Category Archives: Suburbia

Robert Stark interviews Ray Sawhill

Ray Sawhill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ray Sawhill worked as an arts and culture reporter for Newsweek. He has also written for Salon.com and blogs at Uncouth Reflections as Paleo Retiree. He splits his time between New York and Santa Barbara.

Topics include:

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.

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This show is brought to you by Robert Stark’s Artwork

Robert Stark interviews Rabbit about Art, Architecture, & Culture

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Rabbit is an artist, experimental musician, and blogs at AltLeft.comRobert 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 MinimalismCubism, 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

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Robert Stark talks to Charles Lincoln & Robert Lindsay about LA, the 1980’s, & Blade Runner

FTRH
BR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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Robert Stark interviews Charles Lincoln about True Stories

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Robert Stark interviews Charles Lincoln about True Stories which is a 1986 American film that spans the genres of musical, art, and comedy, directed by and starring David Byrne of the band Talking Heads. It co-stars John Goodman, Swoosie Kurtz, and Spalding Gray. Byrne has described the film as, “A project with songs based on true stories from tabloid newspapers. It’s like 60 Minutes on acid.” Robert Lindsay also joins in on the conversation

Topics include:

The setting of the film, a small fictional town on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas that is undergoing change
How the town in the film is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Texan independence
Charles Lincoln’s personal connection to Dallas
How the film shows both the old America and the New and how that is symbolic of America in the 1980’s
The depiction of diversity in the film
The Conspiracy Theorist Preacher in the film
The depiction of crass materialism and how the culture of the 80’s was more upfront than today’s  hybrid of materialism and social justice
The marginalization of highbrow culture(ex. scene in the film depicting a janitor singing opera
Emile Durkheim’s theory on anomie,  which is the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community
The music in the film by the Talking Heads
Ronald Reagan and how Charles Lincoln opposes Reagan from a traditionalist standpoint and Robert Lindsay from an Alternative Left standpoint
How Reagan’s credit policy encouraged suburban sprawl, which is depicted in the film

 


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Robert Stark interviews Paul Bingham about Black House Rocked & Cultural Trends

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Topics include:

Paul’s Novel Black House Rocked which Robert interviewed Paul’s co-author Emril Krestle about
How almost everything in the story was based on real life events
How the protagonist’s story was inspired by a friend of Paul’s who was falsely convicted of Child Molestation
Why Paul picked a character who was at the bottom of society
How Paul see’s his characters as willing to pay the price for their qualities
The cultural and political topics covered in the book
The setting the book, an economically decimated community in the Ozarks
The Fabian concept of a commuter town which led to modern lifeless bedroom communities
Why the culture of Flyover country should not be fetishized
How despite regional differences the media sets the culture and values in America
Paul’s view that the Alternative Right tends fosters a critique of society without producing any goals or culture
The Poet & The Cat, how Paul gives Robert credit for it’s inception, and production, and how he wrote the script when he was drunk, broken down, in the middle of the night
James O’meara Reviews The Poet & The Cat
The writer Taylor Caldwell
How the theme of theme of nihilism and viewing society as empty is nothing new(ex. Dostoevsky)
Cicero
The concept of dying with honor
How the bloodshed and violence of the middle east has produced great poetry and literature
Saddam Hussein’s literary work and why Paul want’s to see it translated into English and made widespread
Black humor and finding humor in the worst situations
Paul’s theory of generations; Millennials versus the younger generation who are still in their teens
How the 1980’s was the last decade of cultural innovation in music
How Rap has always been about selling out since it left the streets
The genre of angry rock in the 90’s that died off after the Columbine Massacre
James O’Meara view of acceptable versus unacceptable homosexuality
Paul’s view of the German band Rammstein as an example of unacceptable homosexuality
John Houston’s critique of Tennessee William’s play The Night of the Iguana from his memiors
The “Wiggerfication” of Country Music and Rednecks
How the lack of real life experiences leads to the sterility of the culture
The film  Winter’s Bone which is set in the Ozarks like Paul’s book
How Paul views Robert Stark as one of the few truly independent journalist


