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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN November 23, 2003 Issue 
James Dean Died Here The Locations of America's Pop Culture Landmarks by Chris Epting 
Americana: Places to Visit or Just Read About It must be that sense of connection with the rest of humankind that compels us to visit Civil War battlefields, historic buildings, sites like the Parthenon in Athens and the Colosseum in Rome. Distances have shrunk turning the world into a global village making travel accessible to many more people. As we search for new travel destinations, subconsciously perhaps, we often aim to visit places and sites that would reinforce that sense of continuity with history and validate our lives. The brand new book "James Dean Died Here" by Chris Epting is an encyclopedic listing accompanied by descriptions and photographs of locations where all sorts of events of American pop culture have taken place -important and obscure, sublime and sleazy, famous and infamous, notorious and mysterious. According to the author, "Pop culture consists of those series of activities and events that are more or less equivalent to national identity." The first chapter "Americana: The Weird and the Wonderful" starts with the history of the birth of the Apple computer and lists the garage where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak made their first computer in 1977. Also in this chapter: The highly secret government Area 51, the eight-inch-in-diameter well into which Baby Jessica fell, the location where the famous Bigfoot film was recorded, the location of what Ponce de Leon thought to be the fountain of youth, the Excelsior hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas where the Clinton/Paula Jones scandal began, a number of J.F.K, Jr. sites such as the church in which he was married and his New York apartment, several Marilyn Monroe sites and a number of other locations that most people might find insignificant. Dispersed throughout the chapters one can also find the locations of American restaurants, eateries or places where famous American dishes were created. The Buffalo bar/restaurant where the Buffalo wings were born, the New Haven, Connecticut luncheonette where in 1900 the American hamburger was invented, the Harland Sanders Café & Museum where the Colonel created his secret recipe for his finger lickin' Kentucky fried chicken and the San Bernardino location where McDonald's had its start are all in the first chapter on "Americana." F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and all the American expatriates in Paris hung out at the Deux Magots and Closerie des Lilas - today visited by throngs of starry-eyed undergraduates and would-be Hemingways. But in Hollywood, Fitzgerald and his colleagues - screen playwrights and movie music composers - had Schwab's Drugstore. Amongst the places listed in the chapter "History and Tragedy" are the location of the infamous Aaron Burr/Alexander Hamilton duel of which Gore Vidal's book "Burr" gives a better perspective, the most famous civil and revolutionary wars sites, Little Big Horn where Custer's army and Native Americans tried to wipe out each other, the Chicago TV studio where the Kennedy/Nixon debate took place, the Kent State University site where in 1970 students protesting the war in Vietnam were murdered by National Guardsmen, several decisive events in the Civil Rights movement, and the most destructive fires, earthquakes and bombings. Judging from the fact that the house where Lizzie Borden killed her parents is now a bed and breakfast whose guests can sleep in Lizzie's room or in the rooms where her parents were murdered, it appears that there are people who would be interested in visiting the sites of even the most gruesome killings. Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment and the Chi Omega Sorority in Tallahassee, Florida where Ted Bundy murdered four college girls while they slept and a number of sites associated with the assassinations of American presidents and with lawlessness in the American West are also in this chapter on "Crime, Murder, and Assassination." The atmosphere of oppressive gloom created in the previous chapter continues in the chapter "Celebrity Deaths and Infamous Celebrity Events." The chapters "Let's Go to the Movies" and "R&B, Rock 'n' Roll, and All That Jazz" are a bit more uplifting with all the sites of where famous films were shot and where history was made with American rock 'n' roll, jazz and rhythm and blues music. Reading this book makes one wonder about choices we make. What draws one person to locations associated with James Dean and another person in a totally different direction? Why is it that I would make a great effort to have a picture taken of myself in front of the house in which the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley lived in Rome or in front of libraries all over the world but would not cross the street to see something associated with John Belushi. A place that I would like to visit that is listed in this book, is the house where in 1974 the remnant Symbionese Liberation Army members burned to death. Ordinarily, it is not the sort of place in which I would have an interest. But this one tugs at me because one of the misguided members of the S.L.A. who perished in that house and whom the newspapers called Angela Atwood, was my friend and sorority sister Angel De Angelis. Back at Indiana University, Angel was a pretty and effervescent sorority girl always up for campus queen or some other popularity title. It is hard for me to reconcile my memory of Angel with the image of the S.L.A. revolutionary Angela Atwood, a last name she never really took of a husband with whom she lived but for a moment in her brief life. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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