Three side-by-side houses in SFO’s Sunset district last week.

One person commented that he had lived in one of these and that it had a 5′ by 5′ outdoor patio in the center of the house. Come to think if it, I remember such an inner patio in my friend Rod Lundquist’s mother’s house out in the avenues, it was like a light well with windows looking into it on all 4 sides. A pretty nice feature for houses that are built wall-to-wall.

The title popped into my mind and I just looked it up, nothing to do with houses, but a pretty nice opening stanza in this poem by Eugene Field, 1850-1895:

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
    Sailed off in a wooden shoe,
Sailed into a river of crystal light
    Into a sea of dew.

“Where are you going, and what do you wish?”
    The old moon asked the three.
“We have come to fish for the herring fish
    That live in this beautiful sea;
    Nets of silver and gold have we,”
Said Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

• From @lloyd.kahn’s Instagram

This photo and a bunch of other interesting builds from our friend in France, architect/builder Tomas Strac (see previous post) at:

anarchitecturetomas2.blogspot.com

Small house in Martinique

The $392,000 Lifeguard: ‘Baywatch’ as Union Shop

Savvy bargaining has gotten them handsome benefits and six-figure salaries.

Being a lifeguard isn’t easy, but in Los Angeles it can be lucrative. Auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found 82 county lifeguards earning at least $200,000 including benefits and seven making between $300,000 and $392,000. Thirty-one lifeguards made between $50,000 and $131,000 in overtime alone.

After 30 years of service, they can retire as young as 55 on 79% of their pay. The Los Angeles County Lifeguard Association makes all this possible. Since 1995 the union has bargained for better wages, hours, benefits and working conditions.

Over the past five years, lifeguard captain Daniel Douglas brought home $630,000 in overtime alone. His total employment costs in 2019 were $368,668–$140,706 base pay, $131,493 in overtime, $21,760 in “other pay” and $74,709 in benefits.

In 2009 the city of Santa Monica signed a 10-year, $25 million contract with the county for lifeguard services. In 2019 the city extended the contract for five years and $17 million. There were no identified competitors and the contract wasn’t put out for bid.

To be sure, being a lifeguard isn’t all fun in the sun: Some are EMTs and paramedics, and some are part of an underwater recovery team and participate in diving operations. Some are marine firefighters with specialized training for fireboat operations. Some are on duty for 24 hours at a time — though they’re allotted eight hours for sleep, and if they have a call that interrupts their slumber after five hours or less, “the entire 24-hour period shall be counted as hours worked,” the contract states.

Still, they’re handsomely paid beyond what virtually all other EMTs receive. By comparison, the top-paid public lifeguard in Florida made $118,000, including benefits — though the pay goes further in the Sunshine State, which has no income tax. Even in New York City, the top-paid lifeguard made only $168,000.

Think of the Los Angeles County Lifeguard Association as the teachers’ union of “Baywatch.”

www.wsj.com/articles/the-392-000-lifeguard-baywatch-as-union-shop-11620858328

From Spike Bullis, ex LA lifeguard

Dear Lloyd,

Thank you for your amazing blog. Here is a photo of New Zealand’s first off-grid coffee bar, I thought you might like it.

Kind regards,
Bill (Choquette)