That Liberal Arts Progressive College Town Coffee Shop Type Feeling
November 15, 2014 12:19 PM Subscribe
I've been craving a certain feeling, which I can only describe as a liberal arts college town coffee shop intellectual artist vibe. I'm looking for media that will let me immerse myself in it. Details inside.
I'm talking about that cozy, liberal, often lesbian, progressive college town Western Mass, Upstate New York type feeling. A few examples that might (?) help:
Dar Williams' song Southern California wants to be Western New York: "... a SUNY student with mousy brown hair who is taking out the compost; making coffee in long underwear..."
The movie Liberal Arts, the beautiful campus and the small town intellectual feel.
Winters, forests, coffee shops, progressive causes, liberal arts degrees, writers retreats, hipsters-but-not-in-a-city...
I'm not looking for shows that mock (more than gently) this environment (so not Portlandia).
I'd love any movies, TV shows, songs, etc. that evoke this feeling for you. Especially TV shows so I can watch for hours!
(Bonus points if you can come up with a better phrase to describe what I'm talking about.)
I'm talking about that cozy, liberal, often lesbian, progressive college town Western Mass, Upstate New York type feeling. A few examples that might (?) help:
Dar Williams' song Southern California wants to be Western New York: "... a SUNY student with mousy brown hair who is taking out the compost; making coffee in long underwear..."
The movie Liberal Arts, the beautiful campus and the small town intellectual feel.
Winters, forests, coffee shops, progressive causes, liberal arts degrees, writers retreats, hipsters-but-not-in-a-city...
I'm not looking for shows that mock (more than gently) this environment (so not Portlandia).
I'd love any movies, TV shows, songs, etc. that evoke this feeling for you. Especially TV shows so I can watch for hours!
(Bonus points if you can come up with a better phrase to describe what I'm talking about.)
Questionable Content?
http://questionablecontent.net/
posted by ferret branca at 12:26 PM on November 15, 2014 [6 favorites]
http://questionablecontent.net/
posted by ferret branca at 12:26 PM on November 15, 2014 [6 favorites]
Are you interested in books? Both Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Bret Easton Ellis' Rules of Attraction are based on Bennington College and have tons of what you're looking for.
posted by oinopaponton at 12:27 PM on November 15, 2014 [6 favorites]
posted by oinopaponton at 12:27 PM on November 15, 2014 [6 favorites]
Apparently Girls is going to be set in Iowa City next season, so there should be tons of that vibe.
The combination of the quirky, vibrant small New England town and the rapid-fire cultural references always made Stars Hollow (from the show Gilmore Girls) evoke this for me.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
posted by lunasol at 12:28 PM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]
The combination of the quirky, vibrant small New England town and the rapid-fire cultural references always made Stars Hollow (from the show Gilmore Girls) evoke this for me.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
posted by lunasol at 12:28 PM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]
hmmmm ... I love this question. I love questions like this that stumblingly try to get at something that is hard to articulate but definitely interesting and real.
to me the BEST thing that comes to mind is Whit Stillman's film Damsels in Distress. Set at a liberal arts college it is warm, funny, intelligent, quirky ... it gives me a warm feeling every time I see it. Oddly his other works leave me cold but.maybe you would like them.
Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, about an intellectual couple in NYC and their family during a split, gives me thst indefinable liberal arts feel.
The film Art School Confidential has a bit of this vibe. I really like it.
Woody Allen's various Manhattan comedies ... especially "Husbands and Wives" and "Manhattan" and "Deconstructing Harry."
posted by jayder at 12:34 PM on November 15, 2014 [3 favorites]
to me the BEST thing that comes to mind is Whit Stillman's film Damsels in Distress. Set at a liberal arts college it is warm, funny, intelligent, quirky ... it gives me a warm feeling every time I see it. Oddly his other works leave me cold but.maybe you would like them.
Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, about an intellectual couple in NYC and their family during a split, gives me thst indefinable liberal arts feel.
The film Art School Confidential has a bit of this vibe. I really like it.
Woody Allen's various Manhattan comedies ... especially "Husbands and Wives" and "Manhattan" and "Deconstructing Harry."
posted by jayder at 12:34 PM on November 15, 2014 [3 favorites]
Maybe Kicking and Screaming? I liked it a lot, maybe more than The Squid and the Whale. Also agree that some seasons/episodes of Gilmore Girls give this.
Chris Eigeman is interestingly in Whit Stillman's movies, Kicking and Screaming, and The Gilmore Girls, and is beautiful (well mostly just in Gilmore Girls).
