Monthly Archives: February 2020

Los Angeles City Hall was packed with hundreds of climate change activists and several celebrities Friday morning. Though their backgrounds were diverse speakers ranged from indigenous community leaders to actors Jane Fonda and Joaquin Phoenix they all shared a unifying message: Our house is on fire and the climate crisis must be confronted.

The participants congregated for the citys first Fire Drill Friday, an ongoing environmental activism movement that was spearheaded by Fonda and Greenpeace last year. Fonda, a lifelong activist who supported the Civil Rights Movement and opposed the Vietnam and Iraq wars, has dedicated much of the last few months to the movement; she moved to Washington D.C. and started protesting outside the Capitol every Friday to urge elected officials to address the planets ongoing climate crisis.

Though filming duties for Netflixs Grace and Frankie required Fonda to move back to Los Angeles, she brought Fire Drill Fridays with her, and the movement has continued to grow. The Los Angeles-based Fire Drill Fridays will only occur the first Friday of each month due to Fondas work schedule, but once Grace and Frankie filming wraps up, Fonda plans on touring the nation with Greenpeace and hosting local events, with the end goal being to make the 2020 presidential election more climate-focused.

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Many news headlines regarding Fire Drill Fridays have focused on the arrests of its high-profile activists. The typical Fire Drill Friday event includes a variety of speakers, which leads to acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, usually for crowding or obstructing. Fonda was arrested five times during the Fire Drill Friday events in Washington D.C. (one of those arrests prevented her from accepting a British Academy Britannia Award in-person) and stressed that civil disobedience was a powerful political tool, particularly when used by celebrities with a strong public platform.

Every week you have the opportunity to put yourself on the line, Fonda said in an interview. Civil disobedience is not a first resort, but its a step up. Youve petitioned, marched, pleaded, and begged, and you havent been heard, so you take the next step. To align your body with your values is very empowering, and this offers that opportunity.

Civil disobedience is not a requisite of Fire Drill Friday events. Though Fonda still speaks during each gathering, she noted that she cannot participate in civil disobedience for three months due a court agreement stemming from her D.C. arrests.

Joaquin Phoenix participates in the Fire Drill Friday climate change rally.

ETIENNE LAURENT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

A Greenpeace spokesperson said that several dozen participants gathered at Maverick Natural Resources (a company that operates a large number of oil and gas wells in Southern California and the Central Valley) in an act of civil disobedience Friday afternoon. No arrests were made, per the spokesperson.

While the mainstream media and the cultural zeitgeist have begun paying more mind to climate-related issues in recent years, Fondas Fire Drill Fridays has enjoyed particularly rapid growth thanks to its high-profile participants. Celebrity activism is a key component, and the latest events other participating Hollywood workers included Joaquin Phoenix, Amber Valletta, Bonnie Wright, Brooklyn Decker, June Diane Raphael, and Norman Lear, though most of their speeches were intentionally brief and served to hype up the events primary speakers, who were all environmental activists or community organizers.

Fonda also led the movements teach-in events, where shed join prominent activists and climate change experts to discuss climates impact on subjects ranging from jobs, agriculture and the military, with the talks broadcast via Facebook Live.

While courting well-known individuals such as Phoenix who was arrested during a Fire Drill Friday event in Washington D.C. last month helps raise awareness about the movement, Fire Drill Fridays celebrity elements are primarily intended to provide a platform for more overlooked demographics to stress the importance of climate activism, according to Greenpeace executive director Annie Leonard.

The high-profile celebrities draw the spotlight, but understand that the real voices needing to be amplified arent theirs, Leonard said in an interview. The celebrities have the role of introducing the speakers, drawing the cameras, elevating the issue, and growing the audience. They create an incredible spotlight that we use to prioritize the voices that are marginalized in national conversations, such as women, youth, and indigenous people who often live at the forefront of climate change.

Fonda noted that the movement has expanded far more quickly than she anticipated. Fonda reached out to Leonard to discuss climate activism last September and the duo found that they were influenced by the same activists, namely Greta Thunberg hence the movements oft-repeated warning that our house is on fire and author Naomi Kleins On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal. The work of anti-apartheid activist Randall Robinson, who also practiced civil disobedience with well-known influencers, was another key influence and inspired the duo to get additional celebrities involved with their environmental movement. Other celebrities who have participated in prior Fire Drill Friday events include Martin Sheen, Ted Danson, Susan Sarandon, and Sam Waterston.

Fire Drill Fridays was created during a fraught period for environmental politics in America. President Donald Trump and many prominent Republican politicians reject the scientific consensus on climate change. Though Democrats have been more open to climate-oriented legislation, several Democrats rejected the Green New Deal, a much-discussed package of environmental legislation that the Fire Drill Fridays movement strongly supports. Fonda said that she met with senators to discuss how Fire Drill Fridays could promote environmental legislation last year. They told Fonda to build an army.

