clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Curbed Poll: Battle of the Blues


Click to expand!

First day on the job, and our homeboys at Curbed New York Fucking City have already hazed us in the copy room. And LA? Curbed LA isn’t helping its West Coast sister out, either. It appears that both of these cities’ inner children are feeling threatened by BL?, one of San Francisco’s more formidable condo developments-in-progress. Curbed (New York, which is so New York that it doesn’t even need to call itself Curbed New York) went on a typical East Coast superiority trip, claiming that its version of BLUE—note the pedestrian spelling here—is “far superior than anything the West Coast could possibly puke out.” It is on, SF style. To the polls!

Before we discuss architecture, why don’t we get this little ego thing out of the way? Question: which city earned itself an entire South Park episode dedicated solely to its snobbery? Answer: Frisco, bitch.

Moving right along then? In considering our building’s moniker, we’d like to point out the clever dropping of the “e” and subsequent adding of the horizontal bar over the remaining “u,” resulting in the aesthetically pleasing and nevertheless phonetically identical BL?. What else would you expect from a city whose citizens hold the largest percentage of advanced degrees per-capita in the United States? Groundbreaking linguistic innovation, that’s what. A whole hell of a lot of it, too: at 120 units moving for around $800K each, we’re talking $9.6M (yay, math!) $960M worth of Smarty McSmartness.

As for the Other Coast? Um, New York? Did you even watch the flash intro on BLUE’s website before laying such brash claims? Are you seriously pulling for a condo complex that plays the first line of Etta James’ “At Last”—on repeat, nonetheless—in order to shill a building that looks as if it were fashioned from jello shots and krazy glue? Seems as though the Corcoran Group is banking a little too hard on frat party memories and wedding day sentimentality here. And outdoor showers? As if anyone in your frigid city would remove a single sock in public!

LA, how could you abandon us so? Traitor! Don’t think we didn’t notice your lifting of our flair. Your weak umlaut is no stand in for the understated elegance of our horizontal bar! “BlÜ. As in vÜ.” What marketing gürü busted a nut over that one? Only 11 floors, for rent only? Please. We have about as much time for that as we do the rest of your vacant, airbrushed no-man's-land.

To be fair, let's listen with amusement as New York and LA make their respective arguments. Then let's do what we do best, San Francisco: Get pissed off and vote!