Note: While it may appear that the first part of this thread is off topic i assure you it isn't. Keep reading. I decided it needed to be placed here on the main A/P forum rather than the lounge even if it ever so mildly discusses economics and a touch of politics. The politics is probably something we'd all agree on anyway. Most of us that is...
I've been a contractor by trade most my adult life. Before that i started out as a musician. In neither prior business was I trying to hit the big time. Nothing like:
Fame in music.
Huge wealth in construction.
Sure those ideas crossed my mind now and then. However I'm kind of an aging hippie. At 52 that makes me a little young to have been in the Haight Ashbury District in '67 (I was only twelve then and my folks lived in Maryland) but that was where my mind developed. The concept of FREEDOM. No, not the drugs or tons of sex.
Just the desire to do my thing and make a half decent living out of it. That was the REAL MESSAGE of the Hippies. Then as now I really need very little. My car's odometer just spun over 199,000 on the way back from the casino tonight. And yet i have no intention of getting a new car. Or even a newer used car. Maybe I never will buy another car if things keep going well enough.
Who do I need to impress in order to make myself happy? No one.
Definition of "Status": When you buy things you don't need with money you don't have in order to impress people you don't like".
I'm hoping the thing goes another two hundred thousand without an engine overhaul. The car will travel 2000 miles on each quart of oil. Zero engine wear that is. A miracle. Kind of my little gift from God.
I am always happy with what I have so long as it's enough. "Enough" is a definition that varies from person to person. For women, particularly Imelda Marcos types it means six thousand pairs of shoes.
To me it just means that the major bills are paid and I've got enough work planned to carry me through at least half of the coming month.
I own only two pairs of shoes, one sport jacket and a black suit for musical gigs or funerals. Most everything else I wear is for work with a few casual pants and shirts. That's it!
The problem of course for construction in California is that the bottom has fallen out of the market. Cheap imported labor has nearly ruined my "easy does it" lifestyle. I made better money in 1987 when, to be honest i really didn't know diddly compared to what i know now.
But in the early days of construction it was a pretty darn good life: Chose my own hours, treated my customers like kings and I had plenty of small jobs. I paid my helpers well though it was usually just one other guy besides myself. Small remodels, fixing leaky showers and decorative tile work.
The perfect part to full time job for an aging Hippie who likes to play music on the side. Or even gig seriously for money. There are some heavy cats are on my resume of band leader bosses:
Little Anthony & The Imperials
The Late Max Roach, jazz drummer.
I was even in the warm up band for Ray Charles in A/City 1977.
Every Memorial day I am ALWAYS one of two buglers playing at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, CA. We put on a nice concert beforehand too. A free treat if you don't mind being around a couple hundred thousand dead soldiers and their wives...
Those are good memories. There will be more. The things I still hold dear to me. More important than hanging doors, changing toilets and tiling showers for little old ladies though i even enjoy doing these things too.
All work is honorable. "the laborer is worthy of his hire" sayeth the bible. Somewhere in between the pages that is.
Now granted music usually paid schit when i did it full time (1975 through 1978) and was very sporadic and unreliable. Especially here out West where the AFM (musicians union) is a joke and musicians work for nothing at least half the time. Don't even get free beer.
So construction became a good trade for me. For quite some time. Paid the rent and mortgage later on although I did have to sell the house due to a wife with a screwed up sense of financial planning. Most women think this way: Consider the men in their lives the original "entitlement program".
Any married man will tell you this privately. Women can be biatches. Most of them anyway.
Never the less I enjoyed a sense of the original AMERICAN PIONEER'S FREEDOM!. My helper and associates were the last cowboys in our own way. Free riders of the western Sunset. Or in my case the streets of San Francisco. There's actually a huge neighborhood in S/F called the Sunset. Why? Well because it's on the ocean and the last part of the continent in my area to catch the final rays of sun floating over the vast Pacific Ocean at the end of the day. Except when there is fog. Which there usually is.
Back in those days: 1985 through 1999 we had it made. No, we didn't have any savings to speak of. Or pension, medical, dental whatever. Not often anyway unless our wives had them. But we could make a decent 30 to 50 bucks an hour for good physical work. Kept us in shape. I was even envied by a friend of mine who works in an office even though he made three times my annual paycheck.
He missed the freedom I had even though he made the BIG BUCKS. In my trade we don't have to say "Yes sir, no sir" etc. And if i really feel like it i have the FREEDOM to yell complimentary statements out the window to female passers by. "Looking great cutie" being one of my milder sayings.
