#but i also thought they would be more north because its modeled after Seattle

[bd-wlf]

CENTRAL CITY IS LOCATED IN MISSOURI????

[cvrsons]

INTRODUCING.

michael evans behling | he/him | cis man | Have you met CARSON WILLIAMS yet ? They’re the TWENTY-SEVEN year old HYDROLOGIST that lives around WEST POINT HOMES. I think they’ve lived in Seattle for FOUR YEARS. From what I’ve heard, they’re LAIDBACK but they can also be ANALYSTICAL if you get on their bad side. When I think of them, I usually think of LONESOME DAY BY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN.

HIGHLIGHTS.

27 years old but already a career switcher : formerly a software engineering major at google turned hydrologist at noaa — yeah the world works in interesting ways ; moved into west point homes TWO years ago ; laidback & easy going, quick to smile and always willing to extend a helping hand ; stress-baker bc stress running is bad for his knees.

THE STORY.

— born in fresno. dad is an OR surgeon, mom is a nurse. they had a busy work schedule but they made it work. when carson was about 5 they moved north to portland following an opportunity that allowed both his parents more flexible hours to spend more time with family, and carson. he spend much of his childhood splashing around in the ocean, hanging out on beaches, barely stepping foot inside, not even when it rained.

— but eventually the good weather waned and it wasn’t because of any emotional abandonment that carson found himself drawn to computers, but the family’s busy lifestyle certainly lend itself to carson entertaining himself when possible. that love for the digital only grew as the internet and digital era began its rise, seemingly right in tandem with carson’s own growth.

— it probably wasn’t surprising that carson ended up perusing a software engineering degree when it came time for college. what was surprising was he chose a school on the east coast. for someone who valued family ( and still deeply does ) and was a bit of a home-body it was a surprise, but carson figured it was time to step out of his comfort zone.

— had the usual college experience, graduated on time in 4 years and was lucky enough to land a position with a large firm right out of college. worked remotely, though said firm was headquartered in nyc.

— work however... was not nearly as full-filling or interesting as he would like it to be, even after landing a coveted position at google. he stuck it out for two years, helped along by a lucrative salary before he decided a change was much needed.

— it was visiting a friend back in seattle, seeing the ocean again, remembering there are much greater forces at work here. after some thought, he ended applying for graduate school, ultimately getting his masters in hydrology & hydrodynamics from the university of washington - seattle.

— graduated two years ago from the program, and started working for noaa in their seattle office not long after that!!

PRESENT DAY.

— carson moved into an apartment in west point homes in july 2020 ( 2 years ago ). before that, while he went to UW, he lived in the swindelbrook st apartments. from then it’s was easy to settle right in. the career change has done wonders for him --- it’s still a lot of computer based worked, but more data and modeling focused which he loves. he still dabbles in web design through his free lancing which is constantly growing --- especially with a surprising request from the kraken, the newest nhl team.

— works primarily at noaa’s office, not too far of a commute from his apartment. even so, he appreciates the quiet times in the morning and evenings. sometimes he employs his electric longboard, but most of the time he takes the bus. though occasionally, he does just work from the apartments where he has a pretty slick set up in his bedroom. he also sets up in various nearby cafes too. there are some perfectly fine mondays and fridays that he just can’t be bothered by the commute either lol. change of scenery is important for carson to work efficiently, otherwise he gets bored.

— stress baking was something that he clung onto early in his high school days and much more so when he moved to college. it reminded him of home and his mother’s baking —often with unique nigerian influences. carson is no chef, not like some of his friends, but he isn’t living on pb&j either. it’s not uncommon for carson to look up where a certain nigerian food truck is and hunt it down either.

— hobbies : baking, indoor rock climbing, various gym workouts, running, a bit of freelance web design, longboarding, people watching, karaoke ( not good but spirited )

— hangouts : various different coffeeshops near his aparment ( or near his office building ), nearby gym, a nearby indoor climbing gym, any park

— carson is generally very pleased with where he’s ended up now. it’s still far from having a life plan but steady income, a nice place to live, and a job he enjoys is definitely a good foundation to build more things on.

PERSONALITY.

— + laidback, adaptable, intelligent, helpful ; - analytical, disorganized, forgetful, hyper-focused or aloof ( rarely in between )

— carson is a friendly person whose presence often puts others at ease. he’s always quick to smile, even at those he doesn’t know. has a tendency to think of everyone as a friend until proven he should think otherwise --- or is biased based on his current friends’ opinions.

— definitely not high strung and likes to think he requires very little to be happy. easy-going, relaxed, even when under pressure. occasionally, his easy-going nature can be misconstrued as not caring but that is certainly not true.

— always meets his deadlines, though more often than not, the bulk of his work is cranked out directly before said deadline. good at multi-tasking but his time management could definitely use a little tlc, even still.

— extremely disorganized. not necessarily in a physical sense. his apartment is neat enough, and he doesn’t like feeling like his space is messy --- definitely not a help to an already disorganized mind. carson is incredible disorganized in his thinking and often in his execution. carson needs many things going at once so he can jump from one to another if he needs to. sometimes he can work for hours on one project, other times, it’s something new every 20 minutes. breaks are crucial for times like the latter.

— a helpful personality. doesn’t turn away from people in need and likes feeling needed : hence his willingness to constantly extend a hand to those who need one. seattle is a busy place and sometimes, people fall down. lots of people might walk by but carson will stop, even if he’s running late.

— likes to make friends, but that being said, when he doesn’t like someone he’s very internal about it. he believes in being polite to save face --- which sometimes is great, other times... not so much.

— a hard working himself, he doesn’t like when people don’t try to do their best ( regardless of the outcome ). he especially doesn’t like if someone says they’ll do something and then proceeds to not do it.

— level-headed to a fault. keeps things bottled up sometimes to “save face.” stress-reliever baking to the rescue ahaha.

APPEARANCE.

— 6′2″,  200 lbs, muscular from the result of a highly active lifestyle outside an “office job”

— hair often buzzed into a fade, stubble/scruff more common than not though he never sports an actual beard.

— 20/20 vision but uses blue light glasses while he works. consider this look.

— style : loves a good pattern and his shirts are often patterned or textured. slim fit pants, but not tight. clothes that are easy to move around in. loves all colors. loves all neutrals. definitely wouldn’t consider himself fashionable, but has decent taste.

— tattoos & scars : no tattoos, a large collection of various scars everywhere from an active childhood and an ability to try anything at least once.

— quirks : always moving in some way ( tapping fingers, a jumping knee, a tapping heel or foot ), has a tendency to look deeply focused, a “friendly” face that fits his helpful demeanor, quick to smile, very good at hiding when he’s displeased

— probably goes without saying but the look in all my graphics w the scruff & rainbow jacket is simply The Vibe. see this gifset.

MISC. HEADCANONS.

— certainly a home baker, nothing special or fancy. various cookies, brownies, various cookie bars, the such. everyone loves his brownies and says they’re the best ( irony is carson doesn’t really like brownies ). doesn’t care so much for presentation. not really one to sell his baked goods, though neighbors always know when they might be saddled with the consequences of carson’s stress baking when the fragrant aromas start creeping down the hall. doesn’t like being told what to bake. he accepts suggestions but they might not come to fruition until weeks later. it’s just a good stress reliever for him that isn’t as hard on his knees as running is. kinda wants to dabble in bread making. kneading sounds like it’d be a great stress reliever too.

— a messy baker though. the kitchen looks like a disaster when he’s through with it, but he’s very good with the clean up. it can be just as satisfying too.

— loves dogs but doesn’t want to commit to getting one. his past apartments didn’t allow pets anyway

— naturally an early riser dating back to college. his work schedule is notably flexible so long as he works his 8 hours a day / finishes his tasks. however, carson likes to keep a schedule and finish his work with plenty of hours left in the day to do other things he finds fun. never one to finally get on by 10 am, it’s not uncommon to see carson set up by 7 am for a finish time around 3 or 4, depending on how many breaks he took.

— has mild adhd. mostly manifests in small quirks and stretches of hyperfocus followed by unfocused periods. struggles to explain things in a logical way, though it is something he’s working on and had to work on for work. commenting out his code has helped him to find logic in his thoughts. doesn’t write things down, and was never the type to keep a planner. tries to keep to-do lists bc crossing things off is satisfying but it hasn’t taken quite yet.

— an analytical mind always likes to try to put things into a logical perspective, cause and effect, things like that. that being said, is in touch with his emotional side and rarely turns away from somewhere in need. it’s lead to a few times of him being taken advantage of but the fact hasn’t tinted carson’s life outlook.

— a very fast typist. in part a remnant of his software engineering degree, also in part due to a lifetime of growing up around computers. he had a typist job in high school too, something he kept up through college until he started landing relevant internships. carson can be very picky with his keyboards though, often opting for specialty ones with that make a nice clicky noise and feel solid to type and code with. had to see multiple laptops before he finally settled on one he liked ( a pc, not a mac ).

— lover of late 90s early 00s rock music. what he grew up listening to. it keeps him going during the work day and for most other things too.

— infinite iced lattes made throughout the day with the espresso machine that’s in his apartment.

— multi-sport athlete growing up : soccer, basketball, lax, football, track, hockey...  didn’t play during college, just on various club or intramural teams. though he took his time playing seriously and loved it, he knew he was never going to be good enough to even consider going pro. religiously follows all the major sports in the seattle area and is always happy to go to a game. loves the atmosphere of sports games.

— still active. loves to surf, at the gym on a regular basis, trying new things ( one of which was indoor climbing which he loves now ), running though not too much bc his knees hate him for it. daily routine includes morning workouts/yoga session and evening walks ( no matter the weather ).

— engages a lot and surfs social media a lot, but rarely posts on platforms himself. more likely to post on his stories than actual posts themselves.

OOC.

hello everyone !! i’m o ( 21+, est, they / them ). just happy to be here and vibe <3. i started a list of flexible plot ideas HERE, so be sure to check those out. discord is my preferred contact method so feel free to reach out there if you have any ideas or are feeling inspired !!

[easternuniversity]

Courage to Reconcile: Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil DMin ’00, DD ’17

***article first appeared in the Fall/Winter 2017 issue of EASTERN, The Magazine of Eastern University. To see the full issue, visit eastern.edu/publications.*** 

In her opening remarks 2017 Commencement speaker, Reverend Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil DMin ’00 DD ’17, told the graduates “I want to speak directly to you about what it means to be ‘Courageous Christians in catalytic times.’” Rev. Dr. McNeil gave the example of Captain Chuck Yeager, the pilot who broke the sound barrier after many who tried before him had tragically failed, some even losing their lives.  She continued saying, “here, on your graduation day, you’re about to begin the journey of breaking through your own sound barriers into the unknown. And it doesn’t come easy, it requires a lot of courage.”

Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil DMin ’00 DD ’17 knows how to demonstrate courage. With over thirty years of experience, she is a leader in the ministry of reconciliation. As a dynamic speaker, author and professor, her stated mission is to inspire, equip and empower emerging Christian leaders to be practitioners of reconciliation in their various spheres of influence around the world.

She is an Associate Professor of Reconciliation Studies in the School of Theology at Seattle Pacific University, where she also directs the Reconciliation Studies program. She previously served on the staff of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for fourteen years as a Multiethnic Ministries Specialist.

She earned a Master of Divinity degree from Fuller Theological Seminary, a Doctorate of Ministry '00 from Palmer Theological Seminary and was awarded a Doctorate of Humane Letters from both North Park University and Eastern University. She is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church and is on the pastoral staff of Quest Church in Seattle. In addition, she serves on the Board of Directors for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA and formerly served on the Board of Wycliffe USA.

Dr. Salter McNeil was featured as one of the 50 most influential women to watch by Christianity Today in 2012. She is also the coauthor of The Heart of Racial Justice and the author of A Credible Witness and her most recent work, Roadmap to Reconciliation.

She is married to Dr. J. Derek McNeil ('78) and they are the proud parents of two young adult children.

So you might be thinking, “What exactly is the ministry of reconciliation?” On her website, saltermcneil.com, Dr. Salter McNeil has robust and very user friendly resources and teaching tools. In these materials she defines reconciliation as:   an ongoing spiritual process involving forgiveness, repentance and justice that transforms broken relationships and systems to reflect God’s original intention for all creation to flourish. (Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil copyright 2012).

Dr. Salter McNeil states that reconciliation starts with honest, vulnerable and personal conversation and she provides four ground rules to help people engage in the reconciliation process which include:

Use “I” statements

No Interrupting

Maintain confidentiality

Be full present

Her website also includes 22 Action Steps for Racial Righteousness filled with practical and doable steps such as “Vote for political candidates that support economic justice and racial righteousness” and “Volunteer to serve in a non-profit organization that promotes racial equality.”

