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adwdwd · 3 years

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The battle is often seen as a turning point in Canadian history

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forwardintomemory · 6 years

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Not To Forget – The Spirit of March 1st and Its Value

- Picture of Cheonan Exhibition Hall – word ‘peace’ in different languages

It is always good to hear from someone who knows more and who has passion. This post will talk about my own reflection on three things: 1) women’s involvement in the Korean Independence Movement, 2) visit to Cheonan Independece Memorial Hall, 3) stories of Tong Sung Suhr. These stories have worth reading because they produce emotional and spiritual resonance. The story itself is interesting as well.

1) Path To Peace Beyond March 1st Movement

Professor Sim Ok Ju has contributed to finding unknown women activists during the Korean Independence Movement and letting the public know of them. According to Institute of Korean Women’s Independence Movement, the number of women activists who received honor by government is 266.[1] This figure accounts for only 2% of total honored activists. Professor Sim traces unknown ‘her’story.

What is interesting, her work is mainly about women activists under Japanese colony but she does not limit their work to ‘independence.’ It can be seen through the title of the book <The Path to Unification Can Be Found In Korean Women Independence Movement> by Institute of Korea Women’s Independence Movement. The spirit of women at the early 1900 is handed down to present people. Professor Sim mentioned that it is not only about independence, but also peace and human rights.

- The Book <The Path to Unification Can Be Found In Korean Women Independence Movement>

Her saying seems to be true when we see women’s movement in Korea. Women such as Lee Woo Jung(이우정) under authoritative government spoke up for democracy. It was her who read the 3.1 Myungdong Declaration in 1976. Later, Lee organized women’s group united in order to end violence against women. Solidarity shared by women strengthens the bonds between women. On May 26th, women around the world gathered, called for peace in Korean Peninsula, and walked together. The core value of self-determination and human rights were represented.

At her lecture, Professor Sim showed us a short video clip to draw attention. The video was made by one of her students and it says the reason why there are few women known to public is because we do not have any interest. I respectfully disagree with that. We do have interest and curiosity why there are few women activists and few stories. Women’s works intend to be devalued and unwritten. In the male-dominance society, it is kind of fate that women have no choice but to face. Since ‘her’story is not written as much, Professor Sim’s work is more valuable.

It is a critical time for change. Thanks to #metoo movement, people give so many attentions to ending violence against women. Inter-Korean peace is coming. At this time, women need to overcome the backlash and unite as one. The lesson from March 1st movement and democratization movement, which are all connected, should be heard.

2) Going Deep into Cheonan

It was my second time to visit Cheonan independence Memorial Hall. It was quite funny that I could not remember that I had visited there before until I saw the big monument. I was twelve years old (in Korean age) and I visited Cheonan for cross-country trip. At that time, I was very young and knew little so the only thing I remember was the big monument in front of the Hall.

When I got to the Hall and looked around the exhibitions, I felt that this is too much. I mean, even for students who study history the contents are too many to absorb. We had to make a plan for careful research.

First of all, I was very sorry that I could not see the exhibition of March 1st Movement. The Hall rearranges the exhibition every 10 year and this year is for March 1st Movement section. Because of the rearrangement, most of articles were sent to archive. Since I have so much interest in women’s movement, my main research project was to see how women organized the independence movement. However, a very small part of the exhibition was for women’s activities. Though, I want to share what I found.

- Choi Yong Sin’s last words/will

Choi Yong Sin was a women activist who dedicated herself to teaching children in rural area. YWCA took over Samgol(샘골) school and YWCA dispatched Choi to the school. Choi taught Hangeul, the bible, sewing, etc. With Choi’s dedication, people in rural area turned to respect the value of learning.[3] Her last will says even though she is not there anymore, please take care of the children and run the school forever. Her will was taken dictation by someone(cannot find the source) and it starts with “The will of Choi Yong Sin, who has deep thought in YWCA history ever.”

Now there are many Chois in Korea who strives for peace and human rights. YWCA, with their 100-year-old system, mobilizes women to take part in gender equality advocating. Even though there was not much information about women’s movement, the place itself gave a true meaning. As a Korean and as a student who studies peace, visiting Cheonan was meaningful.

3) The Truth Behind the Respected Activist – Hwang Jin Sik

As Tong Suhr wrote in his <The “Grandfather” I didn’t know – The Awful Truth Behind the Father of Modern Korea>, the one who is respected from people cannot be a good person to their family. There are always two sides. And this is my side.

