[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 : 263 points
Date : 2024-03-23 18:41 UTC (1 days 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.
| criddell wrote:
| And he posts here too. Recently he mentioned his plan for
| eliminating crime in Pine Bluff and maybe everywhere:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39633534
| 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.
| jabbany wrote:
| Based on what's being described ("career criminals") it
| doesn't seem like that would be a good deterrence.
|
| A security guard is going to be looking out for their own
| safety and well-being before any property they're guarding.
| What do you think is gonna happen if armed criminals show
| up against a lone guard being paid $35 a night...?
| garbagewoman wrote:
| I would certainly hope they would be looking out for
| their own safety and well-being, no matter what they're
| being paid
| jrflowers 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
|
| This makes sense. The legal minimum wage is $11/hr, which
| multiplied by 12 hours comes out to thirty five dollars
| lazide wrote:
| I seriously can't tell who is the more math deficient
| here. Can someone add a /s somewhere so I'm less
| confused?
| jrflowers wrote:
| How much does eleven dollars even mean? That's gotta be
| what, three dollars max right?
| throwup238 wrote:
| _It's one dollar, Michael, how much could it cost? Ten
| dollars?_
| chucksmash wrote:
| "Minimum wage" is a bit of a misnomer as there are a
| whole raft of situations and exemptions where the minimum
| wage is not actually the minimum wage you can be legally
| paid.
| jrockway wrote:
| Have the security guard serve food to someone once per
| shift. Now the minimum wage is $2.63.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| Not even that, being a tip-enabled position is
| satisfactory to reduce the minimum to 2.63, so just slap
| a tip jar somewhere no one can reach (but still see) and
| call it a day.
| hiatus wrote:
| Every job is tip enabled by default. I think some
| professions would frown on receiving tips but afaik none
| are legally barred from receiving tips.
| lazide wrote:
| Last time I tried to tip a cop they threw me in jail and
| tried to call it bribery.
|
| Luckily, the judge didn't mind. /s
| hiatus wrote:
| They call those campaign contributions where I'm from,
| but that's only for sheriffs and judges.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Tipped minimum wage requires a person to receive enough
| in tips to match the non-tipped minimum wage. If there
| aren't sufficient tips for that, the employer has to make
| up the difference. The only question is if Arkansas has
| its own version of that to require matching the Arkansas
| minimum wage ($11) instead of just the federal minimum
| wage ($7.25).
| IX-103 wrote:
| They're supposed to do that, but many don't. It's not
| like the IRS is going to swoop in and bust them for
| parking less than minimum wage. The employees that take
| those jobs aren't in a position to make demands and
| likely aren't even informed that it is required.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I think you would have to adjust the wage up quite a bit
| to account for the security guard's collusion with the
| local thieves. 100% what I would expect anyway.
| behringer wrote:
| Overnight security guard is not one of those exceptions
| and if you think you can convince an independent
| contractor to even put on socks for 35 dollars, which is
| the only way this would be legal, you're living in a
| fantasy.
| pests wrote:
| Who the hell is going to risk their life for $35 lmao?
| datavirtue wrote:
| Thieves.
| pests wrote:
| In the context of this conversation, who are you going to
| hire for a 12 hour shift at a real job, where their life
| is on the line, without having insurance or hazard pay or
| anything, for $35?
|
| (metaphorical you, and this is more in response to
| chucksmash above)
| mminer237 wrote:
| You can get exceptions for people with disabilities and
| full-time students in a few fields. There's very few
| exceptions where someone can make less than minimum wage
| actually.
| klyrs wrote:
| Hold on, friend. You're not from there but you feel
| comfortable dictating a fair wage without looking at the
| local cost of living? That's _really weird_.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Minimum wage is $11/h, but that is too high. Time to hire
| some undocumented immigrants for $35/12h. Toss in some
| "nobody wants to work anymore" and complaining that
| regulations are what is ruining the economy, and they'd
| sound exactly like many Americans.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Yeah I'd say they're ready for their citizenship!
| throwup238 wrote:
| Isn't Arkansas one of those states removing child labor
| protections as fast as they can?
|
| Just set up shop at a rural hospital and pressure kids
| with sick parents into cheap labor. Charge them room and
| board to recoup the minimum hourly wage. Easy peasy lemon
| squeezey.
