to Factory OS.

“Any decision to use Factory OS shows a blatant disregard for the other craft unions,” he wrote. He asked the mayor to refrain from contracting with the company unless it allowed craft unions to do their pieces of the work. “We realize modular is coming and we want to be part of it, but not at the expense of our workers, which is what’s happening right now,” Mazzola said.

Jay Bradshaw, director of organizing for the carpenters council representing Factory OS workers, said that would be impractical. Think back to that first station, where four people worked above and below the floor. In Mazzola’s world, a plumbers union would represent the workers installing pipes, while other unions would represent the workers up top.

“It would never work to have upward of 10 or 15 labor organizations at a single employer in a factory setting,” Bradshaw said.

For Bradshaw, the real fight isn’t defending job titles but making sure construction workers remain part of a union at all. A short drive from Factory OS, at a carpenters training center, the union is developing a program to train housing-factory workers — something that, it hopes, will prepare more people for an industry that it has come to see as inevitable.

“It sure blows the hell out of building in China,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

CONOR DOUGHERTY © 2018 The New York Times

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/06/opinion-piece-by-piece-factory-made.html

#News

[annamcnuff]

Chicago: The Windy City

Lady Luck is definitely a Chicagan. There’s no other explanation for the star spangled, once in a lifetime, right-place-right time, pick your jaw up off that flaw’ experiences that were bestowed upon me this week.

Heading in, I’ll admit I was a little nervous. Having not enjoyed the ‘big city thang’ in San Fran, I made a concerted effort not to hoist The Windy City up on a pedestal, instead shooing down like a naughty kitty caught tip-toeing along the kitchen surface; “Get down, Chicago, get down!” Well? I loved it. Phew.

A CASUAL START

When you’ve got a big city to explore, there’s no sense in diving right on into Downtown. Oh no no. You’ve got to savour the city flavour, get a feel for what it is to live in and around the big smoke before filling your lungs with it. So I began in Lake Forest - a suburb 30 miles North of the centre, on the shores of Lake Michigan. There I stayed for 2 nights with a wonderful family and visited a local school, to talk to a group of 4th graders who were learning about the 50 states (perfect eh?). Lake Forest is… lush. It’s is the kind of place where the Labradoodles are immaculately dressed and the kids hang out at Starbucks after school. Ain’t no Hubba Bubba for 16p in Starbucks kids (when I was a nipper….).

A FAMILY OF LEGENDS

I then scooted round the edge of the city and headed South West to meet a Mr John Vande Velde. For those of you not inclined to follow cycling, or sport at all for that matter, John is one of the original US cycling legends. In fact, he is the original. Competing on the track at the 68’ and 72’ Olympics, he was then the first US rider to turn pro in 1972. Pile on top of that that he managed to produce three kids (Christian, Madelaine and Ian) who have also represented the US in cycling, and it all gets a little silly.

Meeting John was like meeting an old friend - he was kind, welcoming and more importantly, a total dude. And so we just… hung out. Ate pizza, drank wine and put the world back in rightful order through the medium of chat. His passion for the sport is still as fiery as ever, and I could listen for hours to race-tales from an era where cyclists were even greater hard-nuts than they are today. Of course, my timing couldn’t have been better (see - lady luck 'in the house’). Vande Velde Junior, Christian, having just retired from 15 years as a pro, was on hand to pop over in the morning of my departure. And whaddya know - he’s a dude too. I’d like to have stayed for days at the Vande Velde gaff. In fact, I think I’d rather like to be adopted into the family, although only on the proviso that I didn’t have to give up mine. Joint custody, anyone?

