This passage in John Quiggin’s essay was interesting:
More importantly, the culture of conspicuous consumption, which reached unparalleled heights of excess in the 1990s and early 2000s, is on the wane. The most striking emblem of this change is the end of the American love affair with the motor car. Throughout the 20th century the car stood in American culture as a symbol of personal freedom attainable through consumption expenditure. Year after year, pausing only briefly for recessions and slowdowns, more and more cars were driven further and further, burning more and more petrol. But this endless growth has now, apparently, come to an end. The use of petrol in the US peaked in 2005, before the advent of the economic crisis. The distance driven has also peaked and Americans are buying fewer and smaller cars. Economic factors, including higher fuel prices, have a role to play. But anecdotal evidence suggests that there is more to it than this. Increasingly, driving is seen as an unpleasant chore rather than an exercise of freedom. Young people in particular have been less eager than their parents to start driving and acquire cars.
I wonder if there’s been a general trend away from the vehicle to focus on the body. When I think of the classic American “love affair with the motorcar” I think of young men buying new gadgets for their car or tricking it out with different add-ons and paint schemes. The analogue to the body would be the tattoo. As a side note, my dad, a graphics/sign painter/design guy, has always talked about starting up a business named “Auto Tattoo”.
I was talking to a co-worker last night who was going on about what I like to call, mockingly, a “Five Year Tattoo Plan”. If you are ever around people in their early 20s, you’ll hear a not insignificant number of them talking about their long-term tattoo strategies. It’s pretty annoying, but I indulge. It’s not a ubiquitous trend, but it’s certainly increased over the past five or ten years. Tattoos in general have increased in popularity, and people talking about their tattoos has naturally followed suit. Also, as more people get more tattoos, you see more people with abandoned tattoo projects that are similar to primer-covered hot rods. Half-done, indefinitely. A tattoo frame without color becomes the new norm as the wearer loses the initial spark which drove him towards the concept in the first place. A couple of guys at my gym have back pieces – one of a set of wings – which seem like they’ll be perpetually unfilled.
My co-worker was walking me through the different stages of his project and talking about his plans to save up money for each stage by working more shifts and what not. He’s started at the top of his arm and is going to have a complete sleeve filled out, and it sounds like it might take years. I thought of Quiggin’s essay and how guys used to more often talk about their vehicles the same way. Ten years ago (and definitely 20,30,40 years ago) a guy might save up money to finally cover his primer or maybe he’d purchase a spoiler that didn’t look like something out of a Lego box. That was always a working-class thing, and now the same class has started focusing their limited cash flow on skin design.
My instinct is to just ridicule what I see as a waste of time and energy, but I also see it as a fundamental human characteristic. That gets back to Quiggin’s essay which was about society adopting a 15 hour work week. Even if provided ample amounts of leisure, people will still want to work to purchase status or something that they feel pride in owning or showing off. They want to plan and tinker and build and design and do all of that stuff. They don’t just sit around staring at an empty canvas. People are chaotic and stupid, but that’s kind of the beauty of human nature.
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The young working-class southeast asian men in the Bay Area seem to be just as in love with cars as young white men were when I was that young. Up to, and including, the mechanical tinkering. Last year, I sold a 1998 Integra with 260k miles and a blown cylinder for $800 to a early-20s vietnamese guy – he was going to take it to his buddy’s shop to fix it. (With free use of shop and his own labor, it would probably cost him less than $500 to do a repair which the mechanic estimated at $2500-$3000 for me.) And this is *in* San Francisco proper, the most difficult city in which to own a car west of the Hudson.
On the other hand, as population density in even the suburban parts of our big cities keeps climbing, driving is becoming less and less fun. I still love driving on the open road, but far less of my driving is open road – even when I had a counter-commute, I rarely got to go more than about 70mph unless I was coming home late. And now, I drive across the Bay Bridge, which means sitting in line for 10 minutes (on a good day) before getting to open it up all the way to 40 mph. If self-driving cars come to pass, I’d be awfully tempted to get one for my daily commute, even though I’d keep my incognito hot rod (Honda Civic Si) for when I could have some fun driving.
The other factor I’d look at would be to find out where the kids have sex. Where does a 20-year-old couple not in college go? Do they have their own apartment? If they’re openly boyfriend-girlfriend, do their parents strategically leave the house unoccupied? (My friends of that age are mostly in colleges with dorms, or working in IT, so they can afford their own places, or dating someone in those circumstances.)
