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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ (00:01.923)
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. David A. Banks, lecturer in geography and planning at the University of New York in Albany, and a proud delegate to the Troy Area Labor Council. And we're here today to talk about his book, The City Authentic. Dr. Banks, wonderful to have you on today.
David Banks (00:21.29)
Thanks for having me.
PJ (00:23.211)
So the initial question I ask is always, why this book? Both its purpose, but also what was the journey that led you to pursue this?
David Banks (00:35.606)
That's a great question. It's a question I make my students always answer when they have to write a substantial paper. It's like, why now? Right? Why this? And the answer is, to a large degree, the book is kind of personal in that I moved from Florida. I grew up in South Florida, and then moved to upstate New York, where I currently live is in Troy, it's just north of Albany. And
At first, I was just like, so enamored by how old everything was. It was like, you know, like if it was if it had been built before World War Two, it was like ancient to me. So I that just kind of caught me immediately. I think I was like, really well positioned to fall for the marketing that would then become very popular of the region, right, which was that you could
live out these authentic urban lifestyles on the cheap, right? So you don't have to go work live in New York City. You can have your cute little farmers market thing and go to brunch at a place that's like two nouns with a plus sign in the middle, you know, like bake baker, you know,
David Banks (02:04.011)
a bathtub or whatever, you know, like just like two nouns just put together. And I was like, this is great. I love this. And and then it was when I was in a this is this is true, a hardware store themed bar and restaurant called just called the shop. Right. That yeah, yeah. And you know, you'd like the beer taps like the poles were like old.
PJ (02:23.809)
As it is, yeah.
David Banks (02:33.747)
tools and like there is like the menu looked like an old retro Sears catalog or something, you know, and, and like, looking around here, I'm having a great time spending way too much money on like poutine and an aviator cocktail, right? I'm enjoying this immensely. And, but I realized like, why? Like, what, what the hell is this? Right? Like, why am I in a
it could just be a bar. It doesn't need to be themed after the last thing that was in this building, which was a hardware store. Right. And that just kind of got the wheels turning. And then I would start seeing stuff on social media that was like, propping this stuff up. But then I also realized that everywhere, while yelling that they are very unique, and only from here, can you get this experience? Everywhere was saying that.
And they all kind of looked about the same and they all seem to share a similar aesthetic that, um, uh, that, that they seem to be learning from each other on, on Instagram, mostly. And, um, and it turns out I was right, uh, that like, you know, there's this kind of like, design, this kind of like, uh, relationship among small business owners and economic development professionals in cities that, um,
PJ (03:48.571)
Ha ha ha!
David Banks (03:59.118)
they learn from each other, obviously, just like anyone, anyone else have a sufficiently complicated human task, you know, they learn from each other. And but now that social media kind of orders that it organizes it, you get like this incredibly specific kind of environment and tastes that and nouns, you know, you know, naming conventions.
that all kind of mimic each other, but then the ultimate irony is that they all do that to claim that they're different.
PJ (04:34.499)
Yeah, you have the naming conventions and the color palette, right? Like there's like, it's the Instagram, like, oh man, sorry. So my day job is as a digital marketer. So like this is unfortunate. Yeah, unfortunately I'm like, oh, I'm right back. I'm right back in all the meetings that I have. So for the tagline for the book is how the attention economy builds Urban America.
David Banks (04:41.578)
Yeah.
David Banks (04:45.026)
Yeah, I got you. I got your number. Yeah.
PJ (05:04.923)
for, I think most people will be familiar with it, urban America means, but for those who aren't familiar, when you say attention economy, can you describe what that is and how that fits into your discussion of social media?
David Banks (05:17.758)
Yeah, sure. So, you know, it's interesting, it's a really important concept attention that is very under theorized, there isn't a ton of information or like, you know, people who thought deeply and for a long time about the concept of paying attention to things that I and what is often the case is once a sufficient number of like the literati think that
something is going away, then everyone pays attention to it, right. And so it's only now that we're afraid that we're losing it, that everyone wants to talk about it. And in the term attention economy, which I've gotten, some people really hate this term. And for I think, pretty decent reasons. But you know, when you when you're talking about the cover of the book, you know, you kind of just, you have to pick words that
that resonate with people that are interested in the same topic. And unfortunately, you know, better or worse, that's what works. And so attention economy is, you know, is about like, both paying for your attention, literally an economy, right? People pay and sell attention. But also the idea that attention is a finite resource that itself acts like money and has to be metted out and exchanged.
in really specific ways. And of course, you know, like, attention is always already talked about in econometric terms, right? We pay attention. We give our attention, right? So like, these are all things that at the very base, you know, you don't have to get like to, like, too much in like linguistics theory, which I've known nothing about. But you know, like, I would talk like one intro to comms theory.
class, but you know, you don't need to get too far in the weeds there to start realizing that like, you know, we pick those words for a reason. It's because it kind of acts that way.
PJ (07:27.007)
Yeah, even as you've been talking about this, I remember it's like, I think it's like 10 to 15 years ago, maybe eight years ago, but I want to say 10 to 15 years ago now that the value of consumer data passed the price, like the value of oil, right? And it was that moment when social media kind of took over. And that's kind of like, it's big business now, right? I mean, that's what you're talking about when it's talking about revitalizing urban America.
David Banks (07:41.431)
Yeah.