THE REAL CHICAGO

When I finally made it into downtown, I met up with a sister from another mister, who’d flown in from NYC (she is actually a sister, sort of, it’s complicated). As evening fell we dashed straight to Millennium Park, and to the highlight of Chicago’s modern art - 'The Bean’. I’d been pre-warned this was a prime tourist spot, where out-of-towners amuse themselves by taking ludicrous shots of their grinning faces reflected in it’s shiny surface. Meh. I shan’t engage in such Lemming-esc behaviour, I thought. Fool. NEVER underestimate the power of The Bean. There’s something about seeing the city mirrored at odd angles in an oversized haricot, that’s simply irresistible. We spent a good 30 minutes giggling and snorting like school children, executing the obligatory array of inventive poses.

DEFYING GRAVITY

Like many great cities around the globe (*cough* London *cough*), Chicago has a river running through it. Who knew? I didn’t. But Chicago’s waterway has a dark secret - it used to run in the opposite direction. You what? My thoughts entirely. In a bid to rid Lake Michigan of waterborne diseases, like cholera, a few civil engineering bright sparks set about reversing the flow in 1887. It hurts my brain, trying to understand how they managed to pull off such a feat (you can hurt your brain too by reading about it here). In short - they built a canal, which allowed the river to drain away from the lake, rather than into it. Genius. And a major success. Apart from the residents in the now downstream St Louis of course - who received a flow of watery Chicago poop where there was no poop before. Love thy neighbour? Nothing says love like the gift of raw sewage.

HISTORIC CHICAGO

If you want to cement your love of Chicago, take the architectural boat tour. You’ll learn a ridiculous amount, and above all that Chicago is a city is steeped in history. In 1871, a 'great fire’ caused 6 square miles of destruction in Downtown. Bad news indeed, but like a grimy phoenix, and with the aid of famous architects from around the globe, a new Chicago rose from the flames. These architects flocked to the now blank city-canvas in a bid to leave their mark. They proceeded to fill the city with the most spectacular buildings, spanning a myriad of styles - The gothic Tribune tower, the Art Deco Merchandise Mart (my fave), The curvy groovy Marina city, The Wrigley building and by far the most famous - the 1,450ft Sears tower - once the tallest in the world.

But by far, and of course, my favourite trinkets of truth from the cruise were movie based:

Truth 1 - The Oscar statuettes are manufactured in Chicago (awesome). Truth 2 - Scenes from 'The Dark Knight’ were filmed at the old Post office.

I knew it! As we entered the city via the metro system that morning, on steel tracks above the streets, I’d turned to my friend and said “ This reminds me of Gotham city…. I feel like I’m heading towards Wayne Towers.” You just can’t keep a good movie buff down.

FINAL FLUKES

The night before I left town, I cashed in a birthday treat from my bro’s - dinner at The Sky Deck, in the Sears (now Willis) Tower. For some bizarre reason, no one else had booked dinner that night. So at a tourist attraction which gets 1.3 million visitors per year - we had the entire deck to ourselves. Talk about million dollar dinner dining. As I filled my face with Giordano’s famous Chicago style pizza (cheese first, then sauce) and sipped on root beer (why did we ever stop drinking root beer in the UK?), I felt I should be getting down on one knee and proposing to my mate.

After that, I thought Lady Luck was all out of tricks. Apparently not. As I left town, they happened to open a new section of the Lakeshore bike path. Cue cycling right into a media circus, an interview with a reporter from the Chicago Tribune and an easy ride out of town. Magic.

I’m now on the shores of Lake Erie, having made my way though Indiana, Michigan and on to Ohio. The weather is just about holding up and the riding is flat (ish) and beautiful. I’m going just as fast as I can, racking up big mile days before I hit the foothills of the Appalachian mountains and get slowed down significantly.

Illinois and Chicago snaps are now up on Flickr here, for your perusal and pleasure.

