Robert and Rabbit’s recent trip to Las Vegas
How Las Vegas epitomizes capitalism and commercialism at it’s fullest
How Las Vegas demonstrates how capitalism is both a force for creation and destruction
How Las Vegas lacks any historic preservation
How despite it’s flaws Las Vegas offers an otherworldly fantasy experience
The Resort Fees
The ethics of Gambling
The political and demographic landscape of Las Vegas and Nevada
How Las Vegas lacks any significant SWPL presence
How Las Vegas attracts the trashiest of pop culture
Douche Bag culture, it’s different subsets, and how it’s absorbing hipster culture
The Aesthetics of Las Vegas Casinos, Robert and Rabbit’s favorites, and conceptual casino designs
The different era’s of Las Vegas, including Vintage Las Vegas, the themed resorts of the 90’s, and the newer casinos
The Las Vegas monorail
Whether Las Vegas resorts are a model for urban living
How Thomas got interested in Neon growing up, and how he noticed it’s decline
His project charting and photographing existing Neon Signs before they disappear
The History of Neon, how it was invented in Victorian England in 1898, and latter made into signs by French Scientist Georges Claude
How the peak of Neon was in the late 1920’s and 30’s(Art Deco Era), but already started to see a decline in the 40’s
How Neon was originally used by Corporate chains but latter delegated to small businesses Churches & Neon
How Neon was originally seen as glamorous but latter became associated with seediness
Neon in Cinema, contrasting Dick Powell’s glamorous Gold Diggers Of 1933 – The Shadow Waltz and his 1944 detective film Murder, My Sweet, which depicts Neon as seedy
The 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life which also uses Neon to depict seediness Hotel Neon Signs and and Hotel Neon in the Film Noire Genre
Neon in future films including the utopian 1927 film Metropolis and the dystopian 1982 film BLADE RUNNER
Incandescent Bulb Signs
The history, decline and revitalization of Time Square, and how there are very few Neon Signs left
How Neon has become replaced by LED Signs
The myth that Neon signs are not eco friendly
Historic preservation issues regarding Neon Signs New Neon Signs designed in the Vintage style Neon in San Francisco and the book San Francisco Neon
Las Vegas, how newer casino’s have rejected Neon, and how older signs are preserved at the Neon Museum
The popularity of Neon in Asian cities
How there is a renewed interest in Neon
Artist who depict Neon in their work including Robert Stark
Neon in 1960s Pop Art
The importance of patronizing businesses that have Neon Signs
How Robert and Ray both have personal connections to Santa Barbara and how the city is almost too idyllic
Crime Fiction Novelist Ross Macdonald who’s work captures Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara as a place with strict zoning laws that was modeled after Andalusia in Spain
The contrast between life in Santa Barbara and New York City
How New York City has changed in Ray’s time there in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s
How Cuisine is the one area that has seen increased innovation in New York
Ray’s cameo in the film Exposed set in New York in 1983 staring Nastassja Kinski
How films such as Exposed and Taxi Driver are documentaries for New York in that era
The new peculiarly shaped skyscrapers going up in New York today “See through buildings” where wealthy Foreigners are buying up real estate in New York and leaving them empty
How Ray is drawn to architecture because it is art you can experience and changes the world in a way that regular art doesn’t
How most of the general public has little input and interest in architecture
How places without zoning laws tend to lack any aesthetic value
How the main rule in urbanism is not to do anything that harms the city Art Deco and how it succeeds in bringing tradition and modernity into one Architectual Revivalism which seeks to recreate older forms of architecture Robert Stark’s Artwork
Ray’s work at Newsweek as a reporters covering art, culture, literature, film, and theatre
How Ray’s most significant interviews were with Writers Philip, Roth, and John Updike, filmmakers Francis Coppola, and Robert Altman and Architect Christopher Alexander
How conservatives tend to avoid culture and leave that domain to the left
English Philosopher Roger Scruton as a model for a cultured conservative
Front Porch Anarchist Bill Kauffman New Urbanism
The The Retro Cocktail and Locavore movements James Howard Kunstler
Ray’s involvement with Environmentalism and Bioregional Anarchism
How the environmental movement abandoned the overpopulation issue due to political correctness and mass immigration
The Alternative Right
How the real political divide is between globalism and decentralization
Cultural trends and how Ray views himself as a cultural radar
The trend towards a focus on muscles for young men and men are more self-conscious about their bodies
The value of pleasure and leisure
Erotica and the debate about what’s art and what’s pornography
Controversial nude photographer Jock Sturges, who Ray interviewed
How society is a taking contradictory paths towards lewdness and prudishness Students Still Sweat, They Just Don’t Shower
How having taste and style has become equated with homosexuality
Young women moving to New York City because of Sex and the City “Sex Scenes” which is a raunchy, satirical audio entertainment that Ray created with his wife playwright Polly Frost. Check it out.
Rabbit is an artist, experimental musician, and blogs at AltLeft.com. Robert Lindsay joins latter in on the conversation
Topics include:
How politics is driven by the culture
How conservatives tend to focus on politics and are ineffective in creating culture
How the Alternative Right tends to attracts more creative types than the mainstream right
Why Rabbit feels that much of the Alternative Right holds backwards views towards art and culture
Rabbit’s artistic inspiration in Minimalism, Cubism, Mid-Century Space Age, and Dutch Constructivism Danish Modern Interior Design Robert Stark’s Artwork
The difference between between modernism and postmodernism Italian Futurism
How cultural innovation has stagnated
How the past is the future( ex: in the mid 20th Century the culture looked to the future instead of the past) Vintage Las Vegas
Skyscrapers
Whether capitalism is responsible for aesthetic decline
How in the early to mid 20th Century there was still an innocence to capitalism and higher aesthetic standards Mid-Century Advertisements
Strip malls Suburban cookie cutter houses as an example of when architecture is driven purely by profit without any aesthetic value
Charles’s experience living in London as a child in the 1960’s and an adult in the 1980’s, and Robert’s visit in 2002
Charles’s experiences in New York in the 1980’s and that era in film
The Brownstones of New York and Boston and how they originally started out as single family homes
Art Deco
Mass Transit systems
The demographic transformations of London, New York, and Los Angeles
How mass immigration has led to an increase in the demand for housing in cities
Robert’s recent trip to San Francisco
Chicago’s grid pattern
How Los Angeles started out as car oriented suburbia but latter became denser while not upgrading it’s transit infrastructure
Santa Monica, California and how the 1994 Earthquake transformed the city
The revitalization of downtown Los Angeles
Dallas, Texas and how it’s following the patterns of LA
How whites are moving back to cities while non-whites are moving to suburbs
How single family homes are being replaced by apartments
Why Charles’s views the single family home as the ideal for autonomy of living
How the increase in apartment living coincides with the decline of families
Whether the key issue is density itself or the quality of architecture
The appeal of urban living and why people are willing to sacrifice living space for that lifestyle
The New Urbanist movement which seeks to recreate walkable communities
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