As cities gentrify more white people (people with money to buy cars) and moving in. Since cars are much more of a hassle in the city then the country they are buying fewer and driving less. The advent of car sharing tech (zipcar) also helps this trend.
In addition much consumption of entertainment has shifted from physical activities (going to the park) to sedentary activities (updating your facebook page from your apartment).
They tend to take that extra money and spend it on different things, such as designer food.
I agree with you on the body modification. Its actually gotten more extreme. I went on a date with this hipster girl and there was a hipster guy at the bar that had stretched out his ear lop way down to his shoulder. I asked why someone would do something like that. She said, “why not?” It was at this point I knew me and this girl, and perhaps society, have some fundamental differences. There are plenty of why not’s (including that he is mutilating himself). However, the more pertinent question is why this guy doesn’t have more why’s in his life. If he had more reasons to living then perhaps he would focus on those rather then mutilating himself because he is bored.
hahaha, RYU’s tatt is likely an arrow pointing to his butthole and the words EZ Access–all in prison blue ink of course….
On a related tangent my dad owns a used car lot. One of the things he deals with on a regular basis is young people (guys mostly) who bring in a car that’s been totally tricked out to their specifications that he now wants to trade in. My dad almost never buys them because once a car has been customized to one individual’s tastes it seldom appeals to other buyers the way a comparable but unmodified vehicle would. Meanwhile the owner of the car wants more than book value to recover the costs associated with customizing the car to make it so awesome in the first place.
There’s a lesson in here for the ladies. I have metmany young women who view their tattoos and long history of sexual experimentation as trophies of a life fully lived who just can’t understand why men would rather have the base model.
I think much of the trend to smaller cars and less driving is fuel based. We saw this in the past, when oil shocks and price spikes sent people rushing to buy gas-friendly Datsuns and what have you. But when gas prices went down, the SUV craze exploded. People always return to bigger cars when gas gets cheaper. But gas has not been cheaper for a very long time.
The author notes that driving peaked in 2005. Well, look at this gas price chart. It’s been nothing but historically high prices since about 2004. We are now more than double what prices were through the 70s, 80s and 90s.
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2012/02/27/how-high-have-gas-prices-risen-over-the-years/
You really think we wouldn’t see more driving and bigger cars again if prices went back to the three decade long sub $1.50 or so level?
Also, the SWPL backlash against SUVs has helped push down the amount of gas used (though it wouldn’t mean less distance driven).
Finally, I wonder if the always-coming-but-never-comes trend toward tele-commuting has finally taken off? I have been working at home (for a company, not a home business) for almost four years now. So my gas consumption is way, way down from what it was prior to that. Most of the people in my department telecommute (what the hell, all we do all day is send emails, create PowerPoints and make phone calls).
I would think that as suburban commuting times have gotten ever more horrendous in many regions (thanks in large part to whites escaping the black undertow, which now follows them wherever they go via Section 8), people are looking for any excuse to not drive to the office. Many I know seem to have adopted at least a few days a week at home model, if not exclusively working from home. Even if people worked one day a week at home, it would impact gas consumption enormously.
im 25, in my early 20s i hung out with a lot of other early 20s people and i never heard a single person mention a tattoo strategy
At the strip club my house house a large percentage of the dancers are constantly tinkering with their tattoos. Literally, any time they get a hold of $300 it’s off their tattoo to add a few my lines of ink that arm sleeve or ever-growing back tattoo.
One chick has cat paw prints starting at the top and is planning to cover her whole back as she gradually gets more money. She’s about 1/3 or the way through now.
And here I thought all strippers were putting themselves through medical school.
i like thinking of the imagery of this large collection of tattoos – finished and unfinished – being like a yard full of abandoned vehicular projects.
I always feel sorry for people with tattoos. Who wants to advertise their attention- seeking dysfunction? Tattoos are never not stupid.
Dan in DC
Oh and people with that stretched out earlobe should be euthanized. Only half kidding. How F’n disturbing is that?
Dan in DC
So when the next generation of studious beta guys get their first good jobs and plenty of spending money (if they haven’t tied themselves down to marrying single moms angling for stepdaddies to raise the alphas’ children), will they get motorcycles instead? If so, probably not those overbuilt, overpriced, overprimped bikes known as Harleys. I drive my rice burner proudly, a bike should not cost as much as a car and get the sane mileage as a car.