David Banks (07:54.67)
sure. Yeah, yeah. There have been some people that say, you know, that like, attention or data is the new oil, right? There and there's some, some what I think there's probably like just one big asterisk on that metaphor, which is that right, like, oil definitely does come from the ground, we could say is natural, right? You know, it's like a bunch of dead stuff that under the ground, but
PJ (08:16.932)
Yeah.
David Banks (08:21.15)
But attention and data is a social phenomenon, right? Like there's, right? And so the creation of data or the phenomenon of attention is very human and social. And when you, and it's always dangerous to kind of assume that social things are natural and natural things are social, right? So like you want to pay attention to where that metaphor breaks down. And I think it breaks down pretty well.
PJ (08:25.345)
Right.
David Banks (08:49.526)
fairly quickly. But but yeah, I think it's also really clear that attention is big business and that different people's attention is bigger or smaller business, right? Like I, I was floored. I was floored when I found out this was, I think, 2013, maybe 2012. This was while it was at the very beginnings of this stuff that I found out that
PJ (09:05.524)
Ah, yeah.
David Banks (09:18.418)
I was told that the data of pregnant women is like four times more expensive than anyone else's because they're setting the purchasing patterns of entire households. And like, you know, mom buying one specific kind of cereal will set someone's brand loyalty for the rest of their life, right? And so it's getting those...
PJ (09:32.686)
Right.
David Banks (09:45.098)
that person's data is way, way more important than, you know, like, so like 95 year old guy that, you know, you can trick them into buying a gold coin or something, you know, or, you know, like that, like that, that stuff isn't, you know, like you give that a shot. That's fine. You know, like that's bargain basement attention, but like the real, you know, real good stuff is like people that are just starting to, you know, form their life.
PJ (10:13.067)
Yeah, I have five kids, so yes, I can tell you. It's amazing what, like you tell kids that this is normal and they're just immediately like, yeah, and it will be normal forever, right? Like it takes so much work to shift your habits. So that makes total sense to me. So as you talk about the, I love you have this term, upscale, upstate, talk a little bit about this authenticity
David Banks (10:17.354)
Okay, yeah.
David Banks (10:24.72)
Oh yeah. Forever. Yeah, yeah.
PJ (10:43.015)
everybody seems to have, or at least everyone is claiming to have.
David Banks (10:48.404)
Sorry, you broke up just a second. Could you repeat that question?
PJ (10:53.027)
Uh, how, um...
PJ (10:58.975)
Authenticity. How, like, how does, like, can you describe this authenticity that everyone feels like they need to have, especially in upscale, upstate, yes.
David Banks (11:06.694)
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So, you know, there's a couple things. Some of it, I suspect is generational, you know, you want to be careful with what you attribute to generation to generations. But you know, like some of it, you know, like the millennials that I'm a part of that, you know, grew up in the early aughts and late 90s. They, you know, they, they grew up in the United States, a lot of them in suburbs, especially if they had a middle income.
middle income families. And they rejected that, right? The rebellion of that generation was kind of a return to return to cities. And that can be attributable to everything from, you know, the television shows that were popular at the time, you know, everyone wants to, you know, be friends, the friends, friends.
Friends of the friends, you know, or it's you know, it's a style trends, you know, what have you or even you know like more serious issues around like climate right and wanting to have a smaller carbon footprint a lot of or just not enjoying driving right because the this is that would also be kind of the first generation that never experienced driving quite as much as freedom as a as a Necessity, right?
PJ (12:30.904)
chore. Yes.
David Banks (12:32.162)
in a chore. Yeah. And so it's into they kind of, you know, like, it with fresh eyes, we're like, Oh, actually driving sucks. I wouldn't. This actually sucks a bunch, you know. And so you, you it's a for whatever reason, you know, cities became increasingly popular. And, but what, what actually city life is like, can be told to you.
You can have expectations set for you in a way that is what some tourism scholars call like socially constructed authenticity. This is like, you know, how with my students, I'll show them an old timey like 50s, 60s era postcard from Hawaii. And I'll say, where is this? And they'll say Hawaii.
I'll be like, who here has been to Hawaii? And it's like, no one, you know, or very few people. And like, okay, then how the hell did you know that? You've never been there. Like, how'd you find that out? Right, you play a little dumb, right? But, you know, clearly, but you know, they give me the obvious answer, right? That, you know, you've seen it in media. And it's like, yeah, like, think of all the places that you've never been, but that you have a preconceived notion of, right? Like, that's all filtered through.
through media mostly, but maybe also like what your friend told you. Now think of how new that is, right? And that's a huge deal. And when we can think of not specific places like Hawaii or Detroit or Atlanta or Argentina or whatever, right? If you just think of categories of places like city, you know, you...
What what starts a creating around that category it are our little signifiers, right? That can be anything from you know, the coffee shop on a busy sidewalk To you know, the Edison light bulbs that are hanging in the window Is different forms of public transit that get kind of rendered into aesthetic rather than actual infrastructure
David Banks (14:52.878)
bike culture that far exceeds, you know, kind of, I think some of the more practical elements of what bikes are good for. I don't know. Like that now I'm gonna get in trouble with a lot of urban. I work in a geography and planning department and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get too in trouble about biking, right? All that I'll say is that, you know, bikes are like salmon.
PJ (15:04.636)
Yeah
PJ (15:08.475)
Ha ha ha!
