It starts with the brewpub.....

[toby]

"The coolest place in the world is the one I just departed." I think that's Thompson's MO.

[edens]

Keep an eye on Detroit. There's a whole mess of libertarian whack a doos trying to libify it.

Speaking of Detroit, I'm kind of curious to read this guy's book

[Hildegard]

kinda funny and insightful, but so unrelentingly negative. So what, if anything, does he consider positive? Not clear whether he even believes in positive concepts of cool, but if he does i doubt there are many places that he finds as cool as he believes himself to be.

also, journalists: beware of using the word "anointed" like this, lest ye invoke Thomas Sowell

I think he's deliberately trying to touch nerve endings. There is, I think, a larger point about how downtown renaissances seem to follow a pattern that doesn't have much to do with the character or history of the given town. I think Knoxville has actually done a pretty good job of co-opting the better "pattern" aspects that give a town 21st century credibility and also preserving its bones. Which you cannot at all say for Asheville, a town I used to adore but have become pretty disgusted with. It really isn't a good thing to not be able to tell any meaningful difference b/w a town in Western North Carolina and Santa Fe, except for the landscape and variances in the pimped-up (and not really genuine) local foodie culture. To me, the essay is a cautionary piece with acid wit meant to make people who are used to feeling smug feel a little less so.

[jfm]

I think Knoxville has actually done a pretty good job of co-opting the better "pattern" aspects that give a town 21st century credibility and also preserving its bones. Which you cannot at all say for Asheville, a town I used to adore but have become pretty disgusted with. It really isn't a good thing to not be able to tell any meaningful difference b/w a town in Western North Carolina and Santa Fe, except for the landscape and variances in the pimped-up (and not really genuine) local foodie culture.

I agree about Knoxville, less so about Asheville, which to me has always felt very Appalachian. Granted I haven't been to Santa Fe for 30 years, but I'd be surprised if there's much of an old-time music scene there. Thompson's read on things feels very superficial to me -- yes, all of these places have microbrews and hipster districts and foodie havens (or would-be foodie havens) and so forth, but that's not much more insightful than saying Milwaukee is just like Seattle because they both have baseball teams. Even just spending a weekend in Chattanooga or Nashville or Louisville or Asheville -- or Knoxville, obviously -- you can get some sense of the personality of the place. If you're trying to, anyway. They all feel different to me.

[Hank IV]

Ashefrancisco. Louisville is a great place to raise an adult. Old time music in Santa Fe is sung in Spanish. Detroit rocks (if for nothing else because my dad played for the Tigers). Chuck Thompson couldn't find his ass with both hands. I write in short, choppy sentences.

[Hildegard]

Like I said, the guy is trying to be a pain in the ass. The piece sounds very H.L. Mencken-like to me, and in that vein he is as smug as the people he is trying to piss off. And while all those towns really do feel different if you're trying, I can sort of run with the gripe about how it's kind of too bad you have to try, and by the way, they really are all following a recipe for cultural revitalization that doesn't have very much to do with the history or culture of the area. I mean, yeah, sort of. I can see Thomas Wolfe's birthplace from the fifth floor of the Marriott Renaissance in Asheville, and Tupelo Honey do make some fiiiiiine biscuits & gravy, y'all. But for me Asheville has turned into a Hipster Theme Park.

Btw I have made a point of visiting Santa Fe about every five years for the past twenty. I still love it. But there is something very wrong with a culture that prices out all but the wealthy, in any meaningful sense. That snark about "art that no one buys" is spot on. Towns that get to that zenith like Santa Fe or Sedona or the Pacific oases really cater to a tier of money that pays no respect to the soul of the people who created those cities and their culture. My first trip to Santa Fe, way back in the 90s, I was driving up to Taos (don't even get me started on Taos), and I stopped for gas. The gas station owner still pumped for you. He said he'd lived there his whole life, but he was leaving because he no longer recognized the people who were settling there. Maybe he was a reactionary jackass, but maybe not. I think about him every time I hear somebody in Knoxville snark on rednecks. The division of culture isn't just on them. And you can't have a real city where people don't recognize each other.

[jfm]

And while all those towns really do feel different if you're trying, I can sort of run with the gripe about how it's kind of too bad you have to try, and by the way, they really are all following a recipe for cultural revitalization that doesn't have very much to do with the history or culture of the area. I mean, yeah, sort of. I can see Thomas Wolfe's birthplace from the fifth floor of the Marriott Renaissance in Asheville, and Tupelo Honey do make some fiiiiiine biscuits & gravy, y'all. But for me Asheville has turned into a Hipster Theme Park.

