Not only did Palo Alto lose Facebook to Menlo Park, but it apparently tried to fine thefacebook $250 per day in 2005 because the artist they hired to paint their original headquarters, David Choe, spilled white paint on the parking space outside 471 Emerson Street, at least that’s the story according to Choe’s blog:

You are hereby notified that it has been determined that a painter,

> contracted by you to paint in your leased space at 471 Emerson Street, is

> responsible for the spilling of some white paint on the pavement in a

> parking space on the Emerson Street frontage of your building. The

> spilling of this material is a violation of Palo Alto Municipal Code

> Section 5.20.160., you and your company will be responsible to

> clean up this paint. At that point, an Administrative Citation may be

> issued to you. This citation has a $250 fine associated with it and this

fine is assessed daily.

The guy that hired me to paint thefacebook.com offices, is sean parker he’s only 25 and was one of the founders of napster fucking brilliant guy. It takes me two and a half hours of back breaking work to clean up the spill.

I found this while searching “superchunk” and “palo alto” (apparently Superchunk “Connecticut” and Archers of Loaf “Fabricoh” were on his playlist at the time. I don’t recognize the title, “Connecticut” — it seems to be a b-side of “The First Part” from 1994, and, of course, Jim Wilbur’s home state — and this is a good time to state, for the umpteenth time, that I was hipped to the -chunk because original guitarist Jack McCook came out to SF after leaving the band and I was his host — and I showed him a not quite good enough time –he moved back to Greensboro — I took him to Paradise Lounge was was kinda dead and Pat O’Shea’s where we ate but the music, surprise, surprise, was kinda weak).

I over-tell this story too but on the Facebook thing  — or the thefacebook thing — but I walked upstairs into that office and met Choe and I guess Zuck (in less that was “Phil”) and bought a  calendar from Choe. I like to say that my $20 was what made Choe think it was okay to defer payment for that job (It was later reported that he took stock not cash, eventually worth millions).