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Comment by just_steve_h | Hacker News Reader

You know “Ghostship” was the name of an incredible East Bay artists’ community that was destroyed in a fire which killed multiple people. Is this really the name you’re going with? It’s not ancient history, either - less than 10 years.

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I immediately thought of the Oakland loft disaster in relation to this startup name -- but I'll admit I've been and on-and-off again loft occupant (not the ghostship loft, but other lofts) and East Bay/SF resident so that's probably skewing my view of this naming choice.

I know about ghostship, but I don’t immediately associate the word ghost ship with that disaster. I’ve always thought of them as the spooky abandoned ships that float around and I think it’s a good name.

There's a bit of history with js automation frameworks with spooky names. Ie phantom.js. I think a play on the idea of "headless" browser automation

Never heard of them. I have heard of the shitty 2002 film by that name.

I don’t know why someone would be expected to be aware of a niche, local, artist community or their history

I haven't lived in the Bay Area ever, although I had plans to move there at the time (plans which were sidelined because I didn't get the H1B then), but the fire was pretty big news even halfway across the world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Ship_warehouse_fire

It wasn't the community that sparked attention, but the shoddy living conditions and that people had to resort to living in a warehouse in the Bay Area because of unaffordable housing (and which indirectly led to the conditions for the fire to happen).

But again I wouldn't expect recent YC people who just moved to the Bay Area to know about it.

I’ve never lived in the area, didn’t even know what city he was referencing with “East Bay” and I have been on hacker news since before this fire according to Wikipedia.

I have never heard of this event.

Also according to Wikipedia 36 people died. 31 people have died in Nepal due to their political shenanigans the past few days and I highly doubt anyone not involved in the region is going to remember in 10 years.

It seems really weird to me to be calling out random people for naming collisions with incredibly local, niche, news events from a decade ago

The Ghost Ship was massive news - it was the deadliest fire in Oakland’s history and the deadliest fire in the US since the Great White show at The Station in 2003. It had big impacts on everyone who threw renegade parties as it changed the liability from civil only to criminal against the master tenant and civil against both the city and the utility.

Finally, East Bay is a very common term, even encompassing a well known guitar player. Would you consider that if you’re not familiar with that term, you’re maybe not a very good judge of how common the knowledge of an event is? I’m from nowhere near San Francisco, but both East Bay and Ghost Ship are front of mind for me.

Bruh, I only need to extract this sentence fragment

> It had big impacts on everyone who threw renegade parties…

To point out that you are out of touch. How many people as a percentage of the population do you think even know what those are?

> Finally, East Bay is a very common term, even encompassing a well known guitar player. Would you consider that if you’re not familiar with that term, you’re maybe not a very good judge of how common the knowledge of an event is?

There is an East Bay in every single city with a West Bay. How many people as a percentage of population do you believe know specific guitar players names from niche bands like the Dead Kennedys ?

This entire thread reads like “how dare you not know the culture of San Francisco”

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