Were growing in numbers and want more people to be comfortable being out and demanding, Fonda said in an interview. We always focus on the science and the demands are: No new fossil fuel expansions, phasing out existing fossil fuels over 30 years, and supporting a Green New Deal.

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Jane Fonda Is Building an Army to Defend the Earth with Fire Drill Fridays Movement - IndieWire

Wandering with my young son last summer through our favourite Ithacan village, we were delighted to come across a large sailing boat docked in the port with a crew of latter-day Merry Pranksters. Listening to the Clean Beach Pirates (a group of environmentally minded volunteers collecting plastic waste from beaches around the Greek islands) talking enthusiastically to my eight-year-old about the evils of pollution in the Ionian Sea, Imarvelled at this Ship of Fools that seemed to have sailed in from another era. By which Idont mean the Renaissance but rather the 1970s, an era whose radical spirit Lucas Richert attempts to capture through the story of antipsychiatry.

There is a history to strange medicines, and Richerts conscientious account of mental health and the American counterculture effectively links the likes of the Beach Pirates to an earlier generation of intrepid travellers. The roll call of key players is familiar enough: Eric Berne, Claude Steiner, Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, Werner Erhard, Paul Lowinger and so on, most of whom are summarily glossed in passing. Stringing the narrative together around the usual suspects, Richert sets to with a degree of diligence. But although his writing style is congenial enough, he seems not to know quite where to place the book, leaving it more or less adrift between two options: a journalistic essay on the vicissitudes of the American mind reflected through the prism of the antipsychiatry movement and a more serious-minded Foucauldian analysis of psychiatric knowledge in 1970s America.

The chapters tend to fall between these two stools, starting in essayistic mode with a blizzard of insubstantial references to Vietnam and war-induced mental disturbances, developments in industrial and organisational psychology, mechanisation, environmentalism, the womens movement, patient activism, pornography and punk rock. The current academic fad for interdisciplinary research clearly has a lot to answer for, and one wonders how firm a grasp the author has on his cultural references when citing country singer Merle Haggard and the Sex Pistols in the same sentence, placing both under the improbable heading of angst-ridden working-class sentiment.

The allusions to Michel Foucault suggest a more ambitious genealogy of mental medicine. Instead, we are presented with a fast-paced montage of radicalism in psychiatry that fails to cohere. A chapter on the use of intoxicants, with an inexplicable amount of detail about cannabis, seems to have wandered in from another research project. Meanwhile, the perceived challenge to Freudianism and psychodynamic psychiatry is mapped along various axes: the third version of the American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1980) and the biomedical turn; alternative therapies and cults of unreason (ranging from Esalen, Scientology and the human potential movement to clairvoyance and telepathy); the moral panic about psychoactive substances during the Nixon administration; and LSD-fuelled spiritual transcendence associated with the likes of Timothy Leary and R.D. Laing. There may well be a place for a cultural history of the internecine squabbles, sectarianism and fragmentation within radical psychiatry and the patients rights movement. But a series of descriptive snapshots organised around reform and revolt misses the intricacy that Richert means to convey. The Ship of Fools, finally, slips through the authors hands and glides beyond the zeitgeist of the 1970s, a symbol of great disquiet in another age of anxiety.

Steven Groarke is professor of social thought at the University of Roehampton and a psychoanalyst.

Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture By Lucas RichertMIT Press, 224pp, 22.00ISBN 9780262042826Published 8 October 2019

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Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture, by Lucas Richert - Times Higher Education (THE)

Paganism and especially witchcraft are seeing a popularity explosion. But many of those coming into our movement arent following the same paths we did, and thats raising some concerns about both the Pagan newcomers and the Pagan movement as a whole.

In 2018 I wrote two posts on this topic: So You Want To Be A Pagan A Guide For Pagan Newcomers and 7 Things We Owe Pagan Newcomers. Those cover much of what I want to say on this topic. But the most recent Conversations Under the Oaks generated some questions that go beyond these posts, and I want to address them here.

Ive reworked questions from three different people to make this post flow a little better.

In the 1960s and 70s, becoming a Pagan, witch, or anything along those lines took dedication. Books were few and hard to find, while covens and other groups were mostly closed affairs. There were only a few traditions and it took dedication to find one and convince those in it that you could be trusted with their secrets.

That all changed with the widespread availability of Pagan books in the 80s and 90s, and the explosion of solitary practitioners and backyard covens has never slowed down. With more people coming into the Pagan movement with no structures or elders to guide them, beliefs and practices have gotten more and more diverse. Today you dont have to be super-dedicated to get started, meaning some people arent taking things as seriously as we did.

Rather than calling this watered down I prefer to say were in a speciation phase. More and more versions and varieties of Paganism are being formed. Most of them will only last a few years. Over time, those that are robust and resilient enough to last will grow and thrive.