My great grandfather, Hwang Jin Sik(황진식), was involved in March 1st Movement in Jeju. At Jocheon-ri, where I was born and the whole family has lived, independence movement in Jeju started. Jocheon Harbor was the gateway to Jeju at that time, where people heard news for the first time. On March 16, 1919, Kim Jang Hwan(김장환), who was a student at Hwimun High School(휘문고), came back to Jeju with Independence Declaration.[2] Kim’s uncle Kim Si Bum organized the movement and gathered a dozen of comrades. Among them, there was my great grandfather, Hwang Jin Sik.

- Top line in the middle is my great grandfather, Hwang Jin Sik(황진식) [4]

He organized the movement together with other colleagues and actively participated in the movement. He was arrested and sentenced eight months in prison. He was only 20 years old.

- Written Judgement of Trial on May 29th 1919. Hwang Jin Sik is highlighted. [5]

In 1993, he received Presidential Citation for his contribution to independence movement. However, until then, participating in social activity was not a proud. Jeju 4.3 Incident, which about one third of Jeju people got killed by authoritative power, made people afraid of being socially active. Kim Si Bum(김시범) who organized the movement in Jeju, later was killed during 4.3 because he was assumed to collaborate with left-wing.[6] Kim’s death was a shock to Jocheon people and I guess it influenced my family as well.

My ancestors were not rich. Rather, they were poor. Having March 1st activist in family did not help at all. However, the family members regard it as very honorable. Every March 1st and August 15, we are invited to memorial ceremony. My late grandmother considered it very important to attend the ceremony. My great grandfather could not earn money because of the aftereffect of torture. My grandfather passed away at the age of 35. So, my grandmother had to take care of her mother-in-law and five children, making money for living. Still, she always thought that it was her job to honor and respect the ancestor. To see Tong Sung Suhr reminds me of my grandmother.

4) Concluding Thoughts

I’ve always tried to detach my family background from my identity because I hate them. Whenever I saw my grandmother, I felt so sorry for her all struggles. She was not even the ‘blood’ of Hwang Family. The thing is she married to Hwang and suffered for more than fifty years. But now I should admit that I am inherited the blood of them. It is a fate that I am now involved in women’s movement. And women’s movement has its origins in March 1st movement. Self-determination in 1919, peace, and human rights cannot be disconnected. Then, I, who work for feminism am also connected to March 1st. Now it seems to be silly to resist my fate and the connection. It is difficult to find something valuable but the more difficult is to keep that in mind not to forget.

[1] “The Path to Unification Can Be Found In Korean Women Independence Movement,” Institute of Korea Women’s Independence Movement, 2015

[2] Jocheon Manse Movement, Jeju Hangil Memorial Hall, accessed May 28th 2018, http://www.jeju.go.kr/hangil/contents/jocheon.htm

[3] “Choi Yong Sin,” Wikipedia, acced May 29th, 2018, https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%B5%9C%EC%9A%A9%EC%8B%A0

[4] Pictures of March 1st Activists in Jocheon region, photo by Jejusori , accessed May 29th, 2018, http://m.jejusori.net/?mod=news&act=articleView&idxno=29413

[5] Written Judgement, National Archive, accessed May 29th 2018, http://theme.archives.go.kr/next/indy/viewIndyDetail.do?archiveId=0001351679&evntId=0034984099&evntdowngbn=Y&indpnId=0000015636&actionType=add&flag=1&search_region=

[6] “Recovering impaired reputation during 4.3 is false”, Jejusori, 2007, accessed May 29th 2018, http://m.jejusori.net/?mod=news&act=articleView&idxno=29413

#March1st #Women'sMovement #History of Korea #Cheonan #Family History

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36point36-blog · 7 years

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Here's My Story. It's Long, and I Swear a Lot.

