After doing my weekly new scan for several topics, including yurts, I discovered this week that the perception of us yurt-ers is changing, that we are being considered less weird, becoming more and more accepted, and looked at as being less and less…well…less and less “nuts”. We seem to have become just a bit ahead of the curve, and yurts are becoming “trendy”!
Image via Wikipedia
Bummer!
Folks who have visited here very much know that among the reasons I live in a yurt…economy, efficiency, the aura of the round space, the fact the yurt was easily constructed with a few friends and avoiding having to use a contractor…besides those reasons, there was another that was equally important to me…
Folks are usually cautious around crazy people. For that reason I found the fact that some folks around here looked at me as a few brick short of a load because I was “the nutjob that lives up on the mountain in a tent” to provide a bit of security. People who didn’t really know me, but just knew of me, tended to stay away…after one drive-by to see the “tent”.
I even had hopes that people’s fear of crazy people, and the perception that I was one of them, might, just maybe, encourage the troublesome neighbor I’ve told you about in the past to move elsewhere.
Hey! I can wish, can’t I?
Alas, it seems the weird factor is giving way to just being a little “different”.
Yurts seem to be popping up all over the place, and are appealing to diverse groups of people for diverse reasons.
Apparently the wealthy are finding yurts at least a quirky little “toy”, as this years Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalog has a Neiman-Marcus Yurt for sale. I’m surprised at the low price, given that it IS Neiman-Marcus…though it is a small one with no electricity, plumbing, or land…and the interior decoration was described by one writer as “Martha Stewart meets and decorates for Mohammar Gaddafi”. I’m not sure which that says the most about…Martha Stewart or Neiman-Marcus.
A the other end of the spectrum, it seems that some of the “Occupy xxx” movement have decided to set up yurts in various parks and other public places around the US and in Canada. One story had it that the ocupiers were having an argument among themselves as to if setting up a yurt was a good idea or not.
Image via Wikipedia
One group said a yurt was a temporary structure and should NOT be set up because the authorities were allowing temporary structures like tents, and another temporary structure would not be “in your face” enough to constitute a protest statement.
The other occupiers (the pragmatic ones, if there is such a thing) pointed out that it was getting COLD and that sleeping bags and tarps on the open ground, along with pup tents, just weren’t going to cut it through the winter.
Wusses! These guys play at hating corporate America and capitalism’s excesses, AKA luxuries, but it looks like they’d be lost without their iPhones, iPads, the local supermarket for food, and Mommy and Daddy’s basement to live in. Definitely NOT the homesteading OR yurt types in real life!
I have no idea who eventually won the argument…and really don’t care. The Neiman-Marcus yurt buyers wanting a new toy in their backyard, and the occupiers struggling between wanting comfort and eschewing capitalist-produced shelter, are at two extreme ends of yurt-ers, while the yurt folks I know and love, my readers and site visitors here at JuicyMaters, sit comfortably in the middle, enjoying (or longing to enjoy) one of the most economical, efficient, soul-satisfying structures a person could choose to live in.
Image via Wikipedia
Darn we are lucky…and smart too!
More later, and remember…
Y’all come back now…ya hear?
Related articles
- Welcome to my yurt (macleans.ca)
- $75,000 Luxury Yurt is One of the Fantasy Gifts in Neiman Marcus 2011 Christmas Book (shoppingblog.com)
- Retail Therapy: Happy Holidays! Neiman Marcus Now Sells Fancy-Pants Yurts (curbed.com)
- Occupy Toronto goes high style with $20,000 yurts (thestar.com)
- A yurt too far? (timesunion.com)
Hello Ann…welcome back! I really like it when folks are more than one time visitors.
You made my day with the kudos on my articles, especially the cooking ones. I really need to knuckle down and write more of them, especially here around the holidays. I would make the excuse of having three and a half websites to keep up with…but that’s what it would be, an excuse, so I won’t bother. I’ll just try harder…LOL.
Psssttt…keep that little thing about me not being weird just a secret between us, OK? It keeps the nosy neighbors away…
Bob
Hi again Bob,
I have missed out completely on homesteaders and yurts too. I’ve definitely been working too hard. I thought my friends that were getting into or trying to get into homesteading were kinda weird but then I more or less pictured a 1968 commune in Red Bluff, etc. If Neiman Marcus has caught on to it — you are so NOT even close to weird and I am so OUT of it!! Love your articles (and humor) and cooking. Keep up the good work and thank you.
Ann invites you to read..Debt Settlement Los Angeles
Ann
@ ralph@retirement lifestyle:
I actually like the idea…I think I’ll do it!
Bob@JuicyMaters invites you to read..JuicyMaters’ Yurt-ers, ahead of the curve
Bob@JuicyMaters
Bob,
I think you really need to weird out your neighbors. Just put a sign up in your yard saying “As seen in the Neiman Marcus catalog.”
ralph@retirement lifestyle invites you to read..Give yourself permission…to be more.
ralph@retirement lifestyle
@ Michele:
I didn’t notice the Photoshopping…LOL…I need to pay better attention. I just gotCS5.5 Masters Collection and studying things like that might teach me a few things…
As for the weird factor, thankfully I do enough strange other stuff in the area where I live that I’m managing to maintain…
Bob invites you to read..Granny’s OMG Thanksgiving dinner rolls
Bob
You have my condolences on losing the weirdness factor. It sucks when you go from being weird to just a curiosity.
Did you happen to notice that the Neiman Marcus yurt was PHOTOSHOPPED???? Sheesh. I wonder if the $75k price tag only includes getting your likeness photoshopped into the picture.
Michele invites you to read..A New Segment
Michele