See you next week, kids :)

[gardeniahungma]

On the 180th birthday anniversary for the City of Chicago founded on March 4, 1837, I remember why Chicago was the choice I made for a destination. When my parents decided to live in the United States of America, I was living in the Cuban city of Santiago de Cuba and attending elementary school in Spanish. One day, my Mother told me that both my parents decided to leave Santiago de Cuba and settle in another city of the United States of America. She asked me in which city we should live? There were many choices of cities based on the family relatives who were already in the USA. Since Catholic Charities sponsored the Freedom Flights, "Vuelos de Libertad", the Catholic Church offered help in Connecticut and Chicago to relocate Cuban families there. My Mother and Father thought that Connecticut was very, very cold and farther north in the East Coast. While Chicago was in the Midwest, a city by Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes–Erie, Huron, and Superior. My parents had Cuban friends in Connecticut and Chicago, as well as in other American cities. However, the City of Chicago was unanimously our choice for a destination in the United States of America. My Grandmother had Cuban friends in Chicago and business connections to the mail-order stores like Montgomery Ward, Sears, etc. My parents had Cuban-Chinese friends in Rogers Park, on Howard Street, near Evanston, Illinois. Even now, the far north communities of Edgewater by Lake Michigan, Rogers Park, Andersonville, and Evanston still appeal to my family in general. Military friends from the Great Lakes and visitors from the USA encouraged my Mother and Father to leave Santiago de Cuba.

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Chicago Catholic Charities welcomed my family with open arms, kindness, generosity, and goodwill when we arrived in July 1971. My Father, Mr. Roberto Hung Juris Doctor and my Mother, Mrs. Gardenia Fong Ramos, myself, and my youngest brother, Roberto Santiago Hung were referred for relocation to the Montfield Hotel at the corner of Sheffield and Belmont Avenue in the Lake View neighborhood, near the Illinois Masonic Medical Center on Wellington Street. Later, my Father was referred to a Baptist Church Pastor, Fabio Abreu of Dominican descent and his Canadian-American wife for relocation to the first floor of a Chicago home owned by Mrs. Marie Palmer, a Protestant Lutheran American widow, his neighbor across the alley who needed a responsible and reliable tenant with a family to help her maintain here Chicago real estate property at 2930 North Albany between Wellington and George, near Kedzie Avenue where Avondale Elementary School was located, across from the Grace Lutheran Church.

The Baptist Pastor Fabio Abreu from the Dominican Republic and his Lutheran American-German neighbor Mrs. Marie Palmer were heaven sent during our relocation from the Montfield Hotel in Lakeview to the Avondale community near Logan Square, not far from our Cuban- Chinese friends, Fernando Wong and Yolanda Fen with two children, a retarded daughter with spinal bifida, Zuling, and a male Fernandito Wong Fen who wanted to be an architect engineer later in life. Afterwards, Fernando and Yoli Wong had a daughter named Meiling who lived in the Rogers Park community, near Evanston and Skokie in Illinois.

While I was attending Avondale Grammar School, on Kedzie Avenue, aka Loganddale Elementary School, I used to participate in an abridged 6th grade program, instead of the corresponding 8th grade program which I would later trafer. Since my Mother had my Cuban grammar school transcripts, she told the Principal in Santiago de Cuba that I had alread passed 6th, 7th, and 8th grade programs in Santiago de Cubqa in Spanish.

The obvious problem for all of us was how to speak English, write in English, and attend school of course, obviously, my family and I had to make a transition from spoken Spanish to American English, fluently. There were Free English courses and classes at the Casa Central in Logan Square, Chicago, Illinois 60618, USA. My parents and I, used to practice speaking English in Santiago de Cuba, later on, we, as a family began to speak English at home in Chicago with the television programs of Sesame Street and the Electric Company featuring Rita Moreno, among other television personalities and talent,as well as other TV programs like Perry Mason, classic western movies with John Wayne, and the musical songs of Doris Day, Glen Miller’s American Jazz band, Lawrence Welk, which we used to watch before.

Soon, we made friends with the neighbors like Ludivinia "Ludi" Villareal, whose family was Hispanic from Méjico and invited us to her birthday party for "tostadas", tacos, etc. There were also Cuban-Americans like Armando and his youngest brother who went to Avondale Elementary School also with myself and my youngest brother Robert S. Hung. My 6th grade teacher was Miss Honeywood and my English As A Second Language Teacher was Miss Pantos who later married and changed her name. Later, I was double transferred to 8th grade with Mr. Herbert Hebel where I graduated with High Honors from Avondale Elementary School.

