I am late to be reading Bobos in Paradise, but now that I am, I am full of questions. One of them is, would I be a bobo if I had the cash? Quite possibly. I would never tile my shower in slate or buy an SUV or go on an "adventure vacation," but the rest of what I've read applies to me quite well. This particularly came to mind as I walked my dog this morning in my Helly Hansen raincoat listening to "Car Talk" on my walkman and felt very satisfied with myself as I whipped out my cell and pledged to NPR. But being a bobo seems to be only half about attitude and interests - the other half, which I sorely lack, is bank, and though I work in a bobo-approved field I will never accumulate the resources to do what most bobos do. This is true of all my friends, too. None of us make the kind of money that would enable this lifestyle, if we were to choose it.
The "latte town" concept is interesting too. Chambana is probably too conservative, or at least the campus is, to really do this, and midwesterners are jeans-wearin' rather than hiking gear-wearin', but there are latte elements: the Lincoln Square farmers' market, the fledgling bobo-types in downtown Champaign on Saturday nights, the bulletin board at the Urbana Free Library, the Birkenstock store.... Trying to see what other people thought of this online, I found that Chambana is in epodunk's list of top 10 medium-sized college towns. Which isn't the same as a latte town exactly, but I won't quibble with anyone who sees why my town is a sensible, happy, involved place to live.