| margalabargala wrote:
| That person is from Russia.
|
| I guess $11 goes really far in Russia these days.
| joegibbs wrote:
| I doubt that anyone anywhere in the western world would
| take a job (especially one where you might get stabbed or
| shot, work 12 hour night shifts and don't get weekends or
| holidays off) for $13k per year. There's always some other
| job you can take. You can get a job at McDonald's that
| would pay more. In the worst case you can try to live off
| welfare and you'd probably be better off like that.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| In economically depressed areas like this, it doesn't matter
| what you pay.
|
| If you roll in a $5K welder or roll of copper, your guards
| are going to screw you.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Pine Bluff has one of the highest murder rates in the entire
| United States.
| User23 wrote:
| I recently drove through the area and when I left the
| interstate it felt like being in Fallout.
| margalabargala wrote:
| 44 murders per 100k residents. More than Detroit, less than
| Baltimore.
| sneak wrote:
| You only need to hire armed guards for a few months until the
| problem of the repeat career criminals breaking into the place
| is solved. They will run out of criminal burglars before you
| run out of armed guard salary.
| krisoft wrote:
| Sure, because criminals are all dumb as rock and flock to
| your guarded property like lemings.
|
| What they certainly won't do is threaten the family of your
| armed guards, or bribe your guards, or sabotage the vehicles
| of your armed guards until they don't show up no more, or
| learn the schedule of your armed guards and sneak around
| them.
|
| Or you know, lay low and do easier things until you stop
| paying guards and come back then.
| lazide wrote:
| And the beauty is, during the winter the Gorillas freeze to
| death!
| 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?
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| How even do you reclaim Pine Bluff? it's obviously overrun with
| thieves and the local police are qualitatively useless. It's
| almost like the national guard needs to be sent in.
| hahajk wrote:
| You could institute a UBI by building a tower that drops a $1
| bill every minute.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35585305
| lazide wrote:
| Wouldn't it work better if there were levers and random
| shocks involved? /s
| 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.
| TimMeade wrote:
| i was stationed in Arkansas in the late 80's and we used to
| go to Pine Bluff sometimes. It was a lovely little town. Just
| tragic about the downturn. I had no idea.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Yep. The downtown architecture is pretty and goes back to
| when I assume it was an important agricultural hub for the
| region and money existed.
| 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.
| metabagel wrote:
| Don't conflate Arkansas with the United States. It's one of the
| poorest states.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
| bigjimmyk3 wrote:
| While Pine Bluff is one of the fastest a shrinking cities in
| the country, the northwest corner of AR is one of the
| fastest-growing metro areas. A fascinating example of the
| somewhat fractal nature of growth in the US.
| callalex wrote:
| It's harder to have sympathy when I've watched these places
| blatantly vote against their own self interests for my entire
| lifetime.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Probably a case of just wanting to vote for "your own people"
| rather than who's actually competent.
|
| You saw the same the same thing when Jacob Zuma was jailed
| for corruption. They had massive riots in his support. They
| had massive pro-, not anti-corruption riots.
| 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.
| mikea1 wrote:
| > you do kind of root for him in the end
|
| I'm rooting for him too. He doesn't have all the qualities of a
| classic protagonist, yet I find myself hoping that he succeeds
| in his madcap endeavors. I admire his grit: I would have not
| had his fortitude in the face of violent threats nor withstand
| the constant frustration.
| pard68 wrote:
| I'm not anywhere near knowledgeable enough to chime in on the
| feasibility of creating a nuclear reactor from a MRI machine,
| but there is this guy in Floyd, Virginia who has created a
| nuclear reactor from some old medical equipment, so maybe it's
| possible with a MRI machine too?
