Robert Stark and Matt Pegas discuss their trip to the San Francisco Bay Area over the last Labor Day weekend, their past trips in 2018 (extended segment: 20 minutes in), and how the Bay Area relates to Alt-Urbanism and cultural, aesthetic, societal, and Alt-Center political themes from the show.
Marcus Ruiz Evans is President and Founder of Yes California, an initiative for California Secession. Check out Yes California on Twitter and Facebook.
Topics:
Robert and Marcus’ radio background on AM1680 and conspiracy theories about conservatives being behind Calexit
Marcus as one of the first to popularize California secession in his book California’s Next Century
The financial burden of the United States on California
California values
The impact of the election of Trump on Calexit and why he will win re-election
The Russian conspiracy theory about Calexit and anti-establishment candidate Tulsi Gabbard
Examples of California acting as an independent nation
The concern of California becoming a one party nation and the need for an alternative party such as the California National Party Who moves to California? The wealthier and better educated, mostly
The housing crisis, need for infill growth rather than sprawl, and importance of investing in infrastructure
Immigration policy
The tech oligarchy and need for regulation
The legal precedent of secession and likelihood of America allowing it
The Concept of the Left Wing of the Alt Right; The Alt Left
Greg Johnson’s essay on SWPL Identity and Rabbit’s Alt Left Manifesto Millennial Woes’ talk with Rabbit and Greg Johnson about the Alt Left
The 60’s Left Counter-Culture as a fusion of Tolkien and Marcuse, and the need to reclaim the positive attributes of the left, such as ecology, historic preservation, and anti-consumerism
The Alt Left dilemma identifying with SWPL Culture, and urban aesthetics, while supporting forms of identitarianism that often lack strong aesthetic visions
The lack of cultural sophistication among conservatives, and the left’s monopoly on cultural institutions
Suburbia as a by product of the middle class being cleansed out of cities, and the need to sustain a strong urban middle class
Affordable family formation
The Basic income, how it should be implemented, and who it should favor
Putting caps on high incomes with the exception of artist and inventors
The Nietzschean concept of the artist as the ruler
The conservative outlook that judges people on their material wealth over their aesthetic taste, and creative potential
Overpopulation, and how the ideal is to have immigration reduction with a stable or slowly rising birthrate
Greg’s experience living in San Francisco and Berkeley, San Francisco as a SWPL Utopia, and the aesthetic and ecological attributes of the region
The Transamerica Pyramid and Embarcadero Center in San Francisco
Rabbit’s interest in Mid-Century Space Age aesthetics, and his observations going to Mid-Century Modern home tours Frank Lloyd Wright Art Deco, which was a heroic vision of the future with respect for tradition; Art Deco in New York and San Francisco Film noir, and the Blade Runner
David Lynch’s Archeo-Futurist aesthetic in Dune, and ruin porn
The tradition of right wing modernism; Italian Futurism which captured the vitality, optimism, and new possibilities created by technology
The concept of degenerate art, distinguishing between modernism and postmodernism
Defining what is degenerate; Robert and Pilleater’s show on Avant Garde Film
Robert Stark, joined with Rabbit, and Alex von Goldstein talk about his recent trip to the SF Bay Area
Topics include:
Robert’s departing point Santa Barbara, which is a nice laid back coastal town, but under the cultural influence of LA Robert Stark’s podcast with Bay Area Guy about his last trip to SF
Robert met up with Bay Area Guy and Anatoly Karlin in Berkeley
How like Robert, Alex, and Rabbit, Bay Area Guy and Anatoly Karlin exist on the periphery of the Alt-Right(ex.The Radical Center, Alt Left)
The Cultural Leftist legacy of Berkeley, and how Anatoly Karlin spoke at Richard Spencer’s event at UC Berkeley
How places that are politically correct often produce interesting dissident thinkers
How Berkeley is on a scale similar to European cities(ex. small, compact, dense and walkable)
How transplants often adopt the stereotypes of cities
Demographic trends in the Bay Area, how the traditional white middle class is being pushed out, but also working class Blacks and Hispanics are being priced out through gentrification
Asian culture and immigration in the Bay Area, and Asian Majority Cities, including Daly City, where Robert stayed
The seedy Tenderloin District, urban grittiness, and how it reminded Robert of the film Taxi Driver
The film Dirty Harry
The BART(Bay Area Rapid Transit) System, which has a 70’s futurist aesthetic, and has had issue with crime