I don’t see any trend toward smaller cars where I live, it’s all still giant pickups and SUVs. I don’t know about mileage, but possibly another factor is the growing internet economy. We order things online we used to shop for.
A more interesting car trend is what has happened to two seat sports cars. Once the badge of swinging bachelorhood and cool now they’re chick cars, you almost never see a man driving one. Even the sacred Corvette has been thusly defiled. Part of it is certainly You Go Grrl Power I’m 30+ And My Ovaries Are Drying Up But I’m Still Vibrant! The male side is harder to figure (though the chickafication of sporters is sure to accelerate the trend). That sort of aggressiveness in men is discouraged (was even in the old days I think) and any man over, oh, about 35 who drives such a car is accused of refusing to grow up (that is to say “man down”).
One last thing: Tatts are for morons, and no honey getting a tatt doesn’t make you a rebel, it makes you a herd animal. The heart of tatts, like the heart of car pride I suppose, is an excessive concern over other peoples regard for you and an unhealthy craving to be noticed. The difference is that the former involves actually mutilating yourself. If you’re that desperate to be noticed maybe you need to back up and examine your values.
In the late 70s & early 80s, I and nearly all the teenage and early 20s males in my hometown rebuilt & modified our own 60s and 70s American muscle cars. We’d cruise around town every weekend night and race at New England Dragway on Wednesday nights when it was open to street-registered cars. I was admired by my peers when my ’69 Camaro turned a 14 flat in the quarter mile.
Heck, we’d even trade and sell our cars among ourselves.
I had an after-school job pumping gas at a local Mobil gas station. After hours I’d work on my car in the shop and had access to all the tools and equipment. Many kids wanted a job like that.
I just don’t see teens fixing up their cars anymore, or knowing how to. The other day, I was sitting in a business meeting in a corporate conference room when my female boss’ cell phone went off. It was her 21-year old son panicking; the idiot light went off in the mom’s Explorer and he didn’t know what to do. She told him to take it to the dealer.
There’s nothing scarier than a “tramp stamp!”
The changes in car ownership and fertility are identical to those that occurred in Japan following the end of their bubble. The young guys in Japan used to buy fancy cars because thats what the girls liked and expected. There was also the three “highs”: High position, high salary, and physical height. This all began to change following the end of Japan’s bubble in 1991. By 1995, the young people had become slackers. They lived with their parents or with roommates in apartments, worked part-time or temporary jobs, and did the “lonely-planet” travel to S.E. Asia. Indeed, Lonely Planet began publishing its books in Japanese starting in 1992.
As I predicted in ’09, all of these trends are occurring here in the U.S. Fertility has declined (and will decline more in the next 5 years). Car ownership is less popular. The kids work part-time or temporary jobs and do the “lonely-planet” thing in Latin America and S.E. Asia.
What social conservatives like Dreher don’t get is that being a slacker is a rational choice in a no-growth economy. You cannot expect people to get excited about having families when there is no job/career opportunity and one is facing a limited budget into the foreseeable future. And don’t bother to bring up religion as influence here. Religion is overrated. It does not pay mortgage payments, doctor’s bills, or airline travel. You can’t pour it into your car’s gas tank and use it as motor fuel.
@stonerwithaboner: Too funny. You could go with a “NO ENTRY” tat & have a great pickup line, “You like to break all the rules, don’t you….”
Ugh, tattoos. I see those on someone who’s not blue collar and know I’m dealing with a lazy person. Unlike customizing a car, or learning a musical instrument, tattoos take no skill, no knowledge and no real time investment. Might was well tattoo on yourself “I have the need to be seen as different from everyone else and express my inner being in a way others can see and comment on, but I don’t want to do anything that takes time and hard work to get there.”
It’s important to note that while a modified automobile can be returned to a stock configuration (given enough time and monetary input), that stupid-ass tattoo is forever. Tattoos on the hands, face, or neck pretty much guarantee unemployability for life, which might actually be the point.
I’ve been seeing a lot of “tattoo acceptance” posts on Facebook lately, as if being covered in tats is some spontaneously occurring misfortune that befalls undeserving victims. Seems weird that one would undergo a voluntary and expensive self-mutilation procedure to set oneself apart from others, then supplicate for them to coo over your trashy ink. If you don’t want to take that ride, don’t buy the ticket– the surefire way to avoid being judged for having tattoos is to not get tattoos.
The thing that has struck me about tattoos is the uniform poor quality of the so-called “artwork”.
