There's a sorrowful joy
I've known since I was a boy
Joyful sorrow, I guess
It's a maimed happiness... -David Johansen

I ain't had no fun since the Hammersmith Palais.." - Demolition 23

"Well so long, liberty-let's forget you never showed, not in my time." -Joe Strummer

"You built your refuge, turned you captive just the same..." - Duran Duran

While billionaire oligarchs Bezos and Musk race to Mars in duelling dick rockets, accuse each other of being compromised by foreign powers and demand bigger handouts for their space companies from Biden (which they will probably get) and TV watchers cheer for their preferred Super Scientific Space Savior, Wal-Mart has raised the prices of all their food by like, a lot.

What used to be a dollar fifty, is four bucks, basically. You are a captive audience of the Walton family, if you live somewhere where they killed off all the mom and pop shops of old downtown Main Street. Nine dollars for a GMO watermelon that is white on the inside, has no nutritional value anymore and is almost tasteless thanks to Gates and Monsanto. But your posh celebrity friends will tell you Vandanna Shiva is a conspiracy theorist. Or that Julian Assange works for..."RUSSIA!"

I bet your little town has some insufferable gentrification hipsters in it. Retro hair-do's and deep cocaine pockets, always on iPhones makin' deals, doing their hustles, with sunglasses, nice shoes, and no manners? Taking over your downtown? Indie-martyrs, are they any less evil then big biz, super titanium ultra villain, Monopoly despots? Yeah, probably, 'cause they don't usually have the power to hire positive PR stories in mainstream media or crush unions and shit, but they almost always treat their employees and own clientele like garbage, until they drive themselves outta business.

If I visit your coffee truck or $13 grilled cheese stand four or five times and it takes you 10 minutes every visit while you bitch about how you're not getting enough tips or making enough money, I don't come back. If you own a faux gourmet pizza place and it takes 20 minutes to pick up a to go order we called in half-an-hour ago, and you've made it known you are mostly intentionally catering to rich people from outta town, I stop spending money there, too. The in crowd always spot me on the sidewalk and incorrectly presume I'm the sorta cat they're gonna party with at the bar, but I don't go to businesses that treat old ladies suffering from dementia poorly, or who moan and groan about how much they hate the unsightly poor. In the immortal words of my once semi-homeless ex bass player, The Kid, a.k.a., Useless B: "Fuck Those People!"

If you ain't extra super-duper solvent, these brunch-babies are gonna be replacing you on the block. It really seems their primary purpose on the planet is to move in, wherever working class people were busy making art, copy their bands, monetize their style, short-sightedly rip-off any and all potential paying customers, and displace all rock ‘n’ roll motherfuckers. Instead of The Clash, we get the Offspring. Instead of Prince, here is Bruno Mars. As I recall, it started with the Strokes. I liked 'em way better when they were NANCY BOY!

My little nowhere corner of the desert has a city hall firmly in the breast pocket of some big money Mr. Burns or Dr. Evil lurking behind the scenes, and they just casually announced they will henceforth be using flyover drones to spy on people's backyards and determine whether their gardens and garages are adequately fashionable, sufficiently chicly gentrified, and orderly enough to please booj people sensibilities. Now, lemme tell ya, in dirty boots and high winds cowboy country, all these Daddy Warbucks old, Marlboro Men and Georgia O'Keefe-imitating new age lady artists they almost all own gigantic compounds, where they all keep elaborate collections of multiple boats and little cabins, guest cottages, hot tub rooms, ancient cars and offroad vehicles, greenhouses, RV's and trailers occupied by their assistants. They are all little cities unto themselves, self-governing, like Disney. I highly doubt the yard evaluating spy-cops are gonna be shakin' any of those people down.

Meanwhile, I have an elderly artist friend who created all these 20-year-old, kitsch-y cool installations all over our tiny downtown, years ago. A woman who used to own a second-hand hipster boutique that went outta business hired her to make these kooky fences around her building with a jigsawed wooden cut-out cartoon mural of the lady boutique owner, integrated into the fencing with second hand bed springs, blue glass, broken up bits of mirror, empty champagne bottles, baby dolls, ‘50s advertisements, and old vintage license plates. City Hall says that shit's still cool 'cause they think it appeals to hipster tourists, but her own front yard, that the artist created a similar installation on, is at risk of being code enforcement violated, because she lives near an unsold, new on the market, oversized big, dumb, ugly as fuck McMansion. In her own backyard, there is a gorgeous religious shrine she created from tree limbs and bottles and wire that will likely be called a fire hazard by these crazy Orwellian, gentrifying, drone watchers. So yeah, a grumpy hermit from the rock hound collector club, with a yard full of old stuff he's found on the side of the mountain, or at the beach and recycled and repurposed, he is being hassled and hazed, trash talked online, called a hoarder, hated and feared by just-moved-here suburbans from Iowa.

