The Dinner Party of my (American) Dreams

I was asked the question, “If you could invite anybody to a dinner party, who would it be?” the other day.  My answer was stupid then, but it got me thinking about a hypothetical dinner party between fiveAmerican icons. It would be a crazy time because America is and was so different for them.  Here’s my fictionalized account of a dinner party between filmmakers John Waters and (racist) D.W. Griffith, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Samuel Clemens and conservative writer Norman Podhoretz, all thinking about what America means to them: 

 

John Waters began. “My America is full of filth, debauchery, the loss of innocence, suburban life, drugs, queers, bodily waste, abortion, and religion.”

 

At this statement, D.W. Griffith passed out and Frank Lloyd Wright looked as if he might punch Waters in the face. Still, Waters continued. 

 

“My America is full of trash. After all, they don’t call me ‘The Pope of Trash,’ for no reason. I see these Americans—these rich people, these conservative people, these straight people—and I’ve just gotta shock them out of their complacency. I show them that America isn’t just people like them—these WASPs—but there are gay people, drag queens, fat girls, criminals—and they’re America too. And they’re goddamn funny.”

He finished his speech and took a sip of wine. The others had uniform looks of horror and confusion on their faces. 

 

“John is a liberal, perhaps even a flaming liberal,” said Podhoretz, disdain dripping from his lips, “I used to be one of those back in the 1960s—I even joined the socialist party with my sister--but then, like my co-founder of the neoconservative movement Irving Kristol stated, I became ‘a liberal mugged by reality’ and I moved to the right. My America is a cosmopolitan America—more people than just WASPs can be Americans-- on that I agree with John—all immigrants should be taken in as Americans, they shouldn’t be defined by their culture.”

 

“This idea of miscegenation and a post-ethnic America makes me sick!” Griffith interjected, “The Aryan race is the natural leader of the rest of the races and we need to protect the natural superiority of the Aryan race. This superiority and guidance of the Aryan race is what makes America! I don’t believe in slavery—I came out against it in my next film after Birth of a Nation, entitled Intolerance. But black people are naturally so violent and riotous—they disrupted the Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War!”

 

“I agree in a necessarily elitism in America,” said Frank Lloyd Wright, “but those ‘uncommon men’ should be decided upon because they are the smartest and most innovative of the bunch,” he said putting his hand on his chest to indicate he himself was one of these ‘uncommon men,’ “and I always build houses for these extraordinary Americans. Listen, if it was necessary for America to pick between freedom and equality—it should definitely pick freedom, because is equality even something that we would want? Some men are just better than others!”

 

“Then why did you make so many houses that leave no room for socializing? There is abundant room for the family to interact—but don’t they have any friends? And isn’t being part of a community—no matter how screwed up—part of the American ideal, too?” asked Waters.

 

“My American is non-communal, just like I am a non-communal person. My homes are family homes. Besides, individuals went to the west to be individuals and my American west is my America. Also, buddy, I am a genius so I did what I wanted, and what I wanted was family homes.”

 

“So let me get this straight,” said Samuel Clemens, “Your America, John, is full of a fringe culture of counterculture characters, your America, Norman, is all about race relations and war, your America, D.W., is about white supremacy and innovation, and your America, Frank, is about elitism and architecture? Am I correct in my assumptions?”

 

“Yes, I ‘spose you’re probably right. You always were good about summing up whole ideas in a few sentences,” said Griffiths.

 

“Thank you, son,” said Samuel.

 

“Well, ye sage father of American literature, tell us your almighty vision of America,” said Waters.

 

“I don’t say it myself, but others did, but Huck Finn is the quintessential American hero and The Adventures of Huck Finn is the American myth. My idea of American in the 1830s is in there, and now, Huck Finn is the poster boy for the American ideal. In Huck Finn, like in America, individuals are individuals—Huck just wants to be left alone a lot of the time-- and no matter how much they want to be alone, they still are part of a larger community and they have to contribute to it. You D.W. are in a long line of white supremacists, who were stupid and poor, and just hated black people just because they were the only ones they could pick on—just look at Huck’s father. Dumb as a fence post. America is a place where its citizens can place hope in technology and innovation—I did with my investments in science and inventions, just look where that got me, oh well—just like they were hopeful for the industrial revolution in the 1830s when my book took place. You can invent an identity in America—at least you could then—Huck often put on an untrue identity, even with his best buddy Tom, so, in America, you can be anyone you want to be, but does anybody really know anybody else?”