An artist doesn’t allow his patron to bring in a design or drawing for him to copy and tattoo “artists” are anything but. Copyists at best, they are instructed by the left hand side of the bell curve on just how awesome the wolf head must be and they bend over the drudge and work on their flesh like a welder.
I think on a deeper level inking is a reflex action of a deracinated and alienated population that has no clear line between childhood and adulthood and is simply set adrift to find his or her rites of initiation into an adult world which no longer allows for racial or cultural identity (if you’re White- and lets face it, it’s Whites who are getting the majority of these hideous scars inked all over their bodies). Tattooing has always been about initiation into group identity; tribal, military, prison, etc
People long to be a part of something larger, something that includes them. In an atomized/multicultural wasteland that prohibits tribal identity for the majority of its citizens, there remains that need and it manifests itself in things like this hideous form of self mutilation. Of course these folks can’t grasp this concept intellectually, much less articulate it, so they are left with the old “I just want to be different” excuse even as they do the one thing that makes them just like every other dimwit on two legs.
I pity them, for they know not what they do.
What interests me about tattoos is their permanence.
From about the 50s kids started adopting certain badges to identify themselves with a specific youth sub-culture – haircut, clothes, maybe an earring for a guy. As the kids grew up they cut their hair, grew out their hair, got new clothes whatever. They became straight adults.
Tattoos are a badge that never goes away. We have permanent kids now. The 5 year plan is reflective of that – these kids are saying – “I will always be part of the sub-culture”.
Then again if everyone is part of a sub-culture then no-one is. So maybe just a waste of good ink.
And BTW -
Quiggin as usual is full of shit. Westerners (if they do at all – I am assuming his stats are right) buy less and smaller cars now because they are poorer. Kids buy proportionately less and smaller cars now because they are proportionately poorer. As far as the end of the American love affair with the car goes – what does he mean – the decline of hot rodders and muscle cars ? That was a sub-culture that started in the 50s – like most sub-cultures it was based on novelty – as the years went by the sub-culture changed and shrunk. We have plenty of kids who are into cars around here – but they are mostly outer suburban proles and semi-violent wogs – not the sort of people old Quiggy mixes with.
What next – a lament to the decline of the rockabilly scene ?
And Stoner – do you think you’re back at school or something ? Are you trying to get all the mean girls to gang up on Ryu ?
yeah….not really sure what was up with stoners comment. I personally find ryu pretty insightful.
Here in the Bay Area there is a thriving subculture of restoration of large 60′s-70′s and sometimes older American cars, and it comprises all races. In Oakland just this month there have been two street fairs of which one component is folks showing off their Camaros, Impalas and T-Birds. The really gaudy and/or jacked-up ones tend to belong to blacks. Speaking of which, I see plenty of blacks driving Escalades, late-model BMW’s — and I’m talking 7-series — and other new, upscale and often large vehicles.
Here in Berserkeley we have Prii galore as you may expect, and tiny cars such as the Mini, Honda Fit, Fiat 500 are popular. But there’s quite a variety of models and ages, including plenty of SUV’s. Fewer American-branded cars than you might see elsewhere in the US. And quite a few art cars, which is the hippie/hipster parallel to tinkering with muscle cars, except it’s all appearance.
Maybe 8-12 years ago I noticed a lot of tricked-up Honda Civic, Acura Integra, Toyota Celica, Mitsu Eclipse, etc., driven by young Asian males. There seems to be less of these around these days.
“And Stoner – do you think you’re back at school or something ? Are you trying to get all the mean girls to gang up on Ryu ?”
Mean Girls, well it looks like Amanda Marcotte has the same “ideology”
http://dearwhitefeminists.wordpress.com/update/
Not sure what your point is Stoner.
That fiasco happened years ago. Great memories of Mandy getting hoist on her own petard of hyper-sensitivity to bullshit identity issues.
Ripple – I remember seeing lots more stickers on the rice rockets a few years ago, but then websites which mocked people who thought stickers made their car go faster showed up.
The Honda Fit is actually a pretty practical car. It’s bigger than the Fiat 500 or the Mini, so it appeals to different people – it’s more of a poor man’s Prius. (My wife’s car is a Prius. There’s room for either a medium-sized dog or a lot of cargo behind the back seat – more so than in the WRX, the Yaris, or the Matrix.)
As for the permanence of tattoos – a woman I know got a small (1/2-inch) tattoo of a frog on her shoulder when she was about 18. She then gained a bunch of weight, then later lost it. In her words, it now looks like she lost a game of Frogger.