I recently had the opportunity to ask Dr. Salter McNeil what led to her work in reconciliation and she replied, “My personal call to the work of reconciliation started with a burning question.  During my last year at Fuller Theological Seminary, I became an intern at Occidental College.  In this role, I was given an opportunity to focus my ministry at Occidental on anything I was interested in.  I was drawn to Gender/Women’s Ministry initially, but once I discovered that Oxy’s thriving Christian community of 200 students had only two students of color, I found myself pulled in a different direction.  That was when I started asking myself questions like:  What is it about Christian communities that cause students of color to not relate?  Where are they?  How do we repair the bridge that divides?  That was the beginning of my journey into the ministry of reconciliation.”

It seems she may have been drawing on her own personal experience when, in her commencement address, Dr. Salter McNeil advised the class of 2017 “to break through the sound barrier into this new reality that God has for you after graduation. You will need the courage to engage the complexity and diversity of the world around you, including nationality, gender, social class, age, ethnicity, politics and religious traditions in the world around you. And that’s scary! You will be tempted to play it safe and stay in your comfort zone where things feel safe and familiar. But I’m convinced that’s not where God wants us to be. That’s why catalytic events have to take place to move us from where we are to where God envisions for us.”

I was curious to know how Palmer Seminary may have influenced Dr. Salter McNeil’s current endeavors and she replied, “Interestingly enough, the book I wrote entitled, Roadmap to Reconciliation, began as my doctoral project at Palmer Seminary!  The Doctor of Ministry is a very practical degree.  My thinking and understanding of reconciliation was forged and shaped during my doctoral work, and eventually became more fully developed in the Model of Reconciliation which is the heart of the book.  My studies at Palmer greatly shaped and informed me as a minister, consultant and thought leader of reconciliation.”  

In these turbulent times in our country and world, the work of reconciliation seems to take a fierce courage.  When I asked Dr. Salter McNeil where she found the courage for her work she said, “That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in.  I once heard it said that, ‘Faith is fear that has said its prayers’ and I believe that.  What people see as courage is really my commitment to the path of discipleship.  It is faithfully trying to follow what God has called me to do.  It’s not that I’m braver or more courageous than others.  Discipleship is one faithful, fearful step at a time.  I’m just being obedient to God.  I am currently writing a book about Esther.  I see in Esther an example of the kind of bravery that I believe God is calling people to.  Let me tell you a little story:  many years ago when I left InterVarsity and started my own 501c3 ministry, I knew I would be focusing on reconciliation, but I was focused on a lot of other things too.  Because I was too diffused, I had a hard time raising money.  It was difficult to explain everything I did to donors.  A wonderful consultant guided me to focus on a single issue, and he encouraged me to concentrate solely on racial reconciliation.  Like Esther I thought, ‘I don’t want to do it. Why racial reconciliation?’  I knew I needed to seek God and went on a fast.  During that fast I clearly heard the Holy Spirit remind me of these words from Esther, ‘if I perish, I perish’.  So, like Esther, I went for it and Instead of killing my ministry it actually launched me into everything I am doing today!”

Dr. Salter McNeil left the 2017 graduates with these final words, which can be a call and an inspiration for us all to strive to be courageous Christians, “The role of courageous Christians is to discern the difference between a catastrophe and a catalytic event; and then to interpret what’s happening around us through the eyes of faith and not fear. You are graduating in catalytic times, both in our country and around the world. The dramatic changes taking place in our social, political and global contexts are calling for you to be courageous Christians who press pass the sound barriers in society that prevent us from breaking into the new reality of the Kingdom of God. It won’t be easy! Some people, even Christians, won’t believe it’s possible. But you will need to hold on tight and refuse to succumb to the divisive social and political rhetoric that seems to suggest that a world of unity and equity just can’t be done! Instead may you, the graduating class of 2017, be the generation that is empowered by the Holy Spirit to press through the resistance to break into the multi-national, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic kingdom of God where all people flourish and reach their God given potential!  Amen.”

article by: Denise McMillan

[dippedanddripped]

As other retail industries have struggled in recent years, skate shops seem more uncertain than ever, and this past weekend we lost a longstanding one:Sunday skate shop in Buffalo, NY.

This got us thinking about what skateboarders and the skate industry can do to help shops (obviously in addition to spending more money). But instead of rehashing reasons to Support Your Local, we talked with shop owners themselves about how we can help them stay in business longer and keep our local scenes healthy.

We tried to represent a good chunk of the U.S. and a few other countries, but there’s no way to fit every shop in the world. Everyone had thoughtful and encouraging things to say, but to not let this become a 60,000 word thesis, we were only able to keep a small selection of responses.

For the shops not represented here (Kingpin, Prov, 8five2, Note), thank you! And for the readers who we forgot to call for their expert opinions, we know we’ll be hearing from you in the comments.

LABOR (NEW YORK, NY)

Has the skate industry done anything to negatively affect core skate shops, and if so, how can we reverse what’s been done? There’s a lot the industry has done and continues to do to negatively impact independently-owned shops, while they shred crocodile tears every time a long-running shop closes. I don’t spend a lot of time being mad at companies for [trying to] grow as much as they can year after year.

When companies make a big push to sell direct to customers—which is one of the biggest factors that drives business away from a skate shop—I can’t really be mad. As shop owners, we understand that’s where the biggest margins are. On the other hand, a company can’t be mad if we choose not to carry their brand or order less because they are selling subscription boxes online, or aggressively opening stand-alone retail stores.

How much longer do you think skate shops can exist as they do now? It’s been discussed for years, but the margin in hard goods at the retail level has to adjust, or shops will absolutely not exist in a few years. At some point, skaters will have to accept that the price of skateboards is not going to be $50 forever. Once we get past that, I think we can start making some progress, but there are still so many people that roll their eyes at the price of skateboards.

35TH NORTH (SEATTLE, WA)

What can shop owners do to attract local business and keep skaters interested in coming and buying stuff, as opposed to buying online or from the mall? We stay busy with events. The Seattle skate scene is rad and everyone supports one another so we love to get involved however we can. Skate shops have to make it a priority to promote and grow their scene, plus keeping your local scene healthy is always a good long-term strategy.

Is there anything that you believe the skate industry has done that had a direct negative effect on core skate shops? Is there any way to reverse what they’ve done? You used to have to fill out on your dealer application how far away your nearest competition was. If it was within a certain radius of an existing shop, brands wouldn’t sell to you. Now you literally have brands that you sell in your store along with big online sites they sell to geo-targeting the customers in your area on Instagram hoping they can get sales. If there is a real concern for the health of shops, big online sites need to be addressed and we need to have rad products that you can only buy from shops that actually do shit for their scenes.

Can you imagine any new business models that could help shops succeed? We are sorry to say it but deck prices should and need to go up. If any Shark Tank-style business guy looked at core shops’ margins on their best selling products, they would think we were all idiots. Most shops make under $10 selling a deck. In Seattle, we would have to sell 13 pro decks every single day just to cover one employee’s daily wage. In fact, if the margins in skating were where they should be, a lot of shops might still be in business.

How much longer do you think skate shops can exist as they do now? I believe with the Olympics coming and more corporations wanting a piece of skateboarding, most of that growth and money will not find it’s way into real skate shops.

When does mass commercial success ever mean good things for a mom and pop business? A lot of that money will find its way to the stores that know nothing about culture, or what really makes skateboarding’s history so great because all of that has nothing to do with sports.

As long as there are cool kids who understand what their core shops are actually selling, then we’ve got a shot.

PLUS SKATE SHOP (ORLANDO, FL)

Can you imagine any new business models that could help shops succeed? Create your shop’s brand identity. In order to improve margins, you have to be able to brand your shop and make kids hyped on repping it. We do the typical shop decks (USA made!) and apparel, but we also do backpacks and wallets and shit. The newer generation of kids was brought up going to stores that only sell products that have the name of the business on it. It’s not unusual for them to walk in and see a rack with just Plus merch on it.

Our Plus merch accounts for about 15-20% of our annual revenue. I don’t think a shop can survive solely selling its own products. The brands a shop carries are what provide the vibe and character of the shop. But then, while they are shopping for those brands, they might notice we have a rad T-shirt or hat and purchase our item also. New brands pop up all the time, shops just have to select the ones they believe will work for them and try to keep the product selection fresh.

How can the skate industry and skaters help shops survive? Better pricing for independent skate retailers would help a ton. Since mega mall stores can order a billion of something, they get it cheaper. That’s just business 101. But, since independent, locally-owned skate shops are the businesses that are keeping skateboarding alive, why not give them better pricing in order to keep their doors open? If all the local shops go away, skateboarding will fall off a cliff.

ORCHARD (BOSTON, MA)

Has the skate industry done anything to negatively affect core skate shops, and if so, how can we reverse what’s been done? If you are a shoe or clothing company, don’t sell hard goods online or at your brick and mortar outlets. I don’t want to have to compete with my partners. It’s pretty simple, if you respect what we do for our city’s skate scene, don’t sell skateboards.

Also, have an MSRP and enforce it. It’s almost 2019 and to keep this ecosystem healthy, a skateboard should cost around $60 or more. In an ideal world, a skateboard shop should be able to sustain by selling mostly skate hard goods, but there are so many volume-driven kooks racing to the bottom. It cheapens the value of a skateboard when you have online cowboys selling the same board at a price that would make a skate shop $4 profit after shipping costs.

“IN AN IDEAL WORLD, A SKATEBOARD SHOP SHOULD BE ABLE TO SUSTAIN BY SELLING MOSTLY SKATE HARD GOODS.”

And then, of course, there’s a lot of bedroom brands and after school projects with someone who has $750 to burn on starting a company based on this cool image they found on Google, and they’ve always wanted to have a brand since Pontus [Alv, Polar Skate Co. Founder] inspired them two years ago when they started skating. So they sell their boards for $35 out of their trunk without consideration for the ecosystem.

How can the skate industry and skaters help shops survive? I get it, no one wants to pay full price, but you can’t say, “I only buy skater-owned. What Sole Tech do you have on discount?”, and expect anyone to have money left over to invest in the scene. Spend your money where you have a personal connection and not just wherever is cheapest. On that note, shops should have some kind of rewards program where they hook up the loyal customers, and if a regular only has $45 but needs new shoes, then work with them and try to find something that works.

ATLAS (SAN MATEO, CA)

How can the skate industry and skaters help shops survive? Be conscious of where your resources go. Brands need to work tightly with their core shops. There’s really not too many shops out there, so I don’t want to hear the excuses like, “Sorry, we’re super slammed, but so down,” and then nothing happens. Action leads to results, inaction leads to potential failure. Skaters, stop buying shit from the mall or Amazon. It doesn’t do shit for your local community. If you truly do not care, then go ahead, spend your money wherever you want, but if you do care, put your money where your mouth is. I also want to make it clear that skate shops are not a charity case, they are hubs that work hard to keep communities strong. It’s a group effort that will pay off if we all stick together.

CIVILST (BERLIN, GERMANY)

How can the skate industry and skaters help shops survive? Unfortunately, Germany is super tough when it comes to hardware. If we would be able to offer hardware at a lower price, kids wouldn’t have to buy at the big online shops. Distributions out here haven’t reacted to dollar conversions in years so hardware is fuckin’ expensive in wholesale and it won’t change since most of them have a monopoly on trucks, wheels, etc. Shoutout to €42 for a single truck!

But if the big companies would consider bigger margins, better payment terms, I believe that it would help a lot. Then you can at least offer some discount on certain products in order to keep your business local and not lose out to online shops.

FTC BARCELONA

How much longer do you think skate shops can exist as they do now? If there’s a local scene, a skate shop will always be there. My shop is in the very center [of Barcelona], near MACBA. People still come to the shop to say hi and have a coffee, even though they could be at sunny MACBA watching people skate. Zumiez doesn’t give you that, right? Fuck! Now I said this and they might start giving free coffee with your board. When Amazon learns how to grip boards, we are all fucked!

Is there anything the skate industry has done that had a directly negative effect on core skate shops, and if so, can it be reversed? Don’t buy your board online, kid! Go to the shop, get out, see the streets and talk to people. There’s a life outside of your phone! Plus, no one is gonna grip your board better than the dude at the skate shop while talking shit about the latest video.

FAITH (BIRMINGHAM, AL)

Can you imagine any new business models that could help shops succeed? We partnered with our friends New Republic Printing. In doing so, we have lowered our overhead on rent and bills and we now have an in-house print shop. I think the key is to find supplemental income that coincides with the shop.

How much longer can shops exist as they do now? I think shops will exist, but not thrive unless you happen to raise the next skateboarding superstar that is looking for a crappy investment to show a loss of income in order to balance out their taxes, come tax season [laughs].

The shops I’ve seen go under have locations that are too large and have several employees on their payroll. In order to survive, I have to not take much income from the shop (less than $1,000 a month). I work 2 other jobs as well, and live minimally with low rent and low bills. I will work to make it work until it can’t work anymore! I think most shop owners are the same way, they are indebted to skateboarding for whatever reason.

How can the skate industry and skaters help shops survive? Brands need to reset the standards of being pro or stop over-saturating the market with so many product choices. They wouldn’t rely so much on prebooking this way, thusly not relying on Zumiez to buy into a product before production. Make prebooking product really worth it for us small guys. 10% off is not good when you can wait a month and buy it for 30% off.