The downside is that Paganism and witchcraft are getting so diverse that the terms dont mean all that much anymore. Were going to need more specific terms for the traditions we follow so we dont get tied up in useless arguments about who is or isnt a real Pagan.

Yes. Theyre looking for compelling entertainment. Which is pretty much what storytellers have done since the first stories were told around a campfire. We have a lot of drama in the Pagan community, but its not the kind of drama people want to watch.

We all understand that Hollywood magic isnt real. What Im looking for is the truth behind the fantasy the messages and the themes. Thats why I enjoy The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina even though I wish the witches were Pagans instead of Satanists (which they may be, after the end of Season 3).

Seo Helrune has a very good blog post on Sabrina, Hellier, and the current zeitgeist the themes and mood of the times. The current mood lends itself to stories of darker magic. But Seo Helrune also suggests that perhaps there are non-human hands in human stories and hints of narratives yet to be shaped.

I think thats worth contemplating in much more depth which I hope to do after I finish this round of Conversations Under the Oaks.

Possibly. But if it does its our own fault.

Has Harry Potter led to an increased interest in real magic? Certainly. But Ive never had anybody come to me expecting to learn wingardium leviosa (sadly, I have had people expect me to teach them the Charm of Making from Excalibur). The vast majority of people recognize that fiction is fiction they want to learn whats real.

The mysteries real magic and real Gods are far better than fictional magic, because theyre real. Our challenge is to not get so caught up with the ten people who are satisfied with fantasy that we arent there when the one person who wants the truth comes looking for us.

If its grounded in authentic history, if it promotes strong connections with the Gods, spirits, and the natural world, and if its application generates good results, then its a good thing.

On the other hand, I dont care how many initiations and lineages someone has or how long theyve been a Pagan. If what they teach is based on pseudo-history, consists primarily of New Age psychobabble, and makes people feel good without accomplishing anything, its a bad thing.

I havent been young in a long time, but I have vivid memories of being told wait your turn pay your dues and youre a kid what do you know? This annoyed me, not just because people werent listening to me, but because they werent listening for the wrong reasons. As I argued at the time, either what I say is right or it isnt how old I am is irrelevant.

I could not have written The Path of Paganism at 25, or even at 45. I needed more experience with Paganism, and more experience with life. But if someone else can, great for them and great for us, who get to read it that much sooner.

The phrase age is just a number is as true on the low end as it is on the high end.1

This is another matter entirely. Star Bustamonte had a feature on this for The Wild Hunt back in December and I encourage you to read it. I touched on this in Paganism in the 2020s What to Expect in the Next Decade. The next wave of Pagan influencers will not come from within.

At the core, the criteria from the previous section applies here: does it work or not? The problem is that much of this doesnt work. Its written by ghost writers with questionable experience with Paganism and witchcraft, for editors who know even less, and marketed to mainstream readers who know nothing beyond what they see on TV.

For the most part its not harmful its just very, very weak. It tells people that witchcraft is an aesthetic and not the recourse of the dispossessed (to quote Peter Grey). Its devoid of reverence for the Gods, or pretty much any theological content. It may provide some help to some people, but its nothing to build a practice around.

And its offensive to those of us for whom these things are sacred, to see a facsimile of them sold to people who have no idea of the power and meaning behind the real things.

All we can do is be ready and available when a few of the readers of these books realize theres more out there and decide they want it.

We can start by not quoting the Wiccan Rede and the Threefold Law like theyre holy scripture. If youre a Wiccan theyre an important part of your tradition. But for everyone else, theyre moral propositions that may be more or less true, and more or less meaningful. From my perspective, there is no such thing as harm none and I see no evidence the Threefold Law works as described.

Instead, we can talk about the Strawberry Jam Effect: you cant work with it without getting it all over yourself. Then discuss cleansing, shielding, and other elements of magical hygiene. We can talk about defensive magic, proportional responses, and the deeper meanings of the old saying before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves.

But some lessons have to be learned the hard way.

We talk about baby witches and baby Pagans but no one capable of hexing and cursing is a baby. Even those who are very young and/or very inexperienced know that striking others is a dangerous thing, even if your cause is just.

But sometimes what we know never sinks in until it becomes tangibly real to us. You have to burn your hand a couple of times before it sinks in that pan + stove = hot.

And sometimes you have to punch a bully in the face, even if you get dragged to the principals office afterwards.

As teachers and elders it is our responsibility to warn inexperienced people about the dangers and pitfalls inherent in this path. But thats all we can do. Learning will happen or not when and how it happens.

1 Do I have to point out that age is just a number doesnt apply to sexual relationships between adults and minors? I think I do .