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| Nuclear _fission_ is relatively straightforward so long as
| you either don 't know or don't care about the health risks
| of radiation. It's just a pile of spicy rocks at the end of
| the day.
|
| _Fusion_ , on the other hand, requires you to get center-of-
| sun temperatures and pressures going on to work properly.
| That usually requires either _extremely_ difficult
| engineering processes or a fission bomb (and more precise
| engineering calculations but they 're actually reasonably
| solvable).
| alright2565 wrote:
| I don't know exactly what he's doing, but fusion is pretty
| easy to do: https://www.instructables.com/Build-A-Fusion-
| Reactor/
| whatshisface wrote:
| I don't know about easy, but hundreds of people have
| accomplished this as a hobby project using the Farnsworth
| design, including a handful of very disciplined
| teenagers.
| jmopp wrote:
| I always thought fusion was easier than fission, since all*
| you really need is water and electricity -- the problem
| being that it's currently impossible to get more energy
| than what you put in
|
| * I am eliding over the fact that building a Farnsworth
| fusor is still a challenge, but less of a challenge than
| sourcing, purifying, and enriching uranium certainly.
| Retric wrote:
| If you just want any reactions then fission is still way
| easier, you get more fission from a random bit of uranium
| ore or in some cases even a banana than from a fusor.
|
| Nuclear fission includes radiative decay, what makes a
| nuclear _reactor_ rather than a bomb or pile of rock is
| becoming self sustaining where the reaction is driving
| the reaction. Fusor's don't get there, ITER will as the
| energy from fusion is driving more fusion reactions.
|
| It's the difference between rotting wood and a fire.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Nuclear reactors are easy. Nuclear fusion is not.
|
| At least not a useful fusion reactor.
| 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.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >which he proceeded to squander on unrelated properties.
|
| He bought 74 parcels of land in the town, including a house
| which he moved into, for around $140k.
| resolutebat wrote:
| Buying a house for himself makes sense, but it's still not
| related to the business, and the other 73 are just dead
| weight.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I don't see why everyone's trying to prove that they're
| smarter than this guy. If the town turns around it'll
| have been a great real estate gamble. May we all live
| long enough to see the outcome.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Plus, the 74 houses were all part of the same auction!
| That's what I gathered at least.
|
| And there are benefits to those houses. He could, for
| example, pick nicer ones and hire people for security and
| _give them free rent in a house_ as part of their job.
| With what he paid, he could even give them a "rent to
| own" mortgage!
|
| He could _include the house_ , and even just minimum
| wage. Minimum wage is a livable wage in a very, very
| economically depressed area (look at what housing costs
| here!), but at the same time, minimum wage + free housing
| or _rent to own_ housing is a _great wage_.
|
| He could start a hacker hostel. Those houses give loads
| of opportunity.
|
| He just needs to stabilize things a bit. But security
| would do that. Especially if security = 20 people. He
| just needs a real business plan, or at least to move
| towards something.
|
| Another way to look at it is, imagine if he used the
| house to hire security, maintenance people,
| groundskeepers, cleaning personelle/janitors, and on and
| on.
|
| Now, he's a major employer in the area.
|
| Now, those left that are honest? Are actively fighting to
| protect their jobs!
| jonwest wrote:
| Those are all great ideas! That's the kind of focused
| "make your investments help you towards your goals"
| implementations that I see lacking in the overall
| approach of the person in the article, though. Those
| _would_ be good ideas, but instead they're fighting with
| the people that could help his plans move forward
| (council) and sleeping in a tent in danger.
| ac29 wrote:
| He bought 74 houses at an average price of $2000 each.
| I'd suspect many of not most of them were in
| uninhabitable condition, at least without additional
| investment and maintenance.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I wonder what property tax is like - this would amount to
| more than the purchase price if it's anything like as
| high as where I am.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Property tax is often indexed to property value.
| bbarnett wrote:
| It depends.
|
| Where I live, the city is legally bound to seize and then
| auction off houses for unpaid property tax.
|
| There are even interesting things, such a legally
| mandated grace periods, and the original owner can buy
| back up to one year after auction.
|
| And this sure sounds like a place where property taxes
| might default.
| refulgentis wrote:
| - No one is trying to prove they are smarter.
|
| - Towns don't "turn around" spontaneously.
|
| - people don't usually gamble every dollar they have
|
| That's why this gentleman is a great object of curiosity.
| He's the perfect story of sheltered, with money, hitting
| reality and being flummoxed.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| How many people can say they own 74 houses. That might be
| the end game.
| toss1 wrote:
| I was thinking the cheap warehouse made sense if it were to be
| a warehouse/logistics operation. But then a makerspace, without
| a huge quantity of makers living nearby - huh?