I'm usually far more direct. Often a pair of specific body parts may may enter the discussion. Or at least be implied. They love hearing it too. So long as i keep driving on down the road that is. i do. Would never meet my own definition of "rude". Maybe yours but not mine.
And we enjoyed helping our customers too. My favorite were elderly black men living in Hunters Point. That's a neighborhood on the East side of San Francisco where the WWII shipyards were. there still is some shipping from there but not near as much. That's moved to Oakland.
Everything changes over time.
These kindly Black men owned their homes but came from poverty. So they appreciated a hard working man. Even a White dude like me. They'd show their appreciation by paying cash and telling funny stories from long ago.
I kept a yellow pages ad running and had at least three regular accounts. A couple of contractors and a property management company. And I didn't know half as much about construction back then as i do now.
But again: I was happy. We had it made. In our own mind anyway. None of us were running scared. Not like in today's market.
Then abruptly sometime around the year 2000 this lifestyle got very hard to maintain. Cheap labor coming freely across the border lowered my in the field rate sometimes to less than twenty bucks an hour. That's if i could find work. The "Dot Bomb" hit S/F particularly hard and a lot of the Yuppie money just dried up. People with money now were sitting on homes that wouldn't sell. Homes they'd bought for a million bucks but no longer had huge software type salaries that could afford the mortgage.
I'm a very skilled marble and tile worker as well as decent plumber. So very few of those Noveau Riche types could put in a second story or extra bathroom anymore.
Quite a few times i was down to just the nickels in my drawer for food money. Even had to take Food Stamps for a bit. Reason?
No work. None that paid half decent.
When times are hard the predators come out. Snake in the grass customers who work you down to a rock bottom price and stiff you for the last 33% check after you finish a beautiful job. Sometimes they'd rob you of 50%. You actually LOST money because of these A-holes. Simply evil people. Just the opposite of the nice customers i had in my early days.
It's getting a little better these days as i still have one or two "trust funder" clients who give my a project from time to time. And I've learned that no matter how well i do a job the average customer only thinks price, not quality. The good times are long gone.
You have to dig to get that "easy" fifty per hour that came naturally in the late 1980's.
Those were the days my friends and we didn't even know it.
Most the contractors i know who are "successful" or at least still in business are ruthless predators themselves. In order to work for them you've got to accept less than twenty dollars per hour BEFORE taxes and work at 2 to 3 times the rate of speed we had to work back in the good old days.
If not? Some immigrant worker will gladly take my job for fifteen dollars an hour. Maybe only ten. Sometimes he'll do a good job and other times he's just learning but the average customer is only looking for a price, not a quality product. Some exceptions of course.
How does this relate to good card playing? Specifically blackjack?
Casinos never close due to a lack of business. None I've seen so far. It's not like i got to worry because the phone won't ring and my kids will starve from the construction recession. So long as I've got an extra three to five hundred in my wallet i can usually pull off between 25 to 50 per hour earnings. At least lately that's been my haul. Sometimes more.
While the rules vary from bad to decent there are still beatable games out there.
And I'm a "people person". I enjoy chatting with the dealers, ploppies and even pit bosses with small jugs.
People are people. They can be neat. Everyone needs a job. No reason to look down on a dealer or pit critter. So far I haven't been backed off but i attribute that to my set limit of four to six hundred in winnings on any given day. Then to give that casino a rest for three to four weeks.
When i come back they treat me as a friend. And they are my friends. At least that's the way I think of them. I love these folks.
And when a decent paying construction job comes in i can easily swing that as well.
About the only thing that bothers me about blackjack is that at it's essence it really doesn't create anything. Not directly. Granted i can use tonight's winnings to buy a small digital recorder I need to replace the old one. Or add the dough to make my bankroll thicker. That would be the smart move.
So Blackjack is a means to an ends. The same reason i entered construction after Disco Music died out. Think I'm joking? People paid high cover charges to enter mediocre niteclubs in order to hear Earth Wind And Fire songs played by a live band. Even if we weren't E,W & F.
Things change. If we're lucky we adapt and survive. If not?
We push shopping carts and live under freeways. I know a couple PHD's who do this. Their wives took them for everything, as women often do. Shattered men, their careers got sunk from having too many missing years of employment on the old resume. Then their emotional state couldn't take the pressure of rebuilding and getting back on track.
Broken men. And some women too.
