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Whither fair lesbians? | page 1, 2
"False scents?" by Michelle Chihara When I was younger, so much younger than today, I spritzed myself with a so-called pheromone perfume and wandered the endless stacks at Powell's bookstore in Portland, Oregon, convinced that some bookish boy would catch a whiff and make mad, sweet love to me between the erotica and used poetry aisles. Needless to say, I was disappointed. I was also, I'm ashamed to admit, duped. Michelle Chihara's well-reported piece on the pheromone perfume scam is a must-read for those of us easily persuaded to spend money by sex-shop workers. "Brewhaha" by Jason Gay The yuppies are coming! The yuppies are coming! You can almost hear the hooves of Paul Revere's horse as he gallops through the streets of Boston, San Francisco, Brooklyn and Seattle bellowing his warning to the commoners. One if by SUV, and two with cigars! Their plan is to infiltrate your neighborhoods and destroy the landscape with identical, corporate storefronts and mediocre, homogenized products! For a while, we kept these evil young success stories at bay -- exiling them to the dull and unpleasant wasteland known as suburbs. This way we could keep our inner city neighborhoods poor and segregated. God bless America! Jason Gay describes it succinctly: Somerville's Davis Square "used to be a mixture of working-class families, Tufts students and random slacker types killing time in rock bands and MFA programs. But the death of rent control in Cambridge and the bustling economy increasingly has made it home to well-scrubbed twenty- and thirty-something professionals and affluent young couples with children.
This demographic change, of course, has given rise to accompanying concerns about high rents ... the displacement of long-time residents, and the decline of small businesses. This, of course, leads to a predictable and warranted fear: gentrification." In this rambling interview, apparently with himself, Gay resists the urge to jerk his knee and decry the impending arrival of Starbucks in a coffee-swilling, rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. He rightly notes that even an independently-owned store-produced latte is still a sign that poor residents are being bought out of their homes. But I have to disagree with his assertion that "this is mostly about coffee." His article may concern itself with java, but the issues it raises aren't so simple. If writers continue to discuss gentrification in terms of expensive vehicles, overpriced lofts and Starbucks coffee, they may miss the real -- and far more difficult -- issue at hand: the widening chasm between rich and poor, which won't be eliminated by the success of a locally-owned cafe. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- New York Observer, week of June 28 "Snitcher in the Rye" by Elizabeth Manus Poor J.D. Salinger. First that Joyce Maynard bitch writes a memoir and sells his letters and now his own daughter has turned on him with a memoir about life with reclusive father. Elizabeth Manus discusses Peggy Salinger's apparently not-so-elegant take on the subject. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages, June 23-29 "The People Formerly Known as Fans" By Andrew Carter Andrew Carter straight-facedly reports on a scuffle between the Artist With an Unpronounceable Symbol for Name and the makers of a fan zine devoted to him. You, however, may feel the need to laugh as you read this bizarre tale of obsessed fans and rock star control issues in the face of declining record sales. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- The Stranger, June 24-30 "Sister Sedaris" by Steve Wiecking Amy Sedaris has a sense of humor that makes Charles Addams' disposition seem about as dark as "Mama's Family." Alas, Steve Wiecking feels the need to tell me how funny Sedaris is, explain it over and over, instead of just letting the subject of his interview prove it in her own words. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- Salt Lake City Weekly, June 24-30 "Down the Hatch" by Ben Fulton In the great tradition of exposing Republican hypocrisy, the Salt Lake City Weekly's Ben Fulton cheerfully points out a shocking truth: Sen. Orrin Hatch of the dry state of Utah has accepted campaign contributions from the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America. It's more complicated than that, but you should read the article for yourself. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- If you feel the need to express your anger (or maybe just fuel it with more information) at the usual suspects -- Starbucks, drivers of Ford Explorers, yuppies in suspenders who think they discovered Sinatra, consumer culture and the whole damn status quo -- I highly recommend Adbusters. This organization expresses its "overwhelming rage against consumerist culture" by creating mock ads (intended to expose the hypocrisy in advertising), fun events (Buy Nothing Day! Whee!) and guerrilla tactics such as defacing billboards and pasting "GREASE" stickers on McDonald's trays. Although I'm not -- how shall it put it? -- there yet, Adbusters is a good-looking magazine and an enjoyable read.
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