Straight Outta Richmond: The GWAR TED Talk

Here we have Dr. Michael Bishop, smart dude with a PhD in music, talking about the cultural identity of Richmond, Virginia.  Oh yeah, and he's the lead singer of GWAR.  This is awesome on so many levels. 

Here's the deal city leaders (everywhere).  Every city wants to be known for having good schools, high caliber universities, safe neighborhoods, a thriving economy, and sports teams that make Tom Brady look like an underachiever.  Every town and city has a Chamber of Commerce that makes videos presenting this image, and every one of the 174 people who actually accidentally click on those websites knows they are complete bullshit. 

Your city has poverty.  Your city has racial issues to work out.  Your city has prejudice.  Your city has homeless people, run down neighborhoods, empty buildings, and a mediocre mainstream sports team... or three.  These are NOT the things cities want to become known for.  Here's the good news.  Most cities aren't really known at all on the world stage at all.  In all likelihood, when major business players talk about where to build new corporate offices or factories, your city is probably not even mentioned. 

Here's the bad news, the ONLY WAY you attract highly talented creative people, tech people, and visionary entrepreneurs, serious high tech companies, and major economic development, is to become a city that stands out among the thousands of other average cities worldwide.  The advance of technology has inadvertently created a winner-take-all world, where a handful of cities attract nearly all the talented creative and tech people, at a time where the companies that drive today's economy cluster where the talented creative and tech people are located. 

No, this isn't fair.  But neither is life.  Deal with it.  Most civic leaders haven't come to grips with this concept yet.  To become a player in today's tech enabled economy, a city has to stand out, it has to have something that sets it apart, it has to be a place where highly creative and high tech people want to go.  The people who really put your city on the map, the people who make your city stand out, are the same people every city wanted to run out of town a generation ago.  The people who put your city on the map in the highly creative circles are the freaks, geeks, dorks, and weirdos.  Like it or not, your city's future in the 21st century is now dependent largely on the caliber of fuck ups hidden in the nooks and crannies of your town. 

Richmond, Virginia, like all cities everywhere, has aspects of its history that are dark.  Here, as Dr. Bishop points out above, those aspects are darker than most places.  But it also has a ton of highly creative people.  Richmond has its challenges.  Every city does.  Most cities will continue to wither as the next recession rolls in, and as technology advances and as the major companies of our age continue to cluster.  Most cities are going to continue to run themselves into the ground, not because they lack good ideas, but because of the people currently running those cities are old school, Industrial Age-minded types who keep the good ideas from happening. 

But any city that can produce a group like GWAR, definitely has a fighting chance in the 21st century.  One more reason to like Richmond.

Gwar Bar (yeah, they have a bar) news piece no one has seen.

The sole Gwar Bar fan video on YouTube.  Seriously, there's only one.