As for the rest of us "Cowboys"? Well there's still a future in Blackjack.
I for one am happy for that. VERY THANKFUL!
I've been a contractor by trade most my adult life. Before that i started out as a musician. In neither prior business was I trying to hit the big time. Nothing like:
Fame in music.
Huge wealth in construction.
Sure those ideas crossed my mind now and then. However I'm kind of an aging hippie. At 52 that makes me a little young to have been in the Haight Ashbury District in '67 (I was only twelve then and my folks lived in Maryland) but that was where my mind developed. The concept of FREEDOM. No, not the drugs or tons of sex.
Just the desire to do my thing and make a half decent living out of it. That was the REAL MESSAGE of the Hippies. Then as now I really need very little. My car's odometer just spun over 199,000 on the way back from the casino tonight. And yet i have no intention of getting a new car. Or even a newer used car. Maybe I never will buy another car if things keep going well enough.
Who do I need to impress in order to make myself happy? No one.
Definition of "Status": When you buy things you don't need with money you don't have in order to impress people you don't like".
I'm hoping the thing goes another two hundred thousand without an engine overhaul. The car will travel 2000 miles on each quart of oil. Zero engine wear that is. A miracle. Kind of my little gift from God.
I am always happy with what I have so long as it's enough. "Enough" is a definition that varies from person to person. For women, particularly Imelda Marcos types it means six thousand pairs of shoes.
To me it just means that the major bills are paid and I've got enough work planned to carry me through at least half of the coming month.
I own only two pairs of shoes, one sport jacket and a black suit for musical gigs or funerals. Most everything else I wear is for work with a few casual pants and shirts. That's it!
The problem of course for construction in California is that the bottom has fallen out of the market. Cheap imported labor has nearly ruined my "easy does it" lifestyle. I made better money in 1987 when, to be honest i really didn't know diddly compared to what i know now.
But in the early days of construction it was a pretty darn good life: Chose my own hours, treated my customers like kings and I had plenty of small jobs. I paid my helpers well though it was usually just one other guy besides myself. Small remodels, fixing leaky showers and decorative tile work.
The perfect part to full time job for an aging Hippie who likes to play music on the side. Or even gig seriously for money. There are some heavy cats are on my resume of band leader bosses:
Little Anthony & The Imperials
The Late Max Roach, jazz drummer.
I was even in the warm up band for Ray Charles in A/City 1977.
Every Memorial day I am ALWAYS one of two buglers playing at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, CA. We put on a nice concert beforehand too. A free treat if you don't mind being around a couple hundred thousand dead soldiers and their wives...
Those are good memories. There will be more. The things I still hold dear to me. More important than hanging doors, changing toilets and tiling showers for little old ladies though i even enjoy doing these things too.
All work is honorable. "the laborer is worthy of his hire" sayeth the bible. Somewhere in between the pages that is.
Now granted music usually paid schit when i did it full time (1975 through 1978) and was very sporadic and unreliable. Especially here out West where the AFM (musicians union) is a joke and musicians work for nothing at least half the time. Don't even get free beer.
So construction became a good trade for me. For quite some time. Paid the rent and mortgage later on although I did have to sell the house due to a wife with a screwed up sense of financial planning. Most women think this way: Consider the men in their lives the original "entitlement program".
Any married man will tell you this privately. Women can be biatches. Most of them anyway.
Never the less I enjoyed a sense of the original AMERICAN PIONEER'S FREEDOM!. My helper and associates were the last cowboys in our own way. Free riders of the western Sunset. Or in my case the streets of San Francisco. There's actually a huge neighborhood in S/F called the Sunset. Why? Well because it's on the ocean and the last part of the continent in my area to catch the final rays of sun floating over the vast Pacific Ocean at the end of the day. Except when there is fog. Which there usually is.
Back in those days: 1985 through 1999 we had it made. No, we didn't have any savings to speak of. Or pension, medical, dental whatever. Not often anyway unless our wives had them. But we could make a decent 30 to 50 bucks an hour for good physical work. Kept us in shape. I was even envied by a friend of mine who works in an office even though he made three times my annual paycheck.
He missed the freedom I had even though he made the BIG BUCKS. In my trade we don't have to say "Yes sir, no sir" etc. And if i really feel like it i have the FREEDOM to yell complimentary statements out the window to female passers by. "Looking great cutie" being one of my milder sayings.