In Chicago, my Father, Roberto Hung was able to find employment at the warehouse in Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck and Company. Later he worked for Marshall Field’s and the Theatrical Dance Supply Company. Fernando and Yoli Wong Fen recomeded my Father to work for Felt-Products, on McCormick Boulevard in Skokie, also known today as Federal Mogul, a corporation in the automotive industry manufacturing "oil gaskets" with a patented adhesive created and designed by Albert Mecklenburger, a German-American from Berlin, Germany.

My Mother also had to get a job with Goldblatt’s on Milwaukee Avenue, right in the midst of the Polish American neighborhood. Then, she found another part-time job at Tic-Toc with Mrs. Sherman. Later, my Father recommended her to work for Felt-Products with him in Skokie, also.

I started working at the Offices of Edelstein & Edelstein on Irivng Park Road who needed to make collection calls on the telephone and paid a minimum wage of $4 per hour. Afterrwards, I found a job at McDonald’s at the corner of Irving Park Road and Elston Avenue, not far from the Irving Park Shopping Center, the Y.M.C.A. and Madonna High School.

In order to "Make Ends Meet", both my Father and Mother went to work, and during my 3rd year as a junior at Madonna High School, age 16-years-old, Sister Rosemarie from Counselling referred me to get a job and follow the American Dream working hard to make a living. Mrs. Palmer used to say before she left for work as an Administrator and Office Manager at the Civic Opera, "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go." Chicago is also known as the Windy City because of the cross-winds across Lake Michigan cause whirlwinds and all-changing weather due to the Lake Effect and the Great Lakes. It is still a beautiful city by the Lake Michigan, "the city with the broad shoulders" as a client and friend from Helsinki, Finland, calls the City of Chicago. Mrs. Marie Palmer used to tell me, "if you don’t like the weather in Chicago, wait a minute, it will change." I have grown up in Chicago for the last 46 years on the Northwest side of the Windy City and attended and graduated from Northeastern Illinois University after graduating from Madonna High School on May 27, 1977 with High Honors, as a member of the National Honor Society and the French Honor Society. Later, I pursued Graduate Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago with the Abraham Lincoln Fellowship for Rhetorical Criticism, Speech Writing, Communications, and Theatre granted by the UIC Department of Communications and Theatre managed by Dr. Anthony Graham-White. I have written my Master’s Thesis as an ethnography about "The Chinese in Cuba: Assimilation and Acculturation" presented by Dr. Thomas Kochman, Ph.D.

The City of Chicago celebrates today 180 years since its founding fathers established the settlement by the Chicago River and used the name familiarly with the "wild onions" growing by the river banks. "Happy 180th Birthday Anniversary, Chicago!"

I have rented and lived in a studio apartment on the Northwest side of Chicago near my Father, Mr. Roberto Hung Juris Doctor, on Sacramento and Belle Plaine, near Irving Park Road, in a building owned by Mrs. A.C. Nylen, a German-American realtor in Chicago and the Midwest.

My Mother, Mrs. Gardenia Fong Ramos began to work at Felt-Products Inc. and attended Loyola University Lewis Towers Campus pursuing a Master’s in Spanish Literature with Dr. Martinez, Dr. Carol Holdsworth, and Dr. Luján.

Chicago has always represented the spirit of its community people to prevail and overcome adversity in the challenges that life brings over time, place, and physical presence. The people of Chicago have a fighting spirit to survive and fight for justice, equity, and fairness. Chicago is today a cosmopolitan metropolis and a credit to its sprawling communities by Lake Michigan in the state of Illinois, USA. Happy 180th Anniversary, Chicago!

