MONDAY, MARCH 3, 2014
Volume 13 Issue 91
Santa Monica Daily Press
‘12 YEARS’ A BIG WINNER SEE PAGE 3
We have you covered
THE WE GOT SPIRIT ISSUE
App tracks Construction lag drives up home prices performance in the sheets THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BY DAVID MARK SIMPSON
LOS ANGELES Construction on new Southern California homes is lagging, and that’s driving up prices for would-be middle-class homebuyers amid a reduced inventory.
Developers are still wary about putting up new construction despite a boom in prices over past year. As a result, the region’s supply of new homes dropped to about 2,200 at the end of last year compared with 19,000 in 2006, just before the market collapsed, according to the Real Estate
Research Council of Southern California at Cal Poly Pomona. Analysts say about 15,000 new homes will be sold this year in the six-county region, or 58 percent less than the 20-year SEE HOMES PAGE 12
Daily Press Staff Writer
SILICON BEACH Not that we’re keeping score but Santa Monica ranks fifth among California cities in terms of average length of sex. This is according to data culled by the founders of the Santa Monica-based app Spreadsheets, which monitors and then catalogues users’ carnal movements and sounds through the accelerometer and microphone on their iPhones. Just to quickly couch the bedroom achievements of the Bay City: There’s only so much an accelerometer and a microphone can tell us about the act of love. Without getting too graphic, but also being careful to respect all sexual preferences and the myriad of definitions of sex, Spreadsheets is largely measuring thrust-oriented sex. Santa Monica’s fifth place showing is out of the 210 (of 458) California municipalities in which people used the app. And how long do you have to last to be average in Santa Monica? Two minutes and 57 seconds. Founders Danny Wax (a 2004 Santa Monica High School graduate) and Tyler Elick recently released the endurance data for all 50 states. Californians lasted two minutes and 38 seconds. “People like to have something to compare themselves to and I don’t think it was too threatening,” Wax said. “And maybe that turns out that they feel proud of themselves. That’s all we want. I think it took away all these perceptions that people have of lasting 30 minutes and 45 minutes. It brought it back to reality.” This, more than anything, is their goal, they said. The app, which launched in August and has already been downloaded in 125 countries, is not a perfect science but it can be a conversation starter. “It’s definitely been misinterpreted many times,” Elick said. “I think the biggest misconception is that we’re pushing louder, faster, longer, bigger, stronger, heavier, whatSEE APP PAGE 9
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MAN IN A BUBBLE
Paul Alvarez Jr. editor@smdp.com Buster Balloon sits inside a whoopee cushion of doom during his show Saturday afternoon in honor of Dr. Seuss’ birthday at the Main Library.
Judge says pair of state laws are unconstitutional THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SACRAMENTO, Calif. A federal judge has ruled two California laws enacted through the initiative process are unconstitutional because they retrospectively increase the punishments for crimes committed before
the laws came into effect. U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton of Sacramento issued a 58-page order on Friday, ruling that the so-called “Victims’ Bill of Rights” and another law that allows the governor to reverse approved paroles cannot be enforced.
Gary Limjap (310) 586-0339 In today’s real estate climate ...
Experience counts! garylimjap@gmail.com www.garylimjap.com
Voters passed Proposition 9 in 2008, mandating longer periods of time between parole hearings. The Sacramento Bee reports (bit.ly/NKj5UW) Karlton found that law SEE LAWS PAGE 12
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