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Teaching Without Credentials, the Dangers of Cursing, and Watered Down Paganism - Patheos

Danez Smith was born into a devout Baptist household in St Paul, Minnesota. Smiths grandmother still lives there, in one of only two black households on a street that was mixed but is becoming increasingly white. Smith grew up, on this border between the blacker areas and the white middle-class enclaves of the city, as a black, queer, God-fearing child.

The future poet and spoken-word artist would listen to family members and friends telling stories on the porch, impressed by their way with words. The friends came and went but there was always one constant: church. Smith may have struggled to fit in among the congregation but Sunday morning meant worship, and more importantly a sermon. It was that rousing religious oration that opened up the world of writing and performance.

The first writing I ever loved was the Sunday sermon, Smith says when we meet in Manchester, ahead of a live performance. There are moments in a Baptist church when the pastor gets caught in the spirit I think thats what Im trying to do. I just have to get it out. Just let me get it out.

For the last decade Smith who is non-binary and uses the pronouns them/they has been letting the spirit take over. Three books of searing, brazenly queer and political poetry have made them one of the most discussed poets of their generation, and placed them at the vanguard of an African American movement that has seen spoken-word artists move from stages and backrooms to book deals and awards success.

Smiths 2014 debut, [insert] boy, marked the arrival of a new voice; their 2017 collection Dont Call Us Dead confronted issues that were raging in the US as the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum, holding a mirror up to Americas racism and advocating urgently for change, while touching on Smiths own HIV diagnosis. It was a finalist for the National book award in the US, and at 29, Smith became the youngest ever winner of the Forward best collection prize, beating US poet laureate Tracy K Smith to take the top honour.

The poem dear white America became a viral sensation, with Smiths intense performance of it earning comparisons to Howl Allen Ginsbergs exasperated condemnation of the US in the 1950s.

i tried, white people. i tried to love you, but you spent my brothers funeral making plans for brunch, talking too loud next to his bones. you took one look at the river, plump with the body of boy after girl after sweet boi & ask why does it always have to be about race? because Jordan boomed. because Emmett whistled. because Huey P. spoke. because Martin preached. because black boys can always be too loud to live.

Dont Call Us Dead was a collection that spoke truth to white power and made Smith a literary star. But their new book Homie is different. This book does not care about white people, Smith says bluntly. Its about saying hello to the people of colour in the room, lets talk.

In person Smith is softly spoken and polite, carefully crafting each response, though still standing out in the hotel where we meet, with their basketball shoes, nose rings and Whitney Houston T-shirt a hint of the performer that lies beneath.

Maybe that was the thing with Dont Call Us Dead, it was a lot angrier with white people, Smith says. With Homie I stopped asking myself: What should I do with the white gaze? Because I realised I wasnt interested in it. I asked myself: Why am I spending so much time worried about this gaze? I think white people can learn a lot from the poems, but thats not who Im writing for.

I didnt want trauma porn. I dont think thats what I ever created but it was being used as that

That imagined reader is a specific group Smith calls Beloveds: the largely black and queer friends and acquaintances Homie addresses. Originally, the book was going to have poems named after black people killed by state-sanctioned violence, with a section about a friends suicide. The latter part stayed but Smith decided to make the titles and themes more personal. I was writing to friends, to family, to people I wanted to speak to. I had to shut off the idea that my poems are now being read by this wider audience. Im still invested in this intimate and small table: I can name the people that my poems are for.

Another reason for this more inward-looking perspective comes from Smiths struggle with writers block in the lead-up to the deadline for Homie. Theyd had bouts of it before but this was different the usual stimulants of exercise, sex or weed (Smith says they have a long-term relationship with marijuana) were useless. I was writing, but it was just all shit, says Smith, who put it down to the strain of living up to their newfound reputation. I felt a lot of pressure after Dont Call Us Dead was a thing. It meant a lot to people and it won awards, and as much as I like to say that stuff doesnt affect you, it does. Its great, its a confidence booster, but it also fucked with me for a while.

I was in my own head for a little bit, asking myself: What does it mean if my next book doesnt win the National book award or some big thing? I dont like that side of myself. I felt like I had been to the top of something. I had to come back and say: That is not at all why I started writing poems. Thats not why I still write poems.

The New Yorker said of Dont Call Us Dead that Smiths poems cant make history vanish, but they can contend against it with the force of a restorative imagination. That imagination was honed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Smith studied before going on to form the Dark Noise Collective with other artists including Franny Choi, with whom Smith co-hosts the poetry podcast VS.

Today, Smith makes a living from book sales, touring and teaching in Minnesota, where they still live, but has struggled with the idea of making money from a book so expressly about black suffering. Youre doing the work because you want real change for your folks, but that also means capital gains for yourself. I felt I was profiting.

Dont Call Us Dead pigeonholed Smith as the person the media went to for angry black poems; an easy fix for white editors and publishers looking to tap into the zeitgeist. I want my work to be useful, says Smith. So it felt good to know a poem was good for healing and rage or whatever for my people. But it also felt really gross.