Prior to my current job, I worked for my family business - a small grocery store - more or less steadily for fourteen years, from the age of 16 to the age of 30. The store was located five or so miles from the state capitol, in the heart of a college town, flanked on one side by a sprawling campus and on the other by a large, twisting expanse of highways. Those highways connected us to a vast network of far-flung, sleepy little towns and hamlets that most of us had never seen. Our customer base was therefore very diverse - foreign students, frat boys, truckers, church ladies, families, foodies, and everyone in between were amongst our regulars. There were literally dozens of customers that I saw every single day, five days a week, for over a decade. I naturally became close with many of them, as did much of the staff - who were themselves all very close with one another. We were not always friends, but we nonetheless came to know each other uncommonly well. We knew each other’s families, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, pets, personal habits, quirks, strengths, and weaknesses. Many of us became co-workers as teenagers and continued seeing each other every day well into twenties whether we wanted to or not, which meant that we saw each other’s physical appearances change incrementally over time, in every imaginable direction. Our hair was cut, dyed, grown out, cut, and dyed again. A few of the “boys” that were hired as teenagers started going bald in their twenties. Some of our clothes changed subtly with the fashions of the day, became aggressively collegiate during football season, got frumpier during pregnancy, got sloppier during hangovers or bouts of depression. Waistlines expanded and contracted and expanded again for all sorts of reasons. All of these aesthetic changes just sort of took on a natural ebb and flow amongst the core of employees who’d been there the longest. When you see someone every day for ten years, they eventually transcend whatever they happen to wear or weigh at any given time. Whether they’re fat, thin, bald, pregnant, sixteen, or twenty-six, they are simply themselves at that point. Whatever state they’re in becomes, at that point, a natural one - simply because you’ve seen them in so many states.

But in 2014, my family business closed. It was squeezed out rather controversially by developers and replaced by a national chain store. The aforementioned core of still-young veteran employees was heartbreakingly disbanded. We had become adults together elbow to elbow. We knew each other’s favorite movies and bands and donut flavors. We had survived terrible fights, made out drunkenly in dark bedrooms at parties, cried together, laughed together, exchanged birthday presents, braided each other’s hair, covered each other’s shifts. And then it was all over, and with grim faces and leaden hearts we begrudgingly became other people’s co-workers, other people’s checkout girls, other people’s customer service representatives.

Which brings me back to the heart of this essay or whatever it is - the paradox of former obesity. When the store closed and I had to get another job, I was 220 pounds. I did not actually KNOW that because I had, for my entire adult life, asked the staff at my doctor’s office not to tell me the actual number whenever they weighed me. I would step backwards onto the scale and shut my eyes, and they kept it a secret as per my request. But I was nonetheless 220 pounds. When I started at my current job, roughly two dozen strangers became my co-workers and met me for the first time as a 220-pound woman. That was in September of 2014.

A little over a year later, in October of 2015, I was on top of a ladder at work, missed a step, and accidentally head-butted the side of the light fixture. Now, I am just about the most panic-stricken, white-knuckled hypochondriac and/or pessimist you could possibly imagine. Every minor ailment spells imminent doom to me. If I have a slight cough for more than two days, I become increasingly certain that I’m a modern-day “Satine,” dying from consumption in my own non-musical but equally tragic version of “Moulin Rouge.” In my warped, worst-case-scenario mind, a UTI becomes a long-dormant strain of neurosyphilis, for which I am the Patient Zero. A skin rash all but whispers aloud to me, “Get your affairs in order - you’re not long for this world.” So I hit my head at work, and I naturally freaked the fuck out. That “Concussion” movie had either just come out or was about to come out, and I also happened to have a friend who was undergoing brain surgery at the time, so general head injuries were already on my mind to an unusual extent at the time. The next day, I had a crippling headache - maybe from hitting my head, maybe from freaking out for 24 straight hours about hitting my head. Either way, I was encouraged by my manager to fill out worker’s comp paperwork and go to the nearest urgent care, an unfamiliar setting that only exacerbated my cold-sweated, shaky-handed anxiety. When they finally called me back and said they had to weigh me, I was in such a frenzied state of mind that I forgot my own iron clad rules. Without thinking, I stepped onto the scale the NORMAL way - with both eyes wide the fuck open, looking directly into what might as well have been the fucking eye of Sauron - the scale’s small, menacing LED screen. This would eventually reveal itself to be one of those ultra-rare, movie-like moments where life as you know it - your regular-ass, everyday life - is literally and profoundly changed forever. At the age of 30, after a lifetime of being either obese or significantly overweight, I learned for the first time that I weighed over 200 pounds.

