{"id":1492,"date":"2008-08-01T14:19:15","date_gmt":"2008-08-01T14:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1492"},"modified":"2008-08-01T14:19:15","modified_gmt":"2008-08-01T14:19:15","slug":"the_scouring_of_the_shire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2008\/08\/01\/the_scouring_of_the_shire\/","title":{"rendered":"The Scouring of the Shire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple years ago, I <a title=\"Random Linkage in the Face of the Storm\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/2006\/11\/random_linkage_in_the_face_of\/\">took note<\/a> of a new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bendshire.com\/\">housing development<\/a> in Bend, Oregon, that was to be modeled after the bucolic Shire of Tolkien&#8217;s (and Peter Jackson&#8217;s) <i>Lord of the Rings<\/i>. I recall being both intrigued by and dubious of the project, writing at the time that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;it would be the ultimate in geek bragging rights, I suppose. &#8220;Hey, look, I live in a hobbit hole!&#8221; But ultimately, it just seems a little too contrived to be desirable&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Turns out everybody else agreed with me. Today, I read the bank is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bendbulletin.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20080731\/BIZ0102\/807310374\/1001\/NEWS01&amp;nav_category\">foreclosing on The Shire<\/a>. Only two homes (of a planned 31) have been finished, and only one of those has actually sold. The developer behind the project, Ron Meyers, is quoted as saying, &#8220;Some people were turned off by living in &#8216;Disneyland.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Um&#8230; <i>yeah<\/i>. You didn&#8217;t think of that before you took out massive loans and broke ground? And you didn&#8217;t consider that the sorts of people who might <i>like<\/i> to live in a Disney-style re-creation of a fictional place probably don&#8217;t have the income to buy million-dollar homes? Seems to me that folks who have that kind of scratch are usually interested in something a little less&#8230; gimmicky.<\/p>\n<p>Somebody didn&#8217;t do their market research, it seems&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple years ago, I took note of a new housing development in Bend, Oregon, that was to be modeled after the bucolic Shire of Tolkien&#8217;s (and Peter Jackson&#8217;s) Lord of the Rings. I recall being both intrigued by and dubious of the project, writing at the time that: &#8230;it would be the ultimate in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-and-architecture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}