The Price of Gas

sputnik · Post by **sputnik** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 7:16 pm

Very pretty trailer Emily.

bullD · Post by **bullD** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 8:40 pm

I'd say that trailer is worthy of emoticon use

NICE!!!

Kinetic IV · Post by **Kinetic IV** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 10:53 pm

Oh wow, a modernized teardrop trailer! Most of those are very light and easy to pull without a huge gas mileage hit. And that one looks really nice...I want one of those.

spectabillis · Post by **spectabillis** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 11:57 pm

i-trailer?

happy jack · Post by **happy jack** » Sun Apr 10, 2005 4:31 am

emily, do you have a link or brand name for that trailer?

happy jack · Post by **happy jack** » Sun Apr 10, 2005 4:49 am

Never mind, I figured it out.

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:04 am

Comparative prices noted. Anyone have an idea of current prices abroad?

Yeah, I'll google my own homework later. . .

unjonharley · Post by **unjonharley** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:13 am

$2.21 in Salem

Lassen Forge · Post by **Lassen Forge** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 10:35 am

Whatever it is, it's cheaper than here!

If anyone hears from Iconoclast, he was checking to see if the cheapo gas station was still at 4th and Keystone (or somesuch).

blueniteowl · Post by **blueniteowl** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 12:42 pm

Woo Hoo! Gas here (MN) just dropped, I bought gas yesterday for $1.99. But over the last week it's been ranging from $2.09 to $2.35 depending on which gas station you stop at on what day. The pricing has been all over the board.

LostMachine · Post by **LostMachine** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 1:58 pm

Diesel today in Portland OR was at $2.80 a gallon. I would not be surprised to see the cheap gas hit $3.00 this summer.

------
I thought I’d look before I posted,
There are already gas prices over $3.00

http://www.californiagasprices.com/

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 2:26 pm

Cheap gas already in the 250s in the Bay Area. Nevada gas runs a little cheaper, but not shockingly so in my experience.

spectabillis · Post by **spectabillis** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 3:34 pm

vague memories of Mad Max fighing for petrol, probably appropriate for most art cars

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 3:36 pm

All thunderdome all the time.

too dry for fishies

spectabillis · Post by **spectabillis** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 3:41 pm

suicide sushi?

Chai Guy · Post by **Chai Guy** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 4:59 pm

I looked at one of those tab tailers as I too was intoxicated by it's design. Unfortunately, like a lot of product in the RV/Trailer market it's pure crap. It's poorly built and even the zero mile display model that I saw appeared to be falling apart at the seams. Brillant design however, and I would love to see one that was built by someone who could put some time and love into it.

unjonharley · Post by **unjonharley** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 5:04 pm

There was a trailer like that on a car lot up the street. It was pretty old but in good shape. Asking price $4,000. It was gone in a week.

bullD · Post by **bullD** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 5:18 pm

I just filled up my empty truck, a chevy s-10, not a large truck, just a small truck with a little four cylinder in it, yep, just a wee little truck with a wee little gas tank, 15 or 16 gallons I thinks...

$40.00 fukin dollars! that is a fukin first. we get reamed here in the bay area why? and especially in marin. is there a reason we pay way more than the rest of the fucking state, the rest of the fucking country?

<feeling only slightly better...>

ThePikey · Post by **ThePikey** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 6:06 pm

bullD wrote:we get reamed here in the bay area why? and especially in marin. is there a reason we pay way more than the rest of the fucking state, the rest of the fucking country?

A little bit is just higher cost of overhead out here - it costs more to buy/rent/pay taxes on land for business, they pass it on. Also, methinks CA has a little more in the way of gasoline taxes 'n' fees than the rest of the country.

But we also have a bunch of nearby refineries, which *should* bring prices down a little bit, but doesn't.

There's some places in SF that are nudging up against $3 for the cheap stuff, and we're not even in the summer driving/holiday season. I would not be the least bit surprized if we hit $3.75/gal by the time the burn comes along.

Think of it this way. Now its just that more satisfying to listen to jackasses in their big fat suvs and humvees whine. Gee, maybe you shoulda bought something just a *leettle* more energy efficient, huh?

diane o'thirst · Post by **diane o'thirst** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 6:08 pm

I saw that teardrop trailer at an RV lot out on the west edge of town. The sales guy said that there was a full king bed in there. I wanted to build a teardrop trailer myself but I have nowhere to store it, unfortunately :/

Just saw the regular unleaded gas price at Costco today, we're at around $2.35 there. Chevron's standing at $2.50, $2.65 and $2.71!

The big SUVs get shitty mileage, but when you're in the midsize class — like Navajos and Explorers — the mileage isn't bad. I can go 320+ miles on a 20-gallon tank, which is slightly better than I got with my old El Camino and what I'm driving is bigger and heavier than that was. I think the difference there is that I have a 4.5 litre V-6 and the EC had a 4.1 litre V-8 small block. And a midsize SUV really does live up to the Utility initial, they're tough rigs, can pull around 3,000 pounds, gets you up higher where you can see everything happening, and gives you semi-decent mileage. I wouldn't have put 380,000 some-odd miles on ol' Nephthys Navajo if she didn't get at least 15mpg. I'd choose a good tough midsize with a towing package over a Tankigator or Hummer any day of the week.

emily sparkle · Post by **emily sparkle** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 7:06 pm

diane o'thirst wrote:The sales guy said that there was a full king bed in there.

he lied. it's a queen if it was a t@b. there's no way a king would fit in there. it would be all bed... hey! good idea!

the t@b is my dream trailer because it's cute, light and takes no setup (like those popups). i was in one of the fiberglass ones not long ago and it seemed pretty sturdy. it was new, maybe they've improved their construction. not sure, but none of the little trailers are built very well at all.

we saw a whole row of a-liner hard-side popups on a lot last weekend that all had standing water in them. the sales guy (in his office) had just told me how great and waterproof their seals were. i asked him to follow me and showed him what i'd seen when i was poking around in the models. he was quite embarrassed.

bucky's reservation with a t@b is that he still has to crouch. the airstream bambi has enough headroom but it's something outrageous like $30K. we're starting a business in the fall and can't possibly do that.