David Banks (15:22.374)
or beavers in the Hudson River, if you recreate their natural environment, they will naturally they will they will come back. Right. But if you don't do that, only the people that are like, by either by means or by ideology constricted into riding bicycles will ride the bicycles in anywhere else that isn't comfortable in order to do so. Okay, but okay, so I covered my ass on that. But you know, like everything else is just like, you know,
PJ (15:43.556)
Hmm.
David Banks (15:52.394)
is kind of just like you were kind of expected to have different kinds of city semiotics. And those are opportunities for small business, everything from small business owners to the administrators and elected officials in cities themselves to say, Oh, okay, well, if we want these hippie young urban professionals with lots of disposable income to spend it in our direction, we have to kind of
show the show, you know, let them know, give them the signals, you know, the imagery of urbanism, and then they'll come, they'll come over here. Right. And so that's why I actually opened up the book with a description of an Instagram ad that I got from the Fulton County, New York, it's up in upstate New York, I don't think there's a population center above 50,000 people there. You know, it's very, very rural. But they, they
the ad that they give is like talking about, you know, how old their brick is and the wood floors but also plenty of parking. Right? And I'm just like kind of walking through like what is this? Who cares how old your brick is and who's the audience for this? Right? And the audience is like people who need maybe not class A but class B real estate, right? You know, a small business that doesn't have a
PJ (17:10.284)
Yeah.
David Banks (17:20.054)
of public facing stuff, but you want to keep your office drones happy and have it look cool, right? To make it kind of feel like you're at Facebook or something, right? But you're not. And so you're in Johnsonville, New York in Fulton County, right? And so they're like, you can get that experience for the cheap.
And there's parking. So you actually get both. You get the suburban experience of free, limitless, unlimited parking, and also, you know, the urban stuff. And it kind of works, you know, it or at least it works. And we can get into more empirical stuff if you want. But you know, like, what it works really well for is increasing property values. Surprise, right? It's really good for making things more expensive.
It doesn't actually, it doesn't really attract that many people, I have found. Or if it attracts a lot of people, if it attracts a lot of people, the way that you've done it, because it also raises property values, it pushes out or displaces about an equal number of people. And so the, the net increase in population is negligible.
PJ (18:25.572)
Interesting.
PJ (18:42.187)
Yeah, I mean, by definition, like, I mean, and I think I thought like you're talking about gentrification, right? Like, I mean, this is this is the this is a new mechanism you're identifying in terms of social media being used to create gentrification through the attention economy. Is that a fair way to talk about it?
David Banks (18:48.3)
Yeah.
David Banks (19:00.97)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, and gentrification, you know, talking to my, to my students about gentrification is interesting, because they, you know, like, when people who are only, you know, like, maybe 25 and younger, have lived their almost their entire conscious life post economic collapse, right? And post the 2008 financial crisis is what I meant. And
PJ (19:24.782)
Right.
David Banks (19:31.25)
And so not only do they have like no, like buying a house is so far off the radar for them, that it's just like, that's just never going to happen. But they also, you know, I don't know, they, uh, places a genre in a lot of respects and, um, different kinds of places are like Spotify music genres, but, but they're also, um, when I talk about gentrification.
They say, well, there's also some good stuff with gentrification, like, like the, like the crime goes down and the, and the, there's street trees and stuff. And I was like, that's not gentrification. That's making the place better. Right. Like, um, gentrification is when people get pushed out, uh, it gets too expensive. And they're like, yeah. And that, that happens when it gets nicer.
Yeah, it's just like, you know, it's this from the very, you know, and it's, it's really disturbing, but it's but they're speaking a truth there, right? That, because we is, I think, Harvey Malich described it this way, you know, we all live lives on a real estate investment, right? We're all living on financial investments, physically, like, literally physically living on top of financial instruments, called land, and
PJ (20:40.537)
Hmm.
David Banks (20:50.686)
And when we, it's when we improve that land, and we make it better to live on, you know, by definition, the poor people don't get to live there anymore, right? It's only when you socialize, that sort of thing, or you, you know, you get the George, the Georgian model of land taxing, that you can rearrange that. But otherwise, yeah, it's the same thing. Improving a neighborhood is the same thing as gentrifying, which
you know, which is, you know, sad to hear, but is in a lot of cases, in most places, very true.
PJ (21:37.923)
You cut out for a second there.
David Banks (21:39.687)
Okay, yeah, you're in the tube, but I think we're back.
PJ (21:45.867)
So you were talking about his statement that we're living on financial instruments. Yes.
David Banks (21:54.718)
Yeah. And a financial investment. Yeah, yeah, financial investments. Yeah. And when you do that, that means that you're, by definition, when you make something worth more, the poor people don't get to live there anymore. Right. And so your gentrification is the is this consequence of, of improvement, which paints a very bleak picture for
for really increasingly large number of people, right? You know, like it's not getting better. These are the natural, and this is seemingly natural, you know, like a market force is to consolidate, you know, is to turn into a few monopolies or an oligopoly is, you know, because as the market does its thing, you know, and they're all gonna compete, you know,
the weak ones die or get absorbed. So, of course that's the end result.
PJ (22:56.399)
So I want to describe a little bit of what happened. One, I grew up in New England, moved to central Florida, and then I just went back recently on a trip, and I was like, oh man, the age of these buildings is so cool. And so as you're talking, I was like, coming from Florida where everything is like, it's older than World War II because that's when the AC was invented, right? It's like post-World War II. And so nobody lived in Florida because it was too hot. But...
