Alex Contreras 🍉
@alexbikes.bsky.social
Your local housing & transportation policy expert. Working to end freeway expansions in CA. Trans rights are human rights. They/Them.
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Alex Contreras 🍉
@alexbikes.bsky.social
· Nov 21
Re-introducing myself 👋🏼 I'm a transit/housing advocate working to end freeway expansions in CA. Transit policy, is housing policy, is climate policy. As a zoning & building design reform missionary, I love Georgism, yet I despise the Georgists. Based in Oakland, biking thru SoCal, fck John Fischer 🤟🏼
I third wheel with my married friends so often I just started calling our hangouts date nights. Tonight's date was a walk to go look at Christmas trees and dinner.
December 2, 2025 at 7:13 AM
I third wheel with my married friends so often I just started calling our hangouts date nights. Tonight's date was a walk to go look at Christmas trees and dinner.
Reposted by Alex Contreras 🍉
My wife has been HIV+ for 34 years. She’s alive today b/c work of activists who destigmatized the virus, pushed medical science to adapt & find ways to treat it, & advocated for gov health programs that helped fund her care. The current U.S. regime may want to go back in time, but we won’t let them.
December 2, 2025 at 1:27 AM
My wife has been HIV+ for 34 years. She’s alive today b/c work of activists who destigmatized the virus, pushed medical science to adapt & find ways to treat it, & advocated for gov health programs that helped fund her care. The current U.S. regime may want to go back in time, but we won’t let them.
Reposted by Alex Contreras 🍉
In need of a new climbing buddy. My last one stopped climbing because they got themselves a boyfriend. Very embarrassing for them.
November 30, 2025 at 9:11 PM
In need of a new climbing buddy. My last one stopped climbing because they got themselves a boyfriend. Very embarrassing for them.
Reposted by Alex Contreras 🍉
A small business space in downtown Oakland is up for rent at $7k a month. The idea of being a small business owner with an actual brick n mortar shop sounds difficult n stressful.
November 30, 2025 at 1:48 AM
A small business space in downtown Oakland is up for rent at $7k a month. The idea of being a small business owner with an actual brick n mortar shop sounds difficult n stressful.
I just saw an unhinged, f*cked up, ad featuring Kristi Noem telling people to turn themselves over to ICE and self deport or they will be tracked down and forcibly deported.
November 29, 2025 at 9:32 PM
I just saw an unhinged, f*cked up, ad featuring Kristi Noem telling people to turn themselves over to ICE and self deport or they will be tracked down and forcibly deported.
My sister who has taken in a semi-feral cat this past year sent me a progress pic. This is Jiji, who was once starving, flea bitten, and covered in ring worm. Now he's getting pretty chunky and she's worried she's not feeding him enough 😂.
November 29, 2025 at 8:24 AM
My sister who has taken in a semi-feral cat this past year sent me a progress pic. This is Jiji, who was once starving, flea bitten, and covered in ring worm. Now he's getting pretty chunky and she's worried she's not feeding him enough 😂.
I have been staring at my cart with $300 worth of Sam Edelman shoes. I don't need them. I don't need them. I don't need them.
November 28, 2025 at 10:52 PM
I have been staring at my cart with $300 worth of Sam Edelman shoes. I don't need them. I don't need them. I don't need them.
Reposted by Alex Contreras 🍉
Canada, I am in a different part of you
November 28, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Canada, I am in a different part of you
I have never been more grateful for the invention of the sauna. Cheers to saunas, good food and even better company 🤟🏼
November 27, 2025 at 9:57 PM
I have never been more grateful for the invention of the sauna. Cheers to saunas, good food and even better company 🤟🏼
Reposted by Alex Contreras 🍉
Hey, congratulations to all of Olivia Nuzzi’s horny media critic defenders. Heckuva job!
November 26, 2025 at 10:19 PM
Hey, congratulations to all of Olivia Nuzzi’s horny media critic defenders. Heckuva job!
Reposted by Alex Contreras 🍉
Keys & Mulder build dataset to study homeowners insurance using over 74 million premiums from 2014–2024 inferred from mortgage escrow payments. Premium increases are capitalized into home values, reducing home price growth by over $40,000 in the most exposed zip codes. www.nber.org/papers/w32579
November 19, 2025 at 9:33 PM
Keys & Mulder build dataset to study homeowners insurance using over 74 million premiums from 2014–2024 inferred from mortgage escrow payments. Premium increases are capitalized into home values, reducing home price growth by over $40,000 in the most exposed zip codes. www.nber.org/papers/w32579
Pluribus making me think of moving back to Albuquerque. Love that city.
November 26, 2025 at 4:00 AM
Pluribus making me think of moving back to Albuquerque. Love that city.
