[HN Gopher] The man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas (2022)
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The man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas (2022)
Author : dbcooper
Score : 120 points
Date : 2024-03-23 18:41 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (maxread.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (maxread.substack.com)
| reducesuffering wrote:
| https://1900hotdog.com/2023/07/upsetting-day-john-fenleys-cu...
|
| is the far more entertaining read.
|
| I feel a bit bad, because John Fenley is among us here on HN. But
| I think they also surface that John, you really need to get out
| of Pine Bluff and reevaluate these pie-in-the-sky ideas.
| ratg13 wrote:
| this is the most entertaining article i have read on the
| internet in some time.
|
| thank you for sharing!
| greenie_beans wrote:
| surely most of those incidents are fiction?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| No, all of it is very real. And there's a lot more on John's
| Twitter and Youtube.
| throwaway13337 wrote:
| Doesn't the writer sort of revel in the misfortunes of John?
|
| I'm not sure how he got his money, but what he is trying to do
| with it doesn't sound awful. He might be bad at business - it
| seems like that's the idea here - but a person like John, from
| what I can tell, is a kind of protagonist.
|
| He wants to build his crazy ideas that seem on their face not
| all together sound. And he puts a ton of effort into making it
| happen. These ideas are meant to improve the world in some way
| through the market forces as he can tell. I wish him the best
| for it.
|
| It seems like there is a big culture of cynicism towards people
| trying to improve things through action and not words.
| Underlying it is the assumption of negative externalities. But
| I think we lost sight of something here. All actions have the
| possibility of some negative externalities, but humanity got to
| where it is because of a lot of people doing their best to
| improve things.
|
| The instinct to make potshots from the sidelines at the guys
| playing the game sucks.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| 100%. Sitting in a basement and griping about things on the
| internet has 0% risk.
|
| Real life fails much more spectacularly and frequently.
|
| But it also has an infinitely larger chance of effecting
| actual change.
|
| _Edit:_
|
| >> _He'd had enough. Fenley began open-carrying a weapon at
| all times and holding any would-be thieves at gunpoint._
|
| This is semi-rural Arkansas.
|
| A state ranked 47/50 [0] in per capita income.
|
| It may require more than holding people at gunpoint,
| unfortunately enough.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_t
| err...
| reducesuffering wrote:
| John isn't a bad guy, and if he was close to achieving good
| things, I would be all for supporting him.
|
| Unfortunately, he is living off a 6 figure sum he got from
| stock years ago. He is rapidly burning it to 0 by buying
| unprofitable real estate. Instead of proving out ideas on a
| small scale, and scaling up from there, he thinks if he just
| tries for a home run, he can eventually do it. But he has
| multiple kids that he isn't seeing when he's in Pine Bluff
| most of the time. It's obvious that he's burning through his
| savings and will go bankrupt if he doesn't change course
| sooner. The nuclear reactor or mayor of Pine Bluff moonshots
| are never going to pan out.
| dinobones wrote:
| Part of me wonders if this is a high-risk high-reward play
| to avoid paying his ex-wife a divorce settlement.
|
| If he loses all his money, oh well, sorry ex-wife I've got
| nothing.
|
| If he wins big, he makes a ton of money, but paying out the
| settlement will proportionally feel like nothing.
| freetime2 wrote:
| Yup, I don't like to see anyone be the victim of crime like
| that. We can laugh at some of the poor investments he has
| made, but the reality is things sound pretty dire in Pine
| Bluff. I feel bad for him and all the residents of Pine Bluff
| living in a city where the rule of law has basically failed.
| jachac wrote:
| https://twitter.com/pontifier
|
| He tweets pretty frequently about the on-going drama
| cko wrote:
| I just scrolled through his tweets (Xeets?) and I must say I
| really like the guy. Hugely entertaining.
|
| I hope for his sake this is all a performance art but but I
| doubt it.
| cdchn wrote:
| Top tweet is him confronting an intruder then biffing on his
| face after tripping on a fire hydrant. I just couldn't scroll
| any further.
| 83457 wrote:
| 1. buy warehouse 2. buy houses 3. start a company and rent houses
| to workers 4. maybe profit
| mopenstein wrote:
| Imagine owning and renting to the people you employee. What a
| nightmare! He'd be villainized immediately.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Step 2.5
|
| Find reliable, quality, trustworthy colleagues.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| That seems to be a dangerous place, even hydrants are against
| you:
|
| https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1609493285675859973?s=2...
| Take8435 wrote:
| This entire post is so great. Love that it was posted by dbcooper
| lol
| untech wrote:
| What's the story of dbcooper?
| darby_eight wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper
|
| If he is posting, I sincerely hope he's doing it through the
| security-from-state of some anonymized internet access.
| Chances are he's just dead though.