David Banks (23:10.102)
Yeah.
David Banks (23:20.502)
Yes.
David Banks (23:24.99)
Yeah. Shout out Black History Month. Guy who invented the air conditioner. You know, Florida, one of the Florida greats. You see? Yeah, black guy.
PJ (23:27.118)
Uh, what?
PJ (23:31.852)
Yes.
PJ (23:35.999)
Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, it definitely makes it definitely makes it livable here. So as I, my wife and I work from home, we run our own company. And we were already working from home. But then with COVID, we ended up moving out from Orlando, because it was cheaper. And so we see this what they called Zoom towns.
right? Where we were part, I remember going to with my children to the playground and there were some locals there who were complaining about the wave of people coming from Orlando and raising the property prices. And I remember saying, I, I'm really sorry, I'm one of those people, right? Like they're like, Oh, who are you? Yeah, I know. And how does that play into is that
David Banks (24:21.933)
Yeah.
David Banks (24:26.303)
Did I do that?
PJ (24:34.003)
Is that exactly what you're describing or is that kind of adjacent this idea of working from home and Uh, but because we don't have to be right next to things now We can we can buy is it was it johnsonville? You know, we can buy property a little further out with the unlimited parking. Is that a zoom town phenomenon?
David Banks (24:47.87)
Right.
David Banks (24:51.21)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It absolutely it is. We were going in that direction already. And the that whole region like New York City and all points north has this kind of ebb and flow culture nature to it where, you know, it disgorges, you know, several like fairly well off people every once in a while and they populate.
the areas around it, right? Otherwise, there wouldn't be all these cutesy old buildings to buy in the first place, right? As if there wasn't this original or at least much earlier move out from the city. So like, yeah, this is not the first time it's happened. And it was probably going to happen already anyway, as prices did their thing and made it difficult to afford to live in big cities.
But the pandemic did clearly accelerate that timeline a lot. And in my book, I saw several instances of people, like real estate agents talking about how fast properties would go.
David Banks (26:12.942)
I don't think I'm going to find the quote in a time that would make it worth grabbing as I spoke. But you know, what's nuts is that you get people saying like, you're calling up a real estate agent and be like, is that property still available? And they're like, yes. Like, does it have high speed internet? And they'll be like, yes. And like 20k over asking, like just, you know, done. And they buy it. And like, none of them had ever seen this before.
And then, you know, the prices don't really go down after that for a long time. You know, and, uh, you know, we saw wild, wild increases in population that were fairly temporary. Uh, but, um, but, but it was, it was a massive move of people. Um, I have, um, Rensselaer County, which is a County on the east side of the Hudson river from Albany.
Um, I had a 787% increase in address changes from New York city from that time, the previous year. Yeah. You know, um, uh, Saratoga County, uh, had 518% increase. Uh, and, uh, Albany was 126% skin acted the 152%. Right. And so this is this constellation of, of cities that
PJ (27:19.099)
Poof.
David Banks (27:37.778)
And like the towns around them are about a million people if you count all of them together All right, and you just had this like three digit percentage increase in In moves is like astronomical and but what what? Pencils out eventually. I'm just kind of looking at the table in my book here, you know is Stuff like you know amount of people with a doctorate degree went up
27%. Right? Less than high school went down 14%. Finance and insurance and real estate and rental and leasing professions went up, or sorry, went down 17.5%, which is fascinating, right? It's like, there, a lot of them are probably cashing out. You know? Yeah.
PJ (28:29.99)
Okay, I was wondering where that was going. Yeah, yeah
David Banks (28:35.23)
And yeah, and so and so what you what you end up with own but art, entertainment, recreation, accommodation, food services went up 19% between 2009 and 2019. So this is actually sorry, I meant to say that's pre pandemic, it's leading up to the pandemic, right? Is this move where you're getting a lot more service sector people
PJ (28:55.144)
Ah, okay.
David Banks (29:02.766)
right, 25% increase over that decade of service sector folks. But you're also seeing a high increase in people with high education degrees. And that doesn't mean you just have like MFA students that are also baristas. Like there is that, but that's not all, that's not all that's happening. What's also happening, although, you know, right, you do get stuff like that from the financial collapse, right? Because we're looking at 2009, but you're also getting
PJ (29:28.128)
Oh my gosh, yeah.
David Banks (29:30.902)
But you're also getting what Richard Florida called the creative class economy, where you get a handful of people in education, medicine, law, like these professional degrees. They're the creative class and they're supposed to trickle down all of their genius and money to the working class service sector folks. That never really pans out. And he wrote like a whole book in 2017 saying, oops, sorry, that was wrong.
But like, you know, the point of the matter, right, is that like this was starting and then it really took off over COVID to the point that, you know, today, you know, we had prices, rents went up, I think, you know, like, I think it was like 200% on average, like a total, like they went up significantly, but the-
actual population went up slower than the statewide average in our region. So the population grew a little bit, but it grew actually slower than the statewide average. And despite that, all of the prices for rentals went up way, way beyond that. One thing that tells you is that the price of housing...
PJ (30:47.438)
Right.
