ABSTRACT
A group of beatniks in Venice, California, held a protest meeting in retaliation to one by local property owners and developers seeking ways of throwing them out on grounds that they were depressing real estate values. The scene the beats chose for their meeting was an old bingo parlor, The Gas House. Expressing distaste for persons conformist enough to have real estate interests, they taped, to jazz accompaniment, a poem on the falsity of current business values, called "Funky Blues for All Squares, Creeps and Cornballs." This illustrates the place of one colorful alienated group within American society, and the language of mutual abuse between inhabitants of the "square world" and those who feel "out." The beats are not alone in their contempt for the "Square John" and the "square world." A comparison with a religious sect such as Jehovah's Witnesses will be useful. The obverse of deviant heroes is the rejection of square models.