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| Stole a bunch of money, hijacked a plane, jumped out with a
| parachute, escaped capture.
| untech wrote:
| I think buying a warehouse is kinda cool! But if he's facing
| security problems, can't he just hire guards? The labor price
| must be as low as land price there.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| "Can't he just hire guards?" I'm curious what you think a
| ballpark cost for 24-hour guard security would be?
| untech wrote:
| I've looked up minimal wages in Arkansas. It's $11/h, which
| seems ridiculously high, but I'm not an American. I think
| that in a depressed town, it shouldn't be hard to find
| someone for, say, $35 per 12-hour night shift, just to patrol
| the property with a torch, so that it wouldn't look
| abandoned? Which amounts to about $13k per year.
| adolph wrote:
| I think the above comment is using "torch" which in East
| Atlantic English means "flashlight" in Arkansas.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Pine Bluff has one of the highest murder rates in the entire
| United States.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576974&p=2#39587743
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Eliminate crime everywhere huh? I guess where would we be
| without maniacs?
| rKarpinski wrote:
| What he bought was a large warehouse and later some foreclosed
| lots at auction, spending in total ~400k. The warehouse alone was
| worth 3.4 million as recently as 2008 but de-industrialization
| and local crime have since cratered it's value. [1]
|
| While he's engaged in a completely unreasonable adventure, It's
| sad to see how accepting & cynical we are of the hallowing out
| and degradation of the US.
|
| [1] https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2022/08/17/meet-a-man-
| who...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > It's sad to see how accepting & cynical we are of the
| hallowing out and degradation of the US.
|
| Certain parts of the US. It's a big country, it might not be
| reasonable for it to all be doing well, especially with an
| overall older and older population with productive segments of
| the population agglomerating to smaller regions.
| cdchn wrote:
| >t's sad to see how accepting & cynical we are of the hallowing
| out and degradation of the US.
|
| It is disappointing that people are socioeconomically swept
| away by the tide, but I think all across America since its
| inception has been a place of ebb and flow. A nation of boom
| towns and ghost towns.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I've lived in Pine Bluff before (not that long ago) and almost
| everyone I worked with commuted from either Little Rock (a
| straight shot on the interstate for something like 45 minutes
| of drive time) or one of the nearby little rural towns. A lot
| of businesses have since left the town and will likely never
| come back. The crime is just too high and there aren't enough
| jobs in the area. Little Rock is pretty dangerous too in parts,
| but is safe for the vast majority of places.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| For anyone who wants to understand the macroeconomics behind
| why the US Economy seems to hate export industries lately, I
| highly recommend the book "Trade Wars are Class Wars" by
| Michael Pettis.
| mtlynch wrote:
| I'd never heard about this, but I found Bentley super likable and
| easy to root for. I hope he manages to get things going in his
| direction soon.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| I fell down the pontifier rabbit hole from a HN comment in early
| 2021 as well and I'm glad other people have found the story as
| fascinating as I did.
|
| I do think the article makes him a bit overly sympathetic and
| glosses over some of his eccentricities. Like the fact that he
| seems to really think he can build a nuclear fusion reactor from
| an old MRI machine and I guess all of the Nem saga:
| https://whoispontifier.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/the-journey-...
|
| I still haven't decided if all this is or isn't some sort of
| elaborate performance art, but I appreciate the effort in any
| case. And even though I think he's probably a few cards short of
| a deck, you do kind of root for him in the end.
| ashleyn wrote:
| Reading this was difficult.
|
| * What exactly was his plan for the building? I don't see
| anything coherent. One moment it's a makerspace, another it's a
| music warehouse, then it's a science museum. _Was_ there a
| coherent plan? $281k is a lot of money to spend with no real
| plan.