Oh, and fuck selling your product on Amazon!

NO-COMPLY (AUSTIN, TX)

What can shop owners do to attract local business and keep skaters interested in coming and buying stuff, as opposed to buying online or from the mall? Have alternate ways of bringing in new customers that wouldn’t have otherwise come in. We have an espresso bar up front, so many come in for a coffee and are introduced to the rest of the store. Monthly art shows create a community event and keep our walls fresh.

The main thing is to care about skateboarding and be involved in many ways: owners and employees skateboarding, supporting a team, having or coordinating events like video premieres, demos, contests, art shows, parties. Keep up with the current, past, and future of skateboarding, collaborate with brands, interact, relate to and care about the customers. Create a place they can claim as theirs.

Recently, Urban Outfitters started selling skateboards in a partnership with Skate Warehouse. All the skate brands sold on UO’s site agreed to this. Do you think this will affect the industry? For the brands selling to Urban Outfitters, it’s understandable that a quick buck is intoxicating and that they want to get paid. But it’s a one night stand and they are not going to answer your call tomorrow. They are notorious for taking a brand in and if it works well, they just make their own version of it and get rid of the original. By that time, the original skate shops might be gone or they won’t take your call anymore either.

[ladystylestores]

When the Police Lie – The New York Times

Want to get The Morning by email? Here’s the sign-up.

Good morning. Minneapolis plans to dismantle its police force. New York City is starting to reopen. And Tropical Storm Cristobal has made landfall. Let’s start with a look at false reports from the police.

An encounter in Buffalo last Thursday — in which two police officers shoved a 75-year-old man to the ground and left lying him there while blood poured out of his ear — was troubling partly because of the original police account.

The account claimed that the man “was injured when he tripped and fell.” If a video hadn’t existed, the truth might never have come out.

That’s a widespread problem:

Philip Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University, who has analyzed thousands of police reports, told CNN that lies like these were fairly common.

Activists in the current protest movement have begun to focus on how they can turn the rallies of the past 10 days into lasting change, to reduce both racism and police brutality. And reducing the frequency of false reports by the police is likely to be a key issue.

Already, reform-minded prosecutors and police chiefs have taken some steps in the last few years. The top prosecutor in St. Louis, Kim Gardner, has stopped accepting new cases or search warrant requests from officers with a history of misconduct or lies. In Philadelphia and Seattle, prosecutors are creating similar “do not call” lists, The Marshall Project has reported.

Chris Magnus, the police chief in Tucson, Ariz., told the Marshall Project: “If I had my way, officers who lie wouldn’t just be put on a list, they’d be fired, and also not allowed to work in any other jurisdiction as a police officer ever again.” Often, though, police-union contracts prevent firing even officers with a record of brutality and dishonesty — which then casts a shadow over the many police officers who tell the truth.

(The Times published an investigation this weekend, explaining how police unions have amassed political power and blocked change.)

False police reports are not a new problem. What’s new are the videos that have caused people to realize how common they are. “When I was a reporter, it was the police officer’s word against the victim’s or suspect’s,” Jamie Stockwell, a deputy national editor at The Times, told me. “Cellphone video has changed the debate over policing.”

THREE MORE BIG STORIES

1. Minneapolis to rethink policing

The Minneapolis City Council pledged yesterday to dismantle the Police Department. Council members said that they did not yet have specific plans for a new public safety system and would study models being tested in other cities.

It is the biggest response to the protests so far. In New York and Los Angeles, city officials have vowed to shrink police budgets in coming months.

In other protest developments:

2. New York emerges from its virus lockdown

New York City will take the first steps toward reopening today, a moment of optimism in a city battered by the coronavirus. Nonessential construction and manufacturing can resume, and retail stores can open for pickup. As many as 400,000 workers could return to their jobs.

The milestone comes 100 days after the city reported its first case. Since then, more than 211,000 residents have been infected and more than 21,000 have died. The confirmed infection rate has dropped sharply since the peak in mid-April.

In other virus developments:

3. Distance learning isn’t working

Education experts believe that distance learning in most school districts is not working and that students are falling behind at alarming rates. “We know this isn’t a good way to teach,” a seventh-grade teacher in Colorado said. Black, Hispanic and low-income students are falling behind the fastest, research suggests.

“The richest and poorest parents are spending about the same amount of hours on remote school,” Dana Goldstein, a Times reporter who has written a book on teaching, told us. But “wealthier parents are inevitably able to provide more books and supplies at home, more quiet space, educational toys and often more knowledge of the curriculum.” More high-income school districts are also providing strong remote instruction, rather than basic worksheet-like activities.

Here’s what else is happening

Tropical Storm Cristobal made landfall in southeast Louisiana yesterday, hours after pouring several inches of rain on the New Orleans area. The storm is expected to head north to Arkansas and Missouri by Tuesday.

James Bennet, the editorial page editor of The Times, has resigned over the publication of an Op-Ed by Senator Tom Cotton last week that called for the military to crack down on “lawbreakers” in the protests. (Ben Smith, The Times’s media columnist, looked at the revolts inside the country’s big newsrooms.)

Lives lived: It was the late 1970s, and the hip-hop scene was just emerging. Robert Ford Jr., better known as Rocky, was there to chronicle it as a journalist and then promote it as a producer and mentor to early stars like Kurtis Blow. Ford’s breakout record? A Christmas single. He has died at 70.

BACK STORY: Taking a knee

Four years ago, Kurt Streeter — then an ESPN writer — published a profile of Nate Boyer, an unusual football player. Boyer was homeless as a young man and later served in the Army as a Green Beret, in both Afghanistan and Iraq. For the Seattle Seahawks, he was the long-snapper, who played only on some kicks.

Boyer’s place in football history, however, won’t be about what he did on the field. It will be about the fact that he gave Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid the idea to protest police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem. Boyer, who’s white, said he would never kneel during the anthem. But he thought it was a symbol of reverence and had seen a photo of Martin Luther King Jr. protesting in Alabama by kneeling.

“If you’re not going to stand,” Boyer remembers telling Kaepernick and Reid, as the three of them sat in a hotel lobby, hours before a game in 2016, “I’d say your only other option is to take a knee.”

Kurt has since left ESPN for The Times, and he has written an article about how kneeling spread from the N.F.L. to the recent protests. Boyer’s comments are a fascinating part of the story — and a reminder of why journalists often make an effort to keep in touch with people they’ve interviewed.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT, FREEZE

Make sorbet

All you need is a tin of fruit and a food processor to create a refreshing summer treat: sorbet in an instant.

Some tips: Choose fruits in heavy syrup, and make sure they are pitted and seedless. You can also add a liqueur or other spirit, such as Campari (with frozen grapefruit) or tequila (with lime juice with oranges). Find more flavor combinations here.

A roadblock for baseball’s comeback

As sports leagues around the world finalize plans to return, Major League Baseball still has not. Owners have asked players to take a second pay cut — not only to reflect a shorter season but also for less money per game — and the players have said no. The two sides are so far apart that it’s possible there may not be baseball until next spring.

And in basketball … One thing to watch when the N.B.A. resumes play July 31: Will Zion Williamson, the league’s most exciting rookie, help his New Orleans Pelicans make a late run to the playoffs?

See something moving

The Times is providing free access to much of our coronavirus coverage. Please consider supporting our journalism with a subscription.

Ian Prasad Philbrick and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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Which auto insurance companies in California offer auto insurance for international driving license?

Which auto insurance companies in California offer auto insurance for international driving license?

I already called a few but they tell me there don t offer auto insurance for someone w/ IDL

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :insurance4hquotes.xyz

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Why Canada — the rightful home of hockey — may never be home to another NHL franchise

John Graham is a race car driver, hockey promoter and believer in improbable dreams, an optimism he applied to his role as the point man for a group of prominent though unnamed Saskatoon businessmen who approached the NHL in 2012 with a pitch to buy the money-bleeding, league-owned Phoenix Coyotes and move them to the Prairies.

Saskatchewan at the time was booming, its economy growing by 2.9% a year, good enough to be second only to Alberta nationally. Saskatoon had grown into a city of 230,000 from less than 200,000 at the turn of the millennium, and was adding more bodies and jobs year over year, a prosperous run propelled by a robust oil sector, strength in potash and uranium mining, and the traditional farming and manufacturing sectors. Unemployment was low and the city’s NHL aspirations high, especially given that Saskatoon had already hosted several successful NHL exhibition games, and also had a 15,200-seat arena, government support and proof of concept in the nearby Winnipeg Jets — formerly the Atlanta Thrashers — that relocating to a small Canadian market could actually be a win for everybody.

Naturally, Don Cherry waded in, devoting a Coach’s Corner segment one Saturday to trumpeting Saskatoon’s NHL worthiness, and assuring Canadians of something they all surely knew: “They are hockey people,” he said. “They will sell out in 15 minutes.”

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly even met with Graham and the Saskatoon group, meetings that produced more meetings, talks that, while cordial, weren’t enough to dislodge the Coyotes from Phoenix, where the franchise remains — a money loser still, albeit under new ownership and with a new name, the Arizona Coyotes.

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The small towns that refuse to die: Schemes to woo new blood about more than just staying alive

“Business and life goes in cycles,” Graham says, looking back on those heady Saskatoon days. “For sure, when we thought there was an opportunity to go after Phoenix, Saskatchewan was on an economic high, potash was hot, oil exports were strong. It was the right window for us. Had the team gone in there, I think it would have mirrored Winnipeg’s success. We had everything lined up, but …”

It didn’t happen, not for Saskatoon, and not, more recently, for Quebec City, a locale twice spurned by the NHL in a three-year span in favour of expanding to Las Vegas and now Seattle. The NHL’s repeated snubbing of Canadian markets doesn’t seem just, morally, and it doesn’t seem to jibe with free market economic theory.

Canadians are NHL hungry. There is consumer demand for the product and corporate support, with a demonstrated belief among the business community that being associated with the league isn’t merely a branding exercise, but vital to a brand’s identity. Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire, Ford of Canada, Rogers, Bell, Bank of Nova Scotia, Kraft — and more — have a piece of the NHL action. BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. together own the majority of the Toronto Maple Leafs, in addition to Rogers controlling most of the league’s Canadian broadcasting rights. But in a proven though underserved national market, the NHL appears to be doing everything it possibly can to avoid putting in an eighth franchise.

It can be easy, even comforting, to conclude that the problem must be them: them being the league, its American-sunbelt-loving-New-York-City-headquartered commissioner, Gary Bettman, and the majority of American owners behind him, hell bent on propping up marginal franchises in Florida, Arizona and the Carolinas, while forgoing slam dunk propositions such as the Nordiques 2.0.

Much less appetizing to consider is the alternative, which is that the problem is us: our population, 75-cent dollar, relative lack of billionaire would-be hockey team owners, corporate parochialism and collective inability to grasp, or rather fully admit, that Canada, although the rightful home of hockey, may never be home to another NHL franchise.

Richard Peddie, former president and chief executive officer of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment Ltd., says the financial prospects of an eighth Canadian NHL franchise aren’t great.

To understand why not, it helps to do the math, and who better to run the numbers than Richard Peddie, the former CEO and president of Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment Ltd., and an executive often accused of monetizing every nook of Toronto’s Air Canada Centre (now Scotiabank Arena) during his 13 years at the top. “Looking at it, the financials aren’t great,” he says of the prospects for an eighth Canadian NHL franchise. “It is a thin investment, there is not a lot of earnings in it, and you need a rich person.”

Imagine, as per Seattle, that an expansion team costs around US$650 million. If you are not Quebec City, a new arena would need to be built, costing another $200 million, give or take, assuming the new owner convinces taxpayers to pick up a chunk of the tab. Now, almost a billion dollars later — huzzah — you have yourself an NHL franchise earning, in a good year, about US$25 million before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization or, in other words, close to a zero-per-cent annual return on a huge investment.

Hence the need for a rich person, a billionaire at minimum, which in Canada limits the pool to about 100 potential buyers, seven of which — the Molsons, David Thomson, Larry Tanenbaum, the Rogers, Daryl Katz, Francesco Aquilini, Murray Edwards and Eugene Melnyk — already own, directly or indirectly through companies, at least a part of the seven existing Canadian franchises.

Winnipeg Jets co-owner David Thomson watches his team take on the Anaheim Ducks in the second period of NHL playoff action at MTS Centre in Winnipeg, Man., in 2015.

Thomson, the richest Canadian around, and Mark Chipman in 2011 paid US$170 million for the Thrashers and the right to move the team to Winnipeg. At the time, it was a boondoggle of a price for a terrible franchise with no discernible fan base in a non-traditional hockey market, and an ownership group that was slinging lawsuits at one another after losing millions for years. But Thomson was the right billionaire at the right time in the right place, willing to pay whatever the asking price was for what today amounts to a civic good-works project, with more or less break-even financials, though the Jets are now valued at US$415 million, according to Forbes.