|
| Then after discovering that he is a far above average target,
| and getting a windfall and bringing all his gear and customer's
| property to the site, he gets no security?
|
| Definitely seems to be a few cards short of a deck and have
| more money than sense. I hope he doesn't get himself or his
| family killed if one of those robberies goes bad.
| ryandrake wrote:
| None of his ideas make sense. It just sounds like he has this
| picture of a life in his head, but it's not even remotely
| his. The last line is particularly baffling:
|
| > "It'd be freaking fantastic to own a hotel, and like, have
| rooftop parties and turn the whole top floor into a penthouse
| for me. You know? Like, that's, like, how would I not want to
| do that?
|
| Dude? Who the fuck are you going to be partying with? The
| town is full of criminals who steal from you. A makerspace?
| Where are the makers? An art studio? Where are the artists?
| Your town is "MAGA, drugs and crime" as an HNer put it in the
| previous article about this saga. Where is all of this
| culture going to magically come from, besides your
| imagination?
|
| This guy seems like the true "If You Build It They Will Come"
| believer, but he's not even building anything. And even if he
| does Build It, the place seems like too much of a shithole
| for anyone to actually come.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| This particular town is majority Black, so I doubt the MAGA
| vibe is strong.
|
| Also, if you research the town, it looks like a big casino
| was just built there, at the cost of $350M. Which would
| suggest that the RE investments this guy made might just
| pay out, and that the town leadership _was_ in fact
| maliciously trying to get rid of him (so that someone else
| would profit from the appeciation).
| ryandrake wrote:
| > This particular town is majority Black, so I doubt the
| MAGA vibe is strong.
|
| Yep, according to Wikipedia, you're absolutely right.
| Strike the "MAGA" part from my comment!
|
| But, plopping a casino into an already-crappy town is not
| going to make it less crappy.
|
| And, to be fair, if his plan was to help the city,
| plopping a makerspace or art studio, or a science museum
| isn't going to move the crappiness needle either. There's
| no silver bullet building that fixes poverty and misery.
| It's not like SimCity where you sprinkle your city with
| evenly spaced bonus-providing buildings and suddenly all
| your metrics start going up.
|
| If his plan wasn't to help the city, but to arbitrage the
| low property values into a profitable business, then he
| should have bought strip mall properties and installed
| the usual turnkey check cashing stores, liquor stores,
| payday lenders, and so on. Not easy businesses, but at
| least they are understandable to the city and have a
| chance at being profitable.
|
| If his plan was to just speculate on real estate and hope
| that some miracle happens that raises property values,
| that's just high stakes gambling. Good for him if it pays
| off and he can flip these properties to another sucker
| for a profit.
|
| If it wasn't any of these, then honestly I don't get what
| his plan was. I'm going to buy a bunch of random real
| estate in a dilapidated city and... then... do what? Sit
| there getting robbed every time you move anything of
| value into those properties?
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| I'm just saying he may still get lucky even though he had
| no plan at all.
| devilbunny wrote:
| The town is 75% black. Not exactly MAGA central.
|
| Though in terms of openness to, say, LGBTQ, it definitely
| isn't going to be the most welcoming place.
| nraynaud wrote:
| It screams of unmanaged ADHD.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it goes well beyond ADHD.
| 2devnull wrote:
| NPD? bipolar mania? The altercations with city council are
| suggestive.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Yeah I would have suggested manic episodes (as someone
| who also has bipolar).
| throwaway9917 wrote:
| Let's be real here. The dude is Mormon and has autism. Both of
| these things predispose someone to believe in formal rules over
| things that people think but don't say. Obviously the people
| selling him the property priced it based on what everyone
| thinks, but doesn't say, except in the prices of their offers
| to sell. The sad part is just that the strength of America has
| historically been that the difference between what people think
| and what people say has been small, but lately it has been
| trending larger.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Maybe it's just because I don't live in a depressed area like
| this, but I simply don't understand the city's motivation for
| being a pain in the ass here. I mean, pretend you're the mayor
| or city council of this town. Industry has left. The jobs have
| left. Your schools suck. The state and country is ignoring you.