There are no words to really describe the effect that this revelation had on me. It was like…oh, I don’t know…being struck by lightning and beaten with a cattle prod while learning that my new husband had just been murdered. During the nine month period leading up to this cataclysmic event, I’d actually been LOSING weight in preparation for my September wedding. I’d had several appointments with my regular doctor, who only told me how much I LOST - not how much I WEIGHED. She was increasingly encouraged by the small but steady progress I was making, and amazingly, despite my natural pessimism, so was I. In fact, I was pretty damn confident on my wedding day. I genuinely thought I looked better than I had in years - quite possibly my whole adult life, even. I had, after all, lost nine whole pounds since getting engaged the previous December. I didn’t see a fat bride in the mirror. I actually saw a somewhat transformed person. Nine pounds! Nine of ‘em! That damn near constituted a full-blown makeover, as far as I was concerned.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I was nine pounds less than a staggering 220 - my highest weight on record, which was added to my medical file in December of 2014, right after I got engaged. The urgent care scale read “211,” a number that from that moment onward was permanently tattooed into my brain tissue. Calling it a “wake-up call” would be a hilarious understatement. When I left the urgent care clinic, my heart was pounding out of my chest. I started sobbing the instant I got into my car. I briefly stopped crying long enough to pull up a BMI calculator on my phone, then immediately started crying again once I’d crunched my own numbers. Even nine pounds lighter than before, I was clinically obese. Not even on the cusp between “overweight” and “obese.” There was a little line graph on the BMI calculator website with green on the “normal” side that shaded into yellow once it reached the “overweight” range, then into orange for “extremely overweight,” then finally into the deep oranges and reds of “obesity.” I was well into the orange-red zone, dangerously close to the patch of blood-red at the tail end of the line.

I went home early from work and cried myself to sleep. But the next day, in an unprecedented act of self-improving action-taking, I bought myself a pair of drugstore headphones and I walked to work for the first time. There were approximately 1.5 miles between my front door and the entrance of my workplace, and the first time I walked it in both directions, I felt like I was some sort of 19th century wandering pioneer or ancient nomadic tribeswoman. That first walk TO work might as well have lasted a full calendar year - that’s how epic and sprawling a distance it was at the time, especially out in the open for all to see. Now that I knew I fat I was, I was forced to realize that all the joggers and bikers and drivers and passengers that were passing me ALSO knew how fat I was. This was not only taking place in a fairly small town, but also my lifelong hometown - I had worked, lived, and spent the entirety of my K-12 years within the same five-mile radius. So, presumably, at least some of the people who saw me walking that fateful day recognized me - knew me - had known for years how fat I was. The whole way there, the whole way back, I felt like I was jiggling stark naked down the open sidewalk for all the world to see, with a neon sign affixed to my head that read “CLINICALLY OBESE” in flashing, colorful letters. But somehow, even though it was one of the single most embarrassing and physically uncomfortable experiences of my life, I knew that it had to be done…that it was the only way out of the nightmarish orange-red zone on that BMI chart. I made minimum wage (still do), and I knew I couldn’t even afford an occasional aerobics class, let alone a gym membership or a personal trainer. So I just DIY-ed the fuck out of a radically new lifestyle.

I didn’t count calories or ban refined sugars or carbs or anything, but I started eating a fuck ton of frozen vegetables and spicy sauces from the international foods aisle, and I stopped eating Annie’s macaroni and cheese altogether, which I adored and ate very frequently, always with butter, always two boxes at a time. I copied and pasted all my beloved, rousingly violent 90s rap from my computer into the internal storage on my phone and blared it into my headphones for about an hour and a half total, three or so days a week, on my way to and from work, walking as briskly as I possibly could. I bought some used Gillian Michaels DVDs and played them on mute with the captions on so I could at least listen to my own invigorating, murderous rap jams while I flung myself to and fro across the room and up and down on to the floor with hand weights, as per Gillian’s instructions.

I kid you not, the results. Were. Immediate. Had they NOT been immediate, I might have just screamed “FUUUUUCK IT” into a bowl of peas and given up. But I started losing weight RIGHT away, to an extent that even I (who was, mind you, utterly prepared to fail) could plainly see with my own two eyes. A month in, I was able to squeeze into my favorite coat from six winters before, when I had briefly flirted with the mid 150s, then gotten lost in a long bout of depression, during which I began to drink heavily and rapidly slide into obesity. Two months in, I could actually zip up my junior prom dress. Three months in, I started to occasionally get compliments. By late winter of 2016, during Michigan’s presidential primaries, I was comfortable enough with walking long distances that I canvassed with a genuine spring in my step for the Bernie Sanders campaign. I continued to lose weight during this period and through the end of the winter, so when Bernie won the primary, it felt as though I had, miraculously, won twice.

