Busy poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who is still active at ninety-three years old, moved out to San Francisco and founded City Lights in 1953. More than just the independent bookstore of Beat pilgrimages, City Lights is a book publisher, and in 1956, Ferlinghetti was arrested on obscenity charges because he had published and sold Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. He was later found not guilty of a crime.
The year after Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti made the papers, Jack Kerouac finally found fame with On the Road. The fame was overwhelming, though. Talk-show hosts invited the naturally shy author on their show. Wanderlust kids, winos, and dogged readers showed up unannounced at his home. Fame took a toll on his mind, body, soul.
Ferlinghetti had a cabin, a refuge, out in the wilderness of Big Sur. He could escape the hustle and bustle of San Francisco for respite along the coast of central California. After the fame wore him down, Kerouac escaped there too, living for a brief time in Ferlinghetti’s cabin in the woods. The result of this experience is the 1962 novel Big Sur.
Juniper Ridge now has a room spray called Big Sur. According to their website, it smells of “wild ginger, burnt honey, salt, damp ground.” The ingredients are plucked from the deserts and mountains of the West, and 10% of the $20 spray bottle goes back to protecting western wilderness. They also have a Big Sur soap, essential oil, and sachet. For $50 you can give the gift of Big Sur, which includes the items already mentioned, plus wild huckleberry jam (perhaps reminiscent of Neal Cassady, whom some have said is Huckleberry Finn incarnate). The gift comes gift wrapped with real pine cones! And, like the others, 10% of the profit goes to protecting wilderness.
I knew I was getting old the day I saw a car commercial where the driver was clearly younger than I am.
So here’s an interesting bit of news: Generation Y doesn’t like to drive. According to Reuter’s “America’s Generation Y not driven to drive,” the Millennials think driving is more of a hassle than it’s worth. A California think tank analyst, Tony Dudzik says instead of a driver’s license, a cell phone is the new rite of passage for young adults.
The article points to a few different reasons why Generation Y may be less interested in driving:
Smart phones make it easier to know public transportation schedules
More Gen-Yers are riding bikes
People are more concerned about saving the planet
Car-sharing services are making it easier not to have to own a car
From a cultural perspective, this makes total sense. Gen Y is the hipster culture. The kids in Williamsburg who listen to low-fi indie music on their hi-tech iphone, knit water-bottle cozies that they sell on etsy, ride their bicycles to work, buy their clothes from Buffalo Exchange, spend their weekends at the food coop, brew their own craft beer, and vlog on YouTube. If they drive, they drive hybrids. Because they’re all about the i-this and the i-that, they seek out community more intentionally. Who needs a car, if your friend or parents (they also happen to be the Peter Pan Generation, living at home after college) have one?
I personally fall somewhere between Gen X and Gen Y, making me part of Generation Flux. Generation X refers to people born between the early 1960s and 1980s, while Generation Y refers those born between the late 1970s and the 2000s. I know when I was growing up, there were a lot of cultural arts programs in the school about saving the rainforest and saving the whales, we studied acid rain and the ozone layer, and we joined KAP: Kids Against Pollution. In drivers ed, they pretty much terrified you with statistics, photos, and videos that suggested it was likely you were going to die if you got behind the wheel. The shows that were popular when I was a teen were Mad About You, Seinfeld, Friends, Will & Grace, and Sex and the City, all of which were set in New York City. Other popular shows like Ally McBeal, Frasier, and ER were also set in cities. Our stars didn’t drive. They took cabs and rode the subway. Is it any surprise that we moved into the city and followed suit?
So will a generation who grew up watching Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, and Snooki getting arrested for driving under the influence and/or crashing their cars, a generation coming of age during the Great Recession, a generation who doesn’t care about driving, embrace the 1950s road trip adventure of On the Road when the movie comes out and the novel by Jack Kerouac it is based on? Well, here’s another interesting twist: Jack Kerouac didn’t like driving either. If you read his novel, you’ll see that most of the time, the character based on him in the novel is on the bus or in the passenger seat.
How do you feel like the era you grew up in influenced you?
After watching beauty guru Elle Fowler’s YouTube video on tea, I was inspired to drink more tea. I ran out to Trader Joe’s and got a few variety of teas. I’m now obsessed with Trader Joe’s delicious jasmine green tea. It’s such a great alternative to the stale coffee at the publishing house, and it also dehydrates less than coffee does, which is important as we head into the colder, drier months.
I must be keyed into all things jasmine suddenly because I just opened an email from Korres, a Greek makeup brand that sells here in the States too, and they were promoting their jasmine product line. Korres is Greece’s fastest-growing natural skincare company, and I really value the fact that they have an eco-conscious policy.
Fun fact from the Korres email: Greek monks used jasmine for giving thanks.
What are you thankful for today? I’m thankful for life’s simple pleasures like a hot cup of tea on a cold day and the way a fragrant lotion can lift my mood.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 