Big rich lady compound with old baseball caps and broken musical instruments and fishing gear all over her rusty fences?? They don't wanna fuck with her, she's got more money than any of them or their hipster shop owning boyfriends, so she can be freely freaky, and eccentric and bohemian, until doomsday, which might be any minute now.

I don't own property or recreational vehicles, or drive, or hoard any shit in my yard, so why does this bullshit affect me? Two reasons. I love the unconforming cowboy culture of the desert Southwest, it's why I came here-to get away from fucking rich identikit genre-hag hipsters and overpriced rents and legal for white rich people pot dispensaries. #2: the real target of all this bullshit new "change the culture" over-policing is me. I don't always primarily identify as a poor person, I Frequently feel very blessed, but when I hear the privileged Karens and beardo yuppie hipsters complaining about the damned, dirty, lawless poors, I'm like, oh, yeah. They really don't like me, or care about preserving any kinda old hippie or punk or outlaw desert-mojo culture, only about protecting and expanding their own privilege and tiny empires. They are all Brand Building. Micro-politicians, sales, sales, sales. Two hundred bucks a night, dig?

So I wanna know exactly WHO sits on this style committee of Better Homes & Garden art critics, these apparent "Architecture Digest" subscribers, evaluating other people's cactus gardens and freaky art displays. Who made these mf's Simon Cowell/Isaac Mizrahi unreality show Judges? What happens when somebody don't like YOUR Tibetan prayer flag, or yin-yang garage mural, or mosaic tile hot tub portrait of a fish, or whatever the fuck? Ya know? What qualifications do these DECIDERS have to critique anyone's landscape choices or coyote paintings? I been advocating for one lone wolf in particular who is being unjustly persecuted by people who own more expensive real estate, I was talking to him about our defiant and proud traditions and artistic expression and he says about another D.I.Y. decorator down the street, "that guy needs to work on his paintings-that shit looks psychotic." I, of course, have no heart to say, that is exactly how YOUR art is perceived, by all these get rich quick generic gentrifiers. Everybody's a critic. All that fucking TV programming. "The Voice" and "Amerikkkan Idol". All that shit. Hoodwinked and Bamboozled. Sheesh! Either we stand together or hang apart.

Gentrification is when some outta state grifter, real estate hoarder or greed-head, get rich quick schemer "sees opportunity" (vulnerability) and decides to move into a traditionally poorer enclave of idiosyncratic people in an intentionally offbeat community and "change the culture" by jacking up the local rents, installing way overpriced food trucks, hipster bodegas, or coffee shops, or Airbnbs, or health food stores, making it prohibitively expensive for lower income people to stay there. All under the guise of providing some urban "cool" image, or trendy, artsy patina. Like when 7-Up went psychedelic in the highjacked hippie era! The only resistance one ever sems to hear from the Got-Mine, Jacks about these hipster invaders is their horrified opposition to developers potentially someday receiving low-income housing grants for building, because you know, that would mean (SHOCK! GASP! HORROR!) the dreaded presence of unsightly POOR PEOPLE in "their" own neighborhood.

The big laugh is that we are already here, right here, next door, two doors down, been here, been here before the gentrification hipsters. HERE BEFORE YOU. You'll know someone is a gentrification hipster when they wannabe authority figures and start throwing their weight around, even at petty nothing, low-wage jobs. Rule enforcers like the Hindu tattooed, kooky festival-goer bartender who bans the old lady who does not tip him because she is not a drinker, only came to dance and socialize. That kinda shit. Business owners all learned the pretty P.C. flowery-lingo lexicon at college, about being inclusive and family oriented and welcoming people with disabilities, but only if they can make a big, fast buck off 'em. "Vibrant & Diverse" just means you can be different, or disabled, s'long as you got a lotta MONEY. You get these armies of pseudo-macho, twenty something tattooed males getting off on being cops because they have no compassion and still live with their rich landlordly moms. You got your omnipresent Karens, self-deputized neighborhood watchers, always lookin' to make a bust. You got hipster business owners becoming active on city councils and shit, who don't really care about local traditions of rugged individualism, or the culture being changed, or exploited and cheapened by here today, gone later today mansion builders, they also just see these elitist dollar signs, and think some imaginary outta state money havers visit cool places because they never seen ten McMansions built around a golf course before. They are wrong, of course, people flock to these far-out cool places off the beaten track because the uniqueness and quirkiness of the locals. The main tools that rich people plotting the mass purge of the poor utilize, called "broken window theory", are stop and frisk over-policing tactics, the harassment of true artists and bohemians, and selective code enforcing-city hall art critics evaluating people's homes and gardens based on some bogus, imaginary, empty criteria that only applies to targeted populations. A rich person can have a buncha old shit and unused vehicles all over their gigantic silver fenced block wide big compound, no problemo, but poor people are served with cop threats for cow skull cactus gardens, or old blue bottles integrated into their fences, or eccentric rock garden, or found object installations.