The MTS Centre during the Winnipeg Jets and Montreal Canadiens NHL game on October 9, 2011 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The game is Winnipeg’s first NHL regular season game in 15 years.

Peddie concludes his lesson by adding that, with nominal annual returns, a hypothetical owner entering the NHL game is presumably doing so with two aims in mind: winning a Stanley Cup while betting the asset appreciates in value so that it pays off if he or she decides to sell. Of course, the buy-and-hold-and-eventually-sell sports ownership model starts to look pretty dicey when the price tag up front is a billion dollars and when a hypothetical team is located in a secondary Canadian market, such as Saskatoon or Quebec City.

Yet no matter how bad the math looks, or how far the loonie dips, this is still Canada and fans will pay to watch a team (think, Edmonton) loaded with talent repeatedly fall short of expectations and fail to make the playoffs. It is the kind of loyalty (lunacy?) that doesn’t exist in, say, Arizona, Florida or Carolina — or Ottawa, for that matter — suggesting that Quebec City should hold some allure as a potential destination for an NHL franchise. Right?

A Winnipeg Jets fan looks for tickets for the Jets inaugural game against the Montreal Canadiens at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg, Oct. 9, 2011.

We put the question to Bill Daly, Bettman’s second-in-command. “I’m not prepared to say that Quebec is not a viable market for a future NHL franchise,” he says via email. “And I’m not prepared to say that future opportunities will not present themselves. Every situation is fact- and circumstance-specific, and I would certainly not rule out the possibility of facts and circumstances aligning in the future so as to create a new opportunity.”

In other words: Quebec City is neither on nor definitively off the table, and remains a Plan B (or C or D) with a fully paid-for, publicly-funded arena, a rivalry with Montreal waiting to be resumed and an eager fan base itching to buy tickets, sweaters and overpriced pints at concession stands.

Daly goes on to say that “further expansion” was not a priority at the moment, though he allowed that as long as there is a demand and “assuming that further expansion is ultimately perceived to benefit the league as a whole, it will be duly considered and may well happen.”

Expansion, of course, is one way to get a team. The other is a relocation scenario, where a U.S.-based dumpster-fire of a hockey situation reaches Atlanta Thrashers-sized proportions, and the team/league cries uncle and heads north. Cast against this scenario is Bettman, a man who hates to admit failure, and rightly so, because failing is bad for business. If teams are seen as portable and relocation is always viewed as an option, there is little incentive for fans, so the argument goes, to invest — practically, financially and emotionally — in a franchise that might be gone tomorrow. At the same time, if the NHL hopes to grow its overall fan base and tap into previously untapped corporate dollars, it needs to expand into markets where new hockey converts might be, not where the fans already are (Quebec, Saskatoon, Anytown Canada).

The NHL’s existing strategy might even be paying off, depending on one’s perspective. Auston Matthews, Maple Leafs star and a former No. 1 overall NHL pick, grew up in the Phoenix suburbs as a Coyotes fan; the Arizona State University men’s hockey team in nearby Tempe has emerged as a U.S. college hockey power; and youth hockey enrolment in the state has quadrupled since the Coyotes arrived in 1996. Hockey has a toehold in Arizona, like it or not. Equally evident is that the Coyotes continue to lose gobs of money, reportedly close to US$20 million a year.

The red ink didn’t bother Daryl Jones. As a kid in Alberta, Jones grew up worshipping Oilers great Paul Coffey, and eventually left home to play hockey at Yale University, before graduating into the world of high finance. In 2013, he and a bunch of other rich Albertans bought the sad-sack Coyotes from the NHL for US$170 million. “We thought, No. 1, that NHL franchise values would go up, and that has largely proven to be true,” Jones says from Connecticut, where he now lives. “It would also enable us to make money when we sold out — the rising tide of franchise values.”

Jones and his partners learned some valuable lessons about hockey in the desert during nearly four years as NHL owners, chiefly: the Coyotes have a loyal fan base; the team’s arena couldn’t be located in a worse spot in terms of fans accessing it for weeknight games; financial losses are hard to stem; and Bettman is sticking by Arizona — at least for now. Their bet on increasing franchise values, meanwhile, paid off. They essentially doubled an initial US$45-million equity investment, selling to U.S. hedge fund manager, and now lone Coyotes owner, Andrew Barroway in 2017. (Barroway is shopping for new partners, and has valued the Coyotes at US$500 million).

Jones now owns a piece of a junior team in Dubuque, Iowa. He believes that Quebec City could work as an NHL market, but that the determining factor for the league forever hinges upon one crucial element. “They look at it as, What is the best business proposition for us?” he says. “I don’t think it has anything to do with whether it is a Canadian or an American team.” In other words, it’s all about the money.

Canadian franchises generate revenues in Canadian dollars, while paying players in U.S. funds. Add in U.S. travel expenses, and the cost of operating minor league franchises, typically based in the U.S., and the pressure exerted on a Canadian franchise’s financial well-being by a weakened dollar is significant. Canadian teams can hedge, buying up greenbacks when the loonie is strong and spending them in times when it’s not. But hedging also costs money, and it involves risk. The NHL salary cap has taken some of the bite out of currency fluctuations, as has league-wide revenue sharing, but there is no absolute cure for it, nor will there ever be.

Take, as an example, Dustin Byfuglien, a linchpin of the Winnipeg defence, a fan favourite with a US$8-million-per-season contract whose true cost to the Jets when counted in Canadian currency is $10.5 million. Winnipeg’s total salary expenditure for 2018-19, before player bonuses, is US$71.8 million, or about $94 million Canadian — and that’s operating with a dollar worth about 76 cents U.S. The lower the dollar dips, the worse the math looks. Remember: it was a 65-cent dollar and ballooning player salaries in the mid-’90s that chased the Quebec City Nordiques to Denver — to be recast as the Colorado Avalanche — and the Jets (version 1.0) to Phoenix.

Patrick Roy holds the Stanley Cup aloft after the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup in 1993.

More disheartening than the dollar is the competition Quebec City has faced in recent expansion wars. Las Vegas is an entertainment mecca and sports gambling hub, while metropolitan Seattle is home to 3.8 million souls and several Fortune 500 company headquarters, including Microsoft Corp., Starbucks Corp., Costco Wholesale Corp., Nordstrom Inc. and a little company called Amazon.com Inc. Quebec City is chiefly home to a provincial government and a pension fund investor.

“If you compare, for example, the opportunity in Seattle versus Quebec City, it is a no-brainer,” says Peddie, the former MLSE boss. “When you start comparing Seattle to other Canadian markets, like a Saskatoon, it doesn’t even warrant a conversation. Out of all the NHL owners, maybe a couple have been to Quebec City, because it is such a charming, European kind of place, but for sure none of them have ever been to Saskatoon, or a lot of other Canadian markets.”

Peddie was approached, post-MLSE career, by a private group looking to examine the possibility of Toronto being home to another NHL team, a big what-if requiring an ownership group with a monopoly agreeing to waive its monopoly. The working assumption was that the alliance between Bell and Rogers would eventually fracture, forcing one of them out of the Leafs’ ownership group. Peddie, in crunching numbers, had the Leafs and the expansion team both playing out of Scotiabank Arena, a model that could work financially, he says, but, in talking to his connections, it fell apart, because both Bell and Rogers were only interested in owning the Leafs.

But as bleak as the odds might appear for Canada landing another team, appearances aren’t always everything. Mark Chipman, the Jets chief executive who hooked Thomson on the idea of the NHL returning to Winnipeg, first approached Bettman about it in 1999. Chipman did everything right thereafter, keeping mostly out of the media spotlight almost until the day the NHL officially announced the league was coming to Winnipeg, by way of Atlanta. Something that looked like it would never happen suddenly did. The lesson? Be patient, very patient, and keep things quiet, since the NHL won’t allow itself to get pushed in directions it doesn’t want to go. (Remember: Jim Balsillie and the Hamilton Blackberries).

Perhaps that’s why a curious silence has descended over the Nordiques 2.0 camp ever since Seattle was awarded its franchise in December. Billionaire Pierre Karl Peladeau and his media company, Quebecor Inc., are the money behind Quebec City’s expansion bid. Peladeau did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story. Mayor Regis Labeaume, a champion of the city’s NHL ambitions, who pushed for the publicly-funded arena to get built and initially wooed Peladeau to the cause, also declined. Their silence could indicate surrender, or it could signal they’re taking a page from Chipman’s playbook.

  A young hockey fan cheers on the Calgary Flames before they take on the Edmonton Oilers in NHL hockey at the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary April 6.

Which brings us back to the beginning, and the one thing Canada will always have going for it, the thing that makes this market critical to the NHL’s overall welfare, and the notion of landing an eighth franchise before Wayne Gretzky turns 100 plausible: Canadians love hockey, and care about their home teams, even when they are lousy, and even when doing so runs contrary to common sense.

Fans like Dan Mason, a sports professor at the University of Alberta and in some ways your typical Edmonton Oilers follower, though more casual than crazy. He still watches the team on TV — despite all the reasons not to — and catches a game or two a year at Rogers Place. Mason says that in the days of yore, NHL expansion teams set the baseline minimum value for all the teams, a model that worked when applied, for example, to the US$45-million fee San Jose’s ownership group paid for the Sharks in 1991.

Lately, however, expansion fees — US$500 million in Vegas, US$650 million in Seattle — reflect the value of a team in a given market. That’s not just the professor’s opinion it is the NHL’s official position. The Leafs aren’t worth US$1.45 billion if they are in Winnipeg, and a money pit of an NHL franchise — Forbes values the Coyotes at US$290 million — might not cost Quebec City more than it can afford.

Meantime, while it varies from team to team, ticket sales, game-day concessions, foam fingers, hats, sweaters and ice cream bars — all the money people who actually attend the games shell out — still represent about 50% of a given franchise’s revenue intake. Canadians still go to games. Canadian fans still drive revenues.

Loving hockey almost too much has not landed the country an eighth NHL franchise, or, for that matter, a Stanley Cup champion since 1993, but it is one reason not to completely abandon hope. “We are probably not likely to see a Canadian market get an NHL expansion franchise. It will be a Houston, or another market like that,” Mason says. “But if you see a franchise that continues to be in trouble, you can’t tell me that Quebec City is a worse market than Florida — even with a 60-cent dollar.”

• Email: joconnor@nationalpost.com | Twitter: oconnorwrites

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Vegas Has The Best Expansion Team In The History Of Pro Sports, And It’s Not Close

The Vegas Golden Knights are only halfway through their inaugural season, and they’ve already redefined what anyone thought was possible for an NHL expansion franchise. Against all odds, the Knights are currently 29-10-3 with 61 points, good for the best record in the Western Conference — and only 4 points shy of the Tampa Bay Lightning for the best record in the entire league. It’s enough to make the Knights hockey’s greatest debut team ever, hands down.

But that’s not all: Vegas is also lapping the field of expansion teams across every major pro sport. Even after adjusting for the way records are distributed in other sports, no other brand-new club in modern history came close to doing what the Knights have done so far. Expansion teams just aren’t supposed to have this kind of success this early.

Constructed as a Frankenstein’s monster of unwanted parts from the rest of the league, a new club is usually very bad indeed. In a franchise’s first season, merely being “competitive” — code for losing but keeping things close most nights — is an admirable goal. And going into this season, there were plenty of people who had trouble seeing the Knights even reaching that modest level of success. Most outlets picked Vegas to finish either last or next-to-last in the Pacific Division.

That was a reasonable expectation based on the past performance of first-year clubs. Our own analysis found that Vegas had dredged more talent out of the expansion-draft pool than normal — but that was just supposed to mean the Knights would exceed historical expectations. It didn’t mean we thought they’d make the playoffs, much less that they’d contend for the Stanley Cup.

So far this season, however, Vegas has picked up 73 percent of the maximum number of points in its games and outscored its opponents by 0.7 goals per game. To compare those marks across NHL seasons, we converted them to z-scores, or the number of standard deviations they sat above or below league average. (This helps us account for changes in the league’s spread of talent over time and allows us to make comparisons between different sports — which will come in handy later.) In both categories, Vegas’s z-scores are easily the top marks for an NHL expansion team since the league blew up the Original Six and added six new teams in 1967-68:1

Vegas is destroying its NHL expansion competitors

Best z-scores (standard deviations relative to average) for point percentage and goals per game differential, NHL expansion teams (1968-2018)

Point percentage YEAR TEAM POINT % – Z-SCORE 1 2018 Vegas Golden Knights 72.6 % +1.73 2 1994 Florida Panthers 49.4 -0.06 3 1968 Philadelphia Flyers 49.3 -0.08 4 1968 Los Angeles Kings 48.7 -0.16 5 1968 St. Louis Blues 47.3 -0.32 6 1968 Minnesota North Stars 46.6 -0.40 7 1968 Pittsburgh Penguins 45.3 -0.57 8 1973 Atlanta Flames 41.7 -0.57 9 1971 Buffalo Sabres 40.4 -0.65 10 1994 Mighty Ducks of Anaheim 42.3 -0.76 Goal differential YEAR TEAM GPG DIFF. – Z-SCORE 1 2018 Vegas Golden Knights +0.7 +1.28 2 1994 Florida Panthers +0.0 0.00 3 1968 Philadelphia Flyers -0.1 -0.15 4 1968 St. Louis Blues -0.2 -0.36 5 1994 Mighty Ducks of Anaheim -0.3 -0.37 6 1968 Pittsburgh Penguins -0.3 -0.54 7 1973 Atlanta Flames -0.6 -0.58 8 1968 Los Angeles Kings -0.3 -0.62 9 1971 Vancouver Canucks -0.9 -0.77 10 1971 Buffalo Sabres -1.0 -0.85

Full-season statistics are used for all teams except Vegas.