 

“So what did we really learn about America, asking this question?” asked the white-haired writer, taking a sip of his wine, and wondering why he saw a Starbucks sign out both the window to his left and to his right. 

 

“A whole lot of nothing,” said Wright, bitter as always, “except that I shouldn’t have listened to your views, you should have listened to mine, and it’s about time that I found a new lady friend.” 

 

“I don’t know, maybe we’ve learned the only thing that’s constant about American culture is that each American has a different one. Cultures can blend and merge, you can hate some peoples’ ideas of America, love others, hate the government, love the government, make your own culture, hate your own culture—and maybe all of those blends and new cultural ideas is America. As unsolid as that is—maybe that’s all we’ve got,” said Podhoretz.

 

And on the shaky foundations of five versions of America throughout three centuries, the visions of the dead Americans vanished. John Waters and Norman Podhoretz wondered how they had stayed in the same room for such a long time together, hallucinating about the Americas of three dead men. Norman said his hasty goodbyes to John— suddenly worried what GWB would think-- while John finished his wine, worshipped his shrine to Divine, and went to bed.

Make Capitalism Work For Me!

Proposed art project seeks to open conversation about American capitalism

American artists always have the looming presence of capitalism over their shoulders. Art is not a product to be sold, and yet one needs to engage in some kind of monetary exchange in order to survive within a money system. Many artists seek to address the problems of living within a capitalistic society in their artwork, to place elements of consumerism in new lights, to get people talking. Artist Steve Lambert is attempting to do just that with his latest project, entitled "Make Capitalism Work For Me!"

The public art project will consist of a big flat bed truck with a lit sign declaring "Capitalism works for me!" Observers will then get to become participants in the project by voting true or false on the statement. If capitalism is alright by you, you push the true button. If it's failed to deliver in quite the ways it's promised, you can vote false. The truck will make appearances in several cities throughout the United States, and all data from the truck's encounters with the public will be recorded and published. 

In his artist's statement, Lambert brings up the point that we've become increasingly uncomfortable discussing capitalism at all in the present state of our country. It seems that whenever the word comes up, it brings with it extremists on either side of the political spectrum. You've got the libertarians and objectivists singing its praises to high heaven on the one side. On the other, people who consider the word "communist" to be a compliment discuss doing away with the institution of money altogether. Put these kinds of people in a room with each other and it's bound to get ugly. Whether you're on the liberal or conservative side of things, or, like most people, somewhere in the middle, the word for our country's system of economy drags up a lot of feelings. 

So how do we breach the subject in a productive way? Lambert merely asks people to decide whether capitalism has worked out okay for them. The cheery design of the sign brings a side of humor to the issue. It's not meant to be aggressive, not meant to insist that capitalism should or shouldn't work for people. It's just a question written in carnival lights. It also puts the issue on a personal level. People aren't asked if capitalism is the ideal way of being, but rather if it's been a successful endeavor for them individually. Putting aside what you think is good for people as a whole, how has the American dream been working out for you? 

Speaking of money, Lambert is currently seeking funding for the project. He's more interested in gathering large numbers of supporters than large numbers of dollars, although the truck and materials will need to be covered somehow. Most importantly, he wants people to back him in his journey to get people talking about American capitalism. You can pledge just one dollar to the project; more, if you'd like, but even a small gesture of support will help the project along its way. More information about the project and pledging to it is available on Kickstarter. 

The Truman Show syndrome has people thinking their lives are reality shows

Like most people, I saw The Truman Show when it was released in 1998. After I watched the movie about the man whose whole life had been filmed, I started worrying about my mirrors.  Were there cameras behind them?  I wondered if my friends were getting paid to invite me to their birthday parties.  I thought once or twice that my life, too, might be a well-orchestrated reality TV show.

Turns out that some people take this same passing fancy more seriously than I did.  Convinced that their whole lives are filmed, these people have a disorder that has been tentatively diagnosed as The Truman Show syndrome or delusion. 

The Truman Show depicted the life of Truman Burbank, played by Jim Carrey, a man who lived his life unknowingly on a massive reality TV set.  Truman’s friends, family and the members of his town are all actors and his entire town is really a huge television set.  Everything that happens to Truman is scripted—except for the way he reacts to the people and situations that are thrown at him. 

