Millions of U.S. homeowners regularly receive official-looking notices on letterhead in envelopes bearing the logos of their utility companies. They contain ominous warnings that you, the homeowner, are responsible for repairs to water and sewer lines on your property. The clincher: If there are problems, “you could spend thousands of dollars to fix them, as most standard homeowners insurance policies do not cover these repairs,” warned one “Repair Responsibility Notice.”

These notices often convince homeowners that there are hidden defects on their properties that need to be addressed. Why else would their utility companies issue such dramatic warnings?

Although these mailings seem to come from utility companies, they’re really pitches from third-party companies that have struck partnership agreements with utility providers, allowing them use of their names and logos to sell their warranty plans.

More than 7 million U.S. homeowners have so far purchased these plans, pulling in $900 million a year, according to information disclosed in annual reports from the largest warranty companies.

In the Washington area, Dominion Energy, NOVEC (a cooperative that serves large portions of Fairfax, Fauquier, Loudoun, Prince William and Stafford counties), and the municipal governments of District Heights, Forest Heights, Laytonsville and Poolesville partner with private warranty companies to help market these plans.

The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) used to help sell these plans, but in 2019, it let the agreement expire after its warranty company partner bought CroppMetcalfe, a large plumbing outfit operating in the Washington area. (WSSC issues plumbing licenses and permits and could no longer continue such a deal with a company it also regulates.)

Nationally, these deals are also widespread. The water utilities serving Baltimore, Cleveland, Louisville, Memphis, Nashville, Newark, New York City, Philadelphia, Orlando, Salt Lake City, San Diego and San Francisco have signed on to help private companies sell warranty plans.

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Marketing materials received by homeowners often warn of dramatic potential costs if they don’t protect themselves with offered coverage. One company’s website warns of an average $2,585 cost to replace a water line, and a $3,389 cost for a sewer line. Another pegs the “typical” cost of repairs higher still: $3,500 for water, $8,500 for sewer. And a video presentation used by one company to recruit utility companies features a horror story where a couple’s burst water and sewer lines caused $20,000 in damage.

But Checkbook’s research finds that few homeowners ever have to deal with expensive water or sewer line repairs or replacements. Our researchers examined permit records and dug up similar data from several large cities and found scant evidence that this is a common job at all:

●Claims data from a WSSC interoffice memo obtained by Checkbook indicated that only 4,450 exterior water and sewer claims were made from the 126,207 plans purchased during the program’s first 2½ years, an annualized incidence rate of 1.4 percent.

●Checkbook’s review of San Francisco’s permits in 2019 found that it issued only 369 water and/or sewer line restorations or replacements — out of the 112,115 single-family homes served by the city’s utility company. The chance of needing a restoration or replacement there was only 0.3 percent.

●Minneapolis approved only 667 work permits involving home sewer laterals in 2019. That works out to a rate of 0.7 percent of the city’s approximately 100,000 sewer lines serving homes there — and because the city didn’t exclude permits for new construction from its counts, 0.7 percent is overstating the chance of trouble.

●The Philadelphia Water Department issued 2,459 “Notices of Defect” in 2019 for residential sewer laterals that the department discovered were in need of repair. That was 0.5 percent of its 481,728 customers.

Other research shows that water lines can be trouble-free for years. Juneseok Lee, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Manhattan College, looked at data supplied by a warranty company that had paid for more than 47,000 water line replacements or repairs over 10 years. Lee concluded that “it is not a question of if the piping will fail but rather when.”

However, that report’s findings indicate that “when” is probably a long, long time away. It found that lines made of copper, the most common material used for water lines, typically last 30 to 80 years. Galvanized steel pipes — also common — usually last even longer: 40 to 100 years. Even comparably weak plastic pipes (such as PVC and polyethylene) last 20 to 40 years. And because the study looked only at pipes that failed, your pipes may last a lot longer than these estimates.

Bottom line: Even if you own a house for decades, your odds of having a catastrophic water or sewer line failure are quite low.

Even if you need a repair or replacement, costs will probably fall well short of the thousands of dollars cited by the warranty companies.

One warranty company told Checkbook that over the past three years, it had paid for “more than 400,000 water-related repairs, . . . saving residents $232 million in out-of-pocket repair costs.”

But the company’s own numbers reveal a key issue: Divide that $232 million in repair bills by the 400,000 claimants, and the average payout was just $580.