Also, the movie When Night is Falling is a little more out there regarding the very specific setting/vibe you're asking for (it definitely has elements of it, but also other weird things going on, like a circus) but I think you might like it. It's a great movie.
posted by Blitz at 12:49 PM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]
Chris Eigeman is interestingly in Whit Stillman's movies, Kicking and Screaming, and The Gilmore Girls, and is beautiful (well mostly just in Gilmore Girls).
Also, the movie When Night is Falling is a little more out there regarding the very specific setting/vibe you're asking for (it definitely has elements of it, but also other weird things going on, like a circus) but I think you might like it. It's a great movie.
posted by Blitz at 12:49 PM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]
Nthing Gilmore Girls.
Lydia Davis's The End of The Story evokes that for me, in a sadder vein.
Zadie Smith's On Beauty, and Jeffrey Eugenides The Marriage Plot are more classic campus novels, but might scratch that itch for you. You might also try some of the suggestions that were offered in answer to my previous question about novels that romanticize academia, here.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 12:53 PM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]
Lydia Davis's The End of The Story evokes that for me, in a sadder vein.
Zadie Smith's On Beauty, and Jeffrey Eugenides The Marriage Plot are more classic campus novels, but might scratch that itch for you. You might also try some of the suggestions that were offered in answer to my previous question about novels that romanticize academia, here.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 12:53 PM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]
Oh, and just one more that I reference in that question: DEFINITELY check out All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost, which is set at a thinly disguised version of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 12:54 PM on November 15, 2014
posted by pretentious illiterate at 12:54 PM on November 15, 2014
I will nth Gilmore Girls; also the film With Honors :)
Northern Exposure satisfies this for me too. Small town, coffee, pine trees, Chris In The Morning.... yes, especially episodes with lots of Chris in them!
posted by jrobin276 at 1:33 PM on November 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
Northern Exposure satisfies this for me too. Small town, coffee, pine trees, Chris In The Morning.... yes, especially episodes with lots of Chris in them!
posted by jrobin276 at 1:33 PM on November 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I was coming in to suggest Northern Exposure too. Its not really liberal-artsy (although the writers clearly are) but does evoke a fair bit of the vibe of the actual small liberal college town in the PNW I live in.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:59 PM on November 15, 2014
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:59 PM on November 15, 2014
Not collegiate level, but Dead Poets Society is very evocative of some of the things you mentioned.
posted by mostly vowels at 2:00 PM on November 15, 2014
posted by mostly vowels at 2:00 PM on November 15, 2014
A few more books:
Braided Lives by Marge Piercy is about two young women going to school in Ann Arbor in the late 50s, right at the beginning of the sexual revolution. They are very much in that whole artsy-intellectual, coffeeshop-beatnik, early civil rights era milieu.
Two recent books about groups of friends during and after going to liberal arts colleges: Commencement is about 4 women who meet at Smith, and follows them until they are in their late 20s. A Fortunate Age is about a similar but co-ed group of friends who meet at Oberlin. Neither is great literature, but should scratch this particular itch.
Weirdly, the book Wicked has this. The middle part of the book takes place in college and very much has that staying-up-all-night-talking-about-how-to-change-the-world thing going on.
One thing I really liked about How I Met Your Mother was that the core of the group of friends on the show met at Wesleyan and their frequent flashbacks and references to their college days ring so true as someone who went to a similar school.
I love this question!
posted by lunasol at 2:12 PM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]
Braided Lives by Marge Piercy is about two young women going to school in Ann Arbor in the late 50s, right at the beginning of the sexual revolution. They are very much in that whole artsy-intellectual, coffeeshop-beatnik, early civil rights era milieu.
Two recent books about groups of friends during and after going to liberal arts colleges: Commencement is about 4 women who meet at Smith, and follows them until they are in their late 20s. A Fortunate Age is about a similar but co-ed group of friends who meet at Oberlin. Neither is great literature, but should scratch this particular itch.
Weirdly, the book Wicked has this. The middle part of the book takes place in college and very much has that staying-up-all-night-talking-about-how-to-change-the-world thing going on.
One thing I really liked about How I Met Your Mother was that the core of the group of friends on the show met at Wesleyan and their frequent flashbacks and references to their college days ring so true as someone who went to a similar school.
I love this question!
posted by lunasol at 2:12 PM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]
What comes to mind is John Sayles' first (1979) (...extremely low-budget/homemade...) indie movie The Return of the Secaucus Seven.
The IMDB description: "Seven former college friends, along with a few new friends, gather for a weekend reunion at a summer house in New Hampshire to reminisce about the good old days, when they got arrested on the way to a protest in Washington, DC."