Kinetic IV · Post by **Kinetic IV** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 7:41 pm

A-liners with standing water? A friend of mine is very seriously looking at buying one of those so I'll have to tell her to look out for that. It rained hard here tonight...I'll tell her to swing by and look at them again in the morning and see if those units have the same problem.

Wind_Borne · Post by **Wind_Borne** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 8:04 pm

Nifty trailer.

Re:

I keep seeing headlines in the news that "Americans aren't cutting gas consumption despite higher prices".

Last year the Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to Edward Prescott, who elucidated the time inconsistency effect that explains the above behavior. In a nutshell, the effect of the rise in gas prices on behavior will take place only after people have the opportunity to trade in their SUVs, change jobs, and change where they live. All that takes time. And by that time gas might be cheap again

For my part, I'm in favor of high gas prices. It encourages conservation and reduces the production of green-house gases. We don't need Kyoto; we need higher fuel prices.

diane o'thirst · Post by **diane o'thirst** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 8:49 pm

Emily — it was all bed

There were some cabinets flown above the foot, right inside the door, and a couple light sconces above the head.

stuart · Post by **stuart** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 5:44 pm

I do 55 miles a day for work. Yeah, I am a commuter. Housing is also cheaper where I work. No fuckin way am I gonna give up living where I am for the beige colored 110 degree air of the valley. Can't change jobs neither. Upside is that the wife's commute is about 3 miles.

My kingdom for serviceable mass transit. I miss New York.

synchronicity · Post by **synchronicity** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 6:24 pm

Slight thread drift - Will the average American consumer make lifestye choices based on costs of consumption, or just rack his credit debt higher?

$2.59 and climbing in the Southwest.
Doubled, gas will still be one of my cheaper Playa expenses.

Wind_Borne · Post by **Wind_Borne** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 7:19 pm

stuart wrote:My kingdom for serviceable mass transit. I miss New York.

Effective and economical mass transit requires that people live close to their work, and close to each other: like in Manhattan. This is becuase mass transit is extremely expensive to build and extremely rigid in operation. Case in point, while every politician and planner was busy building BART to service the projected needs of the San Francisco / East Bay nexus, Woz and Jobs built the Apple II and Silicon Valley flashed into existence. Oops... they didn't see that coming!

The truth is that mass transit serves a lucky few very well; it doesn't serve the rest of us at all; and it does this at a very high cost. Even in Japan, the trains bleed money. Mass transit is a centrally-planned solution; but we live in a distributed world.

Its sad that too many bright, environmentally aware, minds waste their energy on mass-transit as a panacea instead of imagining solutions that work with human nature, not against it. It's like the last century's distraction with communism: sounded utopian on paper, but fails miserably because it worked against human nature.

The successful transportation visionary must consider the problem holistically: vehicles, people, social relationships, culture, geography, economics, migration paths from the current transport system to the new one, and so forth. And while you're doing that, don't be surprised if a couple of teenagers working in a garage outside Visalia change the whole paradigm.

diane o'thirst · Post by **diane o'thirst** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 9:47 pm

Okay, here's my pair o' coppers.

As creative people, creative, independent people, you and I both know that we simply <b><i>cannot</b></i> pursue a lifestyle like that without personal, on-demand transportation. And likely the type of personal, on-demand transportation that drinks a lot of gas (pickup, SUV, utility or box van).

Mass transit is fine for office drones and students who have comparitively less to carry — just try to hump a load of 2x4s and plywood sheets or a pallet of concrete bags onto a bus sometime, they'll slam that door and run like hell as soon as they see you coming!

So what are you going to do? Shout from the mountaintop, "My lifestyle is endangering the environment and fucking up human society, I'm going to stop being a consumption-besotted artist!"

Me no t'ink so. And telling those pencil-pushers and corporate meat puppets that they're evil and consumptive is disingenuous. Let's face it, we've woven our society using petrol products as the warp and the weft. There's a bumper sticker that says "If you bought it, a truck brought it." And before the truck there was a train or a plane, and before that there was a factory, and those all run on fossil fuels and were manufactured with machinery using fossil fuels. Telling people to stop driving is shortsighted and at least to me, smacks of an attempt to curb individual freedom.

Wind_Borne · Post by **Wind_Borne** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 11:11 pm

So on the mark, diane o'thirst.

Secretly, I think what people really feel about mass transit is that everyone else should use it and leave the roads free for themselves.

For my part, I ride my motorcycle when conditions allow; but when I need to move some gear or arrive at a client's all crisp and professional looking, I take the car.

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 10:08 am

I don't know that this is true, but I'm speculating anyway.

Could the apparent defunding of the Black Rock Gazzette be related to gas prices?
The LLC has to do a lot of shuttling between the bay area (where gas prices are higher than much of hte country) plus they can reasonable expect to have to pay more for JoTS and other venders to cover their fuel costs. That might mean cutting down on consumption elsewhere. I don't know that that's what's happening with the BRG, but it's possible that that sort of thing might happen more often. Less money for art grants. Or a $50 rise in ticket prices for 2006, rather than the usual $25.