A made - up , mediate - class white America where thelawns are green , the poodle skirts are long , capitalism works for everyone , changing yourself to fit in makes mass felicitous , Elvis ’s pelvisis the greatest threat to the country ’s way of life sentence , and everyone deserving talk about is possessed of the ultimate symbolisation ofAmerican exemption : their very own railway car .
It ’s ironic , then , that the rich man in the populace would determine that 2022 , a time when only50 % of US adults are likely to make more than their parent , is the good moment to open up a drive - in movie theatre and diner complete with carhop on tumbler skates . And yet , Elon Musk , ever attempting to be the principal case , intends to do just that . It will not come as a surprisal that hetweetedabout the idea .
In 2018 , long before the drive - in theater revitalization institute on by the pandemic , Muskwrote:“Gonna put an old school drive - in , roller skate & rock eating place at one of the fresh Tesla Supercharger locations in LA . ” Four years later , that restaurant is becoming a realism .
Image: City of Santa Monica
On May 19 of this year , Electrekreported that Tesla had charge trademark software to use its branding at a retro - futuristic rest plosive speech sound and submitted ambitious plans to the urban center of Los Angeles . Musk is taking over what is now a Shakey ’s Pizza on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood , planning to pulverise it and construct a two - storey , 24 - hour , 9,300 straightforward metrical unit Tesla - branded Supercharger diner with a aim - in theatre of operations and a rooftop Browning automatic rifle . It ’s deserving noting that he has claim this before , applying for Trachinotus falcatus for a old loop of the diner in the city of Santa Monica inMarch of 2018 , but this time , the project looks like much further along .
Once it ’s unresolved , the movement - in will host over 200 patron at a meter , and they ’ll have the chance to visit a Jetson’s - esque hybrid indoor / outdoor restaurant with booths , barstools , and mistily midcentury - modern computer architecture . They ’ll charge their gondola at one of the 34 on - land site file stations . Surrounded by dense bamboo landscape screens to close down it off from the street , the drive - in theater ’s two screens will show 30 - minute short features designed to last about as long as a meal and a full accusation , fit in to its construction Trachinotus falcatus program . George Blakenship , Tesla ’s former frailty president of shop design and development , key out it inForbesas a “ ‘ food truck ’ with aCybertruckdesign . believe diner with a‘Spaceballs Plaid’interior . ”
Plus , Musksaidthat if you ’re drive a Tesla when you visit — why would n’t you be — you will automatically receive the menu on the touch screen in your auto .
Image: City of Santa Monica
Several factors line up for the self - styled “ existent - life history Tony Stark ” to make his move into the restaurant outer space : his brother Kimbal Musk run arestaurant groupthat seems poised to operate the dining car , charging an EV take on longer than take up a gas tankful , and many of Tesla ’s charging stations already include appliance stores . There ’s even one in Germany that has aswimming pool .
To be clear , though , Elon Musk is not opening this restaurant because he ’s really interested in wait on food . Elon Musk does not wish about nutrient . The billionaire who has won the unofficialWorst Member of the .1 % Awardtime and again has gone on record in the past times saying that if he could not eat , he would do just that . Musk once apologized for rust during an consultation withEsquire , and the newsman commented that , “ although he wipe out ravenously , he never succeeds in making his food look appetizing . On his white plate is a turkey ramification , a deplorable bouquet of Brassica oleracea italica , a mound of black beans , and he eats them like an spaceman might use up his ration , with an aviation of hurried functionality . ” Musk even take to have challenged himself to spend adollar a Clarence Shepard Day Jr. on foodwhen he was a teenager . As his ex - girlfriend Grimesput it , “ Bro does not go like a billionaire . ”
Musk care about the fancy , the play , the garish “ look at me ” of it all .
Image: City of Santa Monica
The CEO , who was fascinated with America long before he ever lived here , has made it clear that while the Tesla drive - in will look“futuristic,”it will come with a hyphen or two of the vibes that Vincent Vega persist while eating inside a stylized car at Jackrabbit Slim ’s in Pulp Fiction . Think“wax museum with a pulse . ”I would n’t put it past Elon to dress his waitstaff like Marilyn Monroe .
