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Community/Economy
Kunstler’s third “Capital of Unreality”—Woodstock, Vermont—is, as he describes it with reluctant joy (the same way we might imagine his reaction to the economic crisis), a “scene rich with paradoxes” (239). Well-off tourists love Woodstock for its quaint New England feel with all of the appropriate accommodations. With intense symbolism built into the physical environment, serving to reinforce the myth of the country town, the tourist comes to Woodstock to purchase community, to buy a sense of place. Kunstler spends a good amount of time throughout the second half of the book demonstrating the link between community and economy: community “is a living organism based on a web of interdependencies—which is to say, a local economy” (186). It is important to notice here the physical link between the two: community and economy must be located, embedded, and invested in the same place. The Woodstock example highlights the false sense of community inherent in this particular type of tourism, one based on an idea rather than anything real.
Though I have been to Woodstock before, passing through on a long motorcycle trip, my most vivid experience of the Woodstock phenomenon came in the town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. I occupied a strange place in both the economy and community: I came to the town as a student at the small college up the hill from the main street (a temporary place in the community, if one at all), as well as cook in one of the local restaurants that catered to the large-scale tourism industry in the area. Neither a homegrown or permanent resident, nor a short-term tourist, it is difficult to characterize my experience in Kunstler’s strict binary of local/non-local, despite having many similar qualities.
