Big Rock Candy Mountain
American radicals, surrealists, utopians, visionaries, and oddballs.
Journal created:
on 14 March 2004 (#2509498)
Updated:
on 16 October 2025
Membership:
Open
Posting Access:
All Members , Moderated
A silent movie flickering on the screen in an abandoned theatre... a scrap of old newspaper in a wet gutter: it's an old Katzenjammer Kids comic strip... an abandoned warehouse district in a long-dead industrial section of an American city, perhaps it's Patterson, NJ... a worn and well-read copy of the I.W.W.'s "Little Red Book", corners dog-eared at the song Big Rock Candy Mountain... a hobo jungle beneath an abandoned railroad trestle, pot of Mulligan stew on the fire....
Just a collection of vague images, fragments of a life and a time that was once so real, that is still real in my heart. No dream is ever completely dead.
The old weird america is still alive....
Just a collection of vague images, fragments of a life and a time that was once so real, that is still real in my heart. No dream is ever completely dead.
The old weird america is still alive....
abolitionism, alfred stieglitz, american surrealism, anarchism, armory show of 1913, autonomy, beatniks, big rock candy mountain, bughouse square, calaveras, carnivals, carter family, chicago surrealist group, circus side shows, college of complexes, covington hall, dada, dia de los muertos, dock boggs, emma goldman, emmett miller, emperor norton, flappers, flea markets, folk music, folklore, ghost dance, gone to croatan, great dismal swamp, halloween, harry smith, haywire mac mcclintock, helen & scott nearing, henry david thoreau, hip flasks, hipsters, hobo lore, hobohemia, hoodoo, howard finster, i.w.w., ishmael reed, jack london, james mooney, jazz, joe hill, john reed, johnson family, katzenjammer kids, kenneth rexroth, krazy kat, lemonade oceans, local history, melungeons, metis, modern times, modernism, moorish science, mystery train, nelson algren, new orleans, old cemeteries, old weird america, opium dens, p.t. barnum, patterson strike, peter lamborn wilson, pirates, prohibition, pulp novels, radical america, ralph borsodi, ralph waldo emerson, robert crumb, ron sakolsky, san patricios, secession, silent movies, sioux uprising, slim brundage, spiritualism, syndicalism, tall tales, transcendentalism, tribe of ben ishmael, trickster, utopia, vagabonding, vaudeville, walt whitman, whiskey, william carlos williams, woody guthrie, zora neale hurston