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Category Archives: Travel

Santa Ynez Mountains & Lake Cachuma Photo Album

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Album includes the Santa Ynez Mountains‎, views of Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez Valley, Knapp’s Castle, and Lake Cachuma in  Santa Barbara County, California .

Checkout Robert Stark’s Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram, Stark Truth TV, and novel Journey to Vapor Island

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Robert Stark and Matthew Pegas talk about Urbanist observations from trip to San Diego

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Robert Stark and Matthew Pegas talk about their recent trip to San Diego and their observations on cultural and urbanist trends.

Topics:

San Diego’s reputation as a smaller, cleaner, nicer version of LA and its unique attributes
The layout of the city with a centralized downtown near the waterfront surrounded by suburban sprawl
San Diego and Orange County among the largest areas of upper middle class sprawl in the nation
Politics of San Diego as a historically Republican stronghold that has trended Democratic in recent years
Demographics of San Diego and how they relate to overall CA trends
The most stereotypical American City located in CA while the State is culturally drifting apart from the rest of the Country
After decades of suburban sprawl, San Diego eyes big shift to dense development
The historic Gaslamp Quarter which is the one section that feels truly urban
Horton Plaza: Will this PoMo wonderland in San Diego be saved?
Architect Jon Jerde’s inspiration for Horton Plaza from Ray Bradbury’s “The Aesthetic of Lostness” extolling the virtues of getting “safely lost”
Wealthy beach community La Jolla and it’s village layout
The importance of investing in communal places that the public can enjoy, particularly in wealthy areas
Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve
The Victorian Hotel del Coronado
Friendship Park at the US/Mexico Border and political symbolism of the border wall
The Inland Empire
Heavenly Action by Erasure, the soundtrack of the trip with a message that friendship, love, and positivity can conquer anything

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Checkout Robert Stark’s Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram, Stark Truth TV, and novel Journey to Vapor Island




Robert Stark interviews Author Ben Arzate

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Robert Stark and Brandon Adamson talk to Des Moines based author Ben Arzate. Ben blogs at dripdropdripdropdripdrop.blogspot.com, writes book reviews for Cultured Vultures, and is the author of The Story of the Y and The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Saying Goodbye.

Topics:

The Story of the Y, inspired by outsider musician Y. Bhekhirst whose life remains a mystery
Road trip theme and importance of place in literature
Surreal super natural elements and dream narratives in the book
Ben’s matter of fact minimalist writing style
Comparisons to Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Influences from Quentin Tarantino films, and neo-Westerns El Mariachi and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Fringe and transgressive literature
Ben’s review of Robert’s novel Journey to Vapor Island
How shorter attention spans influence literature
Ben’s interest in the Post-Left and critique of the Woke Left
Women’s March accuses Tulsi Gabbard-a woman of color-of not pandering to women of color
Bringing together the high and low in literature
Georges Bataille
How Ben is best known for his book reviews, least favorite books he’s reviewed, and how to write critical reviews
Ben’s review of Girl Like a Bomb by Autumn Christian 

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This show is brought to you by Robert Stark’s Paintings, Stark Truth TV, and his novel Journey to Vapor Island




Urbanist Lessons from Trip to the Southwest

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Robert Stark and Matthew Pegas discuss their trip last fall to Las Vegas(Vegas Strip and Downtown), The Grand Canyon, and Zion.

Topics:

Las Vegas as the quintessential Post Modernist City
Creating an other wordy aura that does not exist in mundane consumerism
Creating something noble or grandiose out of consumerism
Las Vegas as an economic rather than geographic concept
Nothing permanent because architecture only survives if profitable
Vintage Vegas and Neon Signage
Irony of historic preservationist dismissing architecture of value because it is a product of capitalism
The pros and cons of private zoning
Casino Resorts functioning as an arcology or self contained city
Theme parks as models for urbanism
The potential for an urban alternative to over priced West Coast Cities
St. George Utah, sprawl layout, and high trust homogeneous middle class demographic
Alt-Urbanist solutions that seek to recreate those attributes in an urban setting
Southern Utah and Northern Arizona as one of the most scenic and geologically diverse regions in the world

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This show is brought to you by Robert Stark’s Paintings, Stark Truth TV, and his novel Journey to Vapor Island




Robert Stark talks to Constantin von Hoffmeister about India

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Constantin von Hoffmeister is originally from Germany, lives in Moscow, blogs at Oge Noct, and published the National Futurist Manifesto.

Topics:

Working as a journalist for Blitz(newspaper) in Bombay and National Herald in New Delhi
Interviews with Sonia Gandhi and the Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama on migrants in Europe
Activists Launch ‘Gandhi Must Fall’ Against Statue of ‘Racist’
The cultural and ethnic diversity of India
The Ancient language of Sanskrit, linguistic division between Hindi and Tamil, and the role of English
The Parsis
The Indian diaspora
India’s geopolitics and rivalry with China and the Islamic World
Indian Cuisine and the regional differences
The poor quality of sanitation in India
Economic disparities among regional and demographic groups
Growing prosperity, investment in infrastructure, and skyscrapers
The Right’s irrational hatred of skyscrapers and the need for National Futurist architecture
Le Corbusier’s model of Urbanism and his Chandigarh project in New Delhi
Indo-Saracenic architecture from the British Colonial era
Indo-Islamic and Mughal architecture
The impact of British Colonialism
Political tension between secularist and Hindu Nationalist

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This show is brought to you by Robert Stark’s Paintings, Stark Truth TV, and his novel Journey to Vapor Island