X factor afterthought

Gordinier was driving through Pasadena after lunch, blasting Nick Cave and the Replacements on the stereo of his rental car, pointing out a stretch around Raymond Avenue that was once "the slacker wonderland of all time," the alley where he used to hang at the Espresso Bar, the spots where he hunted through racks of thrift store clothes, the shops where he scored great obscure used books.

But don't look now: "It's a . . . Hooters!?" It's like he's just found a rat while cleaning his kitchen. "That's embarrassing! I'm ashamed -- I'm horrified! That's when you know a real soul death has crept in . . . This is what the Gen-Y people grow up with -- an epidemic of chains."

Gordinier's thesis, such as it is, is that for much of the late '80s and most of the '90s, the environment -- especially bohemian quarters in cities and college towns -- helped shape a generation, one that evolved into what he calls "our reticent, dark-horse demographic," not unlike the cute but "deep" wallflower Molly Ringwald played on "Sixteen Candles."

That environment could exert a lot of force.

"I grew up among Republicans," Gordinier said of his childhood in the moneyed suburban haven of San Marino.

"But people like the Sex Pistols blasted my brain in new directions. Going to used bookstores, going to used record stores, going to coffee shops -- it's a cliche, but it's true -- it introduced me to different ways of thinking, different ways of writing. I'm not kidding, I probably would have been a suicidal corporate lawyer by now if I hadn't been exposed to that stuff."

It didn't matter that, like a lot of Xer rituals, the coffee-shop bohemianism he experienced was already "vintage," inherited from the Beats and lived through a thin layer of self-consciousness. "In its raw form, counterculture is something that helps open you up -- helps you see things you might not have grown up with."

But what happens when you grow up with nothing but malls and franchises? "It's a completely different mind-set," he said. "There are kids growing up now who've never known anything besides chain stores."

According to Neil Howe, a demographer and historian, generations typically define themselves against the one that came before, "trying to solve the problems of the previous generation." As for Gen-X, he has called it "the most under-parented generation in history."

So it's no coincidence that each generation looks misguided to members of another.