by Ian Rygiel | Jul 2, 2014 | Contributor Content, Ian's Blog
7:00 am and we’re on the road. Dew-covered bikes glisten under a hot, humid sun. Thin, gnarled trees and sandpits gradually give way to lush forests and earth. We’re on the road for 30 minutes when I realize I’ve left all my over-shirts in Manahawkin; the first casualty of travel. Asphalt speeds underneath rubber tires for two hours while the humidity disappears and the sun climbs higher above the horizon. We stop at a welcome center just over the Delaware border fresh from soaking in one hell of a view from on high. After a stretch, we make awkward banter for the camera, fill our bellies and hit the road once more. The day grows hotter, and the traffic thickens as we near Baltimore. Semi-trucks box us in on all sides and spew black smoke, which fills our eyes and mouths, while settling in a haze around our boots. I’m hot and the day is growing hotter. My legs cramp, my wrist aches and sweat pours down my back. Jeremy and I shift our weight around on our bikes. We stretch while riding. We swear loudly into our coms. Our sanity is saved by a small two-lane highway on the other side of the Virginia border. Rounding a curve, trees disappear to reveal a gorgeous mountainside, green and lush. The aching joints and tense muscles linger, but the scenery becomes a welcome distraction. Cows! I yell. Goats! I point. More fat cows! My urban upbringing betrays me. We arrive at Luray Caverns 30 minutes late, and I want to hate the place. I’m in a rotten mood and out...
by Lauren | May 29, 2014 | Production Updates, The Poorgeoisie
The mission of Broke Out West is to observe and celebrate the evolving American Dream. I think a lot about the timing of this project and temperature of the audience. This show needs to be made now. People everywhere feel something, in the economy, in society, in the world is not quite as they expected it to be; somewhere out there people are making their unique circumstances work to their advantage. Broke Out West is speaking to an audience dubbed as the “The Poorgeoisie” which consists of well-educated but underemployed individuals with champagne tastes on a beer budget. We are hoping the pessimism surrounding the generation of recent college graduates will dissipate by revealing the struggle to find work. Key messages include: • Americans are strong. • Americans are resilient. • Americans view challenges as opportunities. • The spirit of optimism adventure and hope are very much alive in the country. • Americans still yearn for journey, adventure, and the call to the West is an iconic American rite of passage. We are seeking interviews with people and businesses that not only survived The Great Recession, but thrived and evolved. These stories of struggle and hardship will be told from the perspective that we all need to innovate and adapt. In finding these stories and celebrating the triumphs, as well as failures, we hope to share hope with our audience, and spark thoughts that will resonate and evoke some measure of inspiration....
by Ian Rygiel | May 29, 2014 | Ian's Blog
I’ve always enjoyed sitting in dive bars. I’m not talking about the hipster-chic types, where yuppies can safely slum it, but the taverns, bars and pubs found in working towns across the country. The places with dark wood, stained even darker from years of cigarette smoke and contact from countless bodies. There’s a level of comfort I’ve found in these sacred places. No matter what town or state they’re in, they feel familiar. Populated by workers, regulars, and professional drinkers, these bars are the new campfire. Looking around at the introspective gazes of the patrons, it’s easy to find the ones who have lived their lives, experienced the world, and basked in success and failure alike. They’ve got story after story, and while they might seem as world weary as everyone else, their eyes are alive. The most common of these stories is the “if only…” tale. The lottery ticket that was almost a big win… The sport that could have led to a professional contract… The business that would have made millions… …if only… And if there is one thing I’ve learned from sitting in these bars, it’s there is no shame in the “if only…” story. The shame comes from only have one. After listening to these modern day bards wax poetic, it’s not long before I’m feeling restless again. Picking myself up, I’m ready to leave the stale air behind, venture out into the world, and continue writing my own story. This way, if the day ever comes when I’ve settled into just one bar in just one town, I’ll have a few of my own...
by Ian Rygiel | Apr 18, 2014 | Ian's Blog
As with my last blog post, I’d like to start by referencing a previously written article, if only to start the conversation “The Dark Side of Getting Into College,” written by Lauren Stiller Reikleen, takes a look at the colossal amount of pressure being placed on children to get into college. It should come to no one’s surprise that all of the practices, tutoring sessions, and extra-curricular activities are leading to highly stressed, anxious, and sleep-deprived kids. This is not a problem that ends with a student’s acceptance into college either. I would argue this upbringing is one of the biggest underlying factors the generation of 20-30-somethings, most affected by the Great Recession, are now coping with. When a large portion of someone’s life and identity is wrapped up in the concept of higher education, the result is two-fold: Certainly, it cultivates a generation of intellectually-minded individuals who appreciate art, culture and music, but it also breeds a generation that will find it harder to cope when they are unable to put their education to work — say, when an economy collapses in on itself due to greed and predatory lending practices. What we have now is a new class of citizen. This class has been shaped and molded to become the new bourgeois, but has found limited employment opportunities within this social class, and instead, works in traditionally lower class, proletariat occupations. The result is the creation of the poorgeoisie. And the poorgeois are just as hard-working, motivated and intellectually minded as they ever were — but now, many of us are also more stressed and anxiety-ridden...
by Ian Rygiel | Mar 28, 2014 | Ian's Blog
As The Great Recession turns into The Slow Recovery, I have noticed an increasing number of articles written about the psychological effects of long-term unemployment (if you’re still reading after that opener, I applaud your fortitude). While I always find the statistics sobering, as someone who has had their life deeply affected by the recession, I often find myself disagreeing with how those stats are applied to the inner thoughts of the working class. This article in particular (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26669971 ), written by Debbie Siegelbaum, deals with the alarming fact that companies have begun discriminating against the long-termed unemployed. I’ve lived through this myself, and I can attest that there is no hurry to grant interviews to folks who have been out of work for months at a time. As Siegelbaum points out, in 1950, the average length of unemployment was just 11.8 weeks; in 2014 it is 37.1 weeks. My experience with this phenomenon occurred as my first real job as an educator in a public high school ended. When the recession hit, I was let go along with a sizable portion of my coworkers. Despite my teaching certification, which I received through an MA program, I found the prospects of getting an interview growing dim. After sending out countless job applications, and receiving only one interview in over a year, I began to settle for part-time positions; not limited to the field of education mind you. For a while I worked as a day laborer, scraping tile and hauling all manner of things from refuse to cement and eventually found a part-time gig loading trucks on an overnight...
by Ian Rygiel | Mar 23, 2014 | Ian's Blog, The Poorgeoisie
For as long as I can remember, the American Dream was tangible: Get an education, work hard, and prosper. It was simple. It was straightforward. It was fair. It was American. And in my experience, it’s all we 20, and now 30, -somethings wanted. Yet, here I am, and very likely, here you are. We’re killing ourselves in dead-end jobs. We work in warehouses, in the back of trucks, and behind grills. We wait tables, we pour coffee, and we live paycheck to paycheck with bachelor and masters degrees that we earned by placing ourselves in crippling debt. We are a generation of highly capable and motivated individuals. We are highly educated. We appreciate high culture, art, and music, yet our paychecks barely leave our encouraged champagne tastes within our beer budgets. It should come to no one’s surprise then, that we are a highly transient and restless generation. We are a generation yearning for the challenges we were trained to face. We want to work, and we want a fair wage for that work, yet both have been denied to us. We are the lost and forgotten. We are the discarded. We are the poorgeoisie....