The WSSC reported during its agreement with a warranty company that claims for sewer line repairs also averaged just $580; the average for water line claims was $1,565.

These average costs of repairs reveal that although warranty companies rely on worst-case scenarios to sell their plans, “most often, the claim you put in is for a clogged line, and the first thing they try to do is unclog it,” said Alon Abramson, program manager for the Philadelphia Energy Authority (PEA). “More often than not, that fixes the problem.”

In other words, when repairs are needed, they rarely cost thousands of dollars, but are usually done by a plumber using a snake.

In exchange for lending their names and logos, the utilities that sign on to help sell these warranties get a share of the premiums.

For example, for 2020, the warranty company working with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) paid it $3.61 every month for each enrolled policy, according to a public document posted online by SFPUC. The plans were sold for $12.99 a month. That means 28 percent of premiums it collected went to the SFPUC.

That document shows that the SFPUC receives the same $3.61 from the warranty company’s $8.99/month sewer-only warranties and its $4.49/month water-only plans. So, for those, commissions equal about 40 and 80 percent, respectively. SFPUC expects to make more than $1 million from this deal over its first four-year term.

The deal signed by the PEA also funnels a portion of the premiums back to it. The plans cost $7.98 a month for water-sewer warranties purchased in 2020; the PEA got 20 percent of that, plus up to $500,000 in annual fees, according to information supplied to Washington Consumers’ Checkbook in response to a public records request. In 2019, the first full year of its contract, Philadelphia’s share was $1.3 million.

Many utilities that partner with warranty companies say they direct their shares of sales to a good cause.

Yvonne Kingman, a spokesperson for Washington (State) Water Service, told Checkbook it recycles the warranty fees it gets back to its customers: “We’re regulated. The money we collect is all used for company-related projects. We don’t pocket the money. We charge customers for the actual cost of providing the water service.”

But, of course, even if it gets directed toward a charitable fund, all the revenue collected by these warranty companies is derived from utilities’ cooperation in enrolling their customers or constituents in these plans.

Douglas Heller with the Consumer Federation of America noted that “these deals are so clearly problematic that even those willing to take them require some veneer of justification that it is a public benefit.”

Checkbook often warns about these types of “peace of mind” policies, which are typically overpriced. Although you should buy insurance to protect against risks that could be financially catastrophic — house fires, liability claims, auto accidents, medical care — you shouldn’t pay to cover the risk of paying for unlikely repairs you can afford.

Washington Consumers’ Checkbook magazine and Checkbook.org is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help consumers get the best service and lowest prices. It is supported by consumers and takes no money from the service providers it evaluates. You can access all of Checkbook’s ratings and advice free of charge until March 15 at checkbook.org/washingtonpost/insurance.

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The line at Olivia Rodrigo’s final US concert of her “Sour” tour in San Francisco stretched the span of Bill Graham Civic Auditorium — twice — and the entire length of City Hall on Friday night.

That was, in part, by design. Imagine this: The defining pop star of this young decade booked what is essentially an oversized high school theater to perform her globe-conquering debut album “Sour,” all so that she won’t “skip any steps” in her already-expedited route to pop stardom. (In other cities, they booked even smaller venues, like the 5,900-capacity Greek Theater in Los Angeles.)

She may have made the right call. Her music thrives in small spaces, where the din of the crowd singing in unison feels rapturous given so many of her early singles (recorded in 2020 and released in early 2021) came out in such a solitary time of the pandemic.

“I think that’s the most beautiful thing about music,” Rodrigo said just before playing “Driver’s License,” the song that consecrated her career, “is that sometimes it can communicate how we feel better than words ever could.”

When she says a line like that with that much conviction, you can’t help but believe it for yourself, too.

Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Bill Graham Civic Center, in San Francisco, on Friday, May 27.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Bill Graham Civic Center, in San Francisco, on Friday, May 27.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

For her primarily Gen Z audience, Olivia Rodrigo’s best songs feel like they subsume into you, make you feel whole, understood. At the very least, they compel her audiences to lose their voice the next morning or brave the San Francisco chill in their shein best. Rodrigo’s songwriting crystallizes the depths of heartbreak in all the rage, the paranoia and envy. Like every other teenager, she cares about what other people think — maybe too much.

