Krunchy kitsch
Wednesday September 12, 2007
Categories: Architecture
Filed Under: Thomas Kinkade
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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I know, I know, but Carmel, CA was planned in a not altogether different utopian way and it works.
Um. Carmel "works" if you don't mind that it has a terminal case of thinking well of itself, and a REALLY terminal case of the "cutes." (This is where Thomas Kinkade really IS from!)
Carmel, rather than being a functional community in a crunchy-con sense, is nothing more than a tourist haven. Carmel grows no food, manufactures no widgets, and its main street is mostly hyper-expensive chain stores interspersed with "art" galleries, all aimed at outsiders. Oh, and residences there are astronomically expensive, further ensuring that no lower-class or working-class person will ever live there.
"Simpler Times" eh? I hope they get this "simpler" villiage built before the recession hits. CAn you imagine building anything, particularly this kind of white-bread theme park without power tools, cheap gasoline and low interest rates?
This isn't all that far removed from "Celebration," the Florida town devised by the Disney company several years ago.
And the concept itself hearkens back to an even earlier Disney project, Main Street U.S.A., visited by tens of millions at Disney World and Disneyland.
As entertainment, it's swell. But as a way of life? It's a candy-coated nostalgia for something that never was.
This is an excellent marketing idea to separate the nostalgic from their disposable income. The people who came up with this stand to haul in a load of cash. Good for them.
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