Source: Hockey-Reference.com

The Florida Panthers used to be the model for a successful NHL expansion team. Florida was more than merely competitive in 1993-94 — it finished one win shy of a .500 record and scored exactly as many goals as it allowed. Then, with the good core of talent they had picked up in the expansion draft, the Panthers made the Stanley Cup final three seasons into the franchise’s existence. Before Vegas came along, that was the gold standard for brand-new clubs: solid in the first year, outright good within a couple seasons. But the Knights’ debut has flipped those expectations on their head.

(Yes, it should be noted that the 1967-68 St. Louis Blues made the Cup final in their first season. But that was solely because the NHL dropped all six of its new teams into the same division, the winner of which had to make the final. Every team in the new West division, which housed all the expansion clubs, had a negative goal differential during the regular season, but someone had to win it — and the Blues were that team. They were also swept by the mighty Montreal Canadiens when they played for the Cup.)2

Vegas’s season becomes even more impressive when you compare its z-scores to those of the top expansion teams from other sports. No modern MLB expansion club finished a season any better than the 70-win 1961 Los Angeles Angels; no debut NBA team ever topped the 33 wins of the 1967 Chicago Bulls; no NFL expansion team could beat the 7-9 Carolina Panthers from 1995. Hockey does tend to see its teams’ records more tightly bunched than in such sports as football and basketball, but even after adjusting for that with our z-scores, the Golden Knights’ current season blows away any would-be challenger from the NFL, NBA or MLB since the early 1960s:

Vegas beats other sports’ expansion teams, too

How the Vegas Golden Knights stack up against top expansion teams in each league by z-score* of winning percentage, 1961-2018

Vegas vs. MLB expansion teams Score Differential Win percentage Year Team Value Z-Score Value Z-Score 2018 Vegas Golden Knights +0.7 +1.3 72.6% +1.7 1961 Los Angeles Angels -0.3 -0.3 43.5 -0.7 1969 Kansas City Royals -0.6 -0.8 42.6 -0.8 1962 Houston Colt .45’s -0.8 -1.0 40.0 -1.0 1969 Seattle Pilots -1.0 -1.3 39.5 -1.1 1993 Colorado Rockies -1.3 -2.1 41.4 -1.2 Vegas vs. NBA expansion teams Score Differential Win percentage Year Team Value Z-Score Value Z-Score 2018 Vegas Golden Knights +0.7 +1.3 72.6% +1.7 1967 Chicago Bulls -3.7 -0.7 40.7 -0.5 1971 Portland Trail Blazers -4.5 -0.9 35.4 -1.0 1969 Milwaukee Bucks -5.1 -1.1 32.9 -1.1 1968 Seattle SuperSonics -6.5 -1.3 28.0 -1.3 1990 Minnesota Timberwolves -4.2 -0.9 26.8 -1.3 Vegas vs. NFL expansion teams Score Differential Win percentage Year Team Value Z-Score Value Z-Score 2018 Vegas Golden Knights +0.7 +1.3 72.6% +1.7 1995 Carolina Panthers -2.3 -0.4 43.8 -0.4 1968 Cincinnati Bengals -8.1 -0.8 21.4 -1.1 1967 New Orleans Saints -10.4 -1.2 21.4 -1.3 1961 Minnesota Vikings -8.7 -0.9 21.4 -1.3 1966 Miami Dolphins -10.6 -1.2 21.4 -1.4

*Z-score is the number of standard deviations above/below average, relative to the overall league that season.

Sources: Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com

One thing that jumps out is that many NHL expansion teams had better z-scores than the best expansion teams in the other sports. But why is it so much easier to build a strong NHL expansion team (relative to the league) than in the other Big Four North American sports? I don’t have a great explanation.

Hockey is the sport with the least reliable individual stats — while scouts’ eye tests can be swayed by recency and other biases — so it may be that the caliber of players left available in the expansion draft is higher than in other sports. Or perhaps the outsize value of goaltending means one good pick between the pipes is enough to carry a team of talent-strapped skaters to respectability. Or maybe good coaching deserves more credit than it sometimes gets around the league. Whatever the reason, expansion teams have done better on ice in general, even before Vegas started to blow the doors off the league.

We know that, in the NHL, it takes a lot of games to tell who’s good and who’s bad — which is why even a hot half-season can turn cold overnight. For Vegas, the heat has been generated by MVP-candidate seasons from the likes of William Karlsson and Jonathan Marchessault and a near Vezina-worthy performance from Marc-Andre Fleury — all players who were considered expendable as recently as seven months ago. Peeking under the hood, the Knights’ ratio of shots taken to shots allowed at even-strength is nothing special, even after adjusting for score effects and other factors. And let’s face it: Few teams can sustain this pace for an entire season: Of the 24 teams with at least 60 points in their first 42 games since 2005-06,3 only one (last year’s Capitals) had a second-half point percentage as good as it did in the first half of the season.

So it would be logical to assume that a second-half regression could be lurking around the corner for the Golden Knights. But the advanced stats don’t suggest that Vegas has been particularly lucky. In terms of expected goals (which measures where a team’s chances come from in addition to their volume), the Knights have the ninth-best ratio in the league.

Regression or no regression, various projection systems consider the Knights all but a lock to make the playoffs, which would make Vegas the first expansion team to claim that honor since the 1968 season’s standings guaranteed that four new clubs would qualify. Even the in-town sportsbooks are paying attention to the possibility of playoff action in the desert: The Knights are currently tied for the second-best Stanley Cup odds of any team in the league.

For an expansion team, all of this seemed unthinkable going into the season. New franchises aren’t supposed to be instant contenders. They’re supposed to struggle, to require years of building before achieving this kind of success. Vegas clearly doesn’t care about any of that. And now we have an entirely new yardstick with which to compare every other expansion club that comes along in the future, no matter the sport.

from News About Sports https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/vegas-has-the-best-expansion-team-in-the-history-of-pro-sports-and-its-not-close/

[rollinbrigittenv8]

The Inside Story of an Online Travel Reunion at the New Uber

Uber selected Barney Harford, the former CEO of Orbitz Worldwide, as COO. Trevor Knight

Skift Take: There were a ton of people who wanted the COO position at Uber, and it went to Expedia alum and former Orbtiz Worldwide CEO Barney Harford. The pressure will be on both Khosrowshahi and Harford to turn around the ridesharing company. As if there weren't abundant pressure already.

— Dennis Schaal

In tapping Barney Harford, a former Expedia executive and the ex-CEO of Orbitz Worldwide, to run operations at Uber during the challenging times ahead, Uber boss Dara Khosrowshahi picked someone whom he’s worked with and competed against for 16 years.

In fact, Harford sold Orbitz Worldwide to Khosrowshahi’s Expedia Inc. for $1.6 billion in 2015. Although Orbitz never challenged Expedia’s dominance in the U.S. market when Harford was Orbitz CEO, he was widely credited for modernizing a struggling online travel agency that had been on the brink of bankruptcy, and boosting its share price from $3.77 on the day he was appointed in 2009 to $12 per share when Expedia bought it.

Over the years, Khosrowshahi’s Expedia and Harford’s Orbitz Worldwide engaged in high-stake battles over the hotel market, which Expedia dominated; airline booking fees; private label client wins, and loyalty programs, to name a few areas.

Here’s the inside story of how Harford got picked as Uber COO, a position that saw dozens of candidates, including several high-profile Silicon Valley executives, vying for. It’s also a look at the relationships and career meanderings that connected Khosrowshahi, who took the reins at Uber in late August, and Harford over the years.

Conversations Began Almost Immediately

Harford starting talking to the new Uber CEO within days after Khosrowshahi relinquished his post as Expedia CEO and signed on to head up Uber. Harford has always been a data geek, and Khosrowshahi showed him some of Uber’s internal numbers to dig into. Meanwhile, conversations continued as Khosrowshahi returned to Seattle on weekends.

Khosrowshahi initially thought his CEO role would entail running operations, as well, but started realizing he would need help on the daily operations side. In early October, Harford came on board for two days per week at Uber as senior advisor to the CEO  to help out with input on the core business, although the two initially discussed the possibility of Harford becoming Uber CFO, as opposed to the COO role he eventually took.

Harford busied himself with identifying the most important areas where improvements could be made at Uber. He then joined the Uber executive leadership team at an off-site meeting later in October, and during a break Khosrowshahi raised the idea of Harford joining Uber full-time. The company announced on December 20 the appointment of Harford as COO.

First Meeting in 2001

Khosrowshahi and Harford met for the first time at Barry Diller’s home in West Hollywood in early 2001 in a get-together to find a buyer for Microsoft’s controlling stake in already-public Expedia. At the time, Diller was chairman and CEO of USA Networks, Khosrowshahi was USA’s executive vice president of operations and strategic planning, and Harford was leading corporate development and strategic planning for Expedia.

Expedia founder and then-CEO Rich Barton, CFO Greg Stanger, USA Networks vice chairman Victor Kaufman, and National Leisure Group co-CEO Brad Gerstner also attended the meeting. In July 2001, USA Networks announced a deal to buy Microsoft’s shares and thereby acquire Expedia.

READ MORE about the role of USA Networks and Expedia in online travel history in Skift’s Definitive Oral History of Online Travel.

International Experience

Barton had hired Harford at Expedia in 1999, and in a 2002 speech about “passion,” cited him as “a live example of someone who simply wouldn’t leave my office until we built our merchant hotel business, someone who now runs our WWTE Private Label business … ”

From 2004 to 2006, Harford served as president of Expedia Asia Pacific, where he launched Expedia Japan and Expedia Australia. Near the beginning of his role heading APAC, Expedia took a minority stake in eLong, and then exercised a warrant and took majority control after the Chinese online travel agency went public in 2004. Harford managed that majority stake in eLong for Expedia during his remaining tenure at the company.

Harford left Expedia in 2006 and served as an eLong board member through 2008. But long after Harford left, eLong proved to be a money-losing albatross for Expedia in the hyper-competitive Chinese domestic market, and Expedia sold its eLong stake to Ctrip in 2015.

Harford’s experience in launching international businesses and straightening out problematic global operations is highly relevant for the tasks ahead at Uber.

At Orbitz Worldwide, he was saddled with fixing its highly problematic eBookers business in Europe it had been acquired before Harford arrived at Orbitz in 2009. In fact, then-parent company Cendant took a $425 million impairment charge in February 2006 related to its acquisition of eBookers two years earlier.

Harford managed a multi-year effort to migrate eBookers onto Orbitz Worldwide’s global technology platform.

“There were big learnings related to the importance of consistency and standardization across geographies,” Harford said, adding that China is “tough” and there were many takeaways there, too.. “If you don’t focus on this, unnecessary variation can become a real drag on innovation. This is a significant opportunity for Uber, given its decentralized approach to early growth.”

Harford was dealt a really tough hand when taking over the stewardship of Orbitz Worldwide in 2009. The company teetered on the edge of bankruptcy around the time he took up his post. The company’s private equity owners saddled it with massive debt, which Harford managed to pay down over the years. The company was also overly flight- and U.S.-focused.

By the time Harford sold Orbitz to Khosrowshahi’s Expedia in 2015, Orbitz’s hotel business grew substantially international operations as a percentage of total revenue had grown from around 21 percent to some 26 percent, a modest increase.

Khosrowshahi and Harford Battle over Booking fees

If Khosrowshahi and Harford are now allies at Uber — and they obviously are — they also were ardent competitors in the years both headed major online travel agencies.

In one pitched battle, Expedia shocked the online travel world in 2009 by eliminating most consumer booking fees for purchasing flights. Flight-heavy Orbitz was dependent on this business model, and some observers thought Khosrowshahi’s Expedia took the action in part to drive Harford’s Orbitz out of business.

Orbitz retaliated by reducing its consumer booking fees for hotels, and that disproportionately Expedia.

Khosrowshahi was said to be really impressed with Harford when Orbitz not only survived the booking fee skirmish, but managed to turn the tables, and grow the business.

In another example of the competitive dynamic between the two companies, Orbitz debuted a loyalty program in 2013 as a means for increasing customers and competing against Expedia, and Orbitz put a lot of marketing into it over the years.