I always try to fight for the little guy and stand with the underdogs, but you know what's sad? When you realize even your own former colleagues and fake friends and would-be former collaborators don't care about preserving any eccentric culture of artistic freedom, only exploiting some surface image of eclecticism to attract touristy money havers and get rich quick, themselves. How terrible it is to slowly realize that your artist associates aren't as dedicated to libertine lifestyles or unorthodox expressions of imagination as they also are of make a buck overnight, blindly ambitious, insatiable, hungry ghost wealth worshipping! I'm the kind of guy who will make cartoon fliers defending some misunderstood cowboy's right to make weird junk sculptures in his yard, and proactively resist the bigwigs and fat cat art cops when the native creative community is under attack, only to gradually realize that an overwhelming majority of the so called creative community are double-secret in bed with the Scrooge McDuck developers and their real agenda is to push undesirable poor people outta town so they can charge more rent and shit. Ten-dollar cups o' Joe. $200 a night bed n breakfast, but without the breakfast, Here's a lava lamp to look at instead. Sometimes, I forget my own rule about not organizing with middle classers or getting involved with proletarian just-us causes. "WE have the right to refuse anyone service" signs.

NOT FAKIN' IT, FOOLIN' MYSELF I'M MAKIN' IT

In the USA, we used to have something called the Bill Of Rights but that got cancelled under Bush/Cheney and Obama just charmed everybody into never mentioning it. War machine propagandists took over the entire media. All the cool people died, died. Even the beautiful B-52's are on their farewell tour. The all-time greatest house party, all aboard for Fun Time, full blast, love shack shakin' and all-night shimmying, right the fuck on, good times entertainers besides the Fleshtones! (Or maybe MM or Iggy Pop!) Do you ever find yourself getting depressed about this shit show world and feel a real nagging desire to wanna kinda get wasted, checkout, melt into old songs, and escape this unreality horror show for at least a little while? I mean, we used to have each other-me and the rest of the glitter kids, we could get together over some beer and vodka and dance to the Fleshtones, and yell along with the Clash, and weep along with Depeche Mode and New Order. Laugh along with Zapp's "I Can Make You Dance (If You Want Me To), or Rick James, have some pizza, pass out, and in the mid-afternoon, do it all again?!  I was listening to that "Like An Angel" 12 inch by Duran Duran this morning and remembering how heavenly it was when we still had some good friends we could trust who weren't just trying to get over on us, make a buck, charge more rent, hit on our lady, or plagiarize our tunes.

Aww, man, wherever I fucking roam, the goddamned trust funders are two steps behind me, with their mama money and hipster capitalist ambitions. These fuckin obedience signalling, woke-washed shit-lib gentrification brunchers get to take your place and steal your face cause their family fortunes allow them to stay in your old zip code and get paid to be you, second hand, by proxy, DJ'ing at some overpriced fake dive bar for millionaires. Whenever I encounter big city hipsters on my walks around the dead-end, once completely deserted, dreary ghost town, they initially all get giddy with utterly vain delusions of assimilating me into their relentless hipster capitalist, Tik Tok, Kardashian brand-building. They always follow me around like the tattooed lady, until they realize I refuse to be their second banana, sideshow mascot, content provider idea man, then, they ghost me L.A.M.F., which is, as it should be. I'm not here to be some brand logo, or cartoon cereal-box Count Chocula or Tony The Tiger space face for these gentrified-asshole empire havers. I understand the temptation, though.