David Banks (30:56.358)
isn't a supply demand curve, not a simple supply demand curve, right? There's something much different happening. And the thesis of my book is that at least in part, it's this premium that you can charge for this kind of downtown lifestyle is at least part of it.
PJ (31:17.371)
Downtown lifestyle with unlimited parking. Let's, yeah. Yeah. Okay, I just, forgive me just for clarification because I know that the, I think it was like, you know, the 15 or 19% for doctorate and for service was over a 10 year period or, but what was the 787% and the 518% increase? What time period was that over? Was that 10 years or was that?
David Banks (31:20.139)
Mm-hmm.
David Banks (31:43.718)
Yeah.
PJ (31:47.127)
was that pandemic. That's crazy.
David Banks (31:47.526)
Oh, that was a pandemic. Yeah, that was just a pandemic. Yeah, on top of that decade. Yeah. That was like the first year. It was really wild because anyone that could afford to get out of the New York City did, right? And they just kind of went close by so that they can maybe commute in.
PJ (31:55.607)
Okay, so that wasn't in the ten years. That was like two years. That was like... Boom. Okay. Alright. Just make it sure. Okay.
Oh my gosh.
PJ (32:10.431)
Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
David Banks (32:16.682)
when their boss forced them to, right? Most of Hudson, New York was the one that grew, or got the most new residents, I think of any city in the country. Little Hudson, New York got that. And that was probably best. The avatar of that was Alison Roman, the like, she was in Conde, like, Bon Appetit for a while.
PJ (32:18.628)
Right.
David Banks (32:47.306)
She's like a food critic personality thing. Her name is Allison Roman. She has a big Instagram influence.
PJ (32:47.342)
Okay
PJ (32:55.139)
Oh, I have, I've watched a couple, I do a lot of cooking, so I have seen her cooking, yeah.
David Banks (32:59.218)
Yeah. Yeah, she's great. Yeah, she's great. And she, she got into an online feud with Chrissy Teigen. This is very important. Right. So her Allison Roman and Chrissy Teigen get into this fight. And Allison Roman is on the losing end of like the popular opinion on this. I think there might have been, I think it might have had, she might have been just a teensy bit racist in some of the things that she said.
or at least that's what everyone said, not actionable. To flee both that and COVID, she moved to this area in Hudson. And then all of these glossy magazines would have like, after the Chrissy Teigen dust up, like what is she doing now? And no matter what you asked her,
One of her first responses was that I'm like crashing on a couch with a friend in Hudson, New York. That was, she would always say that in like one of the first answers to, to any question. And, and you find out, and so I did a little bit more digging and there was another thing that says that she, she had invested like almost silently or very quietly into three different area restaurants. And so.
She's correctly recognizing as a good businesswoman that like her investments in specific restaurants are not going to do well if you advertise the restaurant. You have to sell people on the area, on the whole area. And as that goes up, there's going to be these network effects, this clustering that happens that will kind of like raise most ships.
PJ (34:50.324)
Right, right.
PJ (34:56.227)
Well, because most people aren't going to, like when they look for dinner, they're going to look for something within 10 to 15 minutes. So if they're in the Hudson, they're going to buy at a Hudson restaurant.
David Banks (35:09.95)
Sorry, broke up again. I apologize.
PJ (35:12.628)
Uh, yeah, no, no worries. Uh, so, what we're talking about here is, most people, when they go out for dinner, they're not planning three days ahead of time. They're looking for something within 15 minutes. So if you have a lot of people in the Hudson area, they're going to go for Hudson restaurants. There are particular, why not just say I'm living in the Hudson? Why say I'm crashing on a couch in the Hudson?
David Banks (35:23.712)
Sure.
David Banks (35:34.11)
Oh, yeah, that's a that's a good question. You know, I think part of it is to give it a Bohemian mystique, if I had to guess. And yeah, one, I'm just like you. But also, you know, part of the cell of smaller cities, right? Is that like, you can't, with a straight face, most of the time, say, like, we are the equivalent of New York City, right? Hudson, New York, New York City, but smaller, right? You know, like, you can't
PJ (35:42.955)
I'm just like you, yeah.
David Banks (36:03.938)
He'd quite say that, right? But what you can say is like, the metaphor that I always like to use is, you know, New York City is this name brand, Neiman Marcus, off the rack thing. But you, savvy consumer of geography and place, you're smart, you're not gonna pay full price. You're gonna go to a thrift store and find that nice, unique vintage gem on the rack. And that's Hudson.
And so to crash on the couch in Hudson is to stumble across, you know, a, some sort of vintage, um, uh, article of clothing or something. And you're just like trying it on, you know, you're just trying it out. Uh, because you also like don't want to seem like you're having too much, you're jumping into too much of a fad, but also real estate is so expensive that, you know, you, you do want to be cautious with, um, you know, how you advertise it.
So you kind of soft pedal into it.
PJ (37:07.639)
Well, okay, and I mean, I'm not gonna lie. This entire interview feels targeted at me. I'm not. I, we live in one of the top three cutest towns in Florida. And so even as you, I mean, just, yeah. Mount Dora, yes, yes. No, and so as I look at like.
David Banks (37:17.034)
Yeah. I've been there. I think I know which one you're talking about. I've been there. It's adorable. Yeah.