By plan a 1950s aesthetical , and thus the menstruation ’s implied values , into the future , Musk is show his hand . Because if Elon Musk is tapping into a pink wine - colored past by spread out this nostalgia - laden sci - fi dining car , how imaginary is his visual sense of the time to come ?
If he ’s to be believed , all of his current companies are philanthropic effort that just so materialize to make him astronomically wealthy . But a nimble assessment of the facts calls this theme into question .
Image: City of Santa Monica
Musk is an exploitatory force . Over 500 Tesla and SpaceX employees have contractedCOVID-19 while on the jobsince 2020 . G of current and former Tesla employees are process for back payover alleged parturiency law violations . Ex - factory workers have describe Tesla ’s works as“modern - day sweatshops”rife withunderreported injury . The party is presently facing several causa fromemployeesandinvestorsalike allege a toxic body of work environment , racial discrimination , and sexual torment .
But it does n’t stop there . Because in Musk ’s visual modality of the future , problem with result that already exist will be solved by him , with exciting “ new ” technologies .
Elon Musk hate sit down in dealings , but he also thinks public expatriation is“a pain in the prat . ”The solution ? Reinvent the charabanc blockage , plain . If The Boring Company’sproof of conceptin Las Vegas is any denotation , his architectural plan is to bore tunnels under major cities so that Teslas can shuttle a walloping five people at a prison term through the basis at 35 sea mile per hour . Even if he pull off his eventual mind to fill these burrow with high - capacitance self - driving electrical cars , there is a train - sized elephant in this elbow room .
Electric gearing are themost climate - friendly shape of conveyance . Musk has claimed he ’s developing something resembling one , but theHyperloop , which would purportedly whisk mass from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a miraculous 35 moment , wasimpossible to take seriouslyeven before it came out that he never actually design on building it . accord to a recent piece inTime , Musk “ admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about attempt to get legislators to cancel plan for in high spirits - f number rail in California . ”
The toilsome , compromise - laden work of build public transportation is not anywhere nigh as aphrodisiacal as tweeting about how your troupe is“doing the most to figure out mood change . ”That ’s a liberal claim to make , especially given that Tesla owe much of its winner togovernment incentivesand only opened Supercharger locating toother electric vehiclesin 2021 .
If trains are the most climate - favorable option , then Musk is n’t trying to combat climate change so much as hold onto the nostalgia of car culture as exemption , appealing to American individuality while assuring us that his root is the best one because more car make him more money .
Speaking of car culture , let ’s drive our high - remnant electrical vehicle ( stark withCandy Crushon a gargantuan blind ) down a main road toward the account of fast nutrient . Why has the drive - in endured as an indelible symbolization of Americana ? Why do we get misty - eye about the idea of teenagers fume cigarettes , wearing leather crownwork and artfully lean on souped - up hot rods while snacking on chilly - fries and a Coke ?
Every genesis is prone to romanticize their youth , and the Baby Boomers have foisted on the eternal sleep of the country their nostalgia for their own puerility , deposit as they were in the heat of midcentury America ’s idle abundance . I ’d posit that there ’s anotherscience fiction - themed “ take - in”at Disneyworld because during the ‘ 50s America had a thriving middle class .
In the ‘ 50s and ‘ 60 , the post - war economic thunder leave Americans to hold out lives they could never have guess as young people . valet who had grown up amid the Great Depression , people who worked in factories or on Dust Bowl - era farms , were on the spur of the moment possessed of housewives and 2.5 child , plus fresh , electrify homeswith picket fences and a two - car service department . They could even take the periodic holiday . Mad Men once described this generation asastronautsfor its speedy economic dominance .
Cars , in finical , became the vocation card of American freedom . Our urban center were built around them ; the Interstate Highway organisation was retrace to bring them to all corners of the country . By 1960 , 80 % of American familiesowned at least one car , and 14 % possess two or more . They were ubiquitous and sexy , a convenient way to get around and evince yourself , and , on occasion , a billet to have a good meal , a peregrine living elbow room .