I'm usually far more direct. Often a pair of specific body parts may may enter the discussion. Or at least be implied. They love hearing it too. So long as i keep driving on down the road that is. i do. Would never meet my own definition of "rude". Maybe yours but not mine.
And we enjoyed helping our customers too. My favorite were elderly black men living in Hunters Point. That's a neighborhood on the East side of San Francisco where the WWII shipyards were. there still is some shipping from there but not near as much. That's moved to Oakland.
Everything changes over time.
These kindly Black men owned their homes but came from poverty. So they appreciated a hard working man. Even a White dude like me. They'd show their appreciation by paying cash and telling funny stories from long ago.
I kept a yellow pages ad running and had at least three regular accounts. A couple of contractors and a property management company. And I didn't know half as much about construction back then as i do now.
But again: I was happy. We had it made. In our own mind anyway. None of us were running scared. Not like in today's market.
Then abruptly sometime around the year 2000 this lifestyle got very hard to maintain. Cheap labor coming freely across the border lowered my in the field rate sometimes to less than twenty bucks an hour. That's if i could find work. The "Dot Bomb" hit S/F particularly hard and a lot of the Yuppie money just dried up. People with money now were sitting on homes that wouldn't sell. Homes they'd bought for a million bucks but no longer had huge software type salaries that could afford the mortgage.
I'm a very skilled marble and tile worker as well as decent plumber. So very few of those Noveau Riche types could put in a second story or extra bathroom anymore.
Quite a few times i was down to just the nickels in my drawer for food money. Even had to take Food Stamps for a bit. Reason?
No work. None that paid half decent.
When times are hard the predators come out. Snake in the grass customers who work you down to a rock bottom price and stiff you for the last 33% check after you finish a beautiful job. Sometimes they'd rob you of 50%. You actually LOST money because of these A-holes. Simply evil people. Just the opposite of the nice customers i had in my early days.
It's getting a little better these days as i still have one or two "trust funder" clients who give my a project from time to time. And I've learned that no matter how well i do a job the average customer only thinks price, not quality. The good times are long gone.
You have to dig to get that "easy" fifty per hour that came naturally in the late 1980's.
Those were the days my friends and we didn't even know it.
Most the contractors i know who are "successful" or at least still in business are ruthless predators themselves. In order to work for them you've got to accept less than twenty dollars per hour BEFORE taxes and work at 2 to 3 times the rate of speed we had to work back in the good old days.
If not? Some immigrant worker will gladly take my job for fifteen dollars an hour. Maybe only ten. Sometimes he'll do a good job and other times he's just learning but the average customer is only looking for a price, not a quality product. Some exceptions of course.
How does this relate to good card playing? Specifically blackjack?
Casinos never close due to a lack of business. None I've seen so far. It's not like i got to worry because the phone won't ring and my kids will starve from the construction recession. So long as I've got an extra three to five hundred in my wallet i can usually pull off between 25 to 50 per hour earnings. At least lately that's been my haul. Sometimes more.
While the rules vary from bad to decent there are still beatable games out there.
And I'm a "people person". I enjoy chatting with the dealers, ploppies and even pit bosses with small jugs.
People are people. They can be neat. Everyone needs a job. No reason to look down on a dealer or pit critter. So far I haven't been backed off but i attribute that to my set limit of four to six hundred in winnings on any given day. Then to give that casino a rest for three to four weeks.
When i come back they treat me as a friend. And they are my friends. At least that's the way I think of them. I love these folks.
And when a decent paying construction job comes in i can easily swing that as well.
About the only thing that bothers me about blackjack is that at it's essence it really doesn't create anything. Not directly. Granted i can use tonight's winnings to buy a small digital recorder I need to replace the old one. Or add the dough to make my bankroll thicker. That would be the smart move.
So Blackjack is a means to an ends. The same reason i entered construction after Disco Music died out. Think I'm joking? People paid high cover charges to enter mediocre niteclubs in order to hear Earth Wind And Fire songs played by a live band. Even if we weren't E,W & F.
Things change. If we're lucky we adapt and survive. If not?
We push shopping carts and live under freeways. I know a couple PHD's who do this. Their wives took them for everything, as women often do. Shattered men, their careers got sunk from having too many missing years of employment on the old resume. Then their emotional state couldn't take the pressure of rebuilding and getting back on track.
Broken men. And some women too.
As for the rest of us "Cowboys"? Well there's still a future in Blackjack.
I for one am happy for that. VERY THANKFUL!
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