Joel Gold, a psychiatrist at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital Center and his brother Ian, a Philosophy and Psychiatry professor at McGill University in Montreal, coined the term The Truman Show delusion in 2008. They came up with the term after they met five schizophrenic patients, and heard about twelve more--mostly white men from the ages of 25 to 34--who thought that their lives were reality shows.  Three of the patients out of the Golds’ original five linked their reality show delusions with The Truman Show.

The Golds deem the syndrome to be persecutory, or linked to psychosis as well as grandiose, in that patients believe the world’s events are linked to their singular lives. Some patients were pleased with their delusions—those with grandiose delusion, while others—the individuals with persecutory delusions—were made miserable by it. 

The Golds believe that the syndrome has become present in a modern day society obsessed with publicity and coverage of personal lives. According to psychologists, technologically based delusions like this one are only possible in the modern day.  Over the centuries, delusions have shifted from religious/magical delusions to political delusions to this, technological delusions. 

Unlike Truman Burbank, patients with this syndrome think that cameras are following them. There have been several recorded instances of The Truman Show delusion.  Believing that the attacks were part of his reality show’s plot, one man had to travel to New York City to see that the World Trade Center towers had actually fallen. 

Another man climbed to the top of the Statue of Liberty, thinking he would reunite with his high school girlfriend and be released from his show—a similar fate to Truman Burbank’s.

Another patient was an intern on a reality TV, but believed that cameras were tracking him all the time.  He thought that he was being followed at the polls during the presidential election in 2004 and shouted “Judas” at the cameras, an act that caused the Golds to track him down.   

The Truman Show Syndrome is not officially recognized and is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association.

"The world's a theater; the earth a stage."

Live theaters are strange places.  Their purpose is to create the unreal.  Theater people take this idea to heart, both on and off the stage.  The balance between what is real and what is fake, the boundaries between propriety and impropriety--they are somehow blurrier here than in most places.

In particular, a renovated Vaudeville theater is a creepy place to work. Ventriloquist dummies may as well lay in animated disrepair behind every corner because you’re scared of them anyway. Freak shows may still wait in medical mystery horror in the kitchen because you think you can see their insane scratches on the wall.

The children’s theater in my town needed more space about twenty years ago. An old Vaudeville theater, which had had later reincarnations as a movie theater in the ‘50s and the ‘70s, lay in its former screen queen glamour, gathering wrinkles.

Truth or rumor, it doesn’t really matter, sprung from this art nouveau theater’s shadowy past. Legend says that when the building was first being built, they wanted light stars made from tiny bulbs installed in the ceiling.An electrician, little eccentricities of theatrics in hand, climbed his way up the catwalk, but lost his footing and fell to his death. Later, in the time of abandonment, winters whipped into the unheated beauty. Homeless men were drawn to live within the theater’s unremembered glamor and one froze to death in the cold, his body left to rot in the unused space until the renovation. Both unknown men allegedly haunt the place. Haunting of the mind. The place is earthed in more mystery and myth than any other place I’d ever spent a considerable amount of time. And we all know that this kind of spookiness attracts kooks. And/or, of course, actors.

I worked there as an arts administration intern the summer after my freshman year of college. The lively cast of characters kept me entertained, if not intellectually stimulated through the summer. It was like a string of vaudeville acts—the first—he seduces! he divorces! So many women for this single man! would be followed by the next—he adapts children’s books! he makes shit as an actor, but probably is lucky because he’d make  less as a playwright! See this multi-talented man in action! They were all looking for an audience and I seemed to have a Freudian couch by my desk. The actors were looking for another stage to tell their tales and came to me as I entered data into Excel spreadsheets and told me exorbitant tales of waiting tables. The more practical of the bunch—the publicity people, the management, the set designers—were making some more money, but they came and did a song and dance about how sad it was they couldn’t follow their acting passions.

I don’t know if I’ll ever spend time again in a theater.  Hopefully not.  There is something out of time there, out of touch. This is what makes live theater possible, I think. I learned that theaters are places of magic, mystery, a little bit of fear, but over everything, there is a bit of sadness, too.

 

Food trucks are delicious, fancy and coming to a street near you

I love street food and food trucks.  There’s something about them that is so communal and specialized; you can’t replicate it indoors.  On a hot summer night, the air in the line of a taco stand or Thai food truck is wild and delicious.  And eating steaming food off of paper plates with plastic utensils makes it that much better. Now that it’s summer (or pretending to be), it’s the perfect time to sample the fresh ingredients, local foods and bright culture of your neighborhood food truck scene.  Here are some of the best food trucks across the country.