| Your citizens are spiraling into poverty, drugs, and crime. A
| wacky entrepreneur moves in, and would like to take a shot at
| revitalization.
|
| And you're worried about architectural drawings and building
| codes?????
|
| Even if the guy is has weird ideas, why would you make it your
| job to get up his ass when he appears to at least be trying to
| do something positive?
|
| It's hinted in the article that the local government has its
| own (lame) revitalization plans, which will also not work, and
| sees this guy as competition. So silly. No wonder it sucks
| living in these hopeless places.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| > And you're worried about architectural drawings and
| building codes?????
|
| The most important reason why building codes exist is for
| safety. The buildings have been abandoned for some time and
| are likely in deep disrepair. It seems the city wants to know
| that if their children go to the science museum, it won't
| collapse or burn down. This guy is not an architect or
| engineer, and hasn't even hired one. If the city had building
| codes but didn't enforce them, and some tragedy happened,
| they might even be liable legally. They would definitely be
| liable politically if a big tragedy happened.
| jonwest wrote:
| That's the thing! Even if the city had plans of their own,
| I'd be willing to bet if this guy came in with any sort of
| backing beyond "well I've got my own ideas!" in the way of
| actual (architectural/engineering) drawings,
| (time/financial) budgets, etc, he'd have a lot better luck.
|
| Also--like other people have said, if the city are
| assholes, that sucks, but he's still going to be fighting a
| steeper uphill battle on his plans and investments without
| them behind him--suck it up and learn to work with them or
| it's going to be that much harder to not only get started
| on his current plans, but also his longer term plans of
| revitalization.
|
| Maybe a great piece of software can be built as a single
| person working alone, fighting the odds and pissing people
| off, but I can't see that approach working for building a
| town full of people.
| blindstitch wrote:
| Some development boards and city councils definitely have a
| talent for shooting themselves in the foot, but the man is
| outright antagonistic to them and has been for years. Before
| you can build you have to do some legwork in advance and show
| the development board that your plans are going to be
| compliant. The board wants to be assured that the plan won't
| have safety or nuisance issues for the town. In some cases
| they want to have a guarantee that development will actually
| happen. In each case, Pine Bluff presents very low bars to
| development that this guy repeatedly fails to meet.
|
| IMO this is not a case of a nimby board standing in the way
| of an eccentric trying to innovate. The problem is that he
| has made himself known to this board as an unserious crank
| who does not show the board respect for their processes. He
| has been approved for several different uses at the site and
| failed to follow through on any of them. He demands special
| permissions while actively campaigning against their plans.
| If he could show a good faith effort to help the town build
| upon what the electeds are doing he might have a fighting
| chance, but he instead goes around talking shit about them
| anywhere he can.
| bglazer wrote:
| Wacky entrepreneur moves in, builds go kart track in
| abandoned warehouse. No safety precautions are taken
| whatsoever. Kids come for birthday party. Go kart catches on
| fire, the warehouse fills with smoke. The kids die.
|
| For a less hypothetical scenario, its not hard to see the
| parallels with another wacky entrepreneur and a submarine
| that eschewed traditional safety concerns
| pfooti wrote:
| > And you're worried about architectural drawings and
| building codes?????
|
| Building codes, like several other categories of regulations
| that can at times feel oppressive or arbitrary, tend to be
| written in the blood of accident victims. See, for example
| the ghost ship fire in my recent memory of why they are
| important even if (especially if) you are using an under
| utilized space
| astrange wrote:
| Building codes are not a good example for this one, partly
| because the ones in America/Canada are clearly less safe
| than Europe and we don't seem to care, but also because you
| can just go back and read early 1900s planners talking
| about them and they will explicitly say "it is our goal to
| make safety rules stricter for apartment buildings than
| single family homes so they'll cost more to build because
| we want to stop black people from moving in."
| 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
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| He's here on HN.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pontifier
| 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.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| There's a lot of small towns where buying Main Street wouldn't
| be an outrageous cost. It's got some appeal. Go in and make it
| work again.
|
| But when you get down to the "How?" it quickly becomes apparent
| that the inertia is strong and the odds of success are
| extremely low.
|
| Still, it's a fun daydream.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| Challenges aside, I'm jealous! He needs to pull a Rajneeshpuram
| and politically take over the town, too, lol
| kylecazar wrote:
| Someone posted his twitter above and on it he claims to have
| been running for mayor as a libertarian
| callalex wrote:
| Be sure to avoid the salad bar!
| 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?
| resolutebat wrote:
| Our protagonist hails from deeply Mormon Provo, Utah, home to
| BYU, a slew of tech startups, and 0.8% people who identify as
| Black, and they've trying to spin up their business in a
| wrecked, deindustrialized shell of a Southern town that's
| over 75% Black and they know exactly nobody. Even with the
| best of intentions they're going to get major culture shock.
