Speaker 1: Way down. So walking around Venice, the beach town in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, not the tourist destination in Italy, you see
Speaker 1: the most eclectic mix of people. About twenty years ago
Speaker 1: you could actually have parrots and snakes on you and
Speaker 1: take photos and that sort of change. They didn't want
Speaker 1: a lot of wildlife on the borderwalk. But now you
Speaker 1: have tattoo artists, you have Hanna tattoo, t shirt sales people, psychics,
Speaker 1: palm readers, dancers, you have. That's decent Moore, his essential
Speaker 1: character for today. He's lived in Venice for more than
Speaker 1: twenty years now. It's a normality and that's part of
Speaker 1: the culture here. And they're all over from the you know,
Speaker 1: all different parts of the world. You know, musicians that
Speaker 1: want to get a break. Yeah, Janis Joplin walking on
Speaker 1: the streets, Jim Morrison doing poetry back in the day.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have that creative spirit and you don't
Speaker 1: know who you're standing next to that could be the
Speaker 1: next rock star. But lately new elements have joined this quirky,
Speaker 1: vibrant mix. So this is now Snapchat. The white building
Speaker 1: across Snapchat. This blue building right here is Snapchat that
Speaker 1: used to be an apartment complex for Ages. I've drove
Speaker 1: by last night and there were you haul moving bands
Speaker 1: moving residents out of these apartments. So this literally has
Speaker 1: happened within the last month. That's Jason talking with Jim Rob,
Speaker 1: another concern resident of Venice. Jim's lived here for even
Speaker 1: longer than Jason has. Since. You see corporate badges, clip
Speaker 1: to belt loops, private security guards patrolling public sidewalks, homes
Speaker 1: and offices that changed hands recently to a single owner
Speaker 1: that always keeps the blinds closed to keep their work
Speaker 1: a mystery. Some locals are terrified that their quirky, bohemian
Speaker 1: paradise is turning into the sterile corporate campus a beachfront
Speaker 1: office park for snap app, which is a parent company
Speaker 1: of the social media app Snapchat. And Jason and Jim
Speaker 1: were concerned enough to invite us to l A to
Speaker 1: see what's going on. Hi, I'm Sarah Fryar and I'm
Speaker 1: aki Ito, And this week on Decrypted, we're taking you
Speaker 1: to the historic beach town where snap is rapidly expanding.
Speaker 1: You'll hear from residents, business owners, politician, and this being
Speaker 1: southern California, maybe even a celebrity or two. Yeah. All
Speaker 1: these people who are mad, sad, anxious for a variety
Speaker 1: of reasons we'll get into today. And people in Venice
Speaker 1: worry it's just about to get a whole lot worse
Speaker 1: with Snaps. I p o plan for March that's going
Speaker 1: to make a lot of money for its young employees.
Speaker 1: So what is Snap's obligation to this beach town and
Speaker 1: what can they do to try to fix this paranoia
Speaker 1: and mistrust with their neighbors. Stay with us to find now. So, Sarah,
Speaker 1: you and I visited Venice Southern Week. It was a
Speaker 1: gorgeous day. I was sweating in this long sleeve shirt
Speaker 1: I'd worn from San Francisco. And what struck me as
Speaker 1: we walked around with Jason and Jim was it's not
Speaker 1: like we're talking about this gigantic building going up. It's
Speaker 1: really different from what we see here in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: Like Google has this whole campus in Mountain View, where
Speaker 1: Twitter has their headquarters in the skyscraper in mid market
Speaker 1: San Francisco. This is a bunch of tiny buildings, in
Speaker 1: some cases just one or two floors, scattered all around
Speaker 1: the most touristy and residential parts of town, right on
Speaker 1: the beach in many cases, and these buildings aren't labeled
Speaker 1: with the Snapchat logo that yellow and white ghosts we've
Speaker 1: all scene, or even the company's name. As a tourist
Speaker 1: visiting Venice, you might not even know that Snap was
Speaker 1: there unless you knew what you were looking for. Like
Speaker 1: the presidents of security guards up front wearing park ranger hats,
Speaker 1: and the vans that are shuttling their workers to and
Speaker 1: from snaps various buildings, and the fact that they're blinds
Speaker 1: are all drawn when this gorgeous beaches right in front
Speaker 1: of them. Snap is known for its secrecy, but a
Speaker 1: lot of residents don't know what they do and don't
