head for the hills

Last week in a bar, I asked the person next to me, "What urls do you own?" and he answered with a baffled look. Until that moment, I assumed everyone owned atleast one url. Apparently, this is a falsity culled from living through the 'dot com boom' in the bay area.

I have owned several pieces of "web real estate" since the mid 90s.
I wonder how else I am scarred from the boom besides my url collection and having become normalized to outrageous rents. Back in the day when the internet was a baby, I mostly used email to write poetry. I kid you not. I found filling out the "subject" field a continous source of creative titillation and irony. Me and a friend would send each other email haikus back and forth to each other daily. Poetry seemed to be the most natural form for an email to take. Now it seems silly. Although perhaps no sillier than a blog.

If you were in San Francisco in the late 90s you probably participated somehow in the yuppie eradication project. Whether it was keying an SUV or something more dangerous most people acted out against the dot com invasion, unless you were part of it. If you were part of it, you were 22 fresh out of college and making 100k a year. Yeah. Many people got rich quick. Then when it all crashed they were able to live off their earnings unemployed for a few years. Kinda like a gold rush for sure. Other people got displaced from their homes and/or did some creative actions against the encroachment. Its fun to have someone drunkenly confess some crazy thing they did against the dot com boomers in the 90s. There has been speculation lately about whether a new dot com boom is beginning. Our favorite uncrowded local watering hole is becoming crowded and the patronage is looking suspiciously well dressed.