Don Chow.  Los Angeles.  This truck blends Asian and Mexican flavors in unique, and uniquely Los Angeles, flavor combinations.  One of their specialties is the “chimale,” a tamale with Asian meats and tomato salsa.  Like most vehicles on wheels, you’ll have to follow this truck on their website to see where it's parked.

Austin Daily Press.  Austin, Texas.  Co-owners Cory Nunez and Amy Hildenbrand serve up grilled sandwiches wrapped in a piece of newsprint from The Onion. This truck also functions as a delivery service, so hungry patrons can call up the truck and have sandwiches delivered straight to their homes. 

Crepes Bonaparte.  Fullerton, California.  This food truck was inspired by the owner, Christian Murcia’s, experience eating street crepes in Paris.  In the United States, crepes are a high class dining affair, but the goofballs who run this truck—a vehicle they have painted with a huge moustache and dubbed “Gaston”—wanted to bring crepes to the masses. 

Schnitzel & Things.  New York City. This New York City food truck that combines street food and schnitzel is more than I can bear.  Schnitzel is an Austrian dinner of pounded chicken or veal, breaded and deep-fried and served with a dollop of ketchup and a lemon.  They also have potato salad, which is the requisite side for this dish.  I guess they all serve brats at this stand, but I don’t care about that and neither should you. 

Food Shark.  Marfa, Texas.  Most food trucks have gimmicky paintjobs or themes, but this food truck is more like the kind of mom-and-pop truck that rolled by before all the hype.  The truck is simple, a metal vehicle with hand-painted lettering, and serves the best (and some of the only) Middle Eastern and Meditteranean food in Marfa.  Try the “Marfalafel,” the truck’s falafel. 

Nom Nom Truck.  Los Angeles, California.  This team was on the Food Network’s Great Food Truck Race and they were seriously high-strung and annoying.  They have a pretty cute truck, though, with a little Asian-looking creature “nom-nomming” down on the “Nom Nom” sign.  Okay, that’s pretty annoying, too.  But I guess the truck’s rep is that it serves some of the best bahn mi, Vietnamese sandwiches that include coleslaw, pork and sweet and sour sauce on a baguette, in Los Angeles. 

Nana Queens.  Culver City, California.  This truck, run by a team of sisters, started off with one seriously impressive banana pudding.  The truck has since added wings and a wider variety of puddings, including savory and sweet combinations.   

Condescending Ways Companies Try to Relate to My Generation

Mining youth culture for profit is in like never before

It's cute when enormous, faceless corporations try to convince me that they're my best friend in the world. The kind of branding that gets thrown at young people tries to be awfully familiar, like the big guys in capitalism are in on the same jokes as you. But like most corporate attempts at the cutting edge, this kind of marketing tends to look silly after companies beat a certain trend into the ground or overestimate our gullibility. These are my favorite attempts corporations have made at trying to "relate" to me and my money.

 

Putting everything in lowercase

 

Unsure if a certain brand is supposed to be hip, young, or fresh? Check the capitalization. If there's none, odds are a marketing exec decided somewhere along the line to make the brand speak to the current generation of youngsters. We text, type, and tweet, you see, and we're far too busy to slide our pinkies to the shift key. An all-lowercase typography gives a brand a sly smugness, a nod to the in-joke of texting culture, an edge that you just can't get with proper syntax. Or so the suits would like to think. CB2--Crate and Barrel's "hipper" offshoot--is super guilty of this. Their layout, with the exception of some generic copy, is rife with lowercase sans-serif. I'm sure you've seen the lack of caps elsewhere. Chicago apartment hunting service domu.com is all over the trend, as are plenty of supposedly hipper startups. 

 

Slapping text speak on things

 

OMGWTFBBQ, amirite? Sure, plenty of people use digital shorthand for their everyday conversation these days, but that doesn't mean that we want to accessorize with it. These throw cushions from CB2 just seem a little desperate. I'm not even sure what AYS stands for. On a similar note, this is called the PXL8 clock and it was originally priced at $120. Yeesh, CB2. 

