Below is the article - it's a rough draft, but you get the idea.
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ANYWHERE BUT HERE:
Why New York is Lame
(1,922)
While the Big Apple remains the ultimate ‘destination’ city for many folks across the country, the myth of New York’s cultural preeminence is a dangerous one that has endured for ages. Truth is, over the past forty years, New York City has gradually become a vapid playground for the conservative and the affluent, and remains so. Everything that once made New York City beautiful and unique is long gone.
I. Culture and the Obscene Lack Thereof, or, “COST and REVS – The Bell Tolls for Thee”
Though research shows that the cracks in New York City’s artist-friendly veneer began to show as early as the 1960s, the first time I was personally affected by the decline of culture in New York City was with the disappearance of graffiti. As late as 1993, Digable Planets rapped “New York is a museum with its posters and graffiti,” and fuck if it wasn’t. My friends and I would cut class and use our school-issued bus passes to travel from Staten Island to Manhattan, armed with cameras, to take pictures of our favorite graffiti pieces, like the ones we saw in our favorite book, Spraycan Art.
Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s “Broken Window” theory – that unaddressed disorder invites bigger and more violent crimes – was the basis for the July 11, 1995 Mayoral Executive Order no.24, formally establishing an Anti-Graffiti Task Force. The trains were coated with fluorinated polyurethane, a paint-repelling chemical that caused paint to run right off of its surface. Since this fateful day, the trains are no cleaner than they were in the 70’s, but now possess all the personality of a rain puddle, resembling giant squealing antique spoons.
Meanwhile, quality-of-life programmed Cyborgs in police uniforms were on the prowl. The newspapers, naturally, did their part – I’ll never forget the fake contest the Staten Island Advance ran for graffiti writers to showcase their work on paper, with the promise of $500 for the best contribution, only to have the local police collect the real names of taggers alongside the work they sent in. I remember my astonished mother complaining to the manager of a drug store after I was refused the sale of a laundry marker (which I needed for a school project).
Almost overnight, New York became less a museum than a police state.
Also, during Giuliani’s regime, most of the homeless seemed to disappear, to the delight of all the good white people commuting to the city from Westchester to take their lucrative posts embezzling money and foreclosing on farms. And it wasn’t just the homeless that disappeared, but all kinds of riff-raff – street musicians and squatters, panhandlers and preachers – all gone.
But where did they go?
II. Gentrification, or, “Usurp, We Suffer”
Perhaps ironically, whenever enough artists populate an urban area, wealthy dilettantes are drawn to the new place to dip their toes into some weird sin, resulting in higher rents for the very people who made these places attractive in the first place. The artists are then unable to make the inflated rent, and have to go elsewhere, but the restaurants and boutiques imported by the wealthy interlopers remain.
The term gentrification came into use in the early 1960s, when rich folks began moving to low income areas in New York City to make them more ‘livable” (a relative term if ever there was one). Around this time in the West Village, rental buildings were converted into co-ops, driving out longtime residents to make room for these self-appointed fixer-uppers.
Josh Pais’s excellent film 7th Street examines this type of gentrification perfectly, casting a modern light on Bohemia driven to decimation by something as shape-shifting as national economics. Is it any wonder those vandalism-inclined among us take to culture jamming and adbusting?
Today, New York City, once a bustling marketplace of ideas and idealism, is a bastion of capitalism and tourist fraud. A Kmart is perhaps the most visible thing in the Village, framed by two Starbucks. Times Square is an Orwellian, seizure-inducing scene creepily mirroring the cartoonish excesses of modern Tokyo. Huge screens project images of soft drink giants, while flickering artificial lights beam down from overhead all through the night, resulting in something of an aurora borealis played on a concrete stage all year fucking round.
A recent article in Time Out New York estimated the average rent for one bedroom apartment below 96th street in Manhattan (including Brooklyn) between $1,200 and $4,000 a month. So, next time you’re on St. Mark’s Place and an out of work actor serving you food at some shithole cafe tries to tell you that he’s paying his own way without the assistance of mommy and daddy, forget to leave a tip.