Speaker 1: know how to feel about them, and the lack of
Speaker 1: transparency everywhere just made it to the point where it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, if we want to find transparency, let's at
Speaker 1: least speak to the people in the community. Let's hear
Speaker 1: their voices, and then let's do our investigation and see
Speaker 1: what's actually going on with the zoning, going on, with
Speaker 1: the real estate going on with it all, because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of opinion, there's a lot of rumors, but
Speaker 1: actually to uncover and see what they're doing and what's going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the destic time and we're Jason was Paris Hilton's manager
Speaker 1: for ten years, and now he represents people who are
Speaker 1: professional video game players, which, by the way, is a
Speaker 1: totally fascinating world of its own and something we're going
Speaker 1: to feature on this podcast in the very near future. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's all to say, Jason is not your typical local
Speaker 1: community activists. He said, he's just kind of stumbled into
Speaker 1: all this about a couple of months ago when he
Speaker 1: saw Evan Spiegel, who's the CEO of Snap, on the
Speaker 1: roof of the art gallery next to his office. Jason
Speaker 1: worried that if Snap was buying that art gallery, his
Speaker 1: office might be next. So that's where you saw Evan
Speaker 1: walking up there on the roof here, Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: up on the roof there. How did you tell with him?
Speaker 1: You can see where's jeans, white shoes, white shirt, and
Speaker 1: he looks like Evan Spiegel. You pretty much so has
Speaker 1: like if you brand yourself, I mean, Zucker Works got
Speaker 1: a hoodie. Evan's got his white shoes and white shirt
Speaker 1: and you know they all kind of jobs had his turtlenecks,
Speaker 1: so you kind of know what they look like. But
Speaker 1: maybe Evan Spiegel, just like Art, Jason and his fellow
Speaker 1: residence are not a sense sure what SNAP owns, but
Speaker 1: they're trying to connect the dots like d I Y detectives.
Speaker 1: On their walks around the city. They're noting where snaps
Speaker 1: fans are parked and SNAP security guards are placed, and
Speaker 1: they're digging through the city property records to see if
Speaker 1: they can find hints of what SNAP owns. Here's Jason
Speaker 1: talking to a local business owner, Patrick Liberty, who we
Speaker 1: ran into on the Venice boardwalk. Well, they owned Gingerbreight Court.
Speaker 1: Now they own it. Yeah, they bought it from Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're slowly going to take everybody out. So the
Speaker 1: back has already been leased. You sure they bought it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they bought it. Who told you that it's under the zoning?
Speaker 1: The addresses match other addresses, nobody does, and they and
Speaker 1: they bought and they bought it when the Snap was
Speaker 1: open back in the day. So it's probably one of
Speaker 1: the first purchases that they did with anybody knowing. Nobody
Speaker 1: knew that. I heard that they were behind this and
Speaker 1: they building the building. They are and they found out
Speaker 1: and that kind of threw a Crowbar. We're going to
Speaker 1: go speak with Martha Cherish, who's the one that kind
Speaker 1: of spearheaded to stop. It's that, I guess they The
Speaker 1: Gingerbread Court they're talking about here is one of the
Speaker 1: most famous buildings in town. It's right on the boardwalk,
Speaker 1: this brick structure, originally owned by Charlie Chaplin. It's got
Speaker 1: a short alleyway lined by small shops. Jason and Jim
Speaker 1: showed us a print out of a spreadsheet and a
Speaker 1: map they've compiled with twenty buildings that they think are
Speaker 1: currently owned released by the company. We ran this list
Speaker 1: by a person familiar with SNAPS real estate holdings, who
Speaker 1: told us it contained several errors, but that person did
Speaker 1: confirm that Jason was right about the ginger By Court,
Speaker 1: at least the part that's office space. As we're walking
Speaker 1: down the boardwalk, we talked to some artists around the
Speaker 1: same age as SNAPS employees. They sleep on the beach,
Speaker 1: they paint on scrap wood, They sell their art on
Speaker 1: the boardwalk right in front of SNAPS offices. But they
Speaker 1: said the employees never stopped to buy their art or
Speaker 1: even taking interest. They said that they don't even say Hi.