Looking back, I’m 100% certain that once my weight loss got to the point where it was visible to even the least attentive observer, the overwhelming majority of my co-workers and casual acquaintances didn’t expect me to continue with it much further. I had been 220 pounds and was now around 170. I had to get all new clothes, and I carried myself differently. I had already defied the odds in terms of the national statistics. Once customers started commenting on my weight left and right, within earshot of everyone I worked with, it would have been fair to assume I would have just stopped there. But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. If there was one prevailing lesson I had thoroughly learned at that point, it was that cheesiest of all maxims - basically, “what you think is impossible might actually be possible,” or whatever variation on that you prefer. No one - DO YOU HEAR ME? - NO ONE was less likely than me to succeed. I’m not saying that to be self-deprecating - I’m simply stating a fact. I had never liked - or even tolerated - sports or exercise. I had never enjoyed being outdoors. I had never possessed an ounce of will power or self-control. I had always, always, ever since I was a baby, eaten like a lumberjack in a cartoon or a rescued prisoner of war. I had been overweight my entire childhood and obese as an adult. I was also over thirty. The deck was fucking stacked against me in a lot of ways, and goddamn it, I pushed the fuck back. I kept going. Eighty pounds later (36.36% total weight lost, hence the title of this blog), I’m still going. I’m a little deaf from all the rap blaring into my headphones, and my ropy, calloused feet resemble a gnarled old ballerina’s, but my BMI went from 35.5 to 22.6. I own (and comfortably wear, without Spanx or other control top undergarments) a size 4 Calvin Klein dress. I walk an average of 13 miles a day. This past Tuesday, three days ago, I walked twenty. Alone and happily, quite unexpectedly, without a set goal or destination.

If you think you can’t do it, you’re just wrong. I may not know you, but I hope to God you give yourself a chance and try. I can help you if you want. That’s for real why I made this blog - I am, in so many ways, still as hot a mess of an adult as I ever was, and I’m a very unlikely mentor for anything at all, but in this ONE specific instance, I am living proof that a bunch of weight can be lost without surgery. Or a class. Or portion control. Or a specific diet. Or a food journal. Or a gym. Or fancy equipment. For real. I did it. I highly recommend it.

What all too many so-called “body positivity” activists and pseudofeminists will tell you is that if you’re obese, you don’t really need to lose weight. You’re fine the way you are. The patriarchy or the establishment or the fashion industry or what the fuck ever are just trying to keep you down, and real women have curves, and beauty is within, etcetera, etcetera, and so forth. Now, it’s true that curves are beautiful. It’s true that you can be healthy and be a little overweight. No one should be fat-shamed (or body-shamed at all) by anyone. Bullying IS wrong. Beauty IS within. Cellulite IS normal. Barbie-like bust-waist-hip ratios ARE unnatural and unrealistic for almost everyone. I am not the enemy. This is not a so-called “thinspo” or “proana” blog. This is an ex-obese blog. This is about being obese and wanting not to be. Having been obese for most of my life, I can assure you, flat the fuck out, the alternative is better. In all candor, it feels better weighing 140 pounds than it does weighing 220 pounds. My doctor assures me, might I add, that it IS better. She can hear it in my breathing and my heartbeat. She can see it in my blood pressure. So I do not pretend to have all the answers. I don’t even consider myself to be a particularly accomplished human being overall. I never finished college, I work in retail, I make minimum wage, and I’m 33 years old. But one of the crowning achievements thus far of my entire life has been losing eighty pounds of myself, that magical thirty-six-point-thirty-six percent, and I make no apologies for my pride. If you want to do something like that yourself, feel free to ask me anything you want, or tell me your own story.

So. Thank you for your time…and good luck.

#fitspo #fitness #health & fitness #weightloss #weight loss #obese #nutrition #makeover #diet #workout

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ramialkarmi · 7 years

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Millennials are paying thousands of dollars a month for maid service and instant friends in modern ‘hacker houses'

Every morning in the Euclid Manor, a 6,000-square-foot single-family home on the outskirts of downtown Oakland, California, the residence's 13 inhabitants trample over one another in a race for the shower before preparing breakfast at a kitchen counter that seats three.

