Poverty and Pumpkinscaping

The growing divide between porch elites and penny-pinchers means populist fire is inevitable

The decline of the middle class and rise of a two tier America is a major factor in our social anxieties. The huge resonance of the article about Walt Disney World changing to focus on high end customers is an example of this.

A pair of recent articles in the Wall Street Journal illustrate the two different Americas our citizens increasingly inhabit.

The first is on the rise of “pumpkinscaping,” or people paying big money to have someone build an elaborate pumpkin display at their houses in the fall.

At homes across the country, orange jack o’lanterns, greenish-gray Jarrahdales and pink porcelain dolls cascade down the stairs, sometimes mixed with cornstalks, vibrantly colored mums or spooky Halloween decorations.

These festive stoop setups are the product of a new seasonal micro-economy: pumpkin entrepreneurs and porch stylists. Customers are paying them hundreds—sometimes thousands—of dollars to festoon their homes with gourds of every shape and size…In a country that is near-devotional about pumpkin spice lattes, 12-foot skeletons and football season, pumpkin stylists are in high demand.

…

Torres made her first pumpkin display at home in 2013, inspired by the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden’s Pumpkin Village, which features over 100,000 pumpkins, gourds and squash spread over 66 acres. “I was like, ‘Honey, I’m going to get 30 orange pumpkins today and decorate our front yard,’” said Torres. “My design was quite heinous.” After she added some mini pumpkins, her neighborhood association awarded her yard of the month, kicking off her own yearly tradition. “I was self-proclaimed crazy for how much I was spending,” she said.

There are a number of articles about this. If you aren’t a subscriber to the Journal, you might be interested in this free piece from Slate/Yahoo.

But money is no barrier to the porch elite. As fall family photo sessions have become social media mainstays, some households have opted to invest the equivalent of a pair of Prada loafers in a perishable two-month display that a squirrel colony could devour at any moment.

I started hearing about this a couple of years ago, reading articles about people who have pumpkin styling businesses that earn them hundreds of thousands per year for only about two months work. Providing services to affluent households is extremely lucrative.

On the other side of the divide, the Journal also ran a piece about the lengths many Americans are willing to go to make every penny count.

Saddled with ever-ballooning grocery bills, Julie Simpson decided to take matters into her own hands. She started to dilute.