And in a live setting, these earnest, life-affirming songs f–king ripped. Her theater kid vocal proofs was on full display. Every word she sang had at least a few thousands of others singing alongside her; and for her biggest hits, the 8,500-seat auditorium’s collective voice felt like it hung in the air long after the show ended.

“God damn, I really did save the best show for last,” she joked, at one point, after hearing how loud the crowd sang with her.

Rodrigo’s muse during her tour has been less the singer-songwriters that inspired “Driver’s License” and more the alt-rock station rotation that shaped “Good 4 U” and other, rock-heavy songs on “Sour.” “Brutal,” with its intentionally angsty sing-speak cadence, felt utterly alive. When the crowd yelled “Where’s my f–king teenage dream?” with her, you felt the collective venom of fleeting youth seeping out.

Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Bill Graham Civic Center, in San Francisco, on Friday, May 27.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

These songs she wrote in her bedroom, given this space to bloom and a crowd who latched onto her every word, turned into cathartic, rocking missives over the span of her hour-long set. Take “Happier,” a meek, pleading ballad to a moved-on ex. She jettisons the folksy piano of the recorded song entirely, transforming it into an arena-rock romp that could fill a stadium triple the size of Bill Graham. “Jealousy, Jealousy” got a full pop-punk retrofit; at the show, it felt almost like hearing a long-lost Paramore B-side for the first time.

Even the covers she chose for the tour felt intentionally KROQ-y — Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” and No Doubt’s “Just A Girl,” both of which she’s done in other cities. (If I had one gripe about the show, I wish she did a ’90s, female-led song with a deeper Bay Area tie — hearing Rodrigo do her version of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” or 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up? ” would have been a treat.)

Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Bill Graham Civic Center, in San Francisco, on Friday, May 27.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

The whole time, Rodrigo was vivacious — running back and forth across the stage animated entirely by the love of performing and the adulation of the crowd around her. She dazzled, with so much energy and zeal and gratitude for even getting to be in the room with everyone. The confetti at the end of the night had messages scrawled on them thanking fans for coming to the tour.

But for as much as Rodrigo has been made out by older audiences to be an avatar of endless, indefatigable youth, you forget how young she really is.

Throughout the show, there was this nagging feeling of being an interloper — that the night was a homecoming for the young people who took this album and made it part of themselves.

Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Bill Graham Civic Center, in San Francisco, on Friday, May 27.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

Olivia Rodrigo just turned 19 this year. She is wise, but not wise beyond her years. She cares deeply, enough to stop her show twice within the span of 10 minutes (and cutting into her performance of “Traitor,” forcing her to start again from the top) when two people in the crowd needed medical help. She’s a sage for the teens and tweens worried about what the cool kids are up to, or if their emotionally unavailable boyfriend is talking up another girl. But being a young person today means having to think constantly about the world and how punishing and unfair it can just be.

Consider the extended, chaotic lines leading up to the show. A concert staffer outside told me that the lines were so long in part because security measures were beefed up, likely in light of this week’s massacre in Uvalde, Texas. (In her LA show earlier this week, she explicitly called for “stricter gun control laws in America”; she’s also spoken out about abortion rights this tour.)

I don’t envy anyone who has to come of age right now. I am not much older than the mean age of the concert but I cannot fathom what it is like, growing up with nonstop pain and loss presenting itself at every turn, on every screen.

Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Bill Graham Civic Center, in San Francisco, on Friday, May 27.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

While preparing for her concert and writing this review, I’ve thought a lot about the final song on “Sour,” a sweet lament called “Hope Ur Ok.” In it, she ponders about old acquaintances who have suffered at the hands of neglectful, uncaring parents. It felt out of place in an album so preoccupied with love and its discontent — and even live, it felt too much, like this young woman should not have to carry, let alone perform an entire song about this burden.

Pop stars across generations — from Janet to Gaga — have written songs about the state of the world. And, yet, there’s something to be said for a 19-year old who, on her crown-making first album, felt the need to write a song about how adults, time and time again, have failed young people.

All the other songs about the intricacies of teen relationships ring truer because all Rodrigo wants is for her listeners to be OK. During these anxious times, that feels like enough.

Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Bill Graham Civic Center, in San Francisco, on Friday, May 27.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Bill Graham Civic Center, in San Francisco, on Friday, May 27.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

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When a task force set out to draw lines for the new supervisory districts in 2002, a lot of us were worried. Willie Brown was mayor, and he would have significant influence on the task force. Bad lines could divide up communities, fracture alliances—and, like any gerrymandering, elect people who don’t represent the most vulnerable communities in the city.