Reposted by Alex Contreras 🍉
December 10 at 6pm @eastbayforeveryone.bsky.social will be showing off single stair design competition entrants from the Bay Area along with HAC in Downtown Oakland.
actionnetwork.org/events/12102...
actionnetwork.org/events/12102...
HAC in the Town – Join Us for a HAC Happy Hour in Oakland!
The Housing Action Coalition is heading to the East Bay, and we’re bringing the celebration with us.
Come hang out with the HAC team and other housing friends on Tuesday, December 10 at the iconic D...
actionnetwork.org
November 25, 2025 at 4:35 AM
December 10 at 6pm @eastbayforeveryone.bsky.social will be showing off single stair design competition entrants from the Bay Area along with HAC in Downtown Oakland.
actionnetwork.org/events/12102...
actionnetwork.org/events/12102...
Reposted by Alex Contreras 🍉
A reminder that cars aren’t a technology problem. They’re a geometry problem.
Waymo privatized another public street:
Chanel approaching 4th, San Francisco
Possibly queued for a Billie Eilish show at Chase Center ~half mile away.
The light rail train on 4th seen passing in front of this roboherd has more passenger capacity than all of them combined.
OP: .tiktok.renaspam18
Chanel approaching 4th, San Francisco
Possibly queued for a Billie Eilish show at Chase Center ~half mile away.
The light rail train on 4th seen passing in front of this roboherd has more passenger capacity than all of them combined.
OP: .tiktok.renaspam18
November 25, 2025 at 4:16 AM
A reminder that cars aren’t a technology problem. They’re a geometry problem.
Some planners in my life have me reaching for a cigarette and another coffee. My brother in Christ its not even noon. 😭
November 24, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Some planners in my life have me reaching for a cigarette and another coffee. My brother in Christ its not even noon. 😭
Reposted by Alex Contreras 🍉
Great piece on how density restrictions in zoning are essentially BS.
November 24, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Great piece on how density restrictions in zoning are essentially BS.
I'm cooking a dinner for everyone who cat sat for me this past year. Started prep this morning. Realized I forgot to defrost the turkey. Intense water method defrosting has already begun. Nervously counting down to dinner tonight.
November 23, 2025 at 5:48 PM
I'm cooking a dinner for everyone who cat sat for me this past year. Started prep this morning. Realized I forgot to defrost the turkey. Intense water method defrosting has already begun. Nervously counting down to dinner tonight.
On my wonderful childfree morning that I have all to myself my cat decided to lay across my face while mewing for breakfast.
November 22, 2025 at 3:23 PM
On my wonderful childfree morning that I have all to myself my cat decided to lay across my face while mewing for breakfast.
I really want Bluesky to have private posts because my unhinged thoughts have to go somewhere
November 21, 2025 at 6:50 PM
I really want Bluesky to have private posts because my unhinged thoughts have to go somewhere
Brother, tenement buildings had anywhere from 6-8 people in tiny two room apartments. Shared outhouse. No electricity or plumbing. It was a different time. There was also no zoning!
The free market kept manhattan affordable in the late 1800s and early 1900s
A fun thing about YIMBY dorks is that they are incapable of scrutinizing the hyper capitalist economic model that treats housing as a service that can only be solved via free market principles rather than a human right that may be at odds with endless profit and rent seeking
November 20, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Brother, tenement buildings had anywhere from 6-8 people in tiny two room apartments. Shared outhouse. No electricity or plumbing. It was a different time. There was also no zoning!
Reposted by Alex Contreras 🍉
If you'd like to kill a woman and her two children, and then say you don't feel any need to apologize, and then insist that you're actually the real victim, just remember: use a car as your weapon. gothamist.com/news/brookly...
Brooklyn driver sentenced to up to 9 years for crash that killed a mother and 2 daughters
The woman pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges, but an attorney representing the family says her punishment isn’t adequate.
gothamist.com
November 20, 2025 at 4:52 PM
If you'd like to kill a woman and her two children, and then say you don't feel any need to apologize, and then insist that you're actually the real victim, just remember: use a car as your weapon. gothamist.com/news/brookly...
This is so incorrect I feel like I'm listening to Trump speak about the economy
Guys, I promise there are lots of place in America where it's perfectly legal to build dwellings that aren't single-family homes. This is a weird urbanist myth. Lots of non-SFH housing gets built! That's good, we should build more, but it hasn't exactly ended demand for detached suburban units.
Will do you have any data to support this argument? You keep saying “people want to live in X” when X is the only type of home that’s *legal to build*
Of course most people will opt in to the type of home that is the only option!
Of course most people will opt in to the type of home that is the only option!
November 19, 2025 at 6:51 PM
This is so incorrect I feel like I'm listening to Trump speak about the economy