|
| * The city allegedly giving him grief. I'm still not sure if this
| was preventable or not considering the bit about how he failed to
| submit building plans. If your plan is to own a significant chunk
| of this city, you're going to have to play better politics than
| repeatedly being asked to leave at public functions. Palm-
| greasing would be a far better strategy than righteous anger.
| Maybe a fraction of that $900k could've opened a nice park they
| always wanted. Maybe the PD needs a new bearcat. Something.
|
| * Living in a tent on the lot instead of hiring security. This
| bit was straight out of some episode of a sitcom. This is a
| depressed flyover country town. If you couldn't afford security
| then you couldn't afford the building. Again, a good chunk of
| that $900k would cover round-the-clock security for _at least_ a
| year. Righteous indignation over the crime isn 't an actual cost-
| cutting measure.
|
| * The land is cheap for a reason. The way a town gets revitalised
| is external value flows in. How would the makerspace-warehouse-
| museum thing bring that value into the city? Even if all this did
| pan out, I'd predict an entirely new problem he'd have, which is
| no willing customers outside of a 200 mile radius.
|
| I don't get why people make cockeyed "investments" like these
| when the S&P 500 is sitting right there at a nice 8% a year. No
| bums, no politics, no thinking it through at all really. Just buy
| it and don't touch it. If your idea can't do better than that
| intersection of earnings and effort, don't bother with it.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Sadly this whole story & his YT channel looks like witnessing a
| man's slow descent into madness, like the meatspace equivalent
| of TempleOS.
| resolutebat wrote:
| He was living in a tent and subsisting off ramen _until_ he
| landed the $900k windfall, which he proceeded to squander on
| unrelated properties.
|
| But yeah, the total lack of security is astonishing, you'd
| think he could afford to hire a security guard: the main theft
| happened _after_ he got the windfall and could easily have paid
| for it.
| ametrau wrote:
| Wow. I thought stories like these ended when the internet died.
| I'm glad I was wrong. Should have been on HN ages ago. Crazy and
| exciting read. Thanks max read.
| cpach wrote:
| It's been discussed before:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| This story only exists because the guy can constantly post for
| all to see everything that he's done or is trying to deal with
| and all his grand plans
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I love this, and I am rooting for him. It's the kind of thing I
| dream about having enough money to do.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I find that there is a lot of inertia in decline, things that
| have been declining for a long time generally continue declining.
| The amount of work to turn around a township (?) would be insane
| and I wish him the best of luck.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| Challenges aside, I'm jealous! He needs to pull a Rajneeshpuram
| and politically take over the town, too, lol
| superq wrote:
| Needs more pitch for the archer towers.
|
| Maybe some war dogs.
| AI_beffr wrote:
| i find the person who wrote this to be a complete ass-hole.
| talking about ill-advised redditors, he gives one example of a
| man who decided to build his own house. but the link to that guys
| story is a weird twitter thread that just shows a guy building a
| house. as someone who knows how to build a house, i knew how much
| work and hard-earned lessons went into each of those progress
| pictures. and the guy builds the house better than most
| contractors would. besides the plumbing snafu. the doors and
| windows were not placed in a way that is pleasing to the eye but
| overall it was a great accomplishment. how is that ill-advised?
| its not, its awesome. i hate people that take a shit on those who
| actually make change in the world and take risks. all from their
| safe little cubicle or basement. people who are so ignorant and
| dumb that all the information that is packed into those pictures
| flies right over their heads.
|
| as a person in real estate, looking through pontifiers twitter
| feed is like looking back at my own life. most people know that
| there is a homeless problem. but what many people dont realize is
| that basically everywhere in the united states there are people
| who wander around at night looking for stuff to steal. they poke
| around everywhere but actually do not physically break in most of
| the time. people in liberal areas are familiar with window
| breaking and break and enter but everywhere else there is just
| this omnipresence of vagrants who commit smaller crimes. they are
| just really annoying and make the neighborhood seem more trashy
| than it really is. these people are all fit and ready to work.