But it was fine. The lines were pretty much what the city had put in place when the voters restored district elections. The task force tinkered around the edges to adjust for population, but nobody was unhappy.

The PVI shows the percentage of voters who tend toward progressive positions on key issues. Note that D5, D8, D9, and D10 have high concentrations of progressive voters. Mapping overlays by Michael Redmond

Ten years later, we worried again. Gavin Newsom was mayor; just a little bit of political influence could have made it harder to elect progressives. Again: It was fine.

As Sup. Aaron Peskin told me recently, since the return of district elections everyone has played by the book. They’ve kept the politics out of it, kept neighborhoods together, and made changes only around the margins.

Not this time.

The most recent district lines, which a sharply divided task force seems prepared to accept, would take the most progressive district in the city, which has elected two Green Party members and a Democratic Socialist, and blow it to bits.

It’s strange: District 5 has had very little population change, but the vast majority of the redistricting changes have happened there. “It’s makes me suspicious and I start to disturb the process,” Christin Evans, who owns a bookstore in the Haight and is part of the Haight Ashbury Merchants Association, told me.

The task force—by a 5-4 vote—decided March 25 to continue its work with a map known as 3B as a starting point. Another version, 3A, is pretty close to the current lines and doesn’t make any radical changes.

But 3B does.

Now, another new version, 4A, goes even further.

Take a look at the map here:

This is version 3B. Note how it chops up the progressive vote in the Haight.

Map Version 4, which shifts part of the Western Addition in to D2.

Map V4 with the PVI. It even further breaks up progressive voting communities.

Since the first version of district elections, in 1977, the Haight Ashbury neighborhood has been in an intact part of a district. Version 3B would split the Haight and the Western Addition, moving most of the Haight into district 1 or district 7, and moving the Tenderloin from D6 into D5.

Map 4A would shift part of the Western Addition into District 2, the most conservative district in the city.

Meanwhile, D6 would be made up largely of residents in the new condo buildings that we’ve seen in the past decade, meaning it’s going to be a much more conservative district.

So the progressives lose that one (or, if Matt Haney isn’t elected to state Assembly, get a representative who is moving hard to the Yimby side). District 4 moves west, meaning it will be almost impossible for a candidate like Gordon Mar to win. The progressive vote in D5 is scattered. D3 picks up more conservative areas on the edge of the Marina.

“This is,” Calvin Welch, a longtime neighborhood activist, told me, “a clear and direct attack on the progressive board majority.”

There are three meetings next week, April 2, 4, and 6. And there will be no doubt more versions.

But this process keeps coming up with maps that stray further and further from the old districts, for no apparent demographic reason.

I once said that it would be hard to draw 11 bad districts in San Francisco. I was wrong; the task force has done it.

You think the Mayor’s Office might be behind all of this?

The post New district traces would deeply harm progressive politics in San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

By Andrea Lucia

Click here for updates on this story

HEATH, Texas (KTVT) — Michael Mahan of Heath says it suddenly became clear Christmas Eve there was a problem with his pipes.

“Everything’s backing up the showers are an inch deep in water, nothing’s flushing, nothing’s going down,” he said.

Plumbers got to work, suspecting a tree root might be blocking a line.

“What we found,” he said, searching for the right words. “I don’t think they could have done that if they tried.”

Two fiber optic lines, one belonging to AT&T, the other to Suddenlink, were cutting through his sewage connection.

“I couldn’t believe. They both hit dead center in the middle of it,” Mahan said.

He remembers AT&T laid a line two-and-a-half years ago and Suddenlink sometime after.

Back then, he was single, and even a partially blocked pipe seems to have taken care of business.

Today, he’s married with a wife, son, and his mother living with him.

“We put a lot of pressure on the system and that’s when we noticed the problem,” said Mahan.

Since Christmas, he’s been trying to get the issue taken care of.

“Who do you blame? Like we don’t care. We just want our toilets to flush,” he said.

Mahan says no plumber wanted to risk cutting AT&T or Suddenlink’s lines and, as of Thursday, neither company had shown up.

So, CBS 11 reached out to both.

The next morning, an AT&T crew was at his front door.

By the afternoon, a Suddenlink contractor had arrived, as well.