I couldnt write Dont Call Us Dead again, they add. There will always be America in the news and real black people will always be in my poems, but maybe thats why the focus of Homie is a lot more personal. I didnt want trauma porn and I worried about that. I dont think thats what I ever created but it was being used as that.

Homie is deeply moving and funny, with poems such as all the good dick lives in Brooklyn Park combining a story about a booty call with the tragic decline of a lover dying from an unnamed illness. But it is a step change from Smiths earlier work. With Homie, Smith decided to focus on the theme of friendship and what they refer to as a deep investigation of the n-word. That process starts from the very first page. A note says: This book was titled Homie because I dont want non-black people to say My Nig out loud. This book is really titled My Nig. If that doesnt hit home, the contents page will. Poems titled niggas!, shout out to my niggas in Mexico, white niggas, and an explicit quote from a Lil Wayne song make the point again. Its playful, provocative and serves as a kind of warning to those unprepared for what is about to come.

For Smith, it is important that Europeans include themselves in those conversations about race and language: not being a white American does not absolve European readers from the burden of racism. At readings in the UK and Europe, Smith often addresses the elephant in the room directly. I think that sometimes folks forget that, just because America seems to be the most proud of what it does to its black, brown and indigenous folks, Europe invented that shit and spread it, says Smith.

There was always this idea that Britain was done with racism but Meghan Markle left because you guys were racist

The poet has been coming to the UK for a decade, since being invited by Manchesters Contact theatre, which has always been on the cutting edge of queer culture. Over that time Smith has observed the hypocritical standards of the race debate in Britain. There was always this idea that racism was a thing that Britain was done with and had been for a long time, they say. But Meghan Markle is Canadian now. She convinced a whole prince to leave because you guys were racist. They tried to send all the Jamaicans back too. Look. You are still up to it. So its just to pull back from that moment and say: Hey, I might not be talking about your particular situation but you can find yourself a seat at the table.

Many of the column inches dedicated to Smith have concerned performance and identity: either their own or their works exploration of it. But Smith says they are fundamentally a formalist, who loves to geek out over sonnet crowns and voltas. In her New York Times review of Homie, critic Parul Sehgal identified a new form invented by Smith in the poem how many of us have them, called the dozen, whereby each stanza grows by one line until the final one, comprising 12 lines. Id like to invent or order up new adjectives to describe the startling originality and ambition of Smiths work, she wrote.

Does the general focus on Smiths identity rather than the work grate? That is the story of the black writer throughout time, says Smith. I think that is true but its not particular to me. Some reviewers, Smith argues, are so blinded by identity that they dont realise they are being marvelled by craft. They are connecting to the work, but they are having a different journey to someone who can understand the authors point of view.

With a more forgiving eye, there are ways in which all of us come at the work with whatever references we have because that is just what we know, Smith says. So there are people I have been compared to more canonical folks who I dont even know. I might have read a poem or two in school but I dont really bang heavies with whoever that might be. But there are ways in which other influences come to you. You might be a student of Whitman because one of your favourites really liked Whitman.

For Smith, the bigger crime is that too few reviewers are aware of many of the established poets who have been influences people such as Patricia Smith, Lucille Clifton and Amaud Jamaul Johnson. If your understanding of black radical art starts and ends with Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, then you dont really know a lot of the archive. I think a lot of folks only know the canon, but there are so many canons to pull from, Smith says. All writers deserve that type of deep reading and seeing.

Danez Smith

lately has been a long timesays the girl from Pakistan, Lahore to be specificat the bus stop when the white manask her where shes from & thensays oh, you from Lahore?its pretty bad over there lately.

lately has been a long timeshe says & we look at each other & the look saysyes, i too wish dude would stopasking us about where we frombut on the other side of our side eyesis maybe a hand where hands do no gooda look to say, yes, i know lately has beena long time for your people too& im sorry the world is so good at makingus feel like we have to fight for spaceto fight for our lives

solidarity is a word, a lot of people say itim not sure what it means in the fleshi know i love & have cried for my friendstheir browns a different brown than mineive danced their dances when taught& tasted how their mothers miracle the ricedifferent than mine. i know sometimesi cant see beyond my own pain, past black& white, how bullets love any flesh.i know its foolish to compare.what advice do the drowned have for the burned?what gossip is there between the hanged & the buried?

& i want to reach across our great distancethat is sometimes an ocean & sometimes centimeters& say, look. your people, my people, all that has happenedto us & still make love under rusted moons, still pullchildren from the mothers & name themstill teach them to dance & your pain is not mine& is no less & is mine & i pray to my god your godblesses you with mercy & i have tasted your food & understandhow it is a good home & i dont know your languagebut i understand your songs & i cried when they camefor your uncles & when you buried your niecei wanted the world to burn in the childs brief memory& still, still, still, still, still, still, still, still, still& i have stood by you in the soft shawl of morningwaiting & breathing & waiting

From Homie, published by Chatto on 20 February.