The tight quarters present opportunities for the residents, who include students and startup founders, to shape their bonds. It's not uncommon to find them catching up on their careers and love lives all before 7:30 a.m.

This is the reality that residents signed up for when they leased an apartment with group-living startup Open Door, which runs the Euclid Manor.

For years, the "hacker house" has offered aspiring entrepreneurs a place to rest their heads — often a bunk bed — for cheap rent. In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg rented a five-bedroom house in Palo Alto, where early Facebook employees built the social network. These days, bitcoin entrepreneurs party and plot the future of money in a three-story home they share in San Francisco. There are dozens more mansions like it in the Bay Area.

The "hacker house," "commune," or whatever your preferred name for dwellings that pack in a large number of residents, is going mainstream as millennials continue to migrate to high-priced urban areas in droves. Startups have taken to rebranding the homes as "co-living" spaces.

Companies like Open Door and WeLive, a subsidiary of coworking giant WeWork, have evolved the hacker-house concept into all-inclusive experiences that comes with lots of perks. Residents, or "members," as they're often called, can join these communities and instantly tap into amenities like free internet, maid service, and new friends.

While some critics see co-living as a fringe "dorms for grown-ups" trend, the entrepreneurs behind these startups want to make co-living a major category in the real-estate market.

It may be on its way there. Common, a co-living startup, received almost 10,000 applications to fill its nine residences across three major US cities in 2016. The company is gearing up to rent hundreds more rooms this year. Open Door, founded in 2013, has established three co-living spaces in the Bay Area. The startup plans to expand from 40 bedrooms (with 140 more in the pipeline) to 1,000 rooms by the end of 2018.

In addition to bunking at Euclid Manor, where the built-in bookcases and velvety couches look torn from the pages of "Sherlock Holmes," Jay Standish cofounded the company that operates the house. As he led me on a tour around the estate, we passed a resident taking a call on the deck and a woman working on her laptop in the den. In the dining room, a banquet table stretched the length of the room. It's where residents sit for family-style dinners and meetings.

"We don't just ignore each other and go about our day when we're stressed out ... I'll actually drop in and be, like, 'What's going on in your life?'" Standish says. "It's a way to start the day that's actually honoring my humanity."

Standish, a former web designer, and his cofounder, Ben Provan, a former mechanical engineer, launched Open Door because they wanted to create spaces that brought together a wide variety of urban dwellers under one roof. In Standish's vision, the spaces wouldn't be centered on building the next Facebook but on forming authentic communities.

"That was part of why we decided to use the word 'co-living,' because it was a new thing," he says. "You could shrug off all the past assumptions about what communal living looks like."

Their first project, called the Farmhouse, opened in Berkeley in 2014. It holds 16 people, has a vegetable garden and a chicken coop, and is known for its jam sessions around the fire pit. Another project, the Canopy, sits on the edge of a gentrifying neighborhood in Oakland, and has a workshop where its 12 residents can be found building art projects for Burning Man.

There's a rich array of co-living spaces for those who can handle the lifestyle. In some cases, residents pay a premium for the privilege of having so many roommates.

WeLive, the co-living offering from coworking giant WeWork, launched locations in New York City and Arlington, Virginia, in 2016. The company's furnished, flexible apartments serve as short-term landing pads for people moving to a new city and urban dwellers looking to make friends outside the office.

In its Wall Street location, the company charges $1,900 for a Murphy bed that pulls out from the wall in a private room. Private studios start at $3,050 ($500 more than the median rent for a studio in Manhattan). The Arlington location is slightly cheaper.

According to Miguel McKelvey, chief creative officer of WeWork, co-living was "always part of the equation" for the brand. He and cofounder Adam Neumann envisioned an ecosystem of office rentals, residences, fitness centers, and even barber shops that served the concept of community living.

"It was always thought of, 'How can we support this person who wants to live more collectively, live lighter — who wants to have less stuff, who wants to pursue their passion, pursue a life of meaning, rather than looking for just material success?'" McKelvey tells Business Insider.

WeWork has the reputation and the cash to roll out more co-living spaces than its competitors. The company already has a global presence, with 90,000 WeWork members in more than 100 locations across 14 countries.

But WeLive's co-living business has rolled out more slowly than anticipated. The company reportedly told its investors in 2014 it planned to launch 14 WeLive locations by the end of last year. It currently operates two.

Real estate is a larger, more complicated investment than an office rental, McKelvey says.