Once again whites are “catching up” with blacks.
Blacks decades ago had to figure out a way to display manliness in a Dadfree world where no deep knowledge of cars, construction, etc. was passed from generation to generation.
The early years of the Dadfree Revolution hurt white boys so bad. Anxious, risk-terrified mothers worked out their man issues on their sons and tried to turn them into androgynous Safekids and future manboobz.
Today’s Dadfree generation sees and despises what happened to the original cohort of Dadfree kids in the 1970s-80s. But the knowledge link has been broken forever for many boys. Maybe the original Safekids are in a stable marriage now, but the knowledge chain still got broken. Or, the wife has convinced the family to live in an HOA where busybodies control what type of car and construction work homeowners may perform.
In sum, tattoos are a pretty clownish substitute for hot rodding, taking your boat to the lake to party and water ski, or building cool stuff. But there was always going to be a market for buying manliness when inheriting it became impossible.
Great point about the broken chain of knowledge. Girls are cut off from their roots too. How many young women today can sew, tend a garden, pickle, or make preserves? Many came even cook.
The overall culprit is suburbanization, dual-income economy, and atomized nuclear families.
My mother took her sewing machine to college with her. It was common for girls to make themselves dresses back then.
A DUI costs, all told, something like $10,000 now, and simple speeding tickets can be hugely expensive. Gas is $4.60 a gallon in L.A. for the last month.
Matters of cost aside, I see a trend among elite white young people not really wanting cars because they want to move to 12th St. downtown. But elite white young people make up a tiny fraction of the population. I think Dr. Quiggin is out of touch with who makes up the mass of young people in America. The gold chain crowd still wants German luxury cars, the Mexicans want V8s, whether pickup trucks or SUVs, the Filipinos want rice rockets, and so forth. As the economy inches back, I’m starting to see again the elaborate rims that peaked around 2007.
As someone goes to a fair number of car shows this trend has value.
The number of people one meets at these events are overwhelmingly older, one might say original to the car interest. The younger folks just don’t participate and are often pushed out on cost alone(as is typical with all things that the boomers are involved in).
The one exception is the “rockabilly” crowd which are often always heavily tattooed, but they’re trying to cultivate a certain image. Ironically, in my opinion, there cars look like shit too.
Tattoos like all things though are getting so popular that soon they won’t be cool anymore, I hope.
It is all about oppression. Cars went from freedom machines to oppression machines. Kids get picked for ticketing and know it. Forget about <21 kids driving with alcohol, penalties are ballistic. Easier to put the beer in a backpack and skateboard to the GFs house.
I think Dr. Quiggin is out of touch with who makes up the mass of young people in America.
Dr Quiggin is Australian – he knows shit about America – I doubt he knows much about Australia.
Has anyone else noticed a trend of thirtysomething women doubling down on tattoos once they start to hit the wall? I have several female acquaintances who made it through their twenties with at most a relatively discreet tramp stamp or ankle tattoo, but all of a sudden they’re going all in with full sleeves and chest/back pieces.
These are inevitably single women who’ve ridden the carousel. Getting large and conspicuous tats looks like a desperate attempt to pretend they’re still young and exciting.
Regarding tattoos, you’ve got to hand it to the ever-practical Japanese. While adventurous girls might want to try the look of a tattoo just once, they’d never defile their bodies with them permanently (not least because even today tattoos are associated with gangsters). So what’s the solution? Beige stockings with tattoo-like designs in them:
http://image.rakuten.co.jp/wide/cabinet/pn60000-18/68259.jpg
http://auctions.c.yimg.jp/img347.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/users/1/5/8/8/canyon214-img600x411-1340698260mnbvdz23722.jpg
http://portal.tabio.com/data/original/0/54/651e5a8095e7f4954632a767ea34fffca5f7eea9.jpg?1347944075
They’re not quite a boom or a craze, but living in a major city like Tokyo, you see a few girls a day wearing them. I hope this fad keeps “real” tattoos away from Japanese women’s bodies forever!
When I was a teen in the early 80s, it was a big event, year after year, to attend the “World of Wheels” car show.
Earlier than that, all the kids in my neighborhood paired up and built push go-carts. We’d scavenge wheels from shopping carts and baby carriages and wood from dumpsters and parents’ basements. Nail it all together and race down neighborhood streets. Crash ‘em and rebuild ‘em.
In 5 years the real hardcore rebels will be those without tattoos.