| the cops wont arrest them. nobody really bothers them. i think
| the reason they exist is because people are shittier now and dont
| feel any urge to fix the societal problems that they see around
| them. there are videos on pontifiers twitter where he confronts
| them and they are totally without shame. they arent afraid of
| being caught. i think something similar happened in the 80s and
| people got super fed up and then NY started stop and frisk and
| other things. we need another one of those.
|
| as for the actual purchase of the warehouse and other properties,
| the risk isnt so bad when you take into account the relatively
| small amounts of money that are actually on the table here. as
| far as i know, hes making these purchases in cash. i would say
| that theres a good chance he will pull through and be able to use
| what hes learned to start making a real difference in this
| community and others. by far the most concerning part of this
| story is the city not cooperating. biggest road block by far.
| epivosism wrote:
| yeah, the author seems to like the guy but still falls into
| typical prejudicial choices in explaining the actual story.
| It's so schoolmarmish. Step back man, people can do what they
| want, they make mistakes, they have grand plans that sometimes
| fail.
|
| > "The Overconfident Optimist and His Ill-Advised DIY Project."
|
| This is what I mean. The article just started and he's defining
| his conclusion for all readers.
|
| Then, he compares Fenley to a "Child-destroying slackline"
| (which apparently never actually hurt anyone?). Fenley bought
| some property and tried to artistic type stuff. It is really
| slimy to compare him to such a horrible thing as hurting a
| child. That linked tweet is another "we know better" type of
| guy who's telling someone else how wrong they are. Yeah, doing
| risky stuff is risky, and I definitely don't think kids should
| (or would) be allowed to ride that thing, but I think they'd
| figure it out real quick (possibly after the creator died
| testing it).
|
| This is really a cultural thing - puritan types freaking HATE
| how unplanned, disorganized, and free/careless other cultural
| groups are in the US (i.e. appalachian/borderer people). So
| reading this as straight up cultural mockery/status
| management/ridicule makes it clear. Its basically equivalent to
| a 19th century "lets go to other countries and laugh at
| people's behavior" type of travelogue by northeast USA "know
| better than you" types criticizing other cultural groups for
| the behavior they don't like (monster trucks, bbq, hotdog
| eating competitions, basically anything that's just not done in
| the uptight north-east USA)
|
| Also: author, did you personally ever make 900k from a patent?
| So yeah, people are weird, have bad/dumb ideas. And I can feel
| you kind of like the guy despite everything. So like, get over
| the contempt you feel, figure out what he's got that gave him
| the skill to invent something, and rise above your need to mock
| him. The rest of the article is fine in tone, just fix the
| initial disrespectful comparisons. Something like "I looked
| into this guy and found a complicated, naive, but also gifted
| guy... <details>" rather than just hitting the regular
| playbook.
|
| Final comment: the note about race / murder is super weird. You
| mention a company moved, then immediately explain the race
| distributions without any reason to do that, as if there is a
| connection. Is there? what is it? Did the company ever mention
| race? This is typical journo hinting/dogwhistling. Is there any
| evidence of any racial problems in the subject of the article?
| Some towns are poor, some rich, some white, some black, whats
| the point? Then you mention the murder rates... inadvertently
| confirming a hate fact, that certain groups are linked to super
| high murder rates (victims and perps). I just don't get it.
| Like, what's the point of bringing that up?
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| The individual with the bad window placements was actually a
| Something Awful user (not a redditor) and he was actually well
| advised not to do what he was doing. Folks who'd like to know
| more can search for "Groverhaus" or the more evocative "load-
| bearing drywall".
| Lammy wrote:
| > he gives one example of a man who decided to build his own
| house
|
| The original thread happened on SomethingAwful where being a
| sneering asshole was the dominant culture:
| https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=22...
| (2006)
| htag wrote:
| I can't believe no one has mentioned the FDA toxicology lab near
| the town [0]. There is good reason they put the lab in the middle
| of impoverished no where. There has been issues with the lab in
| the past, including missing primates last year [1]. Maybe I'm a
| bit tin-foil-hat, but this is literally an isolated place to
| study toxicity and I think it's a unique risk to relocate near
| it.
|
| [0] https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/nctr-location-facilities-
| servi...
|
| [1] https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/aug/30/monkeys-
| gone...
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(page generated 2024-03-23 23:00 UTC)