[Noisebridge-discuss] Sleeping at NB

Sat Dec 25 07:00:12 UTC 2010

I think we all agree on "no sleeping at Noisebridge", because we
understand it to be the same as "no living at Noisebridge". Naps are
OK, as is resting after a long night of hacking. What is not OK is
sleeping at NB because you have nowhere else, and ONLY sleeping at NB
and not doing anything else.

The CCC design patterns for hackerspaces mentions no living at the
hackerspace, not for lease or planning code issues, but for the
reasons that Moxie so eloquently covered: a space where random people
are living is not compatible with a space for hacking.

Since we all agree on "no living at NB", the real question is how to
deal with people who take advantage of our openness and start doing
so. In principle I agree with Jake in the sense of humanely asking
people why they are doing it, but in practice I have had several days
taken up with dealing with people who were living in the space, and I
would prefer not to.

On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 10:33 PM, TeeTrizZz <info at leyenhaft.de> wrote:
> So all in all we know now not more than before. It could be a problem or it
> couldn't. The landlord became the inspector. He could care or not. It would
> be even worse if he reports it to the city, I guess.
>
> Why don't we agree on -no sleeping at Noisebridge- anyway? Is it so
> difficult to avoid sleeping here? Then we could close the topic, at least.
>
>
>
> Fabian
>
>
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> From: Gian Pablo Villamil
> Sent: Friday, December 24, 2010 9:55 PM
> To: Ronald Cotoni
> Cc: noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> Subject: Re: [Noisebridge-discuss] Sleeping at NB
>
> Dr. Jesus looked into this a while ago, and posted to the list. In a
> nutshell, living at NB is not against our lease, it is a planning code
> violation. Our space is not zoned residential. However, the inspectors
> who show up every month to look at the elevator probably don't care,
> as long as there are no obvious signs of long term residential use.
>
> I have quoted his message below:
>
> ==============================================
>
> I want to clear up a few facts here to help enlighten the brewing
> discussion a bit:
>
> First of all, it's not against our lease as far as I can tell.  It is
> a planning code violation.  Every time I've talked to city planning,
> including today, they've been real clear that 2169's current status is
> that there shall be no residential uses, period.
>
> Second, it's a legal gray area as to whether taking a nap while
> waiting for the next BART train is "residential use" or not.  There's
> some precedent for it: I know other people in our zoning category and
> neighborhood commercial district who do it occasionally.  Staying
> overnight might be ok, extended periods are definitely not ok, but
> there aren't any serious consequences if the planning department
> doesn't know it's happening.  You can look at the zoning page on the
> wiki for links to more detail.
>
> Third, a Department of Building Inspection person shows up once a
> month to check on the elevators, and the easiest way I can think of to
> get into the elevator room involves going through our space.  I have
> no idea whether they're going to report someone passed out on a couch
> in front of the member shelves.  My intuition says they're probably
> going to ignore it, but on the other hand the city is kind of broke.
>
> Fourth, I talked to three of the people involved with the last spat.
> I found out that a main reason why they are occasionally at
> Noisebridge overnight is that although they have housing, it's usually
> small and they prefer the Noisebridge social environment to being
> alone.  Passing out sometimes seems to be a common side effect of
> this, and for some of them it develops into a sheepishly admitted
> habit.  I've seen all three people pushing brooms at least once.  I've
> also seen at least one of them have a friend show up high on acid and
> pass out on one of the couches.
>
> Lastly, a common compliant seems to be the cost of transportation
> elsewhere, and the difficulty of getting affordable housing in San
> Francisco.  I added a starving hacker resources page on the wiki to
> aggregate the suggestions I'm sure will come up in the ensuing thread:
>
> https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Starving_hackers
>
> Please contribute to it for future generations who won't see this thread.
>
> On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 11:47 AM, Ronald Cotoni <setient at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Ok so.  I am usually pretty quiet on this list.  I am not a member but I
>> am
>> going to quote my last talk at 5 minutes of fame concerning public transit
>> which also seems very applicable here.  For being a city of such smart
>> people, you are all fucking retarded.  There is only one way to solve
>> this.
>>  We need to find out if it is indeed against our lease.  It doesn't matter
>> if the same people are doing it or if it is different people every single
>> night of the week.  If we are not supposed to have people "living" here
>> which could be someone (count 1) person, even if different every night,
>> could make us get kicked the f out of 2169 mission, we are being selfish
>> and
>> mentally handicapped.  If it is against the rules (not even set by the
>> almighty noisebridge or even involving consensus) we HAVE to enforce it.
>> I
>> personally am going to take a few minutes to review the lease if I can
>> find
>> a copy or speak to someone who you know, actually knows.  Personally, if I
>> find out in my research that we are not supposed to, the path is very
>> clear.
>>  No one does it.  I would hope someone would actually have some balls to
>> either say STOP or something else such as calling the landlord and putting
>> complaints in.  No offense, if noisebridge cannot pull it's own head out
>> of
>> it's own rectum, you might need some type of outside intervention to put
>> things into check.   Sorry for the doucheyness but this really isn't
>> something we should still be talking about.  Keep It Simple Stupid is a
>> good
>> idea in this situation.
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 2:31 PM, Sai <noisebridge at saizai.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Shannon Lee <shannon at scatter.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > This is the traffic light problem -- you've got a bunch of people at a
>>> > corner waiting to cross.
>>>
>>> That is an interesting analogy to make. Here is the anarchist (à la
>>> Moxie) equivalent in your analogy:
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Cassini
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space
>>>
>>> - Sai
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ronald Cotoni
>> Systems Engineer
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
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