Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

by Chuck Klosterman

1:43 P.M.: What do you feed a hungry goth? Apparently, Monte Cristo sandwiches from a restaurant called the Blue Bayou in New Orleans Square. A party of five goths waits for a table in the Blue Bayou’s lobby, and I mention that Disney’s mainstream parkgoers appear oddly unalarmed by the number of people bumping around in capes and hooded death robes. However, these goths feel differently about the level of tolerance. “I was just in one of the stores,” says twenty-eight-year-old chemist Jennifer Nogle, “and all the normals were asking the staff questions like ‘What’s with these people? Are they part of some weird religion?’ Get real.” Nogle’s reference to “normals”—goth slang for nongoths—raises an interesting point: people are constantly asking goth kids what makes someone goth. However, an equally valid question is: What makes someone a normal? “They are not us,” Nogle says with focused conviction. “They wear polo shirts.”