Speaker 1: Patrick Liberty. That business owner who we met earlier told
Speaker 1: a similar story. He runs Venice Liberty, a T shirt
Speaker 1: shop on the boardwalk, and he lost his parking spot
Speaker 1: when Snap occupied some space nearby. He's tried over and
Speaker 1: over to get them to make an exception, at least
Speaker 1: for a long time resident. I wrote him a letter,
Speaker 1: gave a T shirt. So I go up there. You
Speaker 1: can't even ring the buzzer up at sixty four marketing
Speaker 1: men without two guards on either side of you think,
Speaker 1: and I help you. And I said, well, I got
Speaker 1: this letter, and I want to I could never get pasted.
Speaker 1: The first time I gave it to security guard because
Speaker 1: that's all I could get past. And the second time
Speaker 1: I come back with another letter, you know, and even more.
Speaker 1: And by the third letter in the T shirt, I'm going, hey,
Speaker 1: look man, you know it's just a parking spot. You
Speaker 1: know you've got lots of them. I live here, and
Speaker 1: you know you came and took it, took it away
Speaker 1: from his beat. You know, I got mad at her.
Speaker 1: I could never The only person I ever solways the
Speaker 1: security guard, these guys walking around in khakis. That's as
Speaker 1: far as I ever got. You cannot email and you
Speaker 1: can't call him, you can't see them. Patrick said that
Speaker 1: since Snap moved into the area, sales at his T
Speaker 1: shirt shop haven't grown enough to offset the increase in rent.
Speaker 1: We met up with another guy who got priced out
Speaker 1: of his storefront altogether. His name Cesario Montano and goes
Speaker 1: by the nickname Block. Snapchat just bought this whole street up.
Speaker 1: So like my shop was right in that red building,
Speaker 1: that's an historical building. But the rent is going crazy
Speaker 1: around here. You know, Block closed down his own shop
Speaker 1: about a year ago. According to the real estate brokerage
Speaker 1: c b r E, asking rents for off space in
Speaker 1: Venice have more than doubled just over the last three years.
Speaker 1: You know, Snaps bringing in this over abundance of wealth.
Speaker 1: Nobody could compete with billion dollars. How much money did
Speaker 1: they make? How much they're worth? Billions? Right, so they
Speaker 1: got a few money, they're coming over a few. Here's
Speaker 1: three million. Get out. I don't care. I want it,
Speaker 1: I want the street, I want it, I want silicone beach.
Speaker 1: The funny thing was, as we were talking to Block,
Speaker 1: he saw one of his old friends and called her over.
Speaker 1: She had just been hired by Snapped, improved the company's
Speaker 1: relationship with the community. But on top of being media shy,
Speaker 1: Snap is in what's known as a quiet period ahead
Speaker 1: of its March i p O, which means it's not
Speaker 1: supposed to be publicly commenting on its business. Once Block's
Speaker 1: friend figured out who we were, she excused herself and
Speaker 1: walked away, saying she couldn't talk to the press. And
Speaker 1: by the way, this i p O is going to
Speaker 1: bring even more money into the community. To Evans, Spiegel
Speaker 1: alone may make more than five hundred million dollars just
Speaker 1: from the i p O, and the early employees and
Speaker 1: executives of the company will soon finally be able to
Speaker 1: cash out on their stakes. As we just heard, Block
Speaker 1: is suspicious of all this money. But it's not like
Speaker 1: he's not used to hanging out with rich people. He's
Speaker 1: a photographer and works a lot with the music industry.
Speaker 1: And you just kind of gradually mentioned to us at
Speaker 1: one point that he was hanging out with Brihanna at
Speaker 1: a Grammy's after party the night before. In Venice, people
Speaker 1: are proud of their local stars. They'll say, that's where
Speaker 1: Robert Downey Jr. Has a house, That's where Arnold Schwarzenegger
Speaker 1: used to work out. But there's something about these tech
Speaker 1: guys that rubs them the wrong way. They don't want
Speaker 1: to talk to you in the local bars anymore. They
Speaker 1: don't really associate with you if you're not if you
Speaker 1: don't have tech vocabulary, they don't. They're like, you're a local,
Speaker 1: You're look at the way I addressed you know, I'm
Speaker 1: from around here. They have nothing to say to me.