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This show is brought to you by Robert Stark’s Artwork

Robert Stark interviews Matt Forney about the NPI Conference, US Cities, Houellebecq, & the Paris Terror Attack

Matt-Forney

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topics include:

Matt’s experience at the recent National Policy Institute’s Conference in Washington DC
How the theme of the conference Become Who We Are was about creating a new identity
How Left-Wing Activists Tried to Shut Down This Year’s NPI Conference”
Matt take on Washington DC, and how it would be a great city if it weren’t for it’s people
How transplants tend to fulfill the obnoxious stereotypes of cities(ex. DC, NY, LA, Portland)
Obnoxious broke hipsters in Portland vs. obnoxious trust fund hipster in NYC
How NY hipster transplants benefited from the same Police enforcement and gentrification which they agitate against
How New York’s gentrification has made the city sterile and killed it’s creative energy
Kill Your Idols documentary about the punk scene in NY in the early 80’s
Matt’s life in Chicago, and how despite it’s crime it has a cohesive culture and affordable living
How Chicago shutting down it’s public housing projects such as  Cabrini–Green dispersed crime over a larger area
Matt experience living in Portland, Oregon, and how Portlandia is so accurate it’s not even funny
Why Matt favors urban living over suburban or rural living
Why Matt views the suburbs as an unfortunate social development but they developed because the left destroyed cities and forced out the middle class
How major cities such as NY once had vibrant urban middle classes
E. Michael Jones’s The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing
How the further away we get  from nature the greater increase in social dysfunction we see
Matt’s trip to Las Vegas and how his friend Davis Aurini describes the city as an “honest whore”
Anti-Natalism and how it’s an interesting philosophical question but attempts to apply reason to interfere with nature
How Anti-Natalism appeals to the most thoughtful and intelligent  individuals thus removing them from the gene pool
Michel Houellebecq The Father Of The Term “Sexual Marketplace”
Houellebecq’s Whatever which is about people who lost out on the sexual revolution
Houellebecq’s Submission which is about an Islamist takeover of France and whether that scenario is likely
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The recent terrorist attack in Paris and future scenarios in Europe


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This show is brought to you by Robert Stark’s Artwork

Part II: Robert Stark interviews Charles Lincoln about Cities

San Francisco Art Deco

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topics include:

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

Robert Stark interviews Bay Area Guy about the SF Bay Area & the Pitfalls of American Exceptionalism

Ghiridelli Square-SF Union Square-SF

 

Robert Stark talks to Bay Area-based blogger  Bay Area Guy of Occident Invicta.

Topics include:

Robert Stark’s recent trip to San Francisco where he met up with Bay Area guy at Union Square
The Bay Area as a microcosm for American Society, and how it combines both the best and worst of what America has to offer
How the Bay Area represent’s American Capitalism at it’s fullest
How SF Is the Second Most Unequal Major City in America
How despite it’s wealth and gentrification SF has preserved much of the historic character of the City
How SF’s unique charm and European feel compared to other American cities increases it’s demand for real estate
How the Bay Area has done a better job at Wilderness Conservation than Southern California
How Southern California has many of the same problems of the SF Bay Area but with lower aesthetic and cultural standards
The Racial Dynamics of the Bay Area
San Francisco and the Bay Area’s Progressive Paradox
How Diversity Destroys Economic Justice
How the elites are Social Darwinist who pose as progressive humanitarians
Andy Nowicki’s article The “PATRICK BATEMAN” RIGHT
His thought’s on Donald Trump and why he’s supporting Bernie Sanders for President
How the political ideal would be to combine the best aspects of Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader
His article The Pitfalls of American Exceptionalism
How the Left uses the language of American Exceptionalism to justify open borders and Cultural Leftism
How America is exceptional at obesity, anti-intellectualism, and income inequality
How The U.S. Has World’s Highest Incarceration Rate
Mark Ames’s Going Postal

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This show is brought to you by Robert Stark’s Artwork