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Danez Smith: White people can learn from it, but thats not who Im writing for - The Guardian

We head south of the border in Steve McQueens Baja Boot to see if its modern incarnation lives up to the legend

Its not a delicate flower. If you flip it on its roof, dontworry. Well just roll it over andkeepgoing.

As pep talks go, this one is being filed under encouraging. Im in the middle of the Mexican desert, sweating heavily into the underside of a five-point harness, having ratcheted myself down into one of the most bizarre-looking and perplexingly engineered road cars on the planet. With exposed bodywork, the headlight structure of a jumping spider, huge off-road tyres, supersized suspension and Tonka-toy dimensions, its all rather imposing. Especially as it wears a supercharged V8 engine like a teenagers rucksack, has a roof-mounted snorkel and two Gatling gun exhausts straddling a full-size spare. Its a visual assault. One that could easily be mistaken for some sort of childish marketing joke a 1:1 scale cereal box toy or something. But it isnt. Its a very serious, very real, very four-eyed, 650bhp middle finger to the Lamborghini Urus, Rolls-Royce Cullinan and Aston MartinDBX.

Its called the SCG Boot, the latest project from film director, car collector, race team owner and car manufacturer Jim Glickenhaus. If you dont know the name, in recent years Jim and his iconoclastic Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus (SCG) outfit have made a name for themselves by ditching rose-tinted spectacles for reality by putting deepfakes on hardcore motoring nostalgia. Take the P4/5, his $3m coachbuilt Enzo throwback that initially went down at Ferrari like a mouthful of sick. Modulo, the extra-terrestrial concept wedge from Pininfarina that Jim got running and approved for road use. Or SCG003, the class-winning VLN car that any Billy can go and buy. Now, his crusade continues this time going for the jugular of the zeitgeist: performanceSUVs.

Words and Photographs: RowanHorncastle

Steve McQueen images: Photographed by Milton H. Greene 2019 Joshua Greenewww.archiveimages.com

Im fed up of seeing all these super-SUVs, Jim says. The Urus isnt an SUV! Look at it! Its just a 4dr Lambo. Real SUVs should be able to drive to the Baja 1000 [the worlds longest and most gruelling non-stop off-road race], compete, then drive homeagain.

So thats exactly what hes doing. Being a slightly frustrated, high-functioning and financially fruitful individual, unlike misanthropes of the internet, Jim hasnt turned his contempt for the new breed of marketing-led SUVs into bilious internet comments and spittle on his computer screen. Rather, hes simply built his own 200k performance SUV. In just 17 months. From scratch. Well, sort of scratch, as he did have something in his garage to act as a muse: Steve McQueens 1967 BajaBoot.

The original Baja Boot was the product of one of Americas greatest technical minds, Vic Hickey. Born in 1919, Hickey served in WWII before returning to California to work on hot rods, dragsters and the famous Novi Indianapolis racecars. In 1959, he was picked up by GM as a research and development engineer. There, he conceptualised vehicles like the Trailblazer, Lunar Rover and, later, the Humvee. He was somewhat of an off-road savant, and the original Baja Boot was one of his skunkworksspecials.

Back then, many off-road racers were based on the ubiquitous VW Beetle. But Vic wanted to make a bespoke engineering masterpiece for a new race down the Baja peninsula. He had just 26 days, so constructed a steel tubular frame, dropped a Chevy Camaro V8 directly behind the driver (like a Grand Prix car) and hooked it up to an automatic gearbox (to make driving off-road more manageable). He then added Corvette differentials, four-wheel drive, a trick transfer case, close-ratio power steering, torsion-bar suspension, chunky tyres and disc brakes. He christened it the Baja Boot, as it raced down the length of Mexico, grabbing the attention of Hollywoods Steve McQueen, who competed in it the followingyear.

For the time, Vics design was wild. So wild that people didnt cotton on to it. But solid logic never ages you just have to wait for technology to catch up and do it justice. And, spurred on by the rise of the super-SUV, Jim believes that time is now. And having bought the original Boot (only two were ever made) at auction a few years ago, Jim had its technical drawings, so assembled a team of off-roads brainiest brains to give these blueprints a 21st-century twist. Two-time Dakar and six class-title Baja 1000 champ Darren Skilton would lead the project, while Elliot Pollock and Armada Engineering (known for pushing boundaries with King of the Hammers builds) were drafted to make designer Michael Youngs 2019, erm, reboot a reality. And, less than two years later, it is very much a reality. HowJim.

