I’m not surprised very often, but when I am, I’ll typically write a post about it. This is one of those times, and the source of my surprise came from somewhere utterly banal: messing around with Google Earth.
As a starting point, I have a simple picture to show you from near where I live. I took this image from Google Maps near the border of Atherton (a very rich town) and Menlo Park (a very affluent town, but not rich like Atherton). Even a partly-sighted person can see the stark difference between the upper left of this image (which is the more densely-populated Menlo Park) and the rest of the map. This, folks, is the difference between $8 million homes and $30 million homes.
That wasn’t the surprise part. As a bit more background, the towns here on the peninsula south of San Francisco can be described in socioeconomic terms in just a few words each. And, as progressive (and I mean REALLY progressive) as this area likes to pretend itself to be, believe me, the racial divisions are razor-sharp. If you have handed me the data on the percentages of blacks, whites, Indians, and Chinese people, I could absolutely tell you which one of the dozens of towns around here you were talking about.
I’ve lived here my entire adult life, so knowing where the rich people live is not a big deal. What struck me, however, as I was zipping around with Google Earth, is the sheer size and beauty of these palaces they’ve built. Keep in mind, this isn’t Lubbock, Texas. A single acre in the right place without a stick of wood built on top is worth ten million bucks on its own. So as my bird’-eye-view of Atherton zipped from place to place, I was mesmerized by just how amazing the houses were.
But, wait, if I’ve lived here all my adult life, what’s the surprise part? Well, because in normal, all these glorious palaces look like this:
This is what Paul Fussell described in his book Class, a lifetime favorite of mine, as “top-out-of-sight wealth. Let’s face it, there are a lot of venture capitalists, senior executives, and private equity types around here. Those billions all have to go somewhere. And, honestly, I didn’t even look that hard, and it was a cinch to find places that looked like Versailles.
In fact, as precious as land is around here, there are some places that are so large that they don’t have anything better to do with some chunks of their yards that they just install huge pieces of modern artwork, just for the hell of it.
I was also struck by the many construction sites, each one more ambitious than the next. Check out this compound being put together, and for the sake of comparison, take note of the already very substantial mansion next door.
In some cases, the plot is so large that it starts to resemble a city park instead of someone’s private residence.
How does one get the kind of mega-fortune to make acquiring such a property possible? All kinds of ways. Inheritance. Having founder’s shares in an IPO. Or, the easiest of all, picking a really good stock and never, ever selling it.