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The Chicago River

Gardenia C. Hung, M.A., B.A. Consulting Social Media Arts Communications

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The City of Chicago Was The Choice I Made For A Destination On the 180th birthday anniversary for the City of Chicago founded on March 4, 1837, I remember why Chicago was the choice I made for a destination.

[newssplashy]

VALLEJO, Calif. — California is in the middle of an affordable-housing crisis that cities across the state are struggling to solve.

Here, in a football-field-size warehouse where workers used to make submarines, Holliday recently opened Factory OS, a factory that manufactures homes.

In one end go wood, pipes, tile, sinks and toilets; out another come individual apartments that can be trucked to a construction site and bolted together in months.

“If we don’t build housing differently, then no one can have any housing,” Holliday said during a recent tour as he passed assembly-line workstations and stacks of raw materials like windows, pipes and rolls of pink insulation.

Almost a decade after the recession flattened the housing industry, causing waves of contractors to go bankrupt and laid-off construction workers to leave the business for other jobs, builders have yet to regain their previous form. Today the pace of new apartment and housing construction sits at a little over half the 2006 peak.

The United States needs new housing, but its building industry isn’t big enough to provide it. The number of residential construction workers is 23 percent lower than in 2006, while higher-skill trades like plumbers, carpenters and electricians are down close to 17 percent. With demand for housing high and the supply of workers short, builders are bidding up prices for the limited number of contractors.

Construction prices nationwide have risen about 5 percent a year for the past three years, according to the Turner Building Cost Index. Costs have gone up even faster in big cities and across California, according to RSMeans, a unit of Gordian, which compiles construction data. In the Bay Area, builders say construction prices are up 30 percent over the past three years — so much that even luxury projects are being stalled by rising costs.

“It’s reached the point where you cannot get enough rent or you cannot sell enough units to make it a viable deal,” said Lou Vasquez, a founding partner and managing director of Build, a real estate developer in San Francisco.

The surge in construction prices is coming at the worst possible time for booming cities like New York, Seattle and San Francisco, already dealing with an affordable-housing crunch that has increased the homeless populations and stoked acrimonious debates about growth and gentrification. City and state legislators have tried to tackle their housing problems with proposals to increase subsidized affordable housing, reduce building regulations and make it legal to build taller.

But even if every overpriced city suddenly overcame the thicket of zoning rules and neighborhood opposition that make it difficult to build new housing in the first place — which seems doubtful — today’s diminished building industry would lack the capacity to build at the needed pace. This affects the rich as well as the poor, because it raises the cost of high-end condos and affordable housing alike.

This year, Californians will vote on a proposed $4 billion bond to build more subsidized affordable housing. In San Francisco, where developers say the per-unit construction cost is edging toward $800,000, that would buy about 5,000 units, a relative blip. “Costs have risen so much that it is not possible to build homes where people want to live at the prices and rents they can afford,” said John Burns, founder of John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

All this has prompted developers like Holliday to go scrambling for cheaper and less labor-intensive construction methods — and investors to pour money into startups that promise to do just that. Katerra, a 3-year-old prefabricated building company in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park, has raised $1.1 billion in venture capital. A number of other building startups including Blokable, based in Seattle; Kasita, based in Austin, Texas; and RAD Urban, based in Oakland, California, have all popped up over the past five years.

“The current system can’t meet demand and that’s resulting in a lack of opportunity for some folks and a major hit to the economy,” said Stonly Baptiste, a co-founder of Urban Us, a Brooklyn-based venture capital firm that invested in Blokable. “These aren’t small problems, and they aren’t small markets.”

The technologies vary but generally involve simplifying construction through prefabricated panels that can be assembled like Ikea furniture and modular apartments that can be stacked together like Lego bricks. A recent survey by FMI, a management-consulting and investment banking company focused on the engineering and construction industry, found a third of respondents said they were looking at some form of off-site construction, a steep rise from 2010. The interest extends from housing to hotels to medical facilities, industrial companies and even fast-food restaurants.

