I swear it’s coincidence that the book club is taking up What’s the Matter with Kansas? the same week that TPMCafe is starting their book club with the very same. Sadly, this blog has neither budget nor clout to fly Thomas Frank to Boston to join us. But I heartily recommend reading and joining us next Thursday. At the very least the book has an abundance of wonderfully quotable passages, which I’ll restrain myself by not quoting left and right here.
As a teaser, though, here’s a nice dig at Richard Florida:
[C]ounter-culture is so commercial and so business-friendly today that a school of urban theorists thrives by instructing municipal authorities on the fine points of luring artists, hipsters, gays and rock bands to their cities on the ground that where these groups go, corporate offices will follow.
Funnily enough, today’s Herald reveals that the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau is hiring a marketing service to launch a $100,000 campaign to lure gay and lesbian tourists to Boston and Cambridge. What exactly they’re supposed to do when they get here, I’m not exactly sure. The city’s gay nightlife is downright paltry (and nearly nonexistent for gay women), and even the touristic appeal of the city’s gay ghetto is diminishing as the South End and Bay Village become straighter. There’s always P-town, I know, but things are expensive enough there already; for selfish reasons, I hope they don’t increase the numbers flocking there.
By the way, if they want the gays to come, they may need better graphic design than this.
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