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| Are you saying that scrappers and thieving and muggings is
| just "Black culture" rit large? That's an incredibly
| fatalistic mentality to put it politely.
| fundad wrote:
| It's pretty common to be raised in the yay-Murica agenda,
| learn nothing about people or our country and come into a
| lot of money at once through tech.
|
| They key is spending it slowly with people you love, lol
| that this guy actually wants to go see his kids.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| The extremely dangerous zipline never killed anyone because
| armchair critics correctly pointed out the danger!
| 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".
| AI_beffr wrote:
| > "load bearing drywall" ok i may have to give him a little
| less credit
| 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...
| krisoft wrote:
| > including missing primates last year
|
| The article you linked does not talk about missing primates.
| They were doing experiments on monkeys. Activist put pressure
| on them to stop and they did stop. Then they rehomed the
| monkeys to a sanctuary.
|
| They are "missing" in as much as the monkeys are no longer
| there, but everyone knows where the monkeys have gone and why
| the monkeys have gone. The article you linked itself explains
| this.
| maayank wrote:
| Awesome read. A real life Nathan Fielder (I mean, the "character"
| Nathan plays)
| LispSporks22 wrote:
| I love this guy
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Perhaps he has really long term vision. According to National
| Geographic, if the polar ice caps melt completely, Pine Bluff
| will benefit immensely by being waterfront property on the now
| larger Gulf of Mexico.
| grouchomarx wrote:
| >agent assured me the price was correct
|
| >arkansas
|
| yea
| Animats wrote:
| At least he's spending his own money. There have been far worse
| schemes where someone tried to create their own community. Some
| recent ones:
|
| - Satoshi Island [1]
|
| - Seasteading [2]
|
| - California Forever [3]
|
| [1] https://www.satoshi-island.com/
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seasteading_Institute
|
| [3] https://gizmodo.com/tech-billionaires-project-to-build-a-
| new...
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Why do you think California Forever is a far worse scheme?
| hristov wrote:
| I would like to remind HN that hoarding is a serious and well
| established mental disorder and that we should not encourage this
| poor soul that has fallen victim to a real estate version of this
| disease.
|
| It is unusual that someone should hoard real estate and it is
| interesting to see the circumstances of how this happened but
| otherwise it is a pretty standard case.
|
| Note how from the interviews he gets pleasure in obtaining new
| properties and yet has no idea what to do with them. Note he does
| not spend the money required to even get an architectural drawing
| made and yet he spends money on obtaining more and more
| properties.
|
| Or the fact that he has decided not to hire security but to guard
| his properties by himself, which would make it much more
| convenient if he has fewer properties not more. But he still
| keeps buying more. At this point a smart thief can get a map of
| his properties helpfully provided on the internet, find out where
| he is and attack any one of his other forty something properties.
|
| Note how in the end of the interview when he is supposed to say
| some inspiring words of his progress or near term plans, he does
| not talk about what he is going to do with the warehouse but
| fantasizes with great excitement about buying yet another
| abandoned property, a hotel.
|
| By the way I fully sympathize with the city officials. No city
| will approve any building project that does not come with fully
| compliant drawings signed and stamped by a licensed civil
| engineer and/or architect (depending on the project). Nor should
| they. It is their job to keep the community safe and habitable.
|
| It is kind of funny they are stealing his ideas, but that also
| might be understandable. They might be good ideas, after all.
| Here you have a town that is looking for ways to revitalize
| itself with little money, and here comes a young techie guy from
| California with what seem to be some very good ideas and some
| money. There probably was some excitement in city hall when this
| guy first submitted his plans. But then they slowly realize that
| this is a sad disturbed individual that is unlikely to ever
| accomplish anything and will not spend money on anything other
| than acquiring abandoned real estate.
