memyselfandhim

A Small Nod To Globalization Not Being As Bad As I Often Tend To Think It Is

I just got back a couple weeks ago from lecturing about FDS at the Society for Philosophy and Technology’s biennial conference (aka SPT2011) at the University of North Texas. While there, I met up with my pal Yoni, a philosophy grad student from Belgium. Out for beers one night in Denton (good college town btw!) somehow it came up that both of us are huge Neil Diamond fans, and Yoni was in fact going to see him perform the following week. After a few poorly (but enthusiastically) sung renditions of his classics we hit upon Sweet Caroline. When I got to the fan response “so good! so good! so good!” part, though, Yoni was silent and looked at me like I was crazy. To my surprise, apparently the “so good” chant is only done in America (or at least not sung in Belgium).

The first time I heard the sing-along chant was 1990. I was a sophomore in high school and visited my sister in college, where, at a party all the students shouted out “So Good!” with a glee only drunken 19-year-olds can muster. Ever since then I can’t hear the song without also, (if not singing “so good” myself, then certainly) hearing it in my head.

Thinking more about the chant, and its absence outside the states, I did some quick searching online and found that Sweet Caroline - and the “so good” chant - is a bit of a phenomenon at US sporting events, especially at Boston Red Socks games, where, according to wikipedia, it’s been played in the 8th inning during every game since 2002. The same entry lists a bunch of other teams, both college and professional, of football, hockey, and baseball that also apparently play Sweet Caroline as a tradition. Because I don’t follow sports (except for the NY Giants), I had no idea of the stadium phenomenon of Sweet Caroline. Alas, sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own country.

A particularly solid example of the “so good so good so good” chant, 40,000 people strong, complete with terrific stadium echo, is the above clip from Fenway Park, home of the Red Socks.

All this, albeit tangentially, reminds me of my friend Brian Gresko’s recent piece on going to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that used to be cutting edge, and now is as edgy as a butter knife. This change, in part, has to do with the standard progression of “transitioning” neighborhoods: artists first, then hipsters follow the artists, then the bankers and lawyers follow the hipsters, then the families move in and the priced-out artists move elsewhere (rinse, repeat). Brian wondered if NYC has now fully become lame, Disneyfied. To a degree he’s right, the globalization of brands, of chain stores taking over ever-increasing amounts of real estate from mom n pop shops, of people in France wearing the same clothes, listening to the same music, watching the same movies, as people in New York, Sau Paulo, and Tokyo, has indeed affected New York, but it’s a global phenomenon. As New York goes, so goes most of the world - or visa versa. An ironic counterpoint to this phenomenon worth mentioning, however, is that in the past few years there has been an explosion of Etsy-type artisanal shops and services in Brooklyn, from handmade pickles to high-end made-to-order furniture by reclaimed-wood-only carpenters.

My Neil Diamond story, though, is sort of my ideal kind of globalization: it involves the unifying aspects where people around the world can share in the same thing - where a guy from New York can have a moment of joyful singing camaraderie with a guy from Belgium while in a bar in Texas - yet it’s not so overwhelming as to eliminate the joy of little geographic/cultural differences like the America-only “so good” chant.

Funny post script: Yoni reported that when the “so good” sing along section of Sweet Caroline arrived during the show, Neil gestured to the audience but no one sang it, that is except for Yoni and his girlfriend. I’d like to think that perhaps they were sitting close enough for Neil to hear them.