PJ (37:32.271)
There is the sell of like, oh, it's like Orlando, but you're savvier. But there's also that one of a kind mystique. And I think that plays into what you're talking about with the authentic thing. It's like, yeah, but you don't get that small town charm in New York that you get with a truly authentic, you know how old our bricks are? I just can't get away from that early. What is this thing that we're selling? And you bring this out in a chapter in your book.
David Banks (37:55.648)
Yeah.
PJ (38:01.603)
What is this thing that you're selling when you're selling authenticity?
David Banks (38:05.918)
Yeah, yeah. So this is where like maybe, maybe this is why I'm on a philosophy podcast, right? Is that, you know, what you're what ultimately what you're selling is your is like yourself, right? You're selling a version of yourself back to the customer. Because ultimately, what these places kind of do is they offer an excess what's called an existential author.
So I talked about socially constructed authenticity before, which is the Hawaii on a postcard thing. In order to feel authentic, you just have to meet expectations. You set expectations and then you meet them. You go to New York City, have a slice of pizza, and go to the M&M store in Times Square, you check, you did it. That's New York City. Authentic New York City experience.
Right? And then there's also what's called objective authenticity, which is kind of like what an art historian does to a painting, right? You find out whether or not what something purports to be is what it says, right? This Rembrandt was painted by Rembrandt himself. We find out all the reasons why that's the case.
PJ (39:17.518)
Hmm.
David Banks (39:35.478)
But existential authenticity is a way to kind of show someone or have them have an experience, it's often about experience, where they feel like they are enacting their authentic self and you're giving them the opportunity to do that. And so when you, right, and me too,
I should say like in my own book, I'm like, you know, this is me too. Like I like, I bought a house here, right? Like I, I fell for it. Hook, line, sinker. I actually haven't got, I'm like interviewing a colleague of mine who, like, I should, I have like all of these academic reasons of like why he's wrong. But like, ultimately I just say like, Nope, you got me. He's like, it's, he's at some level, this is all very true that like, all of this stuff catches me and people like me. I was on.
PJ (40:09.615)
Ha ha ha!
PJ (40:29.711)
Hmm.
David Banks (40:32.334)
I'll finish. The existential authenticity is ultimately like, you know, well, you know, I, I always saw myself as, you know, this very urban person walking around, got my baguette in a bag. And I go to all the different little shoppies and
and then I consume some fine art or something. You have all these dreams for yourself and expectations that you create, and then life gets in the way. All this other stuff happens that you don't immediately resonate with or you somehow create some psychological distance away from it. But then when you feel a moment of authenticity,
several theorists argue and I do as well is that you know, like what your act you're not quite think you put it on the object, when really it's the subject, right? The object feels authentic, the brick wall, the hand pulled espresso shot, whatever, right? All that stuff, you think is the authentic thing.
But in reality, it's the experience of you and the object. It's the object-subject relationship, really, that is the actual authentic thing. And that's why we'll pay so much for it, is because it feels like it can't be done anywhere else, even though it can, right? But in a other way, it can't, because the thing that you're actually enjoying is the subject-object relationship.
And that can only happen in that specific place at that specific time, actually. Right. Um, now there could be another parallel universe where you had this experience in Huntsville, Alabama, instead of Troy, New York. Uh, and I've been to both of these places and they have the exact same coffee shop in them. Right. They all look fricking insane. Right. But like if, if life brought me to Huntsville, Alabama instead, I could have that, that.
PJ (42:35.493)
Ha ha!
David Banks (42:43.894)
that same coffee shop experience, I think, ah, only in Huntsville, Alabama. Right. You know, which, which feels nice because it also means I've made a bunch of correct choices through my entire life. Right. And like, I am satisfied and, uh, and increasingly when, you know, uh, expectations get frustrated in a downwardly mobile, uh, civilization, frankly, right. As a, um, you know, those, those little moments become very valuable and people will pay for them with, you know, like whatever scratch they have left.
PJ (43:13.463)
Yeah, that validation. I'm trying to make sure I'm tracking with you here. Would another way to be put this like, you have these stories about these destinations, you know, even as you're talking about Hawaii, like Hawaii, you know, or New York, you're like, slice of cheese pizza, dirty water hot dog. Hawaii, got to get a Bloody Mary or some drink and a pineapple on the beach, right? Like there's like certain things you have to have. And if, basically,
what people on the other side of it, for economic reasons do, is they create destinations that match the stories, and we pay for that because we want to be the characters in those stories. Is that almost the... Is that...
David Banks (43:54.974)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's really good, which also dovetails nicely into like, I don't know, there've been some think pieces in recent years about like main character syndrome, right? You know, like the center, you're right, and like centering yourself as like, you know, everything else is happening for you or something. Like you're the only agent around, you know, like I think part of it is that too, but that's probably too cynical.
PJ (44:07.508)
Yeah, right, right.
David Banks (44:23.222)
for the, I think it's a little too cynical for even for me, you know, because ultimately, you know, because I situate myself in the book, because as like someone who, you know, quote unquote, fell for it, you know, mostly because like, I don't want anyone to feel like I'm judging them for participating in this system. Everyone does. You know, and I cut myself off earlier, but you know, like, I was on a
PJ (44:23.983)
I'm out.
David Banks (44:50.546)
This machine kills this other podcast about technology and society and The one of the co-hosts Jathan who I've known for a long time. He he's like, yeah, you know I fall for this piece. I just I love food from a place You know if something you know, and you know this happened to me today actually because I fall for this too there was a I was at the beer store and I was looking all the fancy little beers and
PJ (45:07.214)
Yeah.