“When they showed up this morning, I was super happy, like ‘Thank you!'” said Mahan.

In a statement to CBS 11, AT&T wrote:

“As we work to expand and enhance our fiber network to deliver ultra-high speeds to communities, our goal is to minimize the impacts on residents as much as possible. We instruct our contractors to follow all necessary procedures to have utilities located before they begin work. We are working with our contractor to make repairs and restore any impacts from our work.”

By sunset, the company’s crews had repaired the damage.

And Mahan, after some delay, finally got the Christmas gift he’s been after.

“All I want for Christmas is my toilet to flush,” he said, laughing.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

The post Telecom fiber strains the supply of house owner’s plumbing issues appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

By Andrea Lucia

Click here for updates on this story

HEATH, Texas (KTVT) — Michael Mahan of Heath says it suddenly became clear Christmas Eve there was a problem with his pipes.

“Everything’s backing up the showers are an inch deep in water, nothing’s flushing, nothing’s going down,” he said.

Plumbers got to work, suspecting a tree root might be blocking a line.

“What we found,” he said, searching for the right words. “I don’t think they could have done that if they tried.”

Two fiber optic lines, one belonging to AT&T, the other to Suddenlink, were cutting through his sewage connection.

“I couldn’t believe. They both hit dead center in the middle of it,” Mahan said.

He remembers AT&T laid a line two-and-a-half years ago and Suddenlink sometime after.

Back then, he was single, and even a partially blocked pipe seems to have taken care of business.

Today, he’s married with a wife, son, and his mother living with him.

“We put a lot of pressure on the system and that’s when we noticed the problem,” said Mahan.

Since Christmas, he’s been trying to get the issue taken care of.

“Who do you blame? Like we don’t care. We just want our toilets to flush,” he said.

Mahan says no plumber wanted to risk cutting AT&T or Suddenlink’s lines and, as of Thursday, neither company had shown up.

So, CBS 11 reached out to both.

The next morning, an AT&T crew was at his front door.

By the afternoon, a Suddenlink contractor had arrived, as well.

“When they showed up this morning, I was super happy, like ‘Thank you!'” said Mahan.

In a statement to CBS 11, AT&T wrote:

“As we work to expand and enhance our fiber network to deliver ultra-high speeds to communities, our goal is to minimize the impacts on residents as much as possible. We instruct our contractors to follow all necessary procedures to have utilities located before they begin work. We are working with our contractor to make repairs and restore any impacts from our work.”

By sunset, the company’s crews had repaired the damage.

And Mahan, after some delay, finally got the Christmas gift he’s been after.

“All I want for Christmas is my toilet to flush,” he said, laughing.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

The post Telecom fiber strains the supply of home-owner’s plumbing issues appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Red Devil®, a manufacturer of sealants, sealants and hand tools for painters, offers a full line of duct sealants for professional HVAC contractors and home improvement professionals. Its versatile product lines include D-Seal water-based duct sealant and F-Seal 181 water-based duct sealant, both with adhesion for sealing metal and flexible ducts, vents, air conditioning and other HVAC equipment indoors and outdoors.

Designed to be used in conjunction with metal fasteners, Red Devil D-Seal is a smooth, water-based duct seal suitable for all types of HVAC duct systems including metal ducts, fiberglass and duct plates. D-Seal is suitable for commercial HVAC applications and is specifically designed for permanent flexibility and adhesion. It offers water resistance and seal strength, exceeds all SMACNA pressure and sealing classes and is UL 181A-M and BM approved. D-Seal was developed for indoor and outdoor use and is characterized by a fast drying time, resistance to mold and mildew as well as a low VOC content. It is available in gray in 10.1 oz. and 28 ounces. Cartridges, as well as one gallon, two gallon, and five gallon buckets.

The fiber-reinforced F-Seal 181 offers many of the same benefits as D-Seal and features fiber reinforcement for seal strength and processability. F-Seal was developed for sealing fiberboard and flexible ducts and is suitable for indoor and outdoor air ducts. It also offers fast drying time, mold and mildew resistance (after curing), outperforms all SMACNA pressure and sealing classes, and is UL 181A-M and BM approved. F-Seal 181 is designed for sealing jobs of all sizes and is available in white or gray in 28 oz. and 10.1 ounces. Cartridges as well as one gallon, two gallon, and five gallon buckets.