“It’s one of those things that looks like an overnight success but it’s taken 10 years and hundreds of people toiling,” said Chris Giattina, chief executive of BLOX, a Birmingham, Alabama, company that builds hospitals with modular components.

Brokers of Risk

The global construction industry is a $10 trillion behemoth whose structures determine where people live, how they get to work and what cities look like. It is also one of the world’s least efficient businesses. The construction productivity rate — how much building workers do for each hour of labor they put in — has been flat since 1945, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Over that period, sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and retail saw their productivity rates surge by as much as 1,500 percent. In other words, while the rest of the economy has been supercharged by machines, computers and robots, construction companies are about as efficient as they were in World War II.

To understand this, consider how buildings are actually built. It all starts with the developer, who doesn’t actually build anything but instead secures a piece of land and a loan, and gets the project approved by the government. At that point the money is passed to the general contractor that made a successful bid to build the project, who passes it to subcontractors that won the bidding for things like plumbing and sheet metal work, which often pass it to even more subcontractors.

Contractors describe this handoff as “brokering risk.” What they mean is that while everyone in the chain has agreed to build a certain piece of the project for a set amount of money and in a given amount of time, none of them are sure they can do so as cheaply or quickly as they’ve promised. They broker that risk by paying someone else to do it for them, minus a small fee.

“Say you’re a general contractor and your subcontractor agrees to do a job. Once we have a contract I don’t care how many man hours you put into it because that’s your problem now,” said Randy Miller, chief executive of RAD Urban, describing the thinking behind the process.

The goal of prefabricated building companies is to turn this model on its head. Instead of offloading risk, the contractor assumes all of it. Instead of sending jobs to subcontractors, they hire their own factory workers. “The general contractor says, ‘Oh my God, construction is scary, let me broker all that risk,'” Miller said. “I’m saying, ‘Oh my God, construction is scary, let me plan and control it.”

The basic concept isn’t new. In 1624, Massachusetts settlers built homes out of prefabricated materials shipped from England. The pattern was repeated in Australia, Africa and India as the British Empire shipped colonists and structures wide across the globe, according to “Prefab Architecture,” by Ryan E. Smith, a professor at the University of Utah.

Over the next few centuries, new versions of the idea seemed to pop up anywhere people needed to build lots of homes in a hurry — during the California Gold Rush, after the Chicago fire, and through America’s westward expansion. In the early part of the 20th century, Sears sold tens of thousands of kits for Sears Modern Homes, which consisted of prefabricated parts and panels that buyers assembled.

Along the way, the construction industry absorbed manufacturing concepts such as the assembly-line techniques that were utilized by Levitt & Sons, the pioneer of mass-built subdivisions. But the idea of factory-built housing was never adopted long enough or widely enough to make an impact, at least in the United States.

One reason the United States has lagged behind Europe, Australia and Asia — which all have well-established companies doing modular and prefabricated building — is that it is a predominantly suburban nation, and the vast supply of open land has kept the cost of single-family-home building relatively low. Another is that the construction industry has slim profit margins and invests little in research and development.

The chances of being burned are high, and each high-profile failure leads to a furlough of the concept. In the mid-2000s housing boom, Pulte Homes, one of the country’s largest builders, opened a prefabrication plant that aimed to revolutionize how homes were built. The company closed it with the onset of the housing bust in 2007.

Now, instead of single-family homes, companies doing prefab building are focusing on higher-density condominiums and apartments. That’s because, while single-family home construction remains well below its level before the recession, multifamily condominium and apartment buildings have rebounded strongly. “Our goal is to be able to do a 40-story tower in 12 months, at half the cost of traditional construction,” said Randy Miller of RAD Urban.

Still, even if builders are able to reduce construction costs, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be successful. Behind each of these companies is a bet that they can build far more efficiently than current methods. That bet has yet to be proven, at least on a large scale.

