27. One of the Stranger 1970s Fads
The 1970s were chock full of strange fads, but few were stranger than the pet rock fad. There is a saying that if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door. But what if you are indifferent to mice and mousetraps, and instead have smooth rocks on your mind? Well, if you’re a creative hustler like advertising executive Gary Dahl, you create a smooth rock fad out of scratch. Then you sell millions of rocks that you picked up from a Mexican beach for next to nothing, and become a millionaire. It all began as Dahl knocked back a few drinks at a bar, as he listened to some of his friends moan and complain about the time and effort it took to care for their pets.
So he joked about having an idea for a perfect pet: a rock. Rocks don’t need to be fed, walked, groomed, or bathed. They don’t act up or make a mess. They don’t get sick and need expensive trips to the vet, and they don’t die. It was a half drunk joke at a bar, and for most people, that’s where it would have ended, forgotten by the time they settled their tab and staggered back home. But Gary Dahl was not most people, and the gears continued to turn in his head about pet rocks. Why not? The more he mulled it, the more feasible it seemed. Especially in the context of the moment, 1975 America, and where he lived, the San Francisco Bay Area, where stuff that seems whacky to rest of the world is often viewed as mainstream.