Speaker 1: They're like, I have nothing in common with you. I'm
Speaker 1: here to do my tech job. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: the attitude. Our next stop on our Whirlwind tour was
Speaker 1: a spiritual community center run by the actor Andrew Keegan.
Speaker 1: If you need a visual, this is the guy who
Speaker 1: played Joey, the antagonists in the film Ten Things I
Speaker 1: Hate About You. There's obviously so many different issues going
Speaker 1: on in our community, and again, my focus here in
Speaker 1: this space is really bringing community members together that are
Speaker 1: the ones that are like us in the middle of
Speaker 1: all of this, and we really would love to see them,
Speaker 1: you know, put some of their resources and really that
Speaker 1: integration idea of involving their employees and getting to know
Speaker 1: community members, you know, um, not just walking by them
Speaker 1: half in jest. He also had one last tidbit of advice.
Speaker 1: Snapchat just needs to throw us a big party. That's
Speaker 1: the solution, I think from this sponsor a big party,
Speaker 1: I can understand the sentiment. I mean, I remember as
Speaker 1: a kid it going to Venice with my family and
Speaker 1: seeing all the culture and the skateboarding and the art,
Speaker 1: getting lost in the crowd rollerblading. Yeah, this was my
Speaker 1: first time in Venice, but I was completely swept up
Speaker 1: by its charm to The tallest building we saw was
Speaker 1: maybe four stories high. The beachfront was lined with mom
Speaker 1: and pop stores, not a single brand like Starbucks on
Speaker 1: the boardwalk, more than a couple of whips of pot.
Speaker 1: There's something really sentimental about Venice. And then here comes
Speaker 1: this red hot startup making an app that a lot
Speaker 1: of the residents don't use and don't understand, buying up
Speaker 1: or leasing what seems like everything that becomes available. Run
Speaker 1: by this twenty six year old rich guy. It's pretty
Speaker 1: symbolic of this clash of history with a new hot thing,
Speaker 1: which is ironic because presumably it's exactly this renegade artist,
Speaker 1: independent skateboarding hip culture that Venice has preserved that attracted
Speaker 1: Evan Spiegel to Venice in the first place. He went
Speaker 1: to college at Stanford, right in the heart of Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: and yet he left all those sprawling corporate campuses in
Speaker 1: VC firms for Venice, where he's had to buy and
Speaker 1: least these tiny buildings piecemeal. Evan Spegel even talked about
Speaker 1: it in a video of the company made for investors
Speaker 1: for the I p O. It was filmed in the
Speaker 1: Blue House on the Boardwalk, right where the company got
Speaker 1: its first office. He and co founder and CTO Bobby
Speaker 1: Murphy exude pride and nostalgia for those early days when
Speaker 1: they first decided on Venice. I can remember when we
Speaker 1: first got this building as our office. There were eight
Speaker 1: of us, and you know, our dream had always been
Speaker 1: to have an office on the beach. You right here,
Speaker 1: you know, there used to be a table, and this
Speaker 1: is where we built stories and where we planned the
Speaker 1: evolution of the product that the world has experienced in
Speaker 1: the last few years. It's pretty surreal being here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can distinctly remember that the first day that myself, Evan,
Speaker 1: David and Daniel came here to check out this place,
Speaker 1: and we thought it was pretty big for what we
Speaker 1: needed at the time. I think within just a few
Speaker 1: of months he filled this place of the brand of
Speaker 1: about people. There's just a really, really exciting time that
Speaker 1: was the period of this company. To be fair to Snap,
Speaker 1: they're not the first to spark change in Venice. It's
Speaker 1: been a long time coming. Google came even before Snap,
Speaker 1: taking up two blocks of buildings maybe a ten minute
Speaker 1: walk inland from the beach, and there's Abbot Kenney Boulevard
Speaker 1: which has all these fancy shops and restaurants on it.
