Crime Pays. Especially in Oaktown.

Today’s money quote:

“People always seek to improve their wealth and status in the easiest way possible. What’s the easiest way? Take wealth from someone else. That’s why criminals are still in business…after thousands of years of trying to stop them.”

A New All-American Olympics; Plus, Oakland Edition

Now we have another “We’re #1!” type event: the Unemployment Olympics in NYC! Woohoo!(As seen at NYDN and elsewhere.)

Time for Oakland’s Crime & Pimpin’ Olympics! We could have:

• Find a Mayor Up to Some Good, Or Possibly Working
• Put out a porta potty fire
• Be a human shot spotter in the Eastmont Mall parking lot
• Speed portrait painting of prostitutes by San Pablo McDonald’s
• Timed scavenger/treasure hunt at all 100+ 2008 murder sites
• Duck and cover from the chrome wheels
• Find a Tree Without Graffitti
• Measure the black tinting in my windshield
• Count shell casings on my block at night with the lights off
• Turn these empty cartridges into necklaces for sale in RR or Uptown
• Convince your neighbors we have a crime problem taboo/charades
• Fill the water coolers in City Hall with every Koolaid flavor
• Drive your neighborhood drug dealer caught in the act to Montana to be processed at the nearest county jail and fill out his paperwork before falling asleep
• Find a “safe” beat in Oakland not too far uphill or filled with hipsters
• Run away from the muggers three-legged race
• Catch the garden hose thief

Now who will help me “bake the bread”? Ho ho ho–a low blow, you say?

This reminds me of an epiphany I had today. We had a housing atm bubble, zero down for 60 months auto bubble, and bankster bubble… to go with that we also had a jobs bubble… which leads me to conclude that our peak oil bubble also produced a human population bubble. Charming thoughts.

Job bubble photo below, from Mish’s Global Economic Banalisys.

For the record, I don’t consider vice to be in the same category as violent crime or property crime.