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David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here

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Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here

#71

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

rayiner wrote: post #65
jlgreco wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicago and LA perhaps, but there is no way in hell Philadelphia is in the same basket as Detroit. Philadelphia is improving (slowly), Detroit is rapidly decaying. I'm not accusing Philadelphia of being clean or safe, I am asserting that it is ( slowly ) improving. I think you are delusional about just how bad crime in Philadelphia use to be. (And to be clear, there are extremely livable portions of that city, but th…

My wife and I just walked from 10th street to 38th street along mostly Walnut/Chestnut/Market yesterday. It's great except for the portion of Market after 37th street. It's a continuous strip of gentrification now, which wasn't the case 10 years ago. That said, I think gentrification is happening faster in Chicago. I haven't seen a construction crane yet in months of living here (I rarely leave Center City/University…

Both Chicago and Philadelphia will go bankrupt and all bets are off. They are heavily corrupt municipalities. The pension obligations will not be met. New condos here and there don't really enter into it.

Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here

#72

Post by busterarm »

Pxtl wrote: post #63
busterarm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Hamilton, despite the industrial smells. Heh. I spent quite a lot of time around there and Burlington and I much prefer that side of the GTA to the eastern side. The GO train commute isn't that bad...90 minutes at the most and it's pretty direct.

It's a 45 minute drive from Hamilton to Toronto if the traffic is perfect (like 3am). Over an hour on a train that only runs to the Hunter St terminal a couple of times per day is absurd. Most of the time the train ends at Aldershot instead of Hamilton anyways, a suburb of Burlington that only exists to let the GO Transit flip Hamiltonians the bird. The combined traffic and transit woes of the GTA are thoroughly ridi…

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I've always felt like Burlington's wealth came from being a suburb of Hamilton rather than of being a suburb of Toronto.

All of the super wealthy trust fund kids I knew there had parents who ran companies in Hamilton and NOT in T.O.

Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here

#73

Post by pessimizer »

nostromo wrote: post #36

I think New York should welcome the uber-rich with open arms. NY's history is all about 1%ers, like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller and Bloomberg. But what is deleterious to the feel of the city, in my view, is the Dubai-ization of the real-estate market. Entire buildings are empty. Apparently the global elite buy and sell New York real-estate like they do oil futures: not to use but as an investment. These folks aren't c…

>NY's history is all about 1%ers, like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller and Bloomberg.

Not New York's creative history, which is largely based in gradual urban decay and eventually the default. Affordable housing for artists near affordable venues for art are what creates art (if that's not too obvious.)

Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here

#74

Post by pessimizer »

jlgreco wrote: post #45
MrZongle2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Causing a problem to spread to more areas so the original area's problem isn't as bad relatively isn't a solution. That's madness.

Being a desirable place to live isn't a "problem" it is a feature. Being the only desirable place to live might be problematic to some people who want to live in that desirable place cheaply, but the solution to that is not to tear down the desirable place to the same level as other cities, "Harrison Bergeron" style.

Being a desirable place to live for the boring rich, driving up the prices so that the interesting poor all leave, is a problem for both the rich and the poor.

Taking away money isn't the plot of Harrison Bergeron, taking away ability was. Ability is spread throughout the population, not just (or even mostly) the rich part. The rich tend to pay people with ability, rather than to be people with ability (other than the ability to figure out who to pay.)

Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here

#75

Post by gaius »

saidajigumi wrote: post #46
gaius wrote: post #30

Has there ever been a time without massive inequality in NYC? It's been a standard theme in TV and films for as long as I can remember that Manhattan is stunning wealth right next to Harlem's grinding poverty. Look at Eddie Murphy films from the 80s, Coming To America, Trading Places, etc. What's different now?

There's a vast difference between an NYC that has massive inequality and the NYC that's being created today -- one where gentrification that squeezes out not just "crime" but anyone below an upper class income status. That's the trend and future that Byrne describes: > If we look at the city as it is now, then we would have to say that it looks a lot like the divided city that presumptive mayor Bill de Blasio has bee…

Right, but gentrification is nothing new. Look at London. All the creatives (how I hate that term, as if everyone else isn't, but I digress) clustered around Old Street because it was cheap. They were edged out by hipsters with trust funds, like vampires sucking out the cultural blood. Earlier Islington was where the creatives lived, but they weren't edged out, they gentrified the place themselves, getting jobs in "the meeja"! But London is still a vibrant city. Now all the low-budget art is happening in formerly rough area Dalston.

Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here

#76

Post by rwhitman »

Having lived in both NYC and Los Angeles for extended periods of time, NYC for the last 3 years and LA for the previous 7, I was surprised by how little of the underground creative DIY energy is left here. When I first moved to Brooklyn 2 years ago I was invited to some loft parties and underground art events, but compared to LA they felt "manufactured" - as if trying to nostalgically reproduce something that was lost - rather than the unabashed fuck all mentality of the downtown LA underground art scene. Which is bizarre, because everything I had known to date had told me it was supposed to be the other way around.