"In the big picture, we see WeLive as a huge opportunity, as big as WeWork, for sure. I think we're lucky to have a good foundation in place where people trust us and are interested in the product," McKelvey says. He did not comment on how many WeLive residences may open in the future.

Common, founded in 2015, offers more diverse types of co-living.

Its residences are as varied as a 12-bedroom walk-up in San Francisco's fast-gentrifying SoMa neighborhood to a new 135-person apartment building in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill. While the company's $23 million in funding pales in comparison to WeWork's $3.6 billion, Common operates more properties and is focused on making co-living work at scale.

Common says it hasn't been able to keep up with demand for its co-living spaces and receives 300 applications for rooms in its buildings each week.

To learn the market, Common founder and CEO Brad Hargreaves visited dozens of shared housing developments, from hacker houses in the Bay Area to a desert commune in Arizona founded in the 1980s. He studied the pain points and cherry-picked the details he liked for Common's floor layout.

"A lot of what we're trying to do is rethink the layout of buildings as a whole to adapt for community and to keep the benefit of living with others," Hargreaves says. "If we take all the reasons why people don't like living with roommates and ... systematically address each of those, we come up with a much better product on the other end."

There are a few design principles core to the Common experience. No two people will ever share a bedroom. The multiple common areas are what Hargreaves calls "human-scale," or small enough to be intimate and inviting. They install private bathrooms whenever possible.

In a residence in Brooklyn, members can choose between two entrances, one that enters into the common room (where an interior staircase leads to the bedrooms) or a staircase that bypasses any roommates and accesses the bedrooms. The layout gives members the chance to be social when they're seeking community and privacy when they prefer it.

Today, a banner across the company's website reads "Home. Made." It captures the paradox of Common's desire to create a lived-in, familiar environment that is also carefully engineered.

When Micah and Dianna Baylor moved to San Francisco for a job opportunity last year, they expected to pay between 200% and 400% more on rent than what their two-bedroom back in Texas cost. They scoured the internet and wound up in 16 different Airbnb rentals before landing in Common. They're one of several couples who call the co-living space home.

They became members in September and said they intend to stay in Common as long as they live in San Francisco. Their studio space has a private bathroom and kitchenette, with storage overhead that they can access with a ladder. Dianna, a lifestyle blogger and photographer, decorates the room with eucalyptus branches that she picks up at the farmers market on Saturdays.

"My favorite thing about [Common] is it's given me the ease of having friends that aren't all work-friends," Micah, 22, says. "Back in Texas, I worked all day, I went home, I saw Dianna. I never saw anyone that wasn't talking about insurance, which you can imagine gets pretty old."

Down the street from the Baylors' residence, a nearly identical co-living space designed by Common is home to a professional chef, graduate students, and several Samsung employees.

Kevin Suh, a software engineer at an early-stage tech startup, said that when he moved into Common — his first residence in San Francisco — he expected it to be like a hacker house where people constantly discussed tech. He discovered a diverse group of professionals who were happy to relieve him from talking shop.

"Some of these people in this home are my best friends in San Francisco," Suh says.

In many ways, co-living with a house full of strangers isn't all that different from normal roommate living. Some Common members and the vast majority of Open Door dwellers share bathrooms. The noise takes some getting used, according to Suh.

At Euclid Manor, Standish tried to get his housemates to pony up $30 each for professional cleaning services each month, but some expressed concerns around the class dynamics of hiring someone to clean their house. They share the chores instead.

Standish believes millennials have a greater tolerance for the various quirks of co-living because their lives play out on social media. Each major life experience is a moment to be shared across their network anyway.

The rise of co-living does not necessarily mean the death of traditional home rental and ownership. In 2016, homeownership rates among Americans fell to its lowest level in more than five decades. Millennials in particular are putting off planting their roots. However, a 2015 Fannie Mae survey found 91% of renters ages 25 to 34 plan to buy a home someday.

The challenge for co-living companies could be converting short-term renters into long-term enthusiasts. But Matt Mazzeo, a partner at venture firm Lowercase Capital and an investor in Common, sees a cultural shift underway that sets startups like Common up for success.

"Home ownership as a life goal has dramatically shifted, and it's not limited to millennials. I think it's across society. If anything, the housing crisis sort of disavowed the fantasy that home ownership meant security," Mazzeo says. "People just care about belonging."

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