Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes
Moshe KasherAfter bottoming out, being institutionalized, & getting sober all by the tender age of fifteen, Moshe Kasher found himself asking: “What’s next?” Over the ensuing decades, he discovered the answer: a lot. There was his time as a boy-king of Alcoholics Anonymous, a kind of pubescent proselytizer for other teens getting & staying sober. He was a rave promoter turned DJ turned sober ecstasy dealer in San Francisco’s techno warehouse party scene of the 1990s. For fifteen years he worked as a psychedelic security guard at Burning Man, fishing hippies out of hidden chambers they’d constructed to try to sneak into the event. As a child of deaf parents, Kasher became deeply immersed in deaf culture & sign language interpretation, translating everything from end-of-life care to horny deaf clients’ attempts to hire sex workers. He reconnects & tries to make peace with his ultra-Hasidic Jewish upbringing after the death of his father before finally settling into the comedy scene where he now makes his living.
Each of these scenes gets a gonzo historiographical rundown before Kasher enters the narrative & tells the story of the lives he has spent careening from one to the next. A razor-sharp, gut-wrenchingly funny, & surprisingly moving tour of some of the most wildly distinct subcultures a person can experience, Subculture Vulture deftly weaves together memoir & propulsive cultural history. It’s a story of finding your people, over & over again, in different settings, & of knowing without a doubt that wherever you are is where you’re supposed to be.
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Moshe Kasher is a stand-up comedian, writer, & actor. He is the author of Kasher in the Rye. He has written for various TV shows & movies.