One of my lifelong nearest and dearest intimate amigo, dead crusty drunken punk buddies, who really put the crust into crusty, allowed the status quo richies to pat him on the head, and stand him outside their tattoo shop like a wooden indian statue, and membership obviously has it' rewards, he did eventually go from being a universally maligned and feared and loathed and misunderstood and outcast, unappreciated undesirable, to being a harmless, happy go lucky, Frisch's Big Boy bank, brand celebrity for a couple years before he died, and was mainstream-mourned by all the straights and even merchandised, by some enterprising t shirt designers. You can't make this shit up. Beautiful beast, that one, big drinker. I love him forever. Where I live now, all the usual boomer rich people and college culture, sensitivity-studies wokey-wokers who run the town and wish to be seen everyday at the tourist-trap hoo-ha, they all pose as motherfucking shamanic guru mystic, new age healers, and are willing to charge you a hundred bucks to E.S.P. read your fortune, or realign your chakras, or analyze your pet Pitbull’s astrological past lives, or accompany you on a hike up the mountain, or whiteman swet lodge you or whatever, but the main hustle is letting you stay the night in the backyard casita with the hot tub and lotus flower mosaic tile for three hundred bucks a night. If you're lucky, they'll even throw in some longwinded cosmic wisdom, or gluten free artisanal palm reader unsolicited advice, for free around the campfire when you're just trying to have alone time with your spouse that you are paying Gandalf here all that touristy top dollar for. It's gotten to the point that when I see another dude with a backpack and a long ZZ Top beard and a vintage Airstream RV, or a chick with Lisa Bonet dreads and a gauzy hippie dress and bells around her ankles, unfolding a big canvass tepee on the yard, I go the other way. 

I can't stand the Trader Joe hipster capitalists, I been burned by 'em every time, or the self-appointed resident woke and scientific pseudo intellectual, on the corner of the main drag, preaching the gospel of CNN and espousing his holier than thou, "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" message of surrender, and hut two hut two assimilation. What the fuck is wrong with all these Urban Outfitted post AlternativeTM Halloween drugstore box costume rent-an-identity media suckers? Almost all of 'em are make-a-buck privilege havers, who inherited money for real estate and now, they wanna play off the grid Rainbow family, but with all the glamping, bourgeoise-pig luxuries of citified downtown day spa. Do I sound bitter? I never wanted to be a rock critic or reviewer of advantaged rich people products. I still hate yuppies, man. Even and especially the ones who've been showing up in the desert trying to impress me with their secret magic new age powers, expensive looking Timo Kaltio hats, and ridiculous, fawning worship of Jack White. Or Kamala Harris. Or whatever.

All I ever wanted, all I was really ever qualified to do, besides miserable in my hairnet and wet, bloody apron, alcoholic dishwashing, and destination record store salesman, was front a real rock ‘n’ roll band, but in my part of the world, there is nothing more obsolete. There are some brands still around who made it in the ‘70s or ‘80s, but with almost no original members. The punks who shared my point of view or core values all fucking died young, and the others joined the system, or went with really mediocre, but much better financed, tenth generation tedious, redundant rip-off, say nothing, come lately druggy karaoke Thunders tribute bands, that kinda shit. Gentrification-Retro, whatever you call that shit that everybody plays, but had no part in creating, or originating. I still wanna hear somebody with a point of view, their own unique get-down, to impart. Not another fucking cover band of a cover band, not another stripper with a producer, or Fauntleroy showbiz nephew who they made famous overnight by hiring in all the bells and whistles and fashion stylists. I hate hipster capitalism.

Lotsa people try to cover my songs and they got all the studio wizardry and for hire back-up musicians, but not much real emotion. I got real emotion but none of the bells and whistles, so here I am. Still searching, still in the struggle. I still believe my own unheard original songs are way more impactful than the rich kids who other people bought clothes for. Nowadays, I mostly walk, in circles. Until I get bone tired and eat and take some melatonin and try to sleep. What they call a dry drunk, feels like I was born to suffer, I won't join the end time cults, and I got nowhere to belong. The rich brunching hipster motherfuckers have always been so ceaselessly narcissistic and blinded by their own egomania, they actually expect me to applaud their efforts to purge poor people like myself and replace us with more born yesterday festival goer, techno-lovin' rich preppie, paid for platform, Ken doll iPhone motherfuckers. Who always move in, find out about the fuckin' Misfits or D-Generation, and suddenly try to dress like us. Fuck those people. The Hot-Topics and Whole Foodies ain’t my people. They're all pro war, too.