Mr Monopoly Man wrote:
Granny's Toe Jam wrote:
I should change what I wrote--they were neither uneducated nor wanted everybody to live in a shantytown. They just wanted to be left alone to do as they pleased--weld, throw paint, party, do psychedelics, find their own way. There is a great deal of merit in that unregulated sort of existence.
Once you start to comply with all regulations and normative values, you lose your soul, and become a mere administrative unit. It's like architecture, which is now often reduced to design-by-code. Sanitized art by sober artists? Most often bland and uninspiring. Art fairs here are now being reduced to microbrew-crawls, with carnies peddling state-fair-type garbage. Yes there is still vibrancy elsewhere in the city, but not like there used to be.
Part of that is that the zeitgeist has changed. Kids nowadays think they're the shxt, when they don't know squat. They can't even throw a good party. Many of them--black, white, brown, yellow, whatever--aspire to the same settled, secure, suburban existence they see on shows like Blackish, tightly regulated by culturally normative values and standards.
Perhaps it is a mark of a mature, or over-mature, society...however I see much more humanity and vibrancy in other countries that have vastly more mature societies than does the USA.
Those people can all go do all those things in a commune in the woods. But they want the amenities of a city, for free. An utter failure to practice what they preach.
Incorrect. They didn't care for, and didn't avail themselves, any of the "amenities" that the city had to offer. Not only could they not afford it, they didn't want it at all. Like I said, they just wanted to be left alone, and that was the only place to do it. 25 years ago, this city had essentially zero "amenities" in the city! None! They were all in the burbs, except for one county hospital downtown. Other than that, nothing. And even at that, those people didn't use medical care--in fact, many of them lived in a horribly deteriorated state of health, if they were still living. I am serious when I said that more than a few of them died from basic neglect of their own health, and a failure to seek medical care.
As for squatting in the woods, much of the land here is farmland, not squattable. And as far as "the woods" goes, most of it here is cabin-owners (not squattable), or state or national forest (consistently used, not squattable). To the extent that anybody actually squatted, the only really viable squatting was to be found in burned-out old warehouses, which is precisely where they settled. Most of them paid rent though--usually building owners would rent to them because they protected the buildings in a way. Legally speaking, those days are gone. All the "dwelling units" were illegal by today's standards.
And yes the rent was cheap. I thought about it myself back in the day, a huge brick space with a loading dock and kitchenette, combined with a Y membership I was good to go...but we wanted to build some equity, and the security of the condo was of course superior.
Like I said, those people are now paying rent elsewhere, out of the downtown core.