When Skift had a chance to ask Khosrowshahi about his rival’s rewards program in September 2014, he said: “When we look at the Orbitz program, I wouldn’t call it as much a loyalty program because a loyalty program rewards you for being loyal. I think we see the Orbitz program as being more of a cross-sell program. If you buy an air ticket then you have some Orbucks to spend immediately. So it doesn’t necessarily reward loyalty; it rewards cross-sell.

“What we are seeing at Expedia is that we’re able to drive cross-sell through product innovation quite successfully. The Expedia Rewards program is much more about loyalty. We don’t think there is one formula for loyalty, but we are quite satisfied with our various programs and we continue to invest in them pretty aggressively.”

Khosrowshahi, though, had a much more positive take on the Orbitz Rewards program — calling it “innovative” — after announcing the agreement to buy the company in February 2015.

“Listen, we have been at the loyalty game for a long time,” Khosrowshahi said in February 2015 call with analysts to discuss the acquisition. “Hotels.com has had their Welcome Rewards program for a number of years and has over 15 million members as part of that program. Expedia has Expedia Rewards program, which is growing very nicely. So we are very much believers in driving and growing loyalty programs.

“We think the Orbucks program is quite innovative and that is a part of the business that we are quite interested in. The Orbitz team has built, we think, a pretty interesting platform there both in loyalty, in the private-label business, as well, where they are powering some bank points programs, which again is on the loyalty theme. We will bring those businesses in and we will invest in them and grow them. And we think they can absolutely be value-additive over the long term.”

Challenges Ahead

Uber obviously has numerous vexing challenges ahead.

The European Union just made a landmark decision that calls for Uber to be treated as a transportation service, subject to the same rules as other taxi services, and not as a mere marketplace. Khosrowshahi has pushed back with the idea that Uber has already transformed its operations in Europe to reflect that reality, although that is clearly a work in progress.

Would it have been smarter for Uber to have selected a woman as COO given its legacy of sexist malfeasance? Given that Uber already picked a guy as its new CEO and now has tapped another male to run its operations, this s a very legitimate question, and the company has a ton of work to do to transform its internal culture and practices.

There are women, though, such as Rachel Holt, who heads Uber’s North America business and is a direct-report to Harford, who wield considerable influence and power at the company. Uber is reportedly searching for a chairman. Should it be chairwoman of the board perhaps?

One of the issues that Khosrowshahi has to tackle is the deep divisions on the Uber board. One reason investors recruited Khosrowshahi to take the helm at Uber was because of his experience and ability to be a bridge-builder. “He’s not someone who hits you over the head with hammer,” said one executive who knows Khosrowshahi well. He wins you over through thoughtful arguments.”

Harford, too, is known as a skilled board room tactician, having maneuvered through toxic board conditions when private equity firm Blackstone controlled Orbitz Worldwide. “Barney was a superstar and stood on principle when there were difficult board issues,” the source said.

Meanwhile, data-geek Harford, who is said by one person who worked with him at Orbitz Worldwide to be obsessively detail-oriented, will be charged with making Uber’s operations, including its non-U.S. presence, more efficient and — shall we utter the word — profitable on the road to a 2019 initial public offering.

Khosrowshahi, too, is an Excel wizard and extremely numbers-oriented, as any former CFO and current CEO would be, and will be tasked with stemming Uber’s losses and upending the business model.

Together, though, the reunited duo will have to get more than the numbers right to transform Uber into a viable and sustainable business.

[touristguidebuzz]

The Inside Story of an Online Travel Reunion at the New Uber

Uber selected Barney Harford, the former CEO of Orbitz Worldwide, as COO. Trevor Knight

Skift Take: There were a ton of people who wanted the COO position at Uber, and it went to Expedia alum and former Orbtiz Worldwide CEO Barney Harford. The pressure will be on both Khosrowshahi and Harford to turn around the ridesharing company. As if there weren't abundant pressure already.

— Dennis Schaal

In tapping Barney Harford, a former Expedia executive and the ex-CEO of Orbitz Worldwide, to run operations at Uber during the challenging times ahead, Uber boss Dara Khosrowshahi picked someone whom he’s worked with and competed against for 16 years.

In fact, Harford sold Orbitz Worldwide to Khosrowshahi’s Expedia Inc. for $1.6 billion in 2015. Although Orbitz never challenged Expedia’s dominance in the U.S. market when Harford was Orbitz CEO, he was widely credited for modernizing a struggling online travel agency and boosting its share price from $3.77 on the day he was appointed in 2009 to $12 per share when Expedia bought it.

Here’s the inside story of how Harford got picked as Uber COO, and a look at the relationships and career meanderings that connected Khosrowshahi, who took the reins at Uber in late August, and Harford over the years.

Conversations Began Almost Immediately

Harford starting talking to the new Uber CEO within days after Khosrowshahi relinquished his post as Expedia CEO and signed on to head up Uber. Harford has always been a data geek, and got access to some of Uber’s internal numbers to dig into them while conversations continued as Khosrowshahi returned to Seattle on weekends.

Khosrowshahi initially thought his CEO role would entail running operations, as well, but started realizing he would need help on the daily operations side. In early October, Harford came on board for two days per week at Uber as senior advisor to the CEO  to help out with input on the core business, although the two initially discussed the possibility of Harford becoming Uber CFO, as opposed to the COO role he eventually took.

Harford busied himself with identifying the most important areas where improvements could be made at Uber. He then joined the Uber executive leadership team at an off-site meeting later in October, and during a break Khosrowshahi raised the idea of Harford joining Uber full-time. The company announced on December 20 the appointment of Harford as COO.

First Meeting in 2001

Khosrowshahi and Harford met for the first time at Barry Diller’s home in West Hollywood in early 2001 in a get-together to find a buyer for Microsoft’s controlling stake in already-public Expedia. At the time, Diller was chairman and CEO of USA Networks, Khosrowshahi was USA’s vice president of operations and strategic planning, and Harford was doing corporate development work at Expedia.

Expedia founder and then-CEO Rich Barton, CFO Greg Stanger, and USA Networks vice chairman Victor Kaufman also attended the meeting. In July 2001, USA Networks announced a deal to buy Microsoft’s shares and thereby acquire Expedia.

READ MORE about the role of USA Networks and Expedia in online travel history in Skift’s Definitive Oral History of Online Travel.

International Experience

Barton had hired Harford at Expedia in 1999, and in a 2002 speech about “passion,” called him out as “a live example of someone who simply wouldn’t leave my office until we built our merchant hotel business, someone who now runs our WWTE Private Label business … ”

From 2004 to 2006, Harford served as president of Expedia Asia Pacific, where he launched Expedia Japan and Expedia Australia. While serving in that role, Expedia laid the groundwork to take control of eLong, which happened when the Chinese online travel agency went public in 2004.

Harford left Expedia in 2006 and served as an eLong board member through 2008. But long after Harford left, eLong proved to be a money-losing albatross for Expedia in the hyper-competitive Chinese domestic market, and Expedia sold its eLong stake to Ctrip in 2015.

Harford’s experience in launching international businesses and straightening out problematic global operations is highly relevant for the tasks ahead at Uber.

At Orbitz Worldwide, he was saddled with fixing its highly problematic eBookers business in Europe it had been acquired before Harford arrived at Orbitz in 2009. In fact, then-parent company Cendant took a $425 million impairment charge in February 2006 related to its acquisition of eBookers two years earlier.

Harford managed a multi-year effort to migrate eBookers onto Orbitz Worldwide’s global technology platform.

“There were big learnings related to the importance of consistency and standardization across geographies,” Harford said, adding that China is “tough” and there were many takeaways there, too.. “If you don’t focus on this, unnecessary variation can become a real drag on innovation. This is a significant opportunity for Uber, given its decentralized approach to early growth.”

Harford was dealt a really tough hand when taking over the stewardship of Orbitz Worldwide in 2009. The company’s private equity owners saddled it with massive debt, which Harford managed to pay down over the years. The company was overly flight- and U.S.-focused.

By the time Harford sold Orbitz to Khosrowshahi’s Expedia in 2015, Orbitz’s hotel business grew substantially international operations as a percentage of total revenue had grown from around 21 percent to some 26 percent, a modest increase.

Friends and Foes

If Khosrowshahi and Harford are now allies at Uber — and they obviously are — they also were ardent competitors in the years both headed major online travel agencies.

For example, Orbitz debuted a loyalty program in 2013 as a means for increasing customers and competing against Expedia, and Orbitz put a lot of marketing into it over the years.

When Skift had a chance to ask Khosrowshahi about his rival’s rewards program in September 2014, he said: “When we look at the Orbitz program, I wouldn’t call it as much a loyalty program because a loyalty program rewards you for being loyal. I think we see the Orbitz program as being more of a cross-sell program. If you buy an air ticket then you have some Orbucks to spend immediately. So it doesn’t necessarily reward loyalty; it rewards cross-sell.

“What we are seeing at Expedia is that we’re able to drive cross-sell through product innovation quite successfully. The Expedia Rewards program is much more about loyalty. We don’t think there is one formula for loyalty, but we are quite satisfied with our various programs and we continue to invest in them pretty aggressively.”

Khosrowshahi, though, had a much more positive take on the Orbitz Rewards program — calling it “innovative” — after announcing the agreement to buy the company in February 2015.

“Listen, we have been at the loyalty game for a long time,” Khosrowshahi said in February 2015 call with analysts to discuss the acquisition. “Hotels.com has had their Welcome Rewards program for a number of years and has over 15 million members as part of that program. Expedia has Expedia Rewards program, which is growing very nicely. So we are very much believers in driving and growing loyalty programs.

“We think the Orbucks program is quite innovative and that is a part of the business that we are quite interested in. The Orbitz team has built, we think, a pretty interesting platform there both in loyalty, in the private-label business, as well, where they are powering some bank points programs, which again is on the loyalty theme. We will bring those businesses in and we will invest in them and grow them. And we think they can absolutely be value-additive over the long term.”

Challenges Ahead

Uber obviously has numerous vexing challenges ahead.

The European Union just made a landmark decision that calls for Uber to be treated as a transportation service, subject to the same rules as other taxi services, and not as a mere marketplace. Khosrowshahi has pushed back with the idea that Uber has already transformed its operations in Europe to reflect that reality, although that is clearly a work in progress.

Would it have been smarter for Uber to have selected a woman as COO given its legacy of sexist malfeasance? Given that Uber already picked a guy as its new CEO and now has tapped another male to run its operations, this s a very legitimate question, and the company has a ton of work to do to transform its internal culture and practices.

There are women, though, such as Rachel Holt, who heads Uber’s North America business and is a direct-report to Harford, who wield considerable influence and power at the company. Uber is reportedly searching for a chairman. Should it be chairwoman of the board perhaps?

Meanwhile, data-geek Harford, who is said by one person who worked with him at Orbitz Worldwide to be obsessively detail-oriented, will be charged with making Uber’s operations, including its non-U.S. presence, more efficient and — shall we utter the word — profitable on the road to a 2019 initial public offering.

Khosrowshahi, too, is an Excel wizard and extremely numbers-oriented, as any former CFO and current CEO would be, and will be tasked with stemming Uber’s losses and upending the business model.

Together, though, the reunited duo will have to get more than the numbers right to transform Uber into a viable and sustainable business.

[annieinamerica]

WHERE HAVE I BEEN AND WHY HAVENT I BEEN BLOGGING???

I want to start off by making it clear that when I started this blog I 100% was thinking I would be writing weekly and really sticking to it! I promise!!!!!!

But after a few very busy and eventful weeks I really thought that I might have to quit- that I was too far behind to keep it going. BUT I am never one to quit something once I’ve started (maybe that’s a lie) and have decided to push through with this blog regardless!

It’s gonna be a long one, but luckily for you, reader, things have been pretty interesting lately and I have a few great updates to tell you about! So grab a snack and settle in…

 1.     THE FAM CAME TO VISIT!!!!!!

I’ve been wanting to write about this week since it happened, but somehow thinking about it makes me both happy and sad because it was one of the greatest weeks ever. Dad, Susie and Hugs preeeetty last minute decided that they were going to come visit me for a week at the end of June. I had the weekend booked off work and a few plans in store, but NOTHING could prepare me for seeing Hugs and how much he’d grown! Like a huge spidery beanstalk with SHOULDERS!! Like he’s grown into the giant he was always meant to be! Dad and Suze on the other hand looked pretty much the same, but I can’t even TELL you how good it was to see them. It literally warmed my soul. We had an awesome week of sightseeing, shopping, hiking, exploring and eating great food, and watching great movies. Highlights included visiting the pier in Santa Monica (my favourite place in LA), laying on the beach in Venice, hiking Griffith and losing Moz for about half an hour, funny ubery doobery rides, coffee in the arvo at Republic of Pie and Susie sleeping over every night and wasting no time in reminding me just how annoying she can be. (jks love ya snooze).

Overall it was a really great week, I’m very grateful for Dad for all the amazing food I ate and my new sneakers- dad, suze and I now all have matching adidias (Hugs opted for the Jordans because his feet are about a size 300 lol).

