Review: What should I do if Reverend Billy is in my store? by Bill Talen
If you are at all familiar with anti-consumerist movements (e.g. Buy Nothing Day, No More Sweatshops!, the Clean Clothes Campaign), you may already know the Reverend Billy (nee Bill Talen), leader of the Church of Stop Shopping. With his white jacket, $5 collar, and Elvisy-closer-to-god hair, the good Reverend and his church preach out against consumerism, gentrification via chain stores, commercialism, senseless wars, and the homogenization of our lives. His group performs original, creative street (and often in-store) theater, 100% non-destructive, designed to get people thinking: What third-world child produced this piece of Disney-branded crap? Should we really pay extra for the so-called culture that is foisted by Starbucks when all we really want is a cup of coffee? Do we need so much crap, period?

Now out in paperback, What should I do if Reverend Billy is in my store? (The New Press) -- the book’s title comes from a secret memo circulated to Starbucks managers in 2000 when RB was planning his “Rage Against the Caffeine” tour of all the locations in Manhattan -- gives readers an overview of the birth of the Church of Stop Shopping, and accounts of some of his performances.

Reverend Billy’s origin story actually does begin in a church. Bill Talen was the live-in house manager for St. Clement’s Church / American Place Theater, located deep in Hell’s Kitchen. Inspiration hit as he watched Times Square – and the rest of NYC – fall prey to gentrification and a Starbucks on every other corner. In the mid-90s, he got himself a collar, a portable pulpit and started preaching his anti-consumerist gospel in Times Square, alongside the few other remaining street preachers who hadn’t been cleaned out by Hiz Honor Rudy G. Slowly he branched out into guerilla in-store performances, and the creation of the Church of Stop Shopping, complete with full gospel choir.

What should I do…? includes stories of “The Cell Phone Opera” performed in the Times Square Disney Store, where members of the Church pretended to shop while on their cell phones, sharing anti-Disney messages with the “people” at the other end. (“I’m not such a political person, Aunt Martha, but if you don’t want sweatshops, then don’t rain that kind of indentured slavery down on little Audrey’s head!”) In an attempt to get them out of the store, employees threatened: “If you are not shopping, I can have you arrested.” (If that sentence doesn’t disturb you, then just stop reading right now and go out and buy some more crap, okay? You’re obviously too far gone to be helped.) A Starbucks performance is also included, and the story of the campaign to save the Edgar Allen Poe house from destruction by New York University. It’s amazing to read an account of that night; I can only imagine what it was like to be in the middle of it all, chanting “Nevermore.”

This is not a “how-to” book for staging your own anti-consumerist protests. For that, please see the often-updated Church of Stop Shopping site (including scripts for Starbucks actions), or check out Recipes for Disaster by the Crimethinc Collective. However, What should I do if Reverend Billy is in my store? is a passionate treatise from the Reverend Billy – if it doesn’t move you to action (remember, Buy Nothing Day is the day after Thanksgiving), it will hopefully at least make you stop and consider your purchases of worthless consumer crap (really, what purpose does a three foot stuffed Mickey Mouse serve?) and maybe just put your wallet away.

What should I do if Reverend Billy is in my store? (The New Press)
- posted by Synd-e @ 7:43 PM