20 ★ 17 August/18 August 2019Do you ever wonder how things enter the cultural
zeitgeist?Culture Callis a lively, transatlantic
conversation about the people, events and trends
that are shifting culture, hosted by FT editors
Griselda Murray Brown (in London) and Lilah Raptopoulos
(in New York). First up:Taffy Brodesser-Akner, author of
explosive celebrity profiles (including Gwyneth Paltrow and
Tom Hiddleston) and thenovelFleishman Is in Trouble, on
fame, fiction and the art of the interview.ft.com/culture-callW
ith the August sun now
withering the corn
stalks, the high-rollers
of the Hamptons brave
the smouldering heat
on a quest to see and be seen. The
summer invaders descend on towns at
the eastern end of Long Island with the
force of the Napoleonic army. They
stake outposts and claim land,
sidewalks, and coveted tables as if they
were looting Europe’s riches.
New Yorkers and the random rich
are on a quest for social gold: the next
hottest restaurant, nightclub or party.
So where do you suppose is their first
port of call? Maybe Nick & Toni’s, at
the tables preferred by Jon Bon Jovi or
Ron Perelman? Or the counter at
Loaves & Fishes, where you can
purchase lobster salad for $100 a
pound — preferably smacking your
Black Amex on the counter without a
hint of sticker shock?
Nope, wrong on both counts. The
whitest of the white-hot — for rich,
poor or somewhere in between — is
none other than the Kmart megastore
in the Bridgehampton mall.In these
times of graveinequality, the haves and
the have-nots smash up against each
other in a bargain store.
Down one aisle, fluorescent lights
flickering overhead, I see a harried
mother in a waitress uniform trying on
Buzz Lightyear sandals with her young
sons, a workman in worn Timberland
boots grabbing a cooler for his fishing
night with buddies, and aposh blonde
inpink Hermès lizard sandals,
matched by her stylist to her blush-
coloured Brunello Cucinelli scarf.
I watch as she stuffs her grocery cart
with “adorable” orange wine goblets
for the private beach party she’ll have
in front of her $40m oceanfront estate.
There’s a spike on the bottom of the wine
goblet soyou can stick it in the sand — socute and useful!She’s thinner than a
praying mantis, and I follow her as her
impossibly toned arms grab at co-
ordinating pink and orange tablecloths,
candles and teeny umbrellas for
drinks. She seems so thrilled with
herself she might burst.
Down another aisle, I spy a banker —
the type who has already shipped in
his $99 bacon-wrapped Wagyu steak
from Manhattan’s Lobel’s market. Of
course, he’ll be cooking it on his
$24,845 Kalamazoo grill, de rigueur
among the Wall Street set. But as he
walks past the $119 Kmart version he
stops and thinks:Amazing how
opportunity allows everyone in America to
cook how they want and what they want.I
bet my cabinet guy has a Kmart model.
Pleased that he really understandspeople of all incomes, he picks up a $19
Mr Bar-B-Q tool kit to help him feel
like just another regular guy flipping
his burgers.
Of course, the local population
loathes the transient trespassers for
their entitlement and unspeakably
rude manners. Summer people, when
they get in line at any store, deli or bar,
all think the same thing:I really should
be able to cut. As they try to lock eyes
withsomeone in charge here, they huff in
frustration at having to stand in a line
for seven minuteslike some Soviet
citizen in 1970.
Why is the fancy housewife taking
up space in line with people who can
barely find time to put food on the
table and finish at work? Why is thehedge-funder down aisle nine right
now trying to figure outwhether a
generic, $36 chicken rotisserie
machine could work on his
Kalamazoo?
It’s not enough to answer that rich
people want a bargain, or that rich
people are cheap. Both are true.
But there’s another reason rich
people are there, says society watcher
and NewYorkSocialDiary.com editor
David Patrick Columbia. “They are so
distanced from actual working people,
that being at Kmart connects them up
with reality,” he explains.
What’s more, the socialite and the
banker are packing into Kmart to
prove to themselves they don’t need to
be super-deluxe all the time. Hanes
underwear is Hanes underwear, after
all, and it works great with tennis
shorts at the club. Or, as the lawyer and
talk show host James Zirin notes, “At a
higher level of wealth, you have
nothing to prove, so you go to Kmart.”
Like being nice to their Park Avenue
doorman, shopping at Kmart gives the
one-percenters assurance that,phew!,
they are physically and mentally able
to wait in an actual checkout line. Even
snobby, out-of-touch people don’t want
to be so refined as to be cut off.
In these dangerous times of class
warfare, Kmart is reassuring to the
rich. In the same manner, they take the
subway once a year to a baseball game,
just to prove they can get to Yankee
Stadium without their driver. You’ll
spot these pretenders at the turnstiles
in the heart of the Upper East Side, the
tell-tale novice clad in a bespoke suit or
holding a Celine tote, asking someone,
anyone,Excuse me, how does this damn
MetroCard work again?Holly Peterson is a journalist and author
of ‘It’s Hot in the Hamptons: A Novel’
(William Morrow)What’s the hottest spot in
the Hamptons? Kmart!
T
here are individual years
in the 1960s that generate
more nostalgia than
entire decades. Quentin
Tarantino’s new filmOnce
Upon a Time... in Hollywoodlovingly
zeroes in on 1969. So does the demi-
centennial of The Beatles’Abbey Road.
London motorists are losing further
seconds at the titular thoroughfare’s
zebra crossing, clogged as it is with
even more tourists than usual.