The film Fruitvale Station about a Police incident on BART in Oakland
The 70’s futurist Embarcadero Center, designed by architect John Portman, and the importance of having urban oasis’s
How the Silicon Valley is a bland suburban region, which demonstrates that technology has limitation without culture and aesthetics The Shortage Of Women In Silicon Valley
How the area where the tech elite lives has wilderness preserves, in contrast with their support for mass immigration How the Bay Area has done a better job at Wilderness Conservation than Southern California
Robert’s observation’s about where to build in the Bay Area in response to his interview with Laura Foote Clark of Grow SF
How San Francisco has it’s own unique Aesthetic, and is the most scenic American City
How San Francisco is on a high level aesthetically, but the dominant culture is consumerism mixed in with some cultural leftist views
Robert stayed in Walnut Creek, which is a mid-century car oriented suburb in the process of being retrofited into a walkablle New Urbanist community
Walnut Creek aslo has BART access, and owns more open space per capita than any other community in California 80’s Vaporwave Architecture in Walnut Creek, how historic preservation has neglected 80’s Kitsch, and the occultist origins of Kek in California 80’s culture
Nearby Lafayette, which is an idyllic semi rural town, with quick BART access to the city(the best of both worlds for those who can afford it) The San Francisco Bay Area Renters’ Federation lawsuit against Lafayette, and the debate regarding development and diversity
Whether the Bay Area should be it’s own separate country, state, or broken up into a bunch of small independent city states
Robert Stark, Rabbit, and Alex von Goldstein talk to writer and social critic, James Howard Kunstler
Topics include:
The history of suburbia
James’ theory of history that things happen because they seem like a good idea at the time
How our auto oriented petroleum based society is unsustainable
How bad urban planing has negative psychological and cultural implications
The role of zoning laws, and how zoning can both encourage and prevent suburban sprawl
The future of suburbia, how some will be retrofitted into walkalble communities, while others will be abandoned
The New Urbanist Movement
Mass immigration and overpopulation
Why James does not view skyscrapers and hyper density as viable alternatives to suburbia
Robert’s point that tall structures can have aesthetic value, and how James acknowledges that the early wave of skyscrapers(ex. Singer Building, Woolworth Building, Manhattan Municipal Building) were beautiful structures but historical flukes
How European cities provide the ideal model for urbanism
Examples of sustainable American cities include Portland, Oregon, Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia
Mass Transit, and why James favors investing in existing rail infrastrusture over new high speed rail
The Streetcar suburb, and how they provide a model for New Urbanism
James’ point that even with alternative energy and technological innovation, we still have to downsize and localize our society and economy
How peak oil will lead to economic and political decentralization
How Peak Oil will make Globalization unsustainable
The future of China and the Arab Gulf States
Pre-War Japan as the best example of an advanced civilization without industrialization
The scarcity of water in the future, and how the inland water system will regain it’s value Historic Preservation, how the movement was started in the 1960’s in response to the demolition of Pennsylvania Station in NYC, and the debate about what should be preserved
Rabbit makes the case for mid century modern
Capital scarcities in the future, and how mass development is dependent upon the financial system
James’ four book series set in a post economic collapse America, the World Made by Hand
The conservative concept of self sufficiency( ex.working for a corporation, driving a car, and owning a home, in the suburbs) vs. the traditionalist one(ex.growing your own food), and the futurist one
The traditionalist Larpy goal of a society where everyone grows their own food, and how local agriculture should be encouraged, but it is unrealistic for everyone to be involved in it
The growth of the suburbs, from the original Railroad suburbs of the 19th Century, to the post war car oriented suburban sprawl
How small towns that have access to both urbanism and wilderness are the ideal place to live for those who can afford them(ex. Marin County, Palo Alto, and East Bay Hills in the SF Bay Area, and parts of North Jersey) New Urbanism, which seeks to re-create walkable communities out of car oriented suburbs James Howard Kunstler‘s theory that Peak oil will lead to the death of suburbia and re-creation of localized communities
Future predictions that Peak Oil will lead to a Mad Max style collapse