 

Charging a lot to look poor

 

There's a new adage, "it costs a lot to look poor." Clothing companies make sure this stays true. Fashion starts from the bottom up, when designers take inspiration from the streets and then repurpose natural trends for their own very expensive work. The starving artist look is mighty in these days, and so lots of people pay lots of money for name-brand threadbare outfits. But it's not just clothing designers that charge a lot for what should be cheap. I recently discovered that The Container Store sells milk crates. For ten dollars a pop. You know, those things that are free behind the grocery store so long as no one sees you walking away with them? Also known as my own personal modular storage system? Yeah, now you can drop ten bucks to look like you stole a milk crate. Fourteen if you want to opt for the "supreme" variant. 

 

Aggressively marketing everything as "green"

 

We all grew up on PSAs that instructed us not to waste water and to turn out the lights when we left a room. We've been conditioned to feel guilty when we toss that Coke can in the trash instead of recycling it. Companies know this and use it as the perfect excuse to sell you things you might not buy otherwise. What better marketing tactic is there than to make your customers feel like good people when buying your product? Or more specifically, scare them into thinking that they're bad people unless they buy your product? Green marketing can get awfully passive-aggressive. Just look at the "If You Care" line of paper and kitchen products. They sell recycled aluminum foil and brown coffee filters and all that earth-healthy jazz. You could buy them, maybe. You know. If you care. If saving the world and its inhabitants isn't all that important to you then you could pass these up, I guess. No pressure. 

 

Sneakily guilt-inducing as it may be, at least If You Care seems to have an actual sustainable business model. Plenty of companies slap "green" across anything and everything they can. Even bottled water marketing is starting to convince people that buying tap water in plastic containers is eco-friendly. The containers are made of less plastic than before, see? That heals the earth! Not to mention all the shopping bags, travel mugs, and more that are produced en-masse, using up natural resources in their creation, packaging, and distribution as companies try to sell lots of them to lots of people. Convince them that it's ethically sound and you'll have people buying collections of brightly colored Nalgenes and those silicone-topped ceramic mugs that look just like paper cups but aren't--because using disposable paper would be eco-unfriendly.

Collective intelligence in the digital age is peer-reviewed and international

If you think that people are sheep, you may be right.  Pacificists torture civilians in times of war, environmentalists toss their trash on the ground at big music festivals, kids taunt their best friends if they are the brunt of jokes in their classrooms.  This is defined as “groupthink,” or a common behavior and state-of-mind within a group that may be completely different than what the individual would do on his or her freewill. The collective that is the opposite of groupthink—working for good—is called “collective intelligence.” Scientists think collective intelligence can be used more collaboratively for intellectual good and to overcome personal bias. This kind of thinking has taken place since the beginning of time in humans, bacteria and animals, but can be applied differently and more liberally in our technologically sophisticated age. 

Collective intelligence comes about from collaboration and competition between many individuals, eventually creating a group decision. The group must be permanent, if only for a short time, and tied together in some way that encourages a collective feeling. For example, a group of randomly assembled individuals on a bus that ran out of gas on a country road would have to make a collective decision. The marker of the group mentality is if one of the individuals has a different belief, that person will be cast out of the group.  The only way the collective intelligence of the group is dismantled is if the group is disbanded or if new thoughts challenge the group’s core beliefs.

Some scientists say that collective intelligence allows groups of people to form strong communities united in a single goal.  Personal bias can affect decision making and thinking, they say.  In uniting with a group in a common goal, individuals can make better decisions. Essentially, collective intelligence allows for a surival of the fittest of ideas—only the best will rise to the top and the less potentially successful ones will be dropped.  This idea is called “The Golden Suggestion,” or a group’s willingness to accept an idea no matter who in the chain of command it comes from.

Here are the four principles necessary for collective intelligence:

  • Openness—the willingness to share ideas.  Collaboration and sharing of ideas is more productive than keeping an idea to oneself. 
  • Peering—the ability to share ideas with peers and to edit and collaborate—usually electronically—on ideas and documents.  This is in contrast to the old model of business where there was a divide between the people in charge and the people who listened to their instructions.
  • Sharing—This is the business model of sharing some ideas with other companies, while still keeping some intellectual property and patent rights. 
  • Acting Globally—The Internet allows for new, global companies to emerge with little to no actual physical space.  Geographical boundaries are no longer so important in global business. 