Both D-Seal and F-Seal 181 seal high, medium and low pressure HVAC duct systems, offer UV resistance and contribute to LEED EQ Credit 4.1. For best results, the water-based sewer seals should be applied at temperatures between 40 ° F (and rising) and 110 ° F. Cleaning can be done with water and mild soap.

For more facility management news related to HVAC, click here.

The post Water-based duct sealant traces for inside and exterior HVAC home equipment appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

City officials and community leaders are urging MUNI to fully restore lines, especially in underserved communities.

RELATED: 40 SFPD officers on vacation for failing to get a COVID vaccine

In April 2020, MUNI had to close 51 of its 68 transit lines.

“Our service will be deeply unreliable. There will be long gaps in service,” said the then SFMTA director.

“Today there are five bus routes that are still temporarily suspended and serve all parts of Western Addition and Japantown,” said Jeremy Chan of the Japantown Task Force. “Lines like 2 and 3 are especially important for our seniors.”

Japantown has a high density of senior citizens and senior services.

VIDEO: SF In-N-Out sends a strong message against the COVID vaccine mandate

Pressure from the community was paramount in forcing Muni to announce that service would resume on three of the five lines from February next year.

“We will not use the pandemic to weaken and permanently get rid of buses that are critical to our public transport system,” said San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston.

MUNI told ABC7 News that they made an average of 344,000 trips just last week, compared to an average of nearly 750,000 before the pandemic. This is because the passenger numbers have not recovered.

“It could be partly because people are still working from home, it could be partly because people are concerned about the rise in anti-Asian violence,” Chan said.

RELATED: 120 SFPD officials could lose their jobs because of vaccine mandate

In a statement, MUNI said, “Looking ahead to the next 6 months, our goal is to restore more once we can address long-term funding.”

While MUNI has suffered losses, the transit system has received millions in federal aid.

“This is a question, are we going to take a savings approach where we don’t spend the money we get from the federal government because we’re saving it for a rainy day, or are we now spending aggressively to make sure we? restore bus traffic so people can have their buses and the economy can recover, “said Supervisor Preston.

Some routes have been closed due to operator bottlenecks due to the city’s mandate that after November 1st, only vaccinated employees are allowed to work.

Copyright © 2021 KGO-TV. All rights reserved.

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The Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals are not only 12-1 together this NFL season, but also 12-1 against the spread!

Arizona has been a big crowd favorite for the past two weeks, despite heavy cracks at WynnBET Sportsbook, and in both weeks the Cardinals covered the San Francisco 49ers and the Cleveland Browns on the street.

Meanwhile, in Week 6 of overtime against the New England Patriots, the Cowboys found a remarkable way to top the number. Though it only took Dak Prescott one field goal to win (and push Cowboys -3), Dak Prescott found a streaky CeeDee Lamb who gave the Patriots +3 and +3.5 backers one of their worst bad beats of the season .

All time bad beat for sports betting in this Cowboys / Pats game. Everyone (except me) and their dog were with the cowboys.

Shame. I really feel with the books.

– Iain MacMillan (@IainMacBets) October 17, 2021

With Dallas already a public team and continuing to cover the Cardinals, should bettors expect this trend to continue?

We asked WynnBET Senior Trader Grant Tucker whether or not we should expect more inflated betting lines for both teams:

“Yeah, it really seems that these teams just can’t stop covering the spread (DAL 6-0, ARI 5-1 ATS),” he said. “At some point, as a bookmaker, you need to see what number you can start buying back the underdog. A great example is in the Arizona-Houston game this week. This is a game we opened at Arizona -17.” , and we are now at -19.5. If we keep sneaking towards the key number 20, I would expect the pros to then support the Texans on the pluses at the inflated number. Dallas has a goodbye this week.

Bet $ 1 and win $ 100 if either team scores. PROMO CODE: REQUIRED. dark. Exclusive offer

The Cardinals should have no problem beating 1-5 Houston Texans at home today, but can they cover an inflated number? Arizona is currently at -19.5, which is approaching the start of the action on Sunday.

The post Bettors Ought to Count on Extra Inflated Traces for Cowboys, Cardinals Transferring Ahead appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

From Dr. Marcy Adelman-

Although the San Francisco eviction moratorium has been extended to November 30th and additional laws are pending to extend it through December 31st, evictions and threats of evictions have continued. The moratorium does not apply to non-payment cases, Ellis Act cases, or cases of violence or public safety.