Conspiracy Theories, the theory that the elites want chaos vs the frog in the boiling pan theory, and Alex’s comment that the elite’s have a short time frame
A Futurist Utopian model that’s ecologically sustainable, where robots do all the work, and that has a Basic income
How a basic income could create a utopia if implemented the right way, but could also be abused by the elites
How the key problem with society is that the elites control to much of the wealth, and the underclass control a large share of the population, and how to remedy that
Mike Judge’s Idiocracy Transhumanism
The Nineteen Eighty-Four Police State Scenario
The US Prison System, and how inhumane condition only make people more dangerous
How we have open border combined with a surveillance state
How terrorism, “hate speech”, and the underage sex hysteria have been used to justify complete surveillance of the internet
How every political ideology is tied to a cultural aesthetic
Our upcoming show on Retrofuturism, and how Retrofuturism is the perfect aesthetic for Radical Centrism, because they are both based on fusionism
This is a continuation of the discussion on True Stories
Topics include:
The demographic transformation of Southern California
Robert Lindsay’s experience as a substitute teacher
Beverly Hills
The Film Fast Times at Ridgemont High set in the San Fernando Valley in the early 80’s
The depiction of adolescent sexuality in the film
How in the 70’s and early 80’s hedonism existed with less materialism and higher social trust than today
How the rise in hyper materialism coincided with the popularity of Reagan
How Robert Lindsay was involved with the Punk scene in the 80’s
The Film Earth Girls Must be Easy
The Porn Industry in the San Fernando Valley
Southern California Mall Culture
How the decline of traditional Mall Culture symbolizes how all of society is becoming one giant mall
How strip malls in LA are being replaced by higher density development
The debate about density and Urbanism
Mexican Culture vs. Mexican American Culture in California
The Film Blade Runner which is set in LA in 2019
Whether Blade Runner is an accurate depiction of the future
The genre of Dystopian Future Films(ex.Hunger Games, V for Vendetta, Mad Max) NEON SIGNS OF BLADE RUNNER The Film “Her” which depicts the future of LA as an eco friendly SWPL utopia
The decline in the quality of products
Charles Lincoln has a PhD in Anthropology, History, and Archaeology from Harvard University
Topics include:
The breaking down between the distinction between urban and rural societies
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World predictions about how people will live in the future
How cities originally played a role of middlemen in an agricultural economy
The destruction of the small village farming model
The rise of dense cities in the late 19th and early 20th Century
The role that immigration played in the growth of American cities
E. Michael Jones’s The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing
How forced integration pushed the working and middle class out of cities
The rise of suburbia and exurbia
Whether it’s possible to have a thriving middle class within a dense city(ex. NY in the 1950’s, Japanese cities)
Why Charles does not view density as a source of inequality but rather a symptom
How urbanization has led to a lack of self sufficiency
How the ideal place to live for those with wealth has access to both cities and open space
Contrasting the histories of Las Vegas and New Orleans
The Ecological impacts of building cities in the Desert
How both cities serve a function as a destination for escape, hedonism, and vice
How Bread and circuses distract the masses
How without the Law there would be no Vice
How when Vice becomes suppressed it becomes more cruel
How New Orleans has gentrified since Hurricane Katrina
How the culture of New Orleans is one that enjoys life because it accepts death
How in New Orleans there’s no pressure to be either moral or immoral
The European cultural influence in New Orleans
The Cult of Youth
Charles Lincoln describes the transformation of Beverly Hills as a model for the transformation of American society and how we create corrupt elites overseas that come back to change our society into a prison planet where wealth is created by access to easy credit.
Topics include:
His article Beverly Hills at 100: who sets the style for this style-setting enclave?
Mansionization in Beverly Hills
The concept of nuisance as the origin of environmental law
How banks encourage and profit from over-development
How the transaction tax encourages over-development
The transformation of wealth and class in the United States The Queen of Versailles
The Iranian Jewish community if Beverly Hills
The multi million dollar security plan for Beverly Hills High
How we create corrupt elites overseas that come back to change our society