Drive - in movie theater and eatery were born out of this car culture boom , cheap patch on the fringe of townsfolk where huge grouping of people could plain back without worrying if the nestling were too rowdy or if you and your date were too cozy for the residue of the theater . Drive - in restaurants answer everything from tamales to oyster to the prototypical cheeseburger and fries played up the freshness of being served car - side with brightly - colourise neon signs and impulsive architecture . By 1958 , there were 4,000 drive - in theater throughout the US , and the enceinte of them could keep a shocking3,000 railroad car .
tarry 1950s nostalgia is root in this idea of an America where the unsufferable seemed potential , advance was inevitable , everyone always had enough if they had a full - clip Book of Job , and the population was your oyster . Musk is n’t playing with symbols of the ‘ fifty because he want Tesla to bring back that egalitarian vision of the past . He want to borrow it as decoration at his rest full point for the rich .
Why ? Because Musk deduce much of hispersonal philosophyfrom the blindly optimistic high - tech phantasy that defined mid - century scientific discipline fiction . Musk once tweet that Isaac Asimov ’s Foundation serial ( 1942–50 ) is“fundamental to the creation of SpaceX.”He has won awards from both theNational Space Societyand theHeinlein Prize Trustfor his real - cosmos execution of libertarian , technocratic ideas harvest from Robert Heinlein books like Starship Troopers ( 1959 ) andThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress ( 1966 ) . He even quote Douglas Adams as his“favorite philosopher . ”
This is wry open that unlike Musk ’s other favorite generator , Adams was not justanticapitalistbut also deeply aware of the “ average , base , blemished human being , ” the archetypical reader whoVirginia Woolfdubbed “ Mrs. Brown . ” InThe Evening Rocket , Jill Lepore ’s brilliant podcast about Musk ’s “ extravagant , extreme , extraterrestrial capitalist economy , ” she delineate his hamfisted effort to live out the lives of his favorite skill fiction agonist , polymathic men traversing bestial galactic empires full of defy heroes and brainiac - eating insect . Lepore foreground Ursula K. Le Guin ’s essay “ Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown , ” in which she deplore that many writers of Heinlein and Asimov ’s ilk lost track of “ how the subject of all novels”—and indeed the consumer of all product — is this normal , unremarkable , everyday individual . Musk has likewise lost track of the everyday patron of the driving force - in .
Adams ’s work is famously sarcastic , and he wrote in The Hitchhiker ’s Guide to the Galaxy that : “ Far back in the mists of ancient time , in the great and brilliant days of the former galactic empire , life was dotty , rich and , on the whole , tax - costless . Many men , of course , became passing rich , but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really short , at least , no one worth speaking of . ” Taken seriously , that line just about sums up Musk ’s teleological nostalgia , his fundamental misunderstanding of the books and histories he draws such divine guidance from . Did you ever see the movie Elysium ? Get ready for the world ’s most undivided gated community — on Mars .
Mrs. Brown is no one deserving talk of . She is the proverbial reader , Jane Doe , the unremarkable layperson . In theory , she is the customer Musk think of to line when he says everyone . But the affair about Mrs. Brown is that she does n’t get a tag to go where no man has become before . She ’s the carhop in unforesightful shorts , teetering on crimper skate while she curses under her breath about the copious asshole who waltzes in from time to time telling journalists how he ’s saving the macrocosm . She ’s stuck back on earth , cleaning the Tesla drive - in ’s toilet before riding the bus home to her gaggle of roommates , pretending to be anywhere else but here .
Mrs. Brown is exhausted at the end of the 24-hour interval , but she ca n’t afford to eat at employment , so she confound some leftovers in the microwave before tumble into bed , trying to distract herself from the pile of peak on her desk , headphones firmly accommodate in her ear as she indulges in a world ever so dissimilar from her reality — perhaps The leftover Hand of Darkness or How Long ‘ til Black Future Month . She ’ll have to get up and do it all again in the morning , fake smile , rolling wave skate and all .
Meanwhile , her billionaire overlord is building his house on a literal other satellite .
Elon Musk is creating a future base on the imaginings of the yesteryear without caring about the practical solvent of the present . He says he ’s a champion for clime change , an inspiring genius take optimistic solutions to the plenty . But by opening this driveway - in cater to a individual year of gondola - owner , he ’s reminding us that what he ’s really building is an teenage , exclusionary technocracy .
When it comes to science fable or terrene fact , you postulate to pay tending to Mrs. Brown . Because if she gets left behind , what exactly is the point of your future ?
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