DAVE ROSS

Ross: A few things for the East Coast to know about Amazon

Nov 14, 2018, 8:49 AM

amazon...

A water taxi approaches the Long Island City waterfront and skyline, in the Queens borough of New York. Anable Basin, the Queens neighborhood selected by Amazon for one of its new headquarters. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

It’s official. Amazon will build two new headquarters – one in New York, across the river from the UN, the other in Virginia across the freeway from the Pentagon.

Amazon calls them HQ2, but that will not be the real name.

Speaking as I do from Seattle, the first thing to know about Amazon is that it’s not so much a corporation as a civilization. And they name their buildings for corporate projects:  Bigfoot, Cricket, Roxanne, Fiona. It’s like the Ikea of buildings.

And each of those buildings will be sustainable and carbon-neutral, and warmed by the waste heat of busy employees. Your subways will never flood again. Good, because they’ll be packed with those employees, all of whom are young and smart and eat artisan yogurt.

Amazon employees don’t even need calendars. Because every day is “Day One.” Look it up. They do not “work.” They are too busy “making history.”

New York – as big as you are – they are all working on something much bigger.

Same with you, Virgina. Amazon will have more office space than the Pentagon, and once it releases its drone army, the Air Force will have nothing to do.

So good luck East Coast – and if at any time during the next 20 years you see a parking spot, look both ways, check for cops, and then hide it under your shirt for safe keeping. You’ll thank me later.

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