One of the most progressive centers studying and innovating in the field of collective intelligence in the United States is the one at MIT, called the Center for Collective Intelligence. The center conducts research on emerging technologies and the way that collaboration functions in today’s society.  In essence, the Center defines collective intelligence as something that has been around forever, but has different and new applications in the digital age.  Google and Wikipedia are just a few of the Center’s examples of using international individual intelligence to create strong, peer-created collective intelligence.  

How to Enjoy Facebook Again

While many people can stand Facebook’s constant presence in their lives fine, some of us need a break every now and then. I know plenty of people who leave for days or weeks at a time to come back after they feel as if they’ve had a long enough break (or they miss out on invitations, baby pictures, or even family news from leaving—like I did!). Some even leave forever and say that they don’t miss it; I certainly don’t blame them. I don’t like how public our lives have become, how you can’t go anywhere without being added to someone’s pictures or videos (that they’ll, of course, post online), and it’s as if Facebook and Twitter are our way of becoming instant reality television starts. Barf.

But sometimes, instead of just taking a break, it can be fun to mock it all. Seeing the funny side of things can help us put them into perspective and remember not to take anything so seriously, and thankfully there are already websites out there that put together strings of the best Facebook ridicule for us all to enjoy.

Today a good friend of mine shared a hilarious article entitled, “The Best Obnoxious Responses to Misspellings on Facebook.” Most of us have felt pretty irritated a time or two when we log on and evrythg iz speled lik this, often with numbers thrown in for good measure. I have actually removed people from my feed—family members, even—just because that sort of thing is so annoying (then again, it makes me want to leave Facebook, so maybe I should just stick to reading their weird text talk?). We all misspell things now and again, but not words like “of,” “the,” or other simple words. And people who intentionally spell things wrong—like “iz” instead of is, which doesn’t even shorten the word!—are even more annoying!

So this article is a must-read by anyone who has felt as disgruntled about spelling as I have. It may be the funniest thing you’ve read all day. Most of the statuses are simply riddled with spelling mistakes, but my personal favorite is a poor churchgoing woman who only spelled one word wrong: “Just got home from church. We had a good crowd and a wonderful semon. The little ones were running around hunting for eggs afterwards. Happy Easter everyone.” A friend then responded, “Holy type-o.”  

Another good friend of mine (read: person I actually know off of Facebook as well as on the site) often shares posts at Lamebook, where some of the most ludicrous posts at Facebook are shared every day. Today there was a particularly funny one about how a girl gave her boyfriend “Her Pies,” to which another friend asked if he, too, could have some pie, and if they were any good, and the original poster—still completely oblivious to what he’d done—responded, “Herpies is bumps on your d***!” I would never laugh at someone getting herpes, of course, but this was just such a ridiculous exchange that I had to laugh—hard.

You can also spend some time playing around at Failbook, where you can search by topic (such as crazy things that parents say, or party fails) and find some of the funniest (or stupidest) posts ever found on Facebook.

Chuck Taylors are the best selling shoe of all time

Converse’s All Star “Chuck Taylor” shoes are everywhere.  From the feet of disaffected teenagers with long mops of hair to 30-something film directors with cropped hair and European glasses to basketball players with long, shiny shorts, the footwear has come to mean a lot of things to a lot of different people.  Some see the shoe as the mark of the counter-culturists, but the white-rubber-soled canvas sneakers are too ubiquitous to be part of anybody’s radical revolution. (They are sold at Target).  So how did a humble basketball shoe become a symbol of wannabe radicals and basketball stars all over the United States?  Here’s a brief history of the best selling tennis shoe of all time. 

The Converse Rubber Corporation started making rain boots and other work-related rubber shoes in 1908.  They began only manufacturing seasonally—during the rainy season—until they realized they could make more shoes more efficiently working year round on athletic shoes, specifically for basketball. 

The first All Star basketball shoe was created in natural browns with a black trim in 1917. By the 1920’s, Converse started producing the shoe in black canvas and leather versions with a thick rubber sole and a portion of the shoe covering the wearer’s ankle. This early production made the shoe the first mass produced shoe in North America.  However, early sales of Converse’s product were poor.

Charles “Chuck” H. Taylor, a basketball player on the Akron Firestones, helped boost the shoe’s sale.  Taylor himself wore the shoe and thought it was helpful for any basketball player’s game.  In 1921, he started selling the All Star and acting as a player and coach for the Converse All-Stars basketball team. He boosted the shoe’s sale throughout the country with clever marketing ploys like basketball clinics and Converse Basketball Yearbooks.