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 2:20 PM on November 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
The IMDB description: "Seven former college friends, along with a few new friends, gather for a weekend reunion at a summer house in New Hampshire to reminisce about the good old days, when they got arrested on the way to a protest in Washington, DC."
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 2:20 PM on November 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
This might be out there, but have you played Gone Home? It's got very simple mechanics, so is more of an interactive story than a game, but there's a rainy Northwest setting with requisite plaid and struggling writers and forest rangers and zines and teenage lesbians.
Seconding Dykes to Watch out For, and Bechdel's memoir Fun Home too. Oh, and Shirley Jackson's books about raising her kids in upstate VT in the sixties (Life Among Savages is the best) give me this feeling, but that might have more to do with my college days in specific than the general feeling you're looking for here.
posted by theweasel at 2:42 PM on November 15, 2014 [5 favorites]
Seconding Dykes to Watch out For, and Bechdel's memoir Fun Home too. Oh, and Shirley Jackson's books about raising her kids in upstate VT in the sixties (Life Among Savages is the best) give me this feeling, but that might have more to do with my college days in specific than the general feeling you're looking for here.
posted by theweasel at 2:42 PM on November 15, 2014 [5 favorites]
I guess it's kind of old now but the first thing that I thought of when reading the question was Matt Ruff's novel Fool on the Hill.
posted by maurice at 3:13 PM on November 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by maurice at 3:13 PM on November 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
I came to mention Wonder Boys. Also, Rushmore.
posted by youcancallmeal at 9:19 PM on November 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by youcancallmeal at 9:19 PM on November 15, 2014 [2 favorites]
You said any kind of media, right?
The text adventure Save Princeton has this feeling, although God knows how to get a copy anymore.
Also one of my favorite books: Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, a magical-realist fantasy retelling of the folk song. This one is dangerous -- I could always tell that I was getting burned out with my actual life when I felt the need to re-read Tam Lin and fantasize about the perfect small liberal arts college life.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 12:15 AM on November 16, 2014 [2 favorites]
The text adventure Save Princeton has this feeling, although God knows how to get a copy anymore.
Also one of my favorite books: Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, a magical-realist fantasy retelling of the folk song. This one is dangerous -- I could always tell that I was getting burned out with my actual life when I felt the need to re-read Tam Lin and fantasize about the perfect small liberal arts college life.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 12:15 AM on November 16, 2014 [2 favorites]
Marge Piercy and Barbara Kingsolver
posted by runincircles at 4:37 AM on November 16, 2014
posted by runincircles at 4:37 AM on November 16, 2014
Did you catch the recent links for ambient sounds that included a site that has coffee house noise to play in the background while you are working or reading?
Coffitivity
posted by cda at 7:19 AM on November 16, 2014 [1 favorite]
Coffitivity
posted by cda at 7:19 AM on November 16, 2014 [1 favorite]
Another book that might fit is The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach which is set at a fictional east-coast almost-Ivy university that is a bit puzzling to the main character. It's wonderfully meditative on the school, in my view at least.
posted by hepta at 8:28 AM on November 16, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by hepta at 8:28 AM on November 16, 2014 [1 favorite]
It's definitely more collegiate in a classic sense than liberal hippie, but Futility Closet sometimes gives me a fix of that "used to always be around clever charming small talk" feel I miss from college.
posted by ifjuly at 11:42 AM on November 16, 2014
posted by ifjuly at 11:42 AM on November 16, 2014
Home Town is based on Northampton, MA. It's been awhile since I read it and I remember part of it dealt with the closing of the Noho State Hospital. I definitely recognized some of the locals described in the book.
posted by bendy at 12:17 PM on November 16, 2014
posted by bendy at 12:17 PM on November 16, 2014
Novel: Richard Russo's Straight Man. Hilarious, charming book about a writing professor set in a small college town in "west-central" PA (which might as well be upstate NY).
posted by ewiar at 12:33 PM on November 16, 2014
posted by ewiar at 12:33 PM on November 16, 2014
Seconding Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff
Also, I read it long ago, but The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (by Michael Chabon) did this for me, I think.
posted by taltalim at 10:39 PM on November 16, 2014
Also, I read it long ago, but The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (by Michael Chabon) did this for me, I think.
posted by taltalim at 10:39 PM on November 16, 2014
The webcomic Bruno does this for me (not sure if all the archives are still around, but you can buy books if so inclined, or read some stuff online).
posted by the cat's pyjamas at 5:43 AM on November 17, 2014
posted by the cat's pyjamas at 5:43 AM on November 17, 2014
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Ooooh! Felicity (but it's in NYC, but it still has the college feel).
Mona Lisa Smile?
posted by discopolo at 12:24 PM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]