Showing posts with label Oakland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oakland. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Hustle ... Legal, right?

I was standing in line at a Newark, New Jersey coffee shop waiting to buy a donut. The guy next to me spoke very broken English. Said he was from Poland. Been here five years. Yet he had the newest cell phones and dressed like he had cash. Turns out he buys used cars at auctions, fixes them up, and then sells them. Makes a damn good living. No bosses to please. No HR Department to get turned down by. Just cash.



Being from the SF/Oakland Bay Area, I suffered economically when I was younger simply because I lacked ideas. "Everything Changes". If you're up today, you'll be down tomorrow. So a brother needs both a 21st Century skill set AND an 18th set of skills.

It's simply being a man. If you're smart enough to move out of the California Bay Area and purchase a home, then ... why shell out much needed cash to pay some joker who lives around the corner to check out your pad and halfway fix the holes in your dry wall? Learn how to do it yourself... it's all much easier than you think.

There are increasing numbers of places like SF City College's Evans Street Campus that teaches courses like:



Auto Body Repair
Home Building (from the ground up)
Auto Mechanics
Class A Truck Driving
HazMat
Motorcycle (two stroke) engine repair
Blue Print Reading

FOR FREE! Did you get that playa (I never figured out why so many people think they want to be players when life ain't NO game. Trust me.)

Besides, if you don't live in San Francisco or San Mateo Counties, how much game does it take to ask someone to use theirs ... or to simply tell the people you're homeless? (Happens every day playa.)

See, the idea is not to do these kind of gigs forever... the idea is to gain a currently needed skill and make enough money to buy some CHEAP property (with acreage) and then get onto doing the kinds of creative activities you really want to do. Remember the link I always preach ... rural real estate ... LAND in the country?

www.unitedcountry.com

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Shanty Towns In Oakland??

"The only constant is change ... when you resist it, change happens anyway, pulling you along kicking and screaming."




The place looks worse every time I return to Oakland. Economic racism looms large here. In an area where blacks experienced leaps in their personal incomes during and after World War II, it is now very clear that the black dollar has been written off in California as well as in many other states.

I parked my semi near the Oakland Coliseum and walked over the bridge to take BART. Hearing voices I looked down and was shocked to see a SHANTY TOWN here in Oakland!

The time when the plan was to: "Get a good education, and get a good (government) job is OVER!" Through. Ka-Put. Time for a new plan peoples. In other words... you can change, die, or wish you were dead.

It's been said that when God closes one door, He opens at least one more. Folks, we are faced with the same old Existential Dilemma that Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Camus, wrote enough books to fill up vaults about. In short, we are FORCED to be free.

China and India are now the world's number one and two largest economies. What do they have us looking at on television? Paris Hilton. In California the public health system is already overwhelmed and the parole system is hanging on by a tread. The recent Sub Prime Housing debacle threatens to ignite the global recession that has been rumored for the past ten years. And what is the black community's response? To demand Reparations.

Wake up folks! Everybody is trying to bring a covered dish to the table and all we're looking for is a free meal?? THIS from the son's and daughters whose ancestors walked out of Africa and peopled the world?? Oh Noooo ... we can do far better.

But the news is actually good for those who can see the signs, take faith in God, and walk towards a far more promising future. Land is cheap and plentiful in the Midwest and South. (Well ... many have already woke up and moved to the south so it's getting crowded in someplace already.)


I strongly feel that it's better to learn trades than are immune to recession than it is to get an English Degree. If your first dream is to become a doctor, nurse or teacher and you have the means to do so, then by all means, DO. Rural areas NEED those skills. The key is ... get some of this cheap land while it's still cheap.

In Oklahoma where my trucking company is based out of, I can buy 20 acres with an old house on it, a barn and water on or near it for under $100,000 dollars. In some cases, around $56, 000. The quality of life is far higher there and you can grow your own organic food without worries about the increase in genetically modified crops.

Wake up folks ... it's time to go. It's also time to relearn how to love each other .. and ourselves. Nothing teaches that like self-determination. The only Klan you have to worry about these days are those thugs living next door. Me? I'm buying land in areas where blacks are (many are very integrated), and building large fences protected by very large dogs.

What We Believe:

"Every problem is an opportunity in work clothes."
~Henry J. Kaiser