|
| But the town keeps deteriorating, they have to do something, and
| his ideas do seem pretty cheap. So they decide lets try them out
| ourselves. Cities do not like to own businesses. The officials
| cannot take outsize profits for themselves but are on the hook
| for any screwups. So I am sure they would have much preferred if
| someone else was running these things, but they simply knew that
| this guy was not going to get it done.
|
| So yeah, this is an interesting case of hoarding, but that is
| about it. I urge Mr. Fenley to consult a psychiatrist.
| shmageggy wrote:
| So true. This tweet of his really drives home the point (https:
| //twitter.com/pontifier/status/1559080834057097219?s=2...)
|
| > _Ants, flies, termites, cockroaches, mice, rats, mosquitoes,
| thieves..._
|
| > _They all want what you have, and make life miserable._
|
| > _Will I ever have peace? I 'm so tired of everything, and
| don't see an end to it._
|
| There's a very simple solution to this problem my dude...
| fundad wrote:
| He's a politician, this is all part of his campaign. WTF?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Talk about tripling down. Looks like he's running for mayor of
| the town, too[1].
|
| 1: https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1761982196649250831
| codethief wrote:
| Oh, it's the Murfie guy! Does anyone know what the status is
| there? The video on murfie.com ends with "It'll happen. I'm not
| giving up."
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| As always, The Simpsons did it first. Go watch the episode where
| Bart buys an abandoned factory at a tax auction for $1, although
| even Bart hired Millhouse as a security guard.
|
| The reason the city wants architectural drawings and probably an
| engineer to be involved is the same too. Spoiler alert: the
| building collapses into rubble at the end of the episode.
| lazide wrote:
| The thing that people always seem to forget about real estate
| is that assets can have real 'negative value' elements.
|
| For awhile they were selling houses in Detroit for something
| like $100 - but all the articles about it didn't mention the
| $10k+ in delinquent tax liens on the properties, or the $100k+
| in required improvements to make the property even basically
| habitable.
|
| Or that you'd likely get shot attempting to live there, unless
| you had some very specific skills.
| PickledHotdog wrote:
| For Australians: Right-wing, Sky News talking head, Rita Panahi,
| was born in Pine Bluff, AK, according to its wikipedia page. Sure
| would explain her hatred of the poor.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| This is AR, AK is Alaska.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think one of the things that makes this guy's story
| interesting, at least to me, is that there is big part of me that
| would do as he has done but I have actively and intentionally
| suppressed it. Maybe we share the same ADHD inspired impulses.
| The part of me that suppresses these impulses could have easily
| been missing, I see his story I think, 'there but for the grace
| of god go I'.
|
| I don't want to see him fail but since I've suppressed this
| aspect in myself I am kind of seeking reassurance of my own
| decisions. If he succeeds then that may suggest that I have been
| making the wrong choices in life. I wouldn't begrudge him for his
| success and instead I would use it to try to recalibrate my own
| decisions.
| bigjimmyk3 wrote:
| I am a lifelong Arkansan, and I hope he is able to pull off some
| kind of win. I visited that area often as a teen, and Pine Bluff
| was the main entertainment destination for the region. I haven't
| been in awhile, but it sounds like the years have not been kind.
|
| I really hope that his analogy to 1980s NYC works out. It's easy
| to give up when there's so much cultural and institutional
| inertia, but this guy seems to have a pretty deep well of
| motivation. I hope he hangs in there.
| tossedacct wrote:
| Pine Bluff is crazy. I know this because many years ago I found
| an amazing building in the downtown area for sale and went to see
| it. After a couple of hours of tours from a real estate agent and
| town officials I realized that this place was not coming back
| from the dead. The previous owner of the building had been
| stabbed there while trying to get it ready for occupancy. The
| city employees openly wanted money to help me avoid taxes. And
| the kicker was that it smelled awful when the wind blew in from
| the nearby Tyson chicken farm. It's consistently been in the top
| murders per capita rate in the US. I feel bad for this guy, but
| it would hard to miss the red flags before buying there.
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