Speaker 1: This is what Lulio told me. He works for real
Speaker 1: estate brokerage in Venice. Um, so Snap's not new, you know,
Speaker 1: they're just here with Google replacing some things that were
Speaker 1: here before. Um, it's just that. Um, the the people
Speaker 1: who seem to have an issue with what's going on
Speaker 1: with prices increasing on real estate, prices increasing for rent,
Speaker 1: the lack of commercial vacancy space to put a office
Speaker 1: or a restaurant or retail space. You know those folks. UM,
Speaker 1: I don't think anything would ever make those folks happy.
Speaker 1: As Snap rapidly added more employees, it could have looked
Speaker 1: to other beach towns in l A. There's Santa Monica,
Speaker 1: on one side, which is way built up, and there's
Speaker 1: Playa del Rey where Google and Yahoo have campuses. There's
Speaker 1: tons of office space there too. Yeah, those areas welcome
Speaker 1: tech companies with open arms. And I really think of
Speaker 1: any other town and city desperate to attract jobs in
Speaker 1: the face of a changing economy. That's something that Mark
Speaker 1: Ravick talked about when Jason and Jim took us to
Speaker 1: go meet him in a cafe. Mark is running for
Speaker 1: a seat on the Los Angeles City Council to represent
Speaker 1: Venice and its surrounding neighborhoods. The clash between local residents
Speaker 1: and Snap has become a key issue in the race.
Speaker 1: The primary takes place on March seven. My sense is
Speaker 1: that they are simply an add on to the UM
Speaker 1: direction that at the Venice and this entire coastal area
Speaker 1: stretching all the way, oddly, stretching all the way from
Speaker 1: Santa Monica down to Elsa Gundo, in this marriage of
Speaker 1: Internet marketing and and and in film and TV content UM.
Speaker 1: And it's really for me exciting to see. And I
Speaker 1: don't see a downside UM at all, because one of
Speaker 1: the things comes when comes with it is a lot
Speaker 1: of discretionary dollars on behalf of those employees, and they're
Speaker 1: spending it to boost the economy in really remarkable way.
Speaker 1: This was not what Jason wanted to hear. He showed
Speaker 1: Mark that map of all the places you think snap
Speaker 1: owns or is trying to lease. Mark countered that those
Speaker 1: twenty or so properties are infinitesimal compared to the total
Speaker 1: real estate in Venice. And that's when things got heated.
Speaker 1: It's all right for you to have an office there,
Speaker 1: but not all all right first up to to have
Speaker 1: an office there, I wouldn't be able to have an
Speaker 1: office with them. No, no, no, you're not following you.
Speaker 1: It's okay for you to have an office there, but
Speaker 1: not okay for Snapchat to have an office there. Why
Speaker 1: is your office more important than their office? I guess
Speaker 1: it's not good because it's your office, I guess. I
Speaker 1: guess it's not a good thing to be a resident
Speaker 1: of Venice. When you leave, somebody will, you know, rent
Speaker 1: your place and they'll be a resident. I'm being the
Speaker 1: devil's advocate here, But isn't isn't What you're rejecting to
Speaker 1: is change and the fact that change might affect you
Speaker 1: as opposed to the use because office to office, why
Speaker 1: can't I use it? Why? You know, why should I
Speaker 1: be pushed out? Um, because we do exist in a
Speaker 1: capitalist society and they'll pay more than you with Again,
Speaker 1: you may not like that, but that is what's what's
Speaker 1: going on. So how are you as a council member
Speaker 1: to be to represent us with that attitude? Gonna get
Speaker 1: support from residents saying hey, deal with change. I may not.
Speaker 1: You know, one has to say what one believes. Then
Speaker 1: we hopped into Jason's Thunderbird and we drove to Robin
Speaker 1: Rudis Sill's house on the beach. Robbin's also running in
Speaker 1: the city council race, and we've recounted the conversation we
Speaker 1: just had with Mark drivek No, I don't think any
Speaker 1: anybody in Venice grey except well yeah, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not really a stimulus because um, it's taking
Speaker 1: uh some some of the people have the higher paid jobs,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a sort of the medium or
Speaker 1: lower paid jobs that we would probably need here in Venice. Also,
Speaker 1: they're getting this huge tax um credit from the city,
Speaker 1: so they're not even getting a stimulus to tax business taxes.