And all this fuss, remember, is for the
depressing finale of that decade, the
year of Altamont, Charles Manson and
Brian Jones’s founding membership
of the “27 Club”. The industry devoted
to sunny 1966, perhaps the most
romanticised year in British history,
does not even need convenient
anniversaries to prosper.
The 1960s still makes other decades
cringe like dowdy wallflowers at a
party. This is understandable enough.
The artistic feats were legion. The
politics were interesting — if, at times,
too interesting. No decade’s fashion,
for men or women, has dated better.
All I question is whether what is
being celebrated here is the dynamism
and openness of those times.
Increasingly, it feels like something
nearer the opposite is being pined for.
Despite its anarchic reputation, the
whole of the 1960s played out in a
tightly controlled world. Major
currencies were still pegged to each
other under the Bretton Woods system.
The most populous country, China, was
cut off from global trade. A worker in
Munich faced little wage competition
from Dresden (which was behind the
Iron Curtain), let alone Shenzhen.
Western societies were morehomogenous than now: America’s
foreign-born population was around
five per cent, about a third of its
present size. Student protests raged in
several capitals, yes, but they were of
the pie-in-the-sky variety that tend to
burn out. As a mark of their success,
the decade ended with those
revolutionariesRichard Nixon, Georges
Pompidouand Harold Wilson steering
the west. These were much more
orderly times than we sometimes like
to imagine.
Or to put it another way, the 1960s
were the last pre-global decade. The
1970s would bring free-floating
currencies and the opening of China.
It would bring Opec crises thatsmashed apart the highly managed
economic order. The 1980s would go
much further. For people who have
found globalisation discombobulating
(and you will have noticed there are a
few), the 1960s must seem like the last
stand of a more familiar world. In other
words, a decade that has for so long
been synonymous with breakneck
progress is now idealised for exactly
the opposite reason. The “meaning”
of the 1960s has slowly changed.
It is this, I think, that explains the
bizarre popularity of such a far-gone
decade, even among people who were
born long after. On the face of it, it is as
strange as yearning for the 1940s in the1990s would have been. But there was
no particular craving for pre-modernity
then. There seems to be now.
At times, this can cross over into
dark territory. Film critics have
accused Tarantino of “obscenely
regressive” attitudes to race and gender
inOnce Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.
One character forbids another from
crying in front of some Mexican
people, as though in front of children.
There is a ball-and-chain wife.
But then a lesser charge — the taking
of guilty pleasure in an old-fashioned
world — applies to the millions of
people who lose themselves in Sixties
nostalgia. It was evident in the vast
following forMad Menseveral years
ago. The idea of an unreconstructed
male, in a west that could dictate
tastes to much of the world, was meant
by the writers to be, in the social
science argot, “problematic”. For a
large share of the viewing audience, it
was merely glamorous.
There is no shame in nostalgia for a
world that was as one likes it. I am not
above it. If globalisation goes into
reverse in the coming years, as per the
hype, I will sob pathetically for the
noughties, my own Eden, when the
whole planet appeared to have been
created for mobile young men with no
responsibilities. It is just odd to live
through the rebranding of the 1960s
from the wokest of decades to the last
truly conservative one.[email protected]Janan Ganesh will be interviewing novelist
Robert Harris at this year’s FT Weekend
Festival on September 7 at Kenwood
House, London; ftweekendfestival.comLong synonymous
with progress, the 1960s
are now idealised forthe opposite reason
For the past seven years, German
artist Michael Najjar has been
trainingto take a long-awaited trip
aboard Virgin Galactic’s maiden
voyage. Hoping to become the first
civilian artist in space, Najjar has
documented his training, embedding
it into his work to create truly
otherworldly images.
Focusing on the dramatic
transformation of modern society,
Najjar offers a complex and critical
look at everything from the effects ofclimate change to the technologies
now shaping the world.
Fusing technology, science and art
to create visions of future social
structures, the Berlin-based artist
subtly merges reality with fiction,
depicting our helter-skelter world in
striking visual terms.
Jessica Heron-Langton‘Terraforming’ is at the Juan Silio
Gallery, Santander, Spain, to October 5,
juansilio.comSNAPSHOT
‘Liquid Time’
(2017) by
Michael Najjar
Holly Peterson
Wheels up!
Chess solution 23281 Rh4! Rxb4+ 2 Kc5! when Rxh4 is a stalemate draw, Rc4+ 3 Rxc4 bxc4 4 Kxc4 is a drawn pawn endgame, and
Rb2 3 Rh7+ Kb8 4 Kxc6 is a drawn rook ending. This tactical trick has occurred several times, and is worth remembering.Remembering the last
pre-global decade
Janan Ganesh
Citizen of nowhere
Shopping at Kmart gives
the one-percenters
assurance that they are ableto wait in a checkout line
Introducing Culture Call, an FT podcast
РЕ
ЛИЗChess solution 2328ЗChess solution 2328ПООДДГГООТОВИЛАГРУППАChess solution 2328Chess solution 2328 "What's "What's "What's "What'sNews"VK.COM/WSNWSVK.COM/WSNWSChess solution 2328
VK.COM/WSNWSChess solution 2328
Rb2 3 Rh7+ Kb8 4 Kxc6 is a drawn rook ending. This tactical trick has occurred several times, and is worth remembering.Rb2 3 Rh7+ Kb8 4 Kxc6 is a drawn rook ending. This tactical trick has occurred several times, and is worth remembering.VK.COM/WSNWSVK.COM/WSNWS