Because of Taylor’s salesmanship, Converse added his name to the All Star’s ankle patch in 1932.

Taylor continued to popularize the shoe throughout the 1930’s and ‘40’s.  He created the white high top with blue and red trim for the 1936 Olympics.  Taylor, an Air Force captain during WWII, helped market white All Stars for GI’s to use for their exercises.  The shoe became the official sneaker of the Air Force.

After the War, the shoe had become so popular that all professional and college basketball players swore by it. In 1957, Converse held 80% of the sneaker industry. James Dean even wore the now-famous shoe. 

In the 1960’s and ‘70’s, Americans started wanting athletic shoes for everyday wear. The low-top shoe became very popular with non-basketball players, like rock musicians and young people because of the shoe’s inexpensiveness in contrast with other sneaker brands. Punk bands were especially attracted to the brand and the relationship between Chuck Taylors and punk music was solidified. 

The shoe had become fashionable and Converse knew it. Because of this, in 1966, Converse dropped the stipulation that the shoe could only be produced in black and white colors, introducing shoes with prints, patterns and new colors.

Today, more than 60% of Americans have reported owning a pair of the famous shoe.  800,000,000 pairs of the sneakers have been sold, making the simple shoe a phenomenal bestseller for over seventy years.  

 

 

 

 

  

Skating parties were first attempts at "dating"

Co-ed skating parties were the obvious love child of awkwardness and the discovery of the opposite sex. Moms allowed the parties because it reminded them of their own pre-adolescence and we approved because of the couples-only skate in which boys and girls could hold hands to a Whitney Houston tune under a romantic disco ball light. However, only the most popular 5th graders, who wore the right shoes with their school uniforms and possessed the rare, untraceable scent of “popular kid” would receive an elusive invitation.

Unfortunately, along with dating came angst of the early pre-adolescent kind, which in its nascent form is all the more painful because it is new and unexpected. Ungainly long limbs, breast buds, and hormones should not accompany anyone’s first hesitant dip into the dating pool. We girls covered budding acne with body glitter in hopes of being noticed by boys who, to mask youthful exuberance and puberty, had recently begun to employ a macho façade of wide strides and disinterest.

I use the term “we” loosely. I was less skilled than the other fifth graders at hiding my awkwardness, despite well-intentioned applications of both body glitter and metallic lip gloss, so, for a while, was not invited to the parties. I would go into class in the morning to find people whispering in the back row about the awesome (!) party on the upcoming Friday. I practiced pretending not to care—if my stomach would drop, my face would not. Instead, I became proactive in protesting the rush into puberty. At recess I circulated a petition against kissing behind the chapel and got the signatures mostly of those who were not being kissed behind the chapel.

The parties were less posh than say, a royal banquet, but still offered many opportunities to make oneself the jester. First, outfit. Butterfly clips or choker? I would choose both, usually scaring off any potential couples’ skate partners before I walked through the door. Then, entrance. Try to meet with three other friends in fledging adaptions of the female archetypes of Sexy, Stupid, Smart, and Funny. Link arms, giggle, and walk into rink area, looking anywhere but at boys. If friends are unavailable, walk in with shoulders back, thinking something funny to oneself, and try to look self satisfied.  Next, couples’ skate. If asked to skate, wipe hands off on jeans and make stilted conversation with pimply boy for length of “I Will Always Love You.” If not asked, sit on side-lines with quarters and play Mrs. Pak-Man for the rest of the night pretending not to feel rejected.

Last, dinner. The most precarious of all situations. Pepperoni or cheese pizza? Take the last slice that Miss Future Prom Queen would want and face shunning from her and all of her minions for the rest of the night. Should the pizza be folded length-wise, cut with a fork, or eaten held above head and dripped into mouth? Be careful. I chose incorrectly once and wound up with a glob of grease on my t-shirt and was officially banished to the gallows for the rest of the night.

I wish I could say that I found a great love of roller skating, outgrew body glitter, or made a new friend as a result of my fifth grade obsession with being invited and acting cool at skating parties. But I can’t say that I did. Instead, skating parties were my initiation into a new, constantly changing system of social hierarchy that everyone has to deal with all their lives. Perhaps we become a little less awkward, perhaps we stop caring if we’re the most popular person in the room. But most of the time if we’re ignored, a little bit of that chubby, unpopular fifth grader will reappear to open the mailbox and find nothing there.

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