David Banks (45:17.638)
I buy a four pack of tall boys, right? He's like, that's like the new form factor for an expensive, nice beer is you only get four of them, but they're a little bit more, right? And yeah, and I get this porter and looking at this porter and it says Tahitian vanilla in it. I'm like, Tahitian? It's like, oh, they know this specific kind of vanilla that it tastes like, you know, it's like, you know, it's not Haitian vanilla or a Mexican, you know, it's not all these other.
PJ (45:25.74)
Yeah, right.
PJ (45:35.439)
Ha ha ha!
PJ (45:39.628)
Right, right.
David Banks (45:45.91)
Because when you when you say it's one, it's not the others. Right. And what in that simple, you know, distinction means that like, we're playing a different ball game now, right on a different level, they're like, now we're we want this is so specific that I have to know what I'm doing. You know,
PJ (45:49.637)
Yes.
PJ (46:07.255)
Yeah. So, and I, you know, you say at the end, kind of, what then should be done? Can you, I want to be conscious of your time here and respectful of it, the, what, what is, you know, there's the fun aspect of this. I don't think anyone's really denying that. But what is problematic about this? And what would the solution to that problem be?
David Banks (46:18.055)
Yeah.
David Banks (46:33.206)
Yeah, yeah.
David Banks (47:01.918)
uh, um, uh, great recession because it's a way to kind of affordably experience these things that prior generations, uh, could, could afford in, in mass in, in most ways. And, and of course we, we have to say, you know, like mostly white people got to do this, right? You know, uh, cities, cities were redlined, uh, black, uh, and, and brown people are.
PJ (47:16.342)
Right.
David Banks (47:28.718)
historically disallowed from having, building generational wealth, right? And but no, very even fewer people get to do that. And so what you get instead are, you know, experiences of it, right? And everything from credit card points to, you know, these curated boxes of subscriptions of different kinds of
stuff that you can buy, right? All of these things are meant to give you the experiences of luxury in little fits and starts because that's the best you're going to get for now, right? And that's because of a particular economic condition of the moment. And I do draw a connection between this sort of like a frou-frou, hipsterish, hipster...
kind of retro vintage love of all things vintage or whatever, right? I can I do say that that's not too much far off from like the make America great again stuff in a few key ways, right? Like, one it, it romanticizes the past, right? But it's not really saying like, you know, but of course, they come they do very different ends, they have very different ends.
They're not, one isn't like direct blood and soil stuff, but it is like this looking for the past for answers to future questions. And they're not, and none of them are really great answers. And what you end up with instead is this demand of like, I don't know, like all caps return spelled with a V, you know, that isn't super great.
and often, Evelyn's gets people thinking in these very reactive ways. And it also gives us what you could call a home field advantage to reactionary politics, because we found there's been good research in political science that shows right wing politicians are able to leverage ideas of authenticity better than left wing ones.
PJ (49:45.175)
Interesting.
David Banks (49:46.778)
And so when we're all primed to desire authenticity in both people and places, what we're often primed for is looking into the past and more conservative thought. Because progressive thought or socialist or communist thought has these different horizons of what could be. And when you're thinking in the past of what was and how much that was better, those are opposites.
Right. And we, I think in the last couple of years have realized that, you know, culture and politics, the veil is getting extremely thin. So, you know, they kind of mesh and get us into weird directions.
PJ (50:34.223)
That's really fascinating. As we end the interview, and the average person sees these Instagram or, I even hate saying X, but maybe Facebook ads, like what is X? Anyway, don't get me started. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. As they see these ads, as they go out and,
David Banks (50:50.91)
Yeah. Yeah, the social media formerly known as Twitter. Yeah.
PJ (51:03.951)
They enjoy their beer poured from tool levers. What would you encourage our audience to think about over the next week? And to just kind of, what would be your big takeaway for them as they encounter this in everyday life?
David Banks (51:11.734)
Yeah, polls, yeah, yeah.
David Banks (51:28.734)
Yeah. You know, one review of my book did, I really thought it would take longer. But someone realized that my book was could be read as a self help book. And, and I knew and as I was writing it, I thought a little bit about that was kind of what I was doing. And I guess it was more text than subtext, maybe. Because, you know, at my
PJ (51:40.343)
Ha ha ha!
David Banks (51:57.302)
The last chapter of my book, I do go through some, you quoted it right, like what should we do, right? What should be done, what has to be done? And, you know, one is like be good to yourself. Like don't like, there's nothing really gets better with like diving deep into your mind. And like, what does this beer really mean? And like, am I, you know, like coffee shops fascist? You know, like don't do that. Like don't do that.
PJ (52:10.809)
Hmm.
PJ (52:23.451)
Ha ha ha!
David Banks (52:26.718)
Uh, you know, or like I, I have a friend who like, or like, um, Troy, again, where I live was, uh, um, a bunch of small business owners were trying to do a, um, a, uh, a festival that, uh, they explicitly said they were kind of modeling off of South by Southwest. And I was like, this is a terrible, this is terrible. I don't want this. Um, I don't want this for very specific reasons around, like, you know, I would like to be able to.
live in my city and not have like Elon Musk show up and like, give a talk about how like, his new robot that will be your girlfriend or whatever, like I don't want that. Right. And because like, that's the inevitable, like, trajectory of those sorts of things. And, but it's like, well, so you don't like bands, you know, like bands playing in bars, like, no, I love that. I, but you can just do that. You don't need to like,
create like a citywide four day festival that you pack a bunch of bands into and you try to get everyone from outside to come in like that. We've seen where that goes and it makes cities unlivable. So it's really like at that level of stuff like where you just like, which ultimately I think that the one takeaway is like places should be where you live your life, not an experience that you pay for.
