#amazon hq

It's great watching people speculate on what Amazon's HQ siting process is, or what the philosophy is behind the different decisions they've made. Truth is, the negotiations are being done by a guy named Jeff Bucklestern. Or Craig Burski. Something like that. Craig Burski is from a suburb of Indiana, where he grew up under the tutelage of his father, a corn warehouser or something stupid like that which actually put Craig Burski's dad in the $2-5 millionaire range. Craig Burski went to University of Michigan law school. Craig Burski drinks constantly and loves cocaine. Craig Burski is fucking mean to everyone. Craig Burski wishes that everyone was dead so he could get all the money and cocaine. He's also hyper-patriotic. Craig Burski has a 'timeshare' in Nevada where he flies out to every month to 'gamble'. His gambling losses are always the same each month, and his rent is weirdly high. Nobody notices because it's hidden behind a weird Nevada-specific type of LLC that has a PO Box as an address. Several years ago, Amazon made a list of different city-regions where they would like to set up another HQ. They mostly argued about which city they could get the most incentives leveraged out of that would also match what they needed for their operations. They called Craig Burski's firm, Burski & sons (although the sons are always missing) and brought him in as a consultant. Cocaine dripping from his nose, Craig Burski pulled out his bowie knife and stabbed it into the new redwood table in the middle of the Amazon office. He then laid out his plan to get cities on board, get them to commit incentives to the Amazon HQ2, then *split* the HQ across multiple cities while retaining the same incentives they had coaxed out of the cities. Anyways, that's probably how it happened.

SOUTH RICHMOND STREET AREA [CHANGING BY THE DAY]-159676 by William Murphy Via Flickr: The next time you visit the South Richmond Street area (the block bounded by South Richmond Street, Harcourt Road and Charlemont Street) you may be surprised as much of you remember will have disappeared and it is likely that the area will be dominated by the new Amazon HQ complex.

Amazon is opening an HQ in Arlington, VA and already northern VA has felt the ripple effects within the economy. A one bedroom apartment that I lived in on my own about 6 years ago cost me only $975/month with all utilities included AND pet fees. That SAME APARTMENT—it hasn’t been renovated, there have been NO upgrades to the community whatsoever—is now priced at $1275/month, not including pet fees and utilities. Can we please fucking kill capitalism already?? How is this NOT inhumane?!