August 13, 2005

The NYT picks up the "Six Feet Under" eco-burial theme.

Catering to the Boomers will always be good business:
Here, where redwood forests and quivering wildflower meadows replace fountains and manicured lawns, graves are not merely graves. They are ecosystems in which "each person is replanted, becoming a little seed bank," said Tyler Cassity, a 35-year-old entrepreneur who reopened the long-moldering cemetery last fall....

Mr. Cassity, a GQ-ish sort with rock-star stubble who wears sunglasses indoors, has cultural feelers well tuned for the business. He previously did an extreme makeover of Hollywood Memorial Park, the formerly bankrupt final resting place of Cecil B. DeMille, Tyrone Power and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Sr. With his brother Brent, 38, he runs Forever Enterprises, a Missouri company with cemeteries, cremation societies and a coffin business.

Together, they transformed the once-derelict cemetery into Hollywood Forever, a pastoral "Sunday on La Grande Jatte" of death, where weekend screenings of classic films projected onto the side of Rudolph Valentino's mausoleum attract 2,500 picnickers.

As Forever Hollywood tapped into the zen of Southern California, an oasis for the Rodeo Drive dead, so Mr. Cassity anticipates Fernwood will do for the mountain-biking, Luna bar-eating culture to the north.
So are you hankering for an eco-burial to match the other boomerified rituals of your life, like those self-penned wedding vows and videotaped childbirths?

5 comments:

Ron said...

Maybe CBGB's can transform itself into a place where boomers can have their ashes scattered! They'd make a buck, and who would notice more dust there...

"Hey! Ho! Let's Go...one last time," could be an ad slogan for them...

Ann Althouse said...

Aren't people afraid of grave robbers?

Ann Althouse said...

Big Hal: I'm picturing perverts.

Ann Althouse said...

Roaring Tiger: re #2: What do you think the ground is other than decayed organic material? Maybe our mercury fillings are a problem or the drugs we took in our last days or the chemicals we built up in our livers over the years.

Ron said...

Is all of this discussion an argument for ritual canniablism at the moment of death? Eh, what the hell, why not?