PJ (53:50.788)
Hmm.
David Banks (53:52.17)
And what that often means is that like, let bars be bars, let them be the third place. If it's a, if it's a funny theme, have a great time. And if it's the theme is the old hardware store that used to be there. God bless that. Have a great time. But like the, but like that one, that can't be the, the substructure of your economy, it just shouldn't, you shouldn't do that. And it shouldn't.
PJ (54:08.347)
I'm sorry.
David Banks (54:20.654)
come at the expense of building up an economy that's that gives lots of people good, predictable jobs that they can have for maybe most of their life. I don't know that seemed kind of sweet to me. You know, and that's why like, maybe some people think my final chapter is like a hard left turn. But like the final chapter is like co ops, union density. It's about all these different things that actually make
PJ (54:30.48)
Mm-hmm.
David Banks (54:49.986)
places more stable economically and socially, and more livable. And the one, like real tangible connection there is that, you know, one thing we didn't talk about, that kind of is a big theme in the book is these things that I call the community control mechanisms that go throughout different cities where it's like, you know, it's your business improvement district, it's all these different industrial, what are called industrial development authorities, this is
PJ (55:07.524)
Hmm.
David Banks (55:18.45)
you know, like mischievously hidden, but like just so uninteresting that no one cares about them kinds of non profitee kind of industry groups that are tasked with planning our capitalist economy, right? Our economy is planned. It's just planned differently than the cartoon version of the Soviet Union that we all imagine, right? It's not North Korea. But it is planned. It's very much planned. And, and the people doing the planning.
PJ (55:24.076)
right.
David Banks (55:47.25)
get appointed by other people that you've never heard of, right? And so getting actually more involved at a local level, not just in like running for city council, though, have fun doing that if you want, but also finding out who are these people that work, that work and or in most cases, volunteer their time to these meetings that you can probably legally go to as an audience member, right? And find out how is all this coming together? Because what you'll find
is at least in New York State, right? We have these things called regional economic development councils, and there's like 11 of them across the state. And they rate all these different proposals from private and public sector organizations for grants and low interest loans, right? And bonds and all this other fun stuff. It's free money. And it's like the Lester guy, with the question marks all over his jacket. It's free money, you know, like that stuff. And...
PJ (56:41.188)
Yeah
David Banks (56:46.01)
And you go, it's you can, you can find out who these people are. And often enough, their day job will be like, CEO of your local hospital. Usually, it's usually like some really big employer or the university's provost or something like that, right? That's their day job is that, but then like in the evening, or like on a Friday at 4pm.
they go to a meeting that sets the employment targets for your county, where they try to figure out, oh, well, here's our competitive advantage. This is what the workforce looks like regionally. This is how much housing we have. And now we're going to go ask our state senator to have a meeting with someone from Boeing to see if they'll put a brake pad plant for 737s in our district.
And they're going to give them a ton of tax breaks. They're in, and they're in, and at the same time, they're also going to make sure that, um, you know, maybe they'll, they'll shift the local community college to more of this manufacturing stuff so that they have a workforce that can then work at the factory, right? This happens all across the country and most people ignore it because it's boring, right? But.
But what you notice, what actually turns out is that the people whose day job it is to cut costs, and usually what are the largest employers in the region, are then also tasked with creating jobs in usually a larger jurisdiction. And so what you end up with are these people that, one, are sometimes caught between a rock and a hard place where they have to cut costs on their day job and then increase their labor costs.
PJ (58:23.577)
Hmm.
David Banks (58:33.974)
supposedly in their free time. But it also means that they're going to balance that equation in ways that better benefit them and the people that can annoy them the most. Because they're also going to, if someone's annoying them with protests or emails or whatever, I need them to get a compromise, go away.
Right. And it's in, but no one's focused on these sort of these targets before as like a means of getting what normal people want. And so the one way out is to spend less time hand wringing about whether or not your Friday night is authentic or not. And, or whether caring about it being authentic is bad or good. Don't do that. Just go have fun when you want to have fun, but also start paying attention to.
all of the ways that your locality, like all the jurisdictions that govern your life, how do they do that? And how does the money go to different places and how can you control it with your friends the best you can?
PJ (59:45.563)
What I love about that response is that we are heading into this election cycle, and we're going to get a lot of pressure for a lot of things that we feel like we have very little control of. And to be quite fair, we don't have a lot of control of. Still go out and vote, right? Be responsible. But instead, we would have far more influence over our own lives, and we'd be far more of a force for good if we paid just a little more attention to the boring things, like you said.
David Banks (01:00:14.02)
You know, PJ, this is the most important election of our lives.
David Banks (01:00:21.974)
When have you ever heard that before? Hahahaha
PJ (01:00:22.167)
Well on that, oh my gosh. Well on that cynical note, no. Dr. Bakes, wonderful to have you on today. Thank you, fascinating topic, really appreciated it.
David Banks (01:00:45.733)
You cut a-