I came out of this week feeling very refreshed, motivated and excited. After they left I almost immediately got strep throat and had to take another week of dancing. (STREPISODE 6).

 2.     FAMILY ROADTRIP WITH MY AMERICAN FAM!!!!!

 So after the fam leaves, I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself, when I get a call from my American sis/BFFFFFFFFF Cierra. We catch up a bit about life- she’s dancing in Portland having just graduated college and mentions a family trip coming up, and loosely comments how she would love to bring me to a) catch up an b) escape being a third wheel. We look at each other through the phone screen and think WHY THE HELL NOT? And so I find myself a week later on a plane to Portland, Oregon to join the Chambo fam for a roadtrip up the north west of the US AND CANADA!!

           I Jump of the plane to be whisked into a car, and driven up to the small Mariner town of Astoria (on the border of Oregon and Washington), and so begins the road trip! We spend each day for a week exploring a new place before driving 3-5 hrs to the next one!

           From Astoria it was across through Washington up to Port Angeles, where we DROVE ONTO a ferry that took us across to Victoria on Vancouver Island!  A beautiful little town that was probably my favourite of all the locations. From there we drove up to Vancouver, where we spent and day riding bikes (I SURVIVED) and eating excellent food, and then it was up to Whistler for the night. The next day we did a 4 hr hike at the beautiful Joffre lakes in Pemberton, which was probably the highlight of the trip for me. The hike was very steep, and about 60-90 minutes between each lake, but being a hiking lover I lead the way! Despite it raining all morning and us being drowned RATS in a forest, the lakes were absolutely STUNNING and one of the MOST beautiful things I have ever seen. All my childhood visions of ‘SWAN LAKE’ were coming to life at these lakes!

           After this is was a 6 hr drive down to Seattle, which was very cute by the ocean with a cool skyline, great coffee and cute markets. I had such a great time with the Chambos! Cierra really is the greatest friend but her family made me feel completely at home and part of the crew! Huge thanks to Scott and Donna for everything, I’m super grateful and excited to have seen more of the WORLD!!

 3.     AN EXCELLENT WEEK OF DANCING AND SOME VERY INSPIRING FRIENDS.

Upon my return to LA I got straight back into the grind, and BOY was I ready! It had been a long 3 week break- 1 week with the fam, 1 week with the strep, and 1 week with the Chambos. I hit the ground running and had one of the best weeks of dancing so far. I remember when I studied ballet, for a long time I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Like you do the steps and the choreography, but then one day it all just CLICKS into place. Like suddenly your body really gets and understands the pathways you’re making and you sort of LEVEL UP. That’s what happened to me this week with the commercial stuff. It was like every class I took just felt awesome and easier and like suddenly I didn’t feel like this tryhard ballerina white girl, and suddenly I felt like everything was working how it was supposed to… and maybe I actually had… SWAG???

At the same time this was happening, literally all of my friends booked work. Carsyn (my LA bestie and life support) has been on dance team all her life in college and her absolute dream in life it to dance for an NBA or NFL team. For anyone who doesn’t know, Danceteam is a huge thing over here (google it) basically a team of dancers who dance/support their sporting team- however its quite a bit more than regular cheerleading and takes some bloody good dancers to do it. Whilst I was away in Vancouver, my friends auditioned for the LA Clippers team, possibly one of the most sought after teams in the US because of the hip hop style and cool choreography they do. (these girls aren’t skipping around and lookin pretty, theyre DANCING FULL OUT). Incredibly, Carsyn and another great friend Holly, MADE THE TEAM!!! OUT OF 350 PEOPLE!!!!! My first thought was OMG I SHOULD HAVE AUDITIONED WHAT HAVE I DONE… but after a second I was like, no this is perfect, obviously something else is in store for me.

BUT GET THIS!!!

The same week that they got their contract, Holly’s roommate (and another great friend of mine) Kelly got a phone call offering her a cruise ship contract. Shes been waiting for this for SO long as its her dream too, and now its happening!!

I thought to myself, ok I have to ride this wave!! Its my turn next! And immediately started looking for auditions.

The closest one was for some random show in Vegas… and there I reconnected with my fellow Aussie friend Estelle who I always seem to run into at auditions. We both got cut pretty early (turns out they were looking for tiny ballerinas) and went to get lunch and catch up. 1 week later.. and Estelle has just been booked for a China tour with an artist from over here!

I am now CERTAIN that my turn is coming next and I have a few auditions coming up so we’ll wait and see!!!

 4.     PHOTOSHOOTS, BLONDE AND MORE PHOTOSHOOTS

I’m lucky to be surrounded by talented people here, obviously every one of my friends in noho is a talented dancer, but even at Victoria’s Secret almost all of my coworkers have a separate passion on the side. Theres a comedian, music producer, dj, photographer, makeup artist, hair stylist, fashion designer and so on. One of my coworkers Gena, a twenty-something bra specialist, who actually the ability to tell anyones bra size just by looking at them, is also a specialist portrait-photographer. She charges thousands of dollars to shoot people and make them into the most glamorous versions of themselves, and she asked if I would shoot for her. She wanted to make a promo video for her business, using me in exchange for a free shoot. Of course I said yes!! Photos are to come- but I have posted my new headshot from that shoot!!

A few weeks later, I went blonde. HAHA!

Carsyn works at an amazing salon in Beverly Hills and I was lucky enough to be a model and have my hair done for FREE by their amazing lead stylist Sayaka. She wanted to do blonde so I said why not and so far I love it!

I’ll go back to brown eventually but for now I’m loving it- out here I look ‘more Aussie than ever’. It’s pretty important to have an established ‘look’ out here. For Carsyn it’s the white blonde bob, Kristyn has long black hair, Kelly has the bangs… And with all the black girls and Latinas out here my light brown hair didn’t really cut it. So now I’m like a beachy/summery blonde and I think that this could really help in my auditions… AAAND I had another shoot with Gena to get some updated headshots.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Required Reading

MASS MoCA will unveil what it’s claiming is the “world’s largest watercolor painting,” a 120-square-foot (8′ x 15′), site-specific commission by Barbara Prey. That’s quite a claim, though I do wish the painting was a little more exciting. (via MASS MoCA)

This article about a family “slave” in the US has been much discussed this week. Alex Tizon, who died at the age of 57 this year, writes about when he realized who the woman who lived with his family was. The whole story is chilling:

To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said “please” and “thank you.” We never talked about Lola. Our secret went to the core of who we were and, at least for us kids, who we wanted to be.

After my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave.

RELATED: Some interesting responses:

"My Family's Slave" is now trending in the Philippines, where it's lunch time. I'm going to share a few interesting threads from Filipinos:

— Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen) May 17, 2017

Honestly I'm convinced 3/4 of you who are opining about the Tizon piece didn't finish reading it

— Sarah Jeong (@sarahjeong) May 17, 2017

Eudocia Polida was an enslaved person whose hopes and dreams we know filtered only through the service of others by system not choice

— Sydette (@Blackamazon) May 17, 2017

Read "My Family's Slave" &I just literally wanted to reach into the story and punch every fucker in the Tizon family, including the author.

— ✡️Josh Shahryar ☪ (@JShahryar) May 16, 2017

I hate Interview, which is a celebrity-obsessed rag full of starfuckers, but I do always love Antwaun Sargent’s perspective, so I really enjoyed his interview with painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye:

SARGENT: One signature aspect of your painting is that the figure almost blends into its surroundings, because the earth tones of your backdrops are reflective of the character’s dark brown skin tones. There are a lot of things that are being signified but particularly there’s a critique of the hypervisibility, which Ralph Ellison talked about, that renders blackness completely seen and unseen. Is that part of the negotiation between the figure and its surroundings in your work?

YIADOM-BOAKYE: Maybe I think more about black thought than black bodies. When people ask about the aspect of race in the work, they are looking for very simple or easy answers. Part of it is when you think other people are so different than yourself, you imagine that their thoughts aren’t the same. When I think about thought, I think about how much there is that is common.

Robert Rauschenberg’s “Bed” (1955) piece includes a “stolen” bedcover from another artist:

But for the artist Dorothea Rockburne, the painting carries a more personal charge. She first met Rauschenberg during their student days at Black Mountain College, the fabled school near Asheville, N.C., that was briefly the epicenter of the American avant-garde. One day, Ms. Rockburne was in the college laundry room unloading her wash from the dryer when she realized that her patchwork quilt was missing. “The next time I saw it was at the Leo Castelli Gallery,” she recently recalled in a tone of disbelief, referring to the public debut of “Bed.” “My first thought was: Son of a bitch! We were close friends.”

Masha Gessen writes about the language of autocrats:

A Russian poet named Sergei Gandlevsky once said that in the late Soviet period he became obsessed with hardware-store nomenclature. He loved the word secateurs, for example. Garden shears, that is. Secateurs is a great word. It has a shape. It has weight. It has a function. It is not ambiguous. It is also not a hammer, a rake, or a plow. It is not even scissors. In a world where words were constantly used to mean their opposite, being able to call secateurs “secateurs”—and nothing else—was freedom.

“Freedom,” on the other hand, was, as you know, slavery. That’s Orwell’s 1984. And it is also the USSR, a country that had “laws,” a “constitution,” and even “elections,” also known as the “free expression of citizen will.” The elections, which were mandatory, involved showing up at the so-called polling place, receiving a pre-filled ballot—each office had one name matched to it—and depositing it in the ballot box, out in the open. Again, this was called the “free expression of citizen will.” There was nothing free about it, it did not constitute expression, it had no relationship to citizenship or will because it granted the subject no agency. Calling this ritual either an “election” or the “free expression of citizen will” had a dual effect: it eviscerated the words “election,” “free,” “expression,” “citizen,” and “will,” and it also left the thing itself undescribed. When something cannot be described, it does not become a fact of shared reality. Hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens had an experience of the thing that could not be described, but I would argue that they did not share that experience, because they had no language for doing so. At the same time, an experience that could be accurately described as, say, an “election,” or “free,” had been preemptively discredited because those words had been used to denote something entirely different.

Siobhan Burke is speaking out against imagery in dance that exploits women (including images of sexual violence):

By “images of violence against women,” I mean not just depictions of violent acts but also the kind of forceful partnering that’s become so ubiquitous, so gratuitous, so banal in ballet — the yanking, dragging, prying open of women’s bodies by men — both with and without a narrative pretext. Calling it out, as I did after seeing Angelin Preljocaj’s “La Stravaganza” (1997) for City Ballet in 2014, or Mauro Bigonzetti’s “Cantata” (2000), performed by Gauthier Dance in 2016 — feels as tiresome as watching it, and unpacking its history would take more space than I have here.

… My disappointment with “Odessa” led me to post a photo on Instagram — my favorite place to air an impulsive thought — with the caption “no more gang rape scenes in ballets, please.” (The photo was of my face, looking directly at the camera, wearing what I consider an “over it” kind of expression.) This prompted an expansive thread of comments, including by my colleague Alastair Macaulay, who had reviewed “Odessa” for The New York Times. He asked whether my call for “no more” was a call for censorship: “Must works of art only depict people behaving correctly?”

The answer, of course, is no. If artists want to deal with rape, gang or otherwise, as subject matter, they should, as they should grapple with any difficult issue. But they must really deal with it: Say something. Don’t just toss it in as one more incidental plot twist, one more exquisite thing to behold. Acknowledge its urgency, its complexity and the fact that to many in the audience, it may not be so abstract.

Documenta or Crapumenta?

Graffiti castigating the spectacle as “Crapumenta 14” soon appeared. “I refuse to exoticize myself to increase your cultural capital. Signed: The People,” has been a particular favourite. While Giorgos Kaminis, the city’s mayor, maintained Documenta was fantastic for tourism (as Aegean Airlines’ new and fully booked Kassel to Athens route has proved), critics complained that it amounted to the worst kind of crisis tourism.

“There’s anger because they haven’t taken circumstance into account,” says Nadja Argyropoulou, a curator in Athens. “Their theory is beautiful, radical and timely, but they didn’t mingle or take the leap into the everyday or address the reality here. Circumstance is what humbles theory and makes art as important as real life.”

For detractors, Szymczyk had become the embodiment of the corporate, neo-liberal order he professes to abhor, a purveyor of the worst kind of soft German power. Not only was the exhibition abstruse, it had committed the cardinal sin of omitting Greek artists and curators. “There are so many names,” Argyropoulou says. “People who should have been in it but were never approached. But please also write that we want them to succeed. If they fail, it is us who will be left with their ruins of contemporary art – and in a country that is continually looking to its past, with unresolved questions of identity, that would be disastrous.”