Legal Assistance to the Elderly (LAE) has quietly and effectively provided free legal assistance to low-income seniors and adults with disabilities in San Francisco for over 40 years. I asked Laura Slade Chiera, Executive Director, about LAE’s services during the pandemic. She told me for the San Francisco Bay Times, “We have received requests for help with protection against physical abuse, help with unemployment, and assess early retirement, rent payments, and access to health care issues. But by far the largest percentage of calls revolve around evictions or fear of eviction. “

“Many of the calls come from those who are most at risk,” she added. “For example, a disabled trans woman who speaks monolingual Spanish in her late fifties received an eviction notice. She had been in her apartment for 11 years and had paid her rent during the pandemic. She spent the whole winter in her apartment without heating, despite repeatedly asking the landlord to repair it. In addition, she was harassed by the property management team, who made transphobic and racist remarks to her and her friends and harassed her about her immigration status. During this stressful time, a roommate left to help pay the rent. And an operation that kept her from work resulted in her unable to pay the rent. She felt hopeless and was afraid for her future. ”

“She asked us for help,” Chiera continued. “Faced with a defense based on retaliation for demanding repairs, the landlord canceled the owner’s eviction. LAE was able to secure the client’s rental support during this time, and with the eviction threat gone, the client was able to find a new roommate to help pay the ongoing rent. The landlord has carried out the necessary repairs at reasonable times of the day and our customers’ lives have returned to normal. “

LAE’s customers are as diverse as the city itself: blacks, indigenous people, Latinx, API, LGBT, seniors and people with HIV. LAE is a frontline nonprofit that is saving people from homelessness by helping people stay in their homes.

Chiera said: “A large number of calls have come from people living in SRO or single occupancy hotels. SROs are small, rented, furnished rooms in multi-tenant buildings in which the tenants share the kitchen, toilet and bathroom. Tenants are afraid of what could happen to them if they are evicted in the middle of a pandemic. “

She continued: “At the beginning of the pandemic it was particularly tough for the people in the SROs. People were encouraged to stay in their room. These rooms are 8 x 8 in size. Getting food or home care was a challenge. You can understand what a stressful environment this was and how it affected a person’s physical and mental health. “

“It was also a challenging time for the staff,” she added. “Despite the health risk for our older clients, we still had to appear in person in court and at hearings. The staff worried about their customers and themselves. It was very stressful. But we did it together. “

Chiera has been the Executive Director of LAE since 2016. Under her leadership, LAE has increased its budget, tripled its staff and, consequently, increased its impact on senior citizens at risk in San Francisco. Although the majority of cases focus on home preservation, LAE has several other areas of practice, including helping seniors and disabled adults struggling with debt collection; Problem with fraud; physical or financial abuse; and assistance with problems related to Medi-Cal, Medicare and In-Home Supportive Services. In addition, LAE, in partnership with the AIDS Legal Referral Panel, provides life planning for older LGBTQ adults and adults with disabilities who require a basic will and health care instructions.

In the past year, LAE opened about 1,550 new cases. With so many of their customers lacking access to technology services like Zoom, they expanded their mobile services, met customers at home, and exchanged documents through the mail. They also worked closely with the Latino Task Force’s COVID-19 Response Centers in the Excelsior and Bay View neighborhoods, which provide housing law services.

Chiera concluded, “It’s too easy to get cynical about the city’s problems. It is important to remember that the people we serve built this city and now it is our turn to help them. You may have worked all your life but still cannot keep up with rising rents. The city needs to expand housing subsidies and provide more affordable and accessible services and health care at home. San Francisco can do this. “

Legal assistance for the elderly: https://laesf.org/

AIDS Legal Referral Panel: https://tinyurl.com/575xs89h

Dr. Marcy Adelman, psychologist and LGBTQ + longevity advocate and political advisor, is responsible for the Aging in Community column. She is a member of the California Commission on Aging, the board of directors of the Alzheimer’s Association of Northern California, the California Master Plan on Aging Equity Advisory Committee, and the San Francisco Dignity Fund Oversight and Advisory Committee. She is the co-founder of Openhouse, the only nonprofit in San Francisco that focuses solely on the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ + older adults.

Published on October 21, 2021

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The internationally renowned Copenhagen restaurant Noma is not lacking in applause. It has been named World’s Best Restaurant five times, has two Michelin stars, and is certainly one of the most sought-after reservations in the world. It is also praised by restaurant critics around the world. Now it’s getting the clickhole treatment.

