"...the audience is...overly concerned with vaguely ethnic accoutrements and patterns that clash."

I think the best thing to happen to the scene is how 90% of folks grew out of the copping anything vaguely Indian and using it as their personality. The current callout of left-of-center folks for cultural appropriation and straight up vulturism is so long overdue; mad props to Ms. Burkes for making the call in 1999.

She's wrong about the music, but *shrug*. Part of the reason it took me a minute to get into Phish in 1999 was getting over the "shifty, parasitic, and completely self-absorbed" hippies and their "nasty white-people dreadlocks." This is wonderfully time-stamped and cathartic read. Thanks for the share.