It doesn't seem to me that the profile of chess with the general population has improved at all in the last few years. What does make the news -- Bobby Fischer in prison, FIDE incompetence, a muddled World Championship situation, Kasparov's retirement -- doesn't necessarily show the game in its most positive light. Nonetheless, the guy from This Place is Dead Anyway believes that chess is going to be one of the next big trends:
...chess is soon to be the newest "Manhattan trend."
...chess never really went away, what with those junkies in Washington Square Park playing their speed games, and the Star Trek geeks sitting in the chess shops on Thompson St. all day gambling the money they earned working overtime for the high school "A.V. club." We all know, however, that chess has never really been considered much of a "hip" pastime. As such, it's only really thrived behind closed doors, in dark, dingy rooms that smell like stale cheese. But the world around us has really changed in recent years, as have our sensibilities. Intellectual activities are no longer shunned as they once were. And we don't mind the smell of stale cheese like we used to. Chess, the ultimate intellectual pastime..., is thus bound to make a comeback.
....You'll see, chess is surely gonna come back "in style." .... Soon, "underground" chess clubs will start to pop up all over the place. Who knows--maybe they're already here.
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