Hmm. We'll just have to disagree. Asheville to me has particular cultural characteristics that define it as a place, characteristics that come from a long and complicated history, and I've never had to "try" to distinguish it from Brooklyn or Portland or Ithaca or whatever. (All of which also are very distinct places, whatever shared affinity they may have for crafted brews and facial hair.)

Santa Fe I know a lot about second-hand, because my dad grew up there and his sister still lives there. It was always a weird and divided city, for one thing, between the anglo and non-anglo populations. By reports it has become something of a moneyed New Age resort, as you suggest -- but that doesn't make it just like (or even much like) any other place. Again, I just think Thompson is being very superficial about what constitutes culture and what makes a place a place.

[Hildegard]

Hmm. We'll just have to disagree. Asheville to me has particular cultural characteristics that define it as a place, characteristics that come from a long and complicated history, and I've never had to "try" to distinguish it from Brooklyn or Portland or Ithaca or whatever. (All of which also are very distinct places, whatever shared affinity they may have for crafted brews and facial hair.)

Santa Fe I know a lot about second-hand, because my dad grew up there and his sister still lives there. It was always a weird and divided city, for one thing, between the anglo and non-anglo populations. By reports it has become something of a moneyed New Age resort, as you suggest -- but that doesn't make it just like (or even much like) any other place. Again, I just think Thompson is being very superficial about what constitutes culture and what makes a place a place.

OK, drive ten minutes outside Asheville to a surrounding town like Black Mountain, and I see your point. But the town itself is actually less recognizable in its region, IMO, than Santa Fe is in its. And while I'm only a tourist/lover of Santa Fe, and you still can have a spiritual experience there, I found (at least on my last trip) that I had to drive out farther into the country to find it than when I could sit in the middle of town and feel it. Hard for me to explain.

Btw you and la fille need to get to Santa Fe, and save half (at least) your trip for driving out into the country. If you haven't checked it out already: Talk to me about the D.H. Lawrence shrine out in the high desert. I've never been so blown away by anything as I was by that. Mighta been just me. I'm counting every cathedral I've ever seen in Europe. That little adobe shack in the middle of nowhere is amazing. I hope some rich fuck hasn't tarted it up and started busload caravans of MFA students from approved Creative Writing programs out there.

/thread derail (b/c it's my thread, and I'll derail if I want to)

[Hank IV]

It's all in the mind of the beholder. In NM, I prefer Tucumcari, Santa Rosa, Vaughn, Clovis, Hatch and Los Cruces. Few interlopers in those places. Older culture still in place. Western NC is crawling with retirees and extended families there for the low taxes n shit that change the culture. Why else does a town like Bryson City (pop. 2,300) have two Starbucks. Just evolution in action.

[Hank IV]

Like I said, the guy is trying to be a pain in the ass. The piece sounds very H.L. Mencken-like to me, and in that vein he is as smug as the people he is trying to piss off. And while all those towns really do feel different if you're trying, I can sort of run with the gripe about how it's kind of too bad you have to try, and by the way, they really are all following a recipe for cultural revitalization that doesn't have very much to do with the history or culture of the area. I mean, yeah, sort of. I can see Thomas Wolfe's birthplace from the fifth floor of the Marriott Renaissance in Asheville, and Tupelo Honey do make some fiiiiiine biscuits & gravy, y'all. But for me Asheville has turned into a Hipster Theme Park.

Btw I have made a point of visiting Santa Fe about every five years for the past twenty. I still love it. But there is something very wrong with a culture that prices out all but the wealthy, in any meaningful sense. That snark about "art that no one buys" is spot on. Towns that get to that zenith like Santa Fe or Sedona or the Pacific oases really cater to a tier of money that pays no respect to the soul of the people who created those cities and their culture. My first trip to Santa Fe, way back in the 90s, I was driving up to Taos (don't even get me started on Taos), and I stopped for gas. The gas station owner still pumped for you. He said he'd lived there his whole life, but he was leaving because he no longer recognized the people who were settling there. Maybe he was a reactionary jackass, but maybe not. I think about him every time I hear somebody in Knoxville snark on rednecks. The division of culture isn't just on them. And you can't have a real city where people don't recognize each other.

Get out of my head!!!