From my perspective NYC has already begun its final transformation into total yuppie assimilation - it takes a good half hour subway ride from Manhattan before you can run into any genuine 'starving artists' any more. Even places like Bed-Stuy are now loaded with wine bars and upscale restaurants. A loft space even deep into Queens is a coveted piece of real estate.

There's really not much compelling left for someone who spends their nights being creative while squeaking by day on a coffee shop barista salary. While there are ample opportunities there isn't much of a way to invest the time into making them work - anyone squeaking by can't afford to live here without spending their evenings and creative time working a second job, and the living space that they have to work in is in many cases literally a creativity-stifling closet with no windows. Thats why so many people in this situation are migrating to rural suburbs or cities like Portland or Philadelphia where the low cost of living allows you to have both affordable workspace and some free time for art.

There really isn't a way to undo this situation unless the cost of real estate in NYC drops precipitously, and I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here

#77

Post by pessimizer »

moogleii wrote: post #19
rayiner wrote: post #7

I have a book of jokes from the 1970's. One of the jokes is "if it weren't for the muggings, there would be no human contact in New York." I remember reading it recently and finding it so anachronistic. The idea of getting mugged in Manhattan or Queens or Brooklyn seems so alien to me today (though I remember as a visitor in the early 1990's the same areas seemed quite post-apocalyptic). My point is... take off the r…

Quote from the article: "I don't romanticize the bad old days. I find the drop in crime over the last couple of decades refreshing. Manhattan and Brooklyn, those vibrant playgrounds, are way less scary than they were when I moved here. I have no illusions that there was a connection between that city on its knees and a flourishing of creativity; I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's…

>I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's bullshit.

First of all, it's not. Second of all, "crime, danger and poverty" are not the opposite of high rents. Low rents are. Low rents make for good art. High rents make for good stockbrokers and bankers.

Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here

#78

Post by jamesbritt »

pessimizer wrote: post #73
nostromo wrote: post #36

I think New York should welcome the uber-rich with open arms. NY's history is all about 1%ers, like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller and Bloomberg. But what is deleterious to the feel of the city, in my view, is the Dubai-ization of the real-estate market. Entire buildings are empty. Apparently the global elite buy and sell New York real-estate like they do oil futures: not to use but as an investment. These folks aren't c…

>NY's history is all about 1%ers, like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller and Bloomberg. Not New York's creative history, which is largely based in gradual urban decay and eventually the default. Affordable housing for artists near affordable venues for art are what creates art (if that's not too obvious.)

which is largely based in gradual urban decay and eventually the default.

Indeed. NYC in the '70s and '80s was a dangerously magical (and magically dangerous) place.

Some good resources:

VH1's (no, seriously) "NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1080761/)

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever (http://www.amazon.com/Love-Goes-Buildings-Fire-ebook/dp/B005...)

I'd be interested in anyone can recommend good books or movies about the NYC art scene of the late '70s or '80s. (I've seen Downtown 81; it's good, but not a documentary. It does capture the downtown NYC of that time, though.)

The whole loft scene was a result of squatting in empty industrial facilities, thanks to economic downturn.

Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here

#79

Post by jamesbritt »

pessimizer wrote: post #77
moogleii wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quote from the article: "I don't romanticize the bad old days. I find the drop in crime over the last couple of decades refreshing. Manhattan and Brooklyn, those vibrant playgrounds, are way less scary than they were when I moved here. I have no illusions that there was a connection between that city on its knees and a flourishing of creativity; I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's…

>I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's bullshit. First of all, it's not. Second of all, "crime, danger and poverty" are not the opposite of high rents. Low rents are. Low rents make for good art. High rents make for good stockbrokers and bankers.

It is a weird claim. Talking Heads, I believe, were squatting in the east village when they came to NYC. Many artists and musicians around that same time (mid '70s to mid '80s) did the same, in the East Village or over in the even more dangerous Alphabet City. (We're talking true post-apocalyptic decay and weirdness here.)

They could do this because no sane person would live there and pay rent if they could go elsewhere. Were it safe and clean there would have been considerable competition for living there, rents would go up, and the artists would be out.

Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here

#80

Post by qohen »

zwieback wrote: post #58

This is a good time for a plug of William Dean Howells' "A Hazard of New Fortunes", a 100+ year old book about the difficulties of starting a new creative endeavor in NY. It features a countryish financier who made his fortune in natural gas and lots of anecdotes about apartment hunting in NY of the 1890s.

Available for free download or reading online at Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4600

Or, if you prefer, here's the tl;dr version:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hazard_of_New_Fortunes

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