Efficiency vs. Workers

Holliday of Factory OS started thinking about modular housing about four years ago, when he was struggling to build a project in Truckee, California. The idea was to build 800 to 1,000 high-density apartments and condominiums, but “the numbers wouldn’t work,” he said. “You couldn’t get the construction costs down enough.”

Holliday floated the idea of modular building to his longtime contractor, Larry Pace, from Cannon Constructors, who over the past four decades has built various projects from one-off homes to office towers. “I said ‘modular jobs have been a fiasco — we don’t need that in our lives,'” Pace recalled, adding an expletive for emphasis.

But Holliday persisted, and he and Pace used modular technology from two manufacturers to build four projects in the Bay Area. They are planning to do the same with the original Truckee development. Pace became so comfortable with modular that he suggested that they find some investors and build their own factory.

On a recent afternoon, Pace laid out the factory’s process. At the first station, just past the door, four workers toiled above and below a raised platform to build what would eventually become the floor. The two men up top laid down flooring while a man and woman stood below simultaneously installing pipes.

From there the unit would move steadily down the line, and, over 21 additional stations, would acquire toilets, indoor walls, outdoor walls, a roof, electric outlets, windows, sinks, countertops and tiling. It takes about a week to finish a unit, Pace said. The goal is to churn out about 2,000 apartments a year, which would be turned into four- and five-story buildings with 80 to 150 units each.

For workers, factory building seems to mean lower wages but steadier work. Factory OS pays about $30 an hour with medical insurance and two weeks of vacation. That’s about half what workers can make on a construction site, but the work is more regular and, for many, requires less commuting.

Tony Vandewark, a 51-year-old foreman at Factory OS, is OK with the trade-off. He lives a few minutes from the factory in Vallejo, where homes cost less than half what they do closer to San Francisco. Contrast that with a job he once had in the Silicon Valley city of Sunnyvale. He drove two hours to work and three hours home before deciding to rent a room so he could stay closer to work on weekdays.

“On a job site, you can go do piece work and make really big money, but then the job is gone,” he said.

In addition to not being rained on, one of the key differences between a construction site and Factory OS is that any worker can be trained to do any job. And for old-school trade unions, that is a declaration of war. “The business model is ‘Hooray for me,'” without regard for anyone else, said Larry Mazzola Jr., business manager of UA Local 38, a San Francisco plumbers union with about 2,500 members across Northern California.

Factory OS is not anti-union: It has a contract with the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, which has organized other modular factories and is banking on the technology’s continued growth. The issue is that builders are laid out like a Detroit auto factory, where one union represents all of the workers, and workers can be trained to do any job within the company walls.

That is a huge departure from construction sites, where unions representing plumbers, electricians, carpenters and various other trades each control their piece of the building process. Last year Mazzola wrote a letter to San Francisco’s mayor, Ed Lee, a month before he died, urging him to deny any city business — such as contracts for subsidized housing — to Factory OS.

“Any decision to use Factory OS shows a blatant disregard for the other craft unions,” he wrote. He asked the mayor to refrain from contracting with the company unless it allowed craft unions to do their pieces of the work. “We realize modular is coming and we want to be part of it, but not at the expense of our workers, which is what’s happening right now,” Mazzola said.

Jay Bradshaw, director of organizing for the carpenters council representing Factory OS workers, said that would be impractical. Think back to that first station, where four people worked above and below the floor. In Mazzola’s world, a plumbers union would represent the workers installing pipes, while other unions would represent the workers up top.

“It would never work to have upward of 10 or 15 labor organizations at a single employer in a factory setting,” Bradshaw said.

For Bradshaw, the real fight isn’t defending job titles but making sure construction workers remain part of a union at all. A short drive from Factory OS, at a carpenters training center, the union is developing a program to train housing-factory workers — something that, it hopes, will prepare more people for an industry that it has come to see as inevitable.

“It sure blows the hell out of building in China,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

CONOR DOUGHERTY © 2018 The New York Times

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