Twenty-four hours ago, we were in Los Angeles, California. Thats where Jim agreed to meet. I rocked up on an unassuming residential street to the sight of Steve McQueens Boot casually sat on the back of a trailer, interrupted by the noise of a thunderous V8 and fresh, squeaky brake pads coming the other way. It was Darren, commuting back from the Boot manufacturing facility in Chatsworth in the new generation. F*ck!, was the most articulate phrase I could muster at the time. These things look incredible together. Especially on a street, juxtaposed with bland crossovers and pickups. But Jim being Jim, wanted to prove a point. So instead of trailering the new Boot to Mexico for me to have a go, he threw me the keys and told me to drive down while hed bring Steve McQueens car along for a desert thrashing too. Win,win.

Theres so much to drink in with the new Boot, its hard to find somewhere to begin. Fundamentally, it follows exactly the same principles and layout as the original just modified for better performance. Theres still a tube-frame chassis and independent suspension, but real strides have been made in the tech especially the suspension over the last 50 years. In the Sixties, the original Boot was deemed cutting-edge for having 9in of travel and Bilstein dampers. Thats childs play compared to the new Boots monster 19in of travel and internal bypass coil-over dampers from Fox the same shocks that are on Dakar Minis, no less. Wheels and tyres have grown too, now 17in Method Race beadlock wheels wearing massive 39in BF Goodrich tyres. Remarkably, the engine follows the same philosophy as Vic had intended: a small-block Chevy V8, turned 180 degrees and mounted out back. But now its a supercharged 650bhp, 6.2-litre LT4 from a Camaro, and pushed even further back to help balance. Its hooked up to a GM 4spd 4L80-E automatic transmission thats pretty much nuke-proof and comes with a switchable 4WD system. And a winch. Because every car needs a winch. And a light bar. Its componentry to make hardcore Defender boys and their muddy fingernailsdizzy.

We headed down to San Diego, where people swarmed to it, utterly baffled by the preposterous proportions and hilarious scale. Its over seven feet wide, yet shorter than most American pickups and taller than pretty much anything on the road. Children stare at it through camera phones. People want to have their picture taken next to it. But piloting it takes some getting used to, as youre aware that giant wheels are sprouting out of each corner, but you dont know exactly where. Given you clog up most of a lane, youre fearful you may accidentally trample over a Prius especially with the steering set-up. Its an ultra-quick rack, meaning economy of movement is key. This combined with soft, lollopy suspension (plus acres of roll you need to fight through) means you have to be patient, allowing for the truck to settle on its springs. When it does, you can lean on it and trust it. But youve got to be careful, as the weight can see-saw the other way, making it easy to get in a pickle and an almightytank-slapper.

Surprisingly, we crossed the border in Tijuana without a hint of a rubber-glove treatment and entered the estranged sliver of land known as Baja California. Home to powerful criminal groups smuggling cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines north to the United States, its a part of the world that gets plenty of newspaper column inches. Mexicos brutal drug war claims thousands of lives every year, and Baja has one of the highest homicide rates. A fact that sharpens the mind when driving a far-from-inconspicuous mode of transport through it. But, like drugs, the annual 1,000-mile race is big business. Its the biggest sporting event in the country, with an estimated 1.5 million spectators lining the course each year. So when something as wild as the Boot wanders in, people tend to roll out the dusty red carpet foryou.

Luckily, the Boot has handy distractions to keep your mind off getting your cabeza lopped off. Notably, noise. Lots of noise. Being a development car, no sound-deadening or glass has been fitted, so Perspex sheets thwack against the cabin, while yelping straight-cut gears fight against supercharger whine and a throaty V8. Its like driving through a dubstep playlist. Its comfortable, though. Not plush (You can throw up on the floor and hose it out, Jim says), but the interior is spacious, a trait accentuated by the full-width panoramic Moon Roof. You snuggle into remarkably comfortable and supportive carbon-backed seats from Sparco (the same as a Lotus Evora), theres Apple CarPlay, USB ports and cupholders. Its genuinely usable. And, when the production car goes on sale next year, Jim plans to make a Gotham Pack: a sealed and soundproof cabin that might be the ultimate go-anywhere GT cruiser, especially when the four-seat, four-door version comes along later nextyear.

We rested up in Ensenada, waking up early to offload Steves Boot and head off-road, simply making the endless horizon our destination. To understand the performance of the new Boot, Jim said I should drive Steve McQueens car. Gulp. I was on the Baja 1000 course, in the same seat, on the same roads, doing what one of the worlds biggest icons had done nearly 50 years ago to the day. Pinch-yourself moments dont get more pinchy than that. Well, actually they do. As Jim told me to give it the beans. Problem was, the old Boot requires quite a lot of grit to drive quickly. Its basically a pedalo with a honking great V8 and a spare wheel lashed to the back; you sit legs wide manspread wide with two shoebox-sized pedals at your feet. Theyre oversized for a reason: so that theyre always there. Youre constantly jiggled and jumped around by Bajas rugged scenery, with all nine inches of suspension travel being spent easily, so when you get to a particularly deathy bit of landscape, you want to stop when you want to stop. But its surprisingly easy to drive: steering is light and manageable, and its amazing how a car with no doors or windows can have such a vibrant musk pure vintage with a hint of military. But God knows how Steve and Bud Ekins used to hammer this thing at 120mph through the desert, in the dark, and not turn to dust after 40-odd hours. They were made of differentgravy.