The satirical website offered its own in-depth look at Noma’s hyper-local cuisine brand. Below are the best lines from what is surely the greatest review Noma has received:

About chef René Redzepi’s predilection for foraging: “Redzepi, who displaces large mountains of sand with hand grenades, almost immediately reveals a veritable buffet of herbs and products that protrude from the ground everywhere. There are wild parsnips, beach peas, sea lettuce, spicy lilacs, Osama bin Laden’s stranded corpse, horseradish, mustard flowers and green goosefoot – all grow in the same 1.2 m radius.

“We use the horseradish in a sea urchin dish, the salad with salted cod roe, and the leg of the corpse to make a nice broth with beets roasted in ash,” he explains.

To Redzepi’s respect for his ingredients: “Just as Redzepi manages to tear the vinegar out of his pocket, the eight-second season of the carrot ends and it explodes into a mushroom cloud of maggots and nine-volt batteries. The explosion left both of us badly burned on large parts of our bodies, ”but Redzepi doesn’t seem worried.

“To be a good cook, you have to respect the ingredients,” he muses. ‘You don’t go into this job if you’re not willing to be blown up by root vegetables from time to time.’ “

To develop new uses for traditional Nordic foods: “Experiments conducted at the facility have resulted in an astonishing array of breakthrough gastronomic achievements in recent years, including, but not limited to, a portable particle accelerator that reconfigures milk molecules in real time to make it possible to make ice cream without an ice cream cone eat; a crudo who know where you live; a way to genetically modify the ants’ pheromones so that the ants taste like moths; a 19-course tasting menu in which each ingredient is infused with a highly concentrated lactic acid, creating a The self-composting effect is that every forkful of food dissolves into thin air when a customer tries to take a bite; a radish that is also a weapon; a thermal centrifuge chamber the size of a meat chamber in which butter can be melted; a method of consolidation of 100 individual raisins into a huge, united bundle of raisins and with helium stuffed chanterelles that will rip your head off and float into space if you stick more than one in your M at once. “

About Redzepi’s kitchen staff: “While the cooks work hard to carefully plate mussels and conjure up intricate emulsions, a little hunchback named Fossegaar, who wears a lace bonnet and leather knee breeches, plucks traditional tunes on his hurdy-gurdy on his hurdy-gurdy, for which he is paid with porridge. A dutiful forest bear named Hungry Harald works as a garçon de cuisine, patrols the kitchen and is available to the chefs if something needs to be torn up or ground to dust. ‘Poppa loves you,’ says Redzepi.

About the ambience of the restaurant: “Ten minutes go by without the waitresses giving a signal, and I see the guests at other tables getting restless. Then, as I get impatient too, the silence is suddenly broken by the majestic roar of four trumpets, swinging them up, and Fossegaar, the hunchback, unrolling on a golden tricycle, wearing a tiara of antlers. “

To eat: “I crack the egg so its yolks cascade over the other ingredients, but to my amazement there are no yolks. Instead, a live fetal quail emerges through the broken shell and stretches its fragile, tiny body and stares somberly into mine.It unfolds its still wet wings and flutters two feet above the table where it hovers peacefully for a few moments before, without warning Head lowers and plunges right into my mouth. “

About the, uh, whim of Redzepi’s food: “True to the mission of Noma, the execution of the second and third courses is decidedly Scandinavian. One is a poignant ode to the Copenhagen of the Reformation, in which a” chimney sweep “(a tiny figure made of charred pumpkin with beech nuts eyes and a barley grass broom) coughs” Lung soot “(caviar and squid ink), and your task is to baptize it in” holy water “(goblet with barley cream) so that his soul can pass on his soul into the Lutheran heaven. Death ‘(you eat him).”

With the imminent closure of Noma (it will eventually reopened with a new menu and a new look): “’If the future is similar to the present, then there is no point in going on – you already know the whole story,’ ponders Redzepi. ‘I always want to tell new stories with Noma. Bigger stories, better stories. Stories like none that have never been told before. ‘

“But the most important thing I want to do is figure out how to capture clouds and cook them,” he continues. ‘That would be pretty neat.’ “

• The best restaurant in the world: Discover a new era of dining at Noma [Clickhole]
• All noma covers [E]

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