Bethesda, Maryland is the kind of place where you can keep time by counting the cars go by and actually enjoy it. Who wouldn't like saying, "Bentley, Bentley, Maserati, Ferrari...Volkswagon Golf?" It is probably the most wealth part of the state, and all of that wealth is concentrated into a perhaps ten by ten block square, centered around Wisconsin avenue, the road that leads directly to Rome. It is a strange thing to be driving up from D.C. and to pass a few strip clubs further down that road, sketchy areas where one doesn't normally see many white girls at night, the national cathedral, and then suddenly a bloc of power stores. Neiman's, Barney's, Dior, Tiffany's, etc. All in a row. Each store glistening in the morning dew, corpulescent and smelling faintly of old bacon or denatured leather.
Even stranger than the area is the fact that wealthy ne'er-do-wells coexist with hippies. You can see them grubbing for fun, living it down as it were at the flea market, or the little vintage clothing stores or the little faux poor cafes. It is interesting to note that the hippies are generally very wealthy as well but have simply approached the fundamental question of wealth in a very different manner. That question is of course, "when you have everything you want, and you don't actually have to work, what do you do?" The quick and dirty answer is that this is a trick question - we all have to work, no matter our finances. We have to want something, it is human nature to desire, to covet desperately. That a set of people have chosen to "love the world" and really CARE about causes only serves further proof that our lives have to mean something, or why live at all? Suicide becomes one hell of a viable option if we don't mean a damn thing in the long run.
That being said, there are plenty of things in the short run to irk us. Such as going into a posh store like Sak's in Bethesda and asking if they carry Dior Homme only to have them reply, "who?" Or learning that the Barney's will stop carrying Jil Sander soon. Or that Hermes only offers their caps and select, shit scarves at the Neiman Marcus. There is no market in D.C. for class with luxury. People in the nation's capital would rather the two be separate and equal, even when luxury carries a knife behind it's back to the senior prom.
It is enough for me to drive past these stores and to wonder if the life I am living is really the life I should be living. Look at all the faux glamour surrounding these pavilions to desire, to human desire! To want to be someone or something else so desperately that money no longer means what it used to mean - it only translates into luxuries, now. I look around and I drive on through, heading back to a friend's house, heading back to the life I am comfortable with, the life that no other American seems to want any more. It used to be that even the gangsters wanted class. Now all they want is another mink coat.
-Rich
I wouldn't touch things in here
Even stranger than the area is the fact that wealthy ne'er-do-wells coexist with hippies. You can see them grubbing for fun, living it down as it were at the flea market, or the little vintage clothing stores or the little faux poor cafes. It is interesting to note that the hippies are generally very wealthy as well but have simply approached the fundamental question of wealth in a very different manner. That question is of course, "when you have everything you want, and you don't actually have to work, what do you do?" The quick and dirty answer is that this is a trick question - we all have to work, no matter our finances. We have to want something, it is human nature to desire, to covet desperately. That a set of people have chosen to "love the world" and really CARE about causes only serves further proof that our lives have to mean something, or why live at all? Suicide becomes one hell of a viable option if we don't mean a damn thing in the long run.
That being said, there are plenty of things in the short run to irk us. Such as going into a posh store like Sak's in Bethesda and asking if they carry Dior Homme only to have them reply, "who?" Or learning that the Barney's will stop carrying Jil Sander soon. Or that Hermes only offers their caps and select, shit scarves at the Neiman Marcus. There is no market in D.C. for class with luxury. People in the nation's capital would rather the two be separate and equal, even when luxury carries a knife behind it's back to the senior prom.
It is enough for me to drive past these stores and to wonder if the life I am living is really the life I should be living. Look at all the faux glamour surrounding these pavilions to desire, to human desire! To want to be someone or something else so desperately that money no longer means what it used to mean - it only translates into luxuries, now. I look around and I drive on through, heading back to a friend's house, heading back to the life I am comfortable with, the life that no other American seems to want any more. It used to be that even the gangsters wanted class. Now all they want is another mink coat.
-Rich
I wouldn't touch things in here
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