Having sampled Steves car for a stage, I handed it back. Primarily because the crippling and very real anxiety that I could be the one that stuffs Steve McQueens historically significant car started getting the better for me. Time for its son, Bootv2.

With Jims words of potential rollover encouragement ringing through my ears, I bury the throttle just to see what happens. Ho-lee-s**t. The two rear wheels bury themselves into the dusty floor like circular saws, throwing the scenery behind the truck until it hooks up and accelerates unlike any other road car on sale. First, youre hit with a wall of noise as the angry LT4 roars round until the rev-limiter on the Motec dash starts looking like the Blackpool illuminations. Thats compounded by a high-pitch supercharger harmonising proceedings as the gearbox starts sounding like a hamster in a blender. But noise quickly turns to movement. A hilarious amount of movement. With each throttle input, the rear suspension compresses until youve used all the travel, where you then start to plane above the desert like a speedboat. Stomp the brakes and with no servo assistance, it is a stomp and the bonnet points itself at the floor literally at the floor. Tip into a corner, and the body roll makes it feel like the whole thing is about to pitch right over.

The closest thing to it on sale is an Ariel Nomad. And I dont mean to cause any disrespect to the scrumpy enthusiasts in Somerset in fact, Ive been quotedas saying the Nomad is the most entertaining four-wheeled driving instrument on the planet. Well, I was wrong. The Boot is a Nomad thats been to Hell Week, got jacked and angry. In the off-road Atom, you can happily hit toaster-sized boulders all day. In the Boot, fridges. Commercial fridges. Thats the scale of hard, unforgiving desert furniture you can simply fire it at and drive over with ease. Its mind-scrambling. You wince, expecting the suspension turrets to fire out of the top of the arches like mortars, but it just compresses and swallows them whole. You have to condition yourself, mind. Its very easy to overdrive, as the dynamics quickly become trustworthy and unbelievably confidence-inspiring. So much so, I just huck it over a jump for the sake of it. Ive never smiled so much behind the wheel in mylife.

Marauding across Mexicos ruffled, pitted and jump-laden landscape in the Boot never gets old. And despite being 2,517kg, its surprisingly agile and adjustable. See, the SCG has got that very rare quality of being set up properly, by people who care and use quality hardware. As soon as you strap in, its like youve dockeddirectly in the chassis and become part of the machine. A well-set-up car means you dont need to think; it becomes intrinsic, natural and telepathic in its communication. This is what you need when racing for 1,000 miles across the desert, across booby-trapped fields with six-foot whoops that go on for hundreds of miles during the night. The fact its got numberplates and can be used on the schoolrun is a bonus. A brilliantbonus.

From an entertainment point of view, its simple: its the best car Ive ever driven. And being able to make progress through places no cars should rightly go is a significant selling point. The SCG Boot is the modern-day Lamborghini LM002. Its the car many wanted the Urus to be but never got. And, at 197,000, its a similar price. Which, when you consider its a small-time manufacturer using ritzy bits, seems like a bit of a steal. Especially as Jims now done what hed said hed do (surprise!) and proved you can rock up and finish the Baja 1000 in it. Try that in your Cullinan, Urus orDBX.

Boot vs Bronco: TheRematch

In 1969, the Baja Boot raced the Ford Bronco in the Baja 1000. Exactly 50 years later, and one week after we drove the car, this duel was reignited as the new SCG Boot raced the new Ford Bronco in the 2019 Baja1000.

Just as Jim had intended, his road-legal race Boot drove down from LA to the start line. For the race, beefier, longer-travel dual shock suspension was used, a race box and a non-scharged, 450bhp LT1 Chevy engine for reliability. All of which can be specced in your Boot if youlike.

The Bronco R prototype (testing the new engine and drivetrain for the road car) and Boot competed in their own class. As expected, both were pummelled by the terrain. But there was only one finisher. And as everyone knows, to finish first, first you have tofinish.

The Boot crossed the line with less than 47 seconds remaining of the 34-hour race cut off. With 33 hours gone, a front brake caliper cracked and seized the wheel. So the support crew raced to fix the issue, breaking two wrenches just trying to get the wheel off. Meanwhile, the Bronco and team Ford retired just shy of the 600-mile marker. And if thats not a statement of intent from Jim, we dont know whatis.

See more here:

Driving the Baja Boots in... Baja - Top Gear