An obsessive fan found the source for the cover image of Radiohead’s OK Computer album (it’s a highway in Hartford):

    After looking at 2,000 scripts, 25,000 actors, 4 million lines, and analyzing them by gender, this is what Hanah Anderson and Matt Daniels (writing for the Pudding) found:

A tour of the new Foster Partners–designed Apple HQ, where the tech company even designed a special pizza box for employees:

For workers who want to take the café’s pizza back to their pods, Apple created (and patented) a container that lets air and moisture escape so the crust won’t get soggy. (via Wired)

Jack O’Donnell worked for Trump in the 1980s, and he reminds us that everything he’s doing is NOT a surprise:

After I resigned in April 1990, I wrote a book about my time with him, Trumped: The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump, His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall, in 1991. In the book, I told stories about Trump’s leadership style that would come to echo his presidency years later.

I witnessed him make public phone calls that he insisted were private and use those conversations to humiliate and corner the person on the other end. I witnessed him demand loyalty from those who worked for him. I witnessed him make impulsive decisions as a result of his short attention span.

RELATED: Did you know Nixon wrote to Donald Trump in 1987? Presidential historian Michael Beschloss posted this:

Nixon writes to Trump, 30 years ago this year: http://pic.twitter.com/rKxHBXNuXO

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) May 17, 2017

ALSO RELATED: A new poll suggests a majority of Americans believe Trump is a liar and wish Obama was still president. More data from Public Policy Polling:

Only 40% of voters approve of the job Trump is doing to 54% who disapprove. For the first time we find more voters (48%) in support of impeaching Trump than there are (41%) opposed to the idea. Only 43% of voters think Trump is actually going to end up serving his full term as President, while 45% think he won’t, and 12% aren’t sure one way or the other.

… By an 8 point margin, 49/41, they say they wish Hillary Clinton was President instead of Trump. And by a 16 point margin, 55/39, they say they wish Barack Obama was still in office instead of Trump.

And Time Magazine‘s new cover became a topic of discussion on social media. This is probably the funniest take on it:

@TIME Fixed this for you. *Turn on audio* http://pic.twitter.com/7soqnUZI7r

— Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) May 18, 2017

Or did Time rip off Mad Magazine?

Once More, With Stealing Dept. TIME MAGAZINE RIPS OFF MAD MAGAZINE?https://t.co/dWYykrr4tJ http://pic.twitter.com/bfYrj2DpUb

— MAD Magazine (@MADmagazine) May 18, 2017

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning ET, and is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

The post Required Reading appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[medicalmarijuana-news]

The Federal Government Claims Zero Cannabis Jobs Exist. Here’s Why.

Editor’s Note: This week Leafly publishes “Cannabis Jobs Count,” a special series on jobs in the legal cannabis economy. The series begins today with Rob Reuteman’s report on cannabis employment data and why it’s so hard to find. We continue tomorrow with a state-by-state count of cannabis jobs.

  In this Oct. 1, 2015 photo, employees of Amazon Organics, a cannabis dispensary in Eugene, Ore., help customers on the state’s first day of adult-use retail sales. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)

Cannabis culture has moved in a few short years from an illicit black market to a legal industry in 29 states and the District of Columbia. Earlier this year the data analysis firm New Frontier pronounced recreational cannabis the fastest-growing industry sector in the United States, outpacing electric vehicles, LED bulbs, solar installations and big data.

Legal cannabis sales reached nearly $7 billion in 2016, up from more than $5 billion last year. Many expect sales in excess of $20 billion by 2020, even without federal legalization.

But like any young industry, there’s much we don’t know. For instance, we have no solid government data on the number of people employed in the legal cannabis sector. We know these people and their jobs exist. We see them growing cannabis, producing oils and edibles, selling at retail shops. But beyond anecdotal evidence, and despite the emergence of several data analytics firms devoted to the industry, we have little information on their wages, benefits and working conditions.

“There are no reliable figures for the number of people employed nationally in the legal marijuana industry,” says Morgan Fox, communications manager for the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project.

He’s right. Last year Marijuana Business Daily (MJ Biz) estimated that somewhere between 21,000 and 33,000 U.S. companies get some or all of their revenue from legal cannabis. That includes growers, retailers, infused-product manufacturers, and testing labs, of course, but it also takes into account consultants, technology providers, security firms, hydroponics and other businesses. For those ancillary jobs, MJ Biz uses a common multiplier effect that assumes each of the 7,000 to 11,000 companies directly involved with the cannabis plant will generate revenue for at least three other companies.

Last year a group of Oregon economists estimated that each dispensary there employed at least six people, but it’s hard – and likely inaccurate – to extrapolate those numbers to other sectors of the industry. And it’s difficult to even have much confidence in that six-per-dispensary figure. Some of the biggest product manufacturers and retail shops in Seattle and Denver employ upwards of 100 people each.

The big industry-wide sales estimates are impressive. But the human factor remains elusive. That’s partly because legal cannabis is a young emerging industry, and partly because cannabis remains federally illegal.

Federal prohibition continues to hamstring the industry’s ability to collect and analyze data about its workers. Federal agencies, you see, are the authorities who traditionally collect and tabulate jobs data. The feds dictate to the states how they want that collection done—or, as is the case with cannabis, not done.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s data agency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, doesn’t just refuse to acknowledge the existence of legal cannabis jobs—it doesn’t even have the capacity to tabulate them if the agency wanted to do so. Business and employment data are collected using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), which assigns a code number to each occupation. Breakfast cereal manufacturing, for example, is 311230. No specific NAICS code exists for any part of the cannabis industry—and it’s not likely to come into existence anytime soon. NAICS codes are updated only once every five years by a consortium of US, Mexican, and Canadian government agencies. The next update is due in 2017. There is no cannabis code on the agenda.

Even if cannabis were legalized by the federal government tomorrow, it would be years before labor statistics bureaus could break those jobs into a separate category. In a pinch, they’d probably be lumped into 424210, “Botanical drugs and herbs merchant wholesalers,” as suggested in this online cannabis banking thread.

Going after state numbers

Farmworkers inside a drying barn take down newly harvested plants after a drying period, at Los Suenos Farms, America’s largest legal open air cannabis farm, in Avondale, Colo. During the fall 2016 harvest, the 36-acre farm at Los Suenos yielded 5 to 6 tons of cannabis. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

So we have no official national data. What about state numbers?

Consider Colorado, poster child for the new cannabis economy. Because most of the industry remains federally illegal, “there is disagreement across the federal government as to how we collect employment data in the marijuana sector,” says Alexandra Hall, chief economist for the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. “Until we get the feds on board, we’re going to have some challenges tracking employees.” That being the case, Hall said, “we work around it to some degree.”

Hall has made a few attempts to match up the state’s employer databases with its employee tax databases. But she admits, “we have run into some problems with that methodology. Ours is an incomplete estimate.”

She took a run at it early last year and came up with a figure of 6,000 payroll employees. “Because the numbers are changing at a faster rate than the overall economy, we’re probably not capturing all of it. It might be a third larger – maybe 8,000 workers – but we’re not talking about tens of thousands of jobs we’re not capturing.”

Others disagree. They put the direct payroll figure in the 10,000 to 13,000 range.

Andrew Freedman, director of marijuana coordination for the state of Colorado, also admitted the difficulty of coming up with an employment number for the legal cannabis industry. “There are about 20,000 occupational licenses currently issued, but it’s really hard to say how many of those folks have jobs,” he said earlier last year. “A lot of them are not great jobs, and the people often are pretty transitional, so I’d use a working figure of somewhere north of 10,000.”

Colorado has an indirect occupational tally that other legal states don’t. All employees of state-licensed cannabis companies must maintain a license from the Colorado Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED). They’re like food industry worker cards. The occupational licenses are good for two years and allow the holder to work in the marijuana industry.

The number of active MED cards fluctuates, but in 2016 the number was usually hovered between 27,000 and 30,000. That’s a pretty solid data point. An official with the Department of Revenue added this caveat, however: “We do not track how many of these licensed individuals will go on to work in the industry.”

Taylor West, deputy director for the National Cannabis Industry Association, says she’s heard employment estimates of “30,000 in Colorado alone, based on occupational licenses and ancillary jobs. But even that is very rough, not based on a lot of hard numbers.”

Mike Elliott, formerly executive director of the Denver-based Marijuana Industry Group, also uses the number of MED license holders to come up with a figure of about 25,000 employees. From the number of license holders (27,350), “take off 10 percent for people who may no longer be employed in the industry or who let their license expire,” Elliott says. “That’s just people who touch marijuana – who grow, sell or manufacture it.” He adds, “I’m an attorney and very much part of the industry but I have no occupational license.”

Hunting the Colorado number

Farmworkers process newly harvested cannabis plants at Colorado’s Los Suenos Farms. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Frustration with the lack of a solid jobs figure led Adam Orens and a group of colleagues at the Marijuana Policy Group, a Denver-based economic consulting firm, to take a run at the data themselves. They thought the number of MED employment licenses was a good starting point, too—but a license itself didn’t necessarily equate to a full time job. By comparing the number of licenses with their own ground-truthed estimate of direct full-time employment, they estimated one full-time equivalent job (FTE) for every 2.14 MED licenses.

In their final analysis, published last October, the Marijuana Policy Group (MPG) estimated that there were 12,591 full-time jobs directly supported by the cannabis industry in Colorado in 2015. Using models that calculate additional indirect and induced employment, the MPG report found that $996 million in annual cannabis sales supported a total of 18,005 full time jobs in 2015.

What about 2016? “Year-over-year, if you just look at one state, you can probably scale it up accordingly,” Orens says. “There are a few nuances you’d miss—there was more outdoor cultivation in 2016, which requires relatively fewer workers—but overall you’d have a solid estimate.”

Colorado’s total cannabis sales in 2016 topped $1 billion at the end of October. They were on pace to hit $1.33 billion by the end of December. That 33 percent increase, applied to employment, would push the state’s full time cannabis jobs to 23,407.

The Big Kahuna: California

Aaron Gonzalez follows a path to harvest cannabis from grower Laura Costa’s farm near Garberville, Calif., in October 2016. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

What about the Golden State? Again, nobody knows for sure. Experts agree on only two things about California’s cannabis market. It’s the largest in the country, and there is virtually no government or institution-backed job data available. “Whatever data we lack in Colorado,” says Joe Hodas, chief marketing officer for Denver-based Dixie Elixirs, “it’s a hundredfold in California.”

Chris Walsh, editorial director of Marijuana Business Daily, estimates that California represents 40 to 50 percent of all legal sales, nationally. “California is a big black hole of data,” he says, “and it’s half the industry.”

John Kagia is executive vice president of industry analytics for Washington, D.C.-based New Frontier , a data company focused exclusively on legal marijuana industry. New Frontier has formed a partnership with ArcView, the cannabis-focused angel investor network, to produce annual reports and updates on the industry.

“We have not built a comprehensive view of the national legal cannabis job market,” says Kagia. “However, we have seen some state-specific analysis for markets like Colorado and Oregon. In Colorado, the estimates suggest over 10,000 people are employed in the industry. In Oregon, a recent report found that 2,100 retail jobs had been created, but it did not project numbers for the overall industry.” Since each state classifies the industry jobs differently, “it will take some us some time to build a definitive national picture on the legal industry’s employment level,” he adds. “It’s a very difficult number to capture.”

Bringing light to job data darkness

In this, Oct. 27, 2016, photo, Rachael Torricelli looks at marijuana for sale at Blum in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Marijuana Business Daily, which has been tracking the industry since 2011, included rough national employment numbers for the first time in its 2016 Marijuana Business Factbook.

“It’s very difficult to get numbers in this industry,” says MJ Biz’s Walsh. “The state estimates tend to be way off. Some are laughable. In some cases, people with great credentials are just making shit up.”

MJ Biz does an anonymous online survey of cannabis business owners. One question that was asked of nearly 1,000 respondents was how many people they employ, full and part-time. “We can get an average for each niche,” Walsh says. “Given the darkness of the industry, this is the best way to look at it.”

The results? MJ Biz provides both a conservative and an aggressive estimate.  For jobs in which an employee “touches the plant,” the estimate ranges from 55,000 to 88,000. Total industry employment is projected to be from 101,000 to 154,000.

For the industry total, Walsh uses an economic multiplier that projects two ancillary jobs for each direct job. “We also include people from other industries that may have one employee who deals with the pot industry,” he says. “We strive to provide realistic numbers grounded in reality, not to make the industry appear bigger than it really is,” Walsh adds. “We don’t lobby, offer investments, provide consulting services or have any other reason to publish hype. We present a conservative picture of the market.”

At this point, with the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics refusing to acknowledge the existence of a single legal cannabis job, a conservative estimate may be the best we’re going to get.

Lead Image: Brennan Linsley

Coming tomorrow: Leafly dives into state-by-state data to determine how many full time jobs are supported by the legal cannabis industry. On Friday, Rob Reuteman profiles five real people in five real cannabis jobs. In our final installment, we look at current employment openings in the cannabis industry—complete with salaries, benefits, and some surprising job titles.

Rob Reuteman

Rob Reuteman is a former columnist and business editor at the Rocky Mountain News. He now teaches journalism at Colorado State University.

The post The Federal Government Claims Zero Cannabis Jobs Exist. Here’s Why. appeared first on Leafly.

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