Speaker 1: Um really so just come in here, have all these people,
Speaker 1: you know, drive up the prices of our homes, take
Speaker 1: our residential units and turn them into offices. And we're
Speaker 1: not talking just a few, We're talking a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of that has been done. And I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that's the gift at all. That's had a very
Speaker 1: detrimental impact on Venice because losing housing has caused people
Speaker 1: to have to move out of Venice that thought they'd
Speaker 1: be here all their lives, you know, so being they're
Speaker 1: being forced out because of this. This point came up
Speaker 1: in our conversations with a lot of other residents too,
Speaker 1: who think snaps breaking the law by having offices in
Speaker 1: residential areas. But here's what the real estate agent LU
Speaker 1: said about that. You know, the majority of the places
Speaker 1: that these folks have taken have been you know, commercially
Speaker 1: zone properties, and if the closest thing that they would
Speaker 1: be too, you know, residential, would be live workspace in
Speaker 1: a commercial zone that just happens to have the use
Speaker 1: code of live work I'm not an attorney, but you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you if you look at the letter
Speaker 1: of the law on the way that you know that
Speaker 1: code is loosely written, it can be interpreted several ways,
Speaker 1: and the community members who actually have interactions with Snap
Speaker 1: employees do have some pretty nice things to say. Here's
Speaker 1: Kristen Poulia, the CEO of ps Arts, a local nonprofit
Speaker 1: supporting the arts for kids. We work with many corporate
Speaker 1: partners in our schools, and I don't think I've had
Speaker 1: nearly the amount of face time, nearly the amount of
Speaker 1: volunteer activity that Snap has has put forward. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, the financial commitment has been so thoughtful.
Speaker 1: You know that they come to us as the experts,
Speaker 1: They say, what is it that the kids need, what
Speaker 1: is going to be the best for this community, and
Speaker 1: they let us design it. So I think they have
Speaker 1: been incredibly responsible UM contributors un characteristically so. She talked
Speaker 1: about Snap employees painting with the kids, sticking around longer
Speaker 1: than necessary, coming up with ideas for new programs. And
Speaker 1: here's Barry Cohen, the principle of a local elementary school,
Speaker 1: you know, dealing with some other companies nearby and trying
Speaker 1: to scare funds from them for different programs. It's been
Speaker 1: a lot more red tape. UM. I feel like with
Speaker 1: snap it was. They said, this is a good thing.
Speaker 1: We want to do it um and they did. At
Speaker 1: the end of the night, Jason and Jim organized a
Speaker 1: cocktail hour for us at a bar next to Jason's office.
Speaker 1: It was called the Canal Club. He had been telling
Speaker 1: people all day that they could show up if they
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to a couple of reporters. We didn't
Speaker 1: know what to expect. They took us to this room
Speaker 1: in the back and I counted at least forty people
Speaker 1: in there, everyone from a young mother holding a baby
Speaker 1: to a couple of people who looked old enough to
Speaker 1: be grandparents. They sat around a few big tables that
Speaker 1: were pushed together, and when the seats filled up, more
Speaker 1: people crammed into the back of the room standing up.
Speaker 1: Yeah is you could just give your name and say
Speaker 1: why you came and what's going on in your world.
Speaker 1: We passed around the mike for the people who wanted
Speaker 1: to talk. The real reason, the real reason all these
Speaker 1: people are here, The real reason all these people are
Speaker 1: here is because they're all a bunch of freaks living
Speaker 1: inventor speech and they're afraid that all these all these
Speaker 1: strike people, all these streak people are gonna come in
Speaker 1: and stir up the peat patch and level it all out.
Speaker 1: I mean, just look around. You can see they're all
Speaker 1: a bunch of freaks. That's what that's that's the bottom
Speaker 1: line right there. You want to be a freak and
Speaker 1: stay a freak. That's it. We also heard from people
Speaker 1: like Kelly Blair. She lives in the house right by
Speaker 1: a building that's SNAP recently moved into. There's like two
Speaker 1: hundred people a day going in that building. That cannot
Speaker 1: be legal, Like it cannot it can't be. And so
Speaker 1: my um up, my driveway is often being used as
Speaker 1: their uber stop or their security guard stop, or what
Speaker 1: happens on Ocean Front or on Speedway, which is a road,
Speaker 1: not a parking lot. They just line up their cars
Speaker 1: at six o'clock, five o'clock, their little shuttles that take
Speaker 1: them everywhere, and they park they park on on Speedway.
Speaker 1: And I have got into another point that came up
Speaker 1: a lot was run ins with the security staff patrolling
Speaker 1: Snaps various offices. People just don't like being looked at
Speaker 1: and judged while they walked down their familiar streets. And
Speaker 1: what we also heard was the sense that Snap was
Speaker 1: kind of getting to operate under a different set of
Speaker 1: rules in everyone else. I just want to add one
Speaker 1: more thing. All io companies in the city get an
Speaker 1: eighty percent business tax break. We don't us individual Mama
Speaker 1: Pop personally. People in this room own a business wow,
Speaker 1: and we don't get a text. But just to say
Speaker 1: whatever incentive may have just for our listeners, I was
Speaker 1: like probably three quarters of the room okay. So that
Speaker 1: leaves us here with two very different sides to the story.
Speaker 1: One of the residents upset with Snap and the other
Speaker 1: of people that really think Snap is doing its best
Speaker 1: to offset the very real pains that any successful growing
Speaker 1: company can bring to a relatively small neighborhood. And like
Speaker 1: a lot of conflicts, the two sides aren't even operating
Speaker 1: with the same set of facts. And we heard actor
Speaker 1: Andrew Keegan bring this up earlier. But residents were just
Speaker 1: clamoring for a form for them to actually talk to Snap.
Speaker 1: I think that's why so many people showed up to
Speaker 1: our cocktail hour. A couple of people even thought we
Speaker 1: were representing the company. We just had to keep reminding
Speaker 1: them that we were journalists. It's probably because the residents
Speaker 1: weren't getting any information from Snap that their concerns had
Speaker 1: escalated into this full blown crisis, that they had to
Speaker 1: rely on people like Jason and Jim digging into property records,
Speaker 1: passing along rumors, some of which were true and some
Speaker 1: of which were not. What you don't know is so
Speaker 1: much scarier than what's out there in the open. We
Speaker 1: heard their residents use words like sneaky and secretive a
Speaker 1: lot on our trip, and it did remind me of
Speaker 1: my past dealings with the company. I remember the very
Speaker 1: first time that I went to Venice to visit them,
Speaker 1: I wasn't even allowed inside the offices. We had our
Speaker 1: meeting on the boardwalk. In the meantime, this could become
Speaker 1: a real business liability for Snap. In their filing for
Speaker 1: their I p O, they do mention a risk factor
Speaker 1: that because they don't have a corporate campus, it may
Speaker 1: actually affect their their morale among employees. And then there's
Speaker 1: this whole issue of future expansion. They could double, triple,
Speaker 1: quadruple in the coming years if you look at the
Speaker 1: growth of Facebook and Google and other companies that came
Speaker 1: before them, that's certainly what they're expecting. Yeah, it's got
Speaker 1: to be pretty hard for Evans Spiegel to run this
Speaker 1: nearly two thousand person company this way, with employee spread
Speaker 1: out across an entire beach town having to be shuttled
Speaker 1: from one office to another instead of getting this chance
Speaker 1: to all be together in a single headquarters. Snap might
Speaker 1: get something like that eventually, and recent reports have come
Speaker 1: out about their interests and expansion in nearby Santa Monica,
Speaker 1: which would certainly give them more space. That's it for
Speaker 1: this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening, tell Us
Speaker 1: has the tech industry Gentrified. Your community record as a
Speaker 1: voice memo and send it to us at Decrypted at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net, or you can write to me on
Speaker 1: Twitter I'm at Sarah Fryar and I'm at aki Ito seven.
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Speaker 1: That helps us make our show better and it also
Speaker 1: gets our podcasts in front of more listeners. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Pierre get Kari Magnus Hendrickson and Liz Smith.
Speaker 1: A very special thank you to reporter Shelley Hagen who
Speaker 1: helps so much in the reporting and the research for
Speaker 1: today's show. Alec McCabe is head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll
Speaker 1: see you next week.