III. Goods and Services, Truths and Lies, or, “You’ve Been Played”
Whenever The Blood Group travels out of New York, Lady Jessica, Jarvis and I are always on the hunt for four things: good Mexican food, good record stores, good book stores, and good thrift stores. And whenever we inquire of the locals where to find such places, they almost always have a list, but they always end with “it’s probably nothing compared to what you have in New York,” or “You’ll probably be disappointed, coming from New York.” Let me attest that I’ve been all over the country, and I’ve found the following to be true:
1) Despite what you have heard, pizza, bagels and other food are not much different outside of New York. As a matter of fact, the best Mexican food we’ve had was in San Diego and the best pizza was in Atlanta.
2) Thrift stores and record stores are usually better the further you go from NYC. This seems obvious, as everything cool / collectible in NYC, whether it’s a vintage Dio shirt or a really rare Van der Graaf Generator single, has long been captured by the hipster elite.
3) Book stores are ALWAYS better outside of NYC. When on tour, we always spend a good deal of time in book stores, and we’ve found that every metropolis has book stores as good as or better than the ones found in New York.
4) New York’s lineage of hip bands is criminally exaggerated. The last great influential band to come from NYC was Sonic Youth, whose first album appeared over 20 years ago. Modern day New York has less to do with Debbie Harry and Jim Carroll than it does John Zorn and his wanky downtown buddies. This realization is enough to make you question everything Greil Marcus ever taught you. Even wastoid king Johnny Thunders knew you can’t put your arms around a memory. Remember, just because Leonard Cohen once got a blowjob here doesn’t make it the rock and roll hall of fame.
IV. Punk Rock, Hardcore and Beyond, or, “You Owe Us Nothing”
Almost every major U.S city had its share of important punk and hardcore bands, and it’s clear, thanks to the luxury of compulsively-documented hindsight, that certain axioms exist. For example, DC punkers were political. Detroit punk bands loved the drugs. In LA, they loved to skate. New York’s legacy, however, is one of xenophobia and violence. While Bad Brains were rocking for light and Necros were hipping the suburban kids to the evils police brutality, the Cro Mags were mugging people and Agnostic Front were shouting about making minorities clean the sewers.
Recently, pop star Shakira made a special trip to the legendary CBGBs to procure a T-shirt bearing the famous club’s logo. I find this especially interesting in the same way I find it interesting that The Strokes and Justin Timberlake attend the same parties. It’s an old and tired song and I won’t insult your intelligence by singing it here, but when the mainstream swallows something up so wholly and immaculately (see the Pillsbury Doughboy placing the last nail in the coffin of breakdancing circa 1986), what’s left for the rest of us?
Last time I was at CBGBs, I swore I’d never return. I was dragged to a New York Dolls tribute show (to this day, the worst show I have ever attended). It was like being at the Renaissance Fair but with far worse music. Feathered hair and bullet belts were the uniform of choice, while aging troglodytes in leather jackets traded their sad old stories, often from the stage, prompting more than one joke from my immediate crew that ended with the punchline “I see dead people.”
In a way, it’s a microcosm of the rearview-gazing climate of the industry. Nowadays, when someone tells me about a band they like from New York City, more often than not they say something like “They’re awesome. They sound JUST LIKE Gang of Four!” and I suddenly feel violent. But the meds are doing wonders these days and so now I just talk shit on message boards and patiently await James Chance’s inevitable East Village killing spree.
V. Inhabitants, or, “Flux of Pink Imbeciles”
Unfortunately, the only truism generated by Hollywood about New York City is the rudeness of its citizens, and there has been little exaggeration, I’m afraid. Soundmen and salespeople, police and panhandlers - generally, all assholes. Whether you’re a high fashion model or a squatter peddling books on the street, it seems that having a chip on one’s shoulder is a prerequisite for living in the Big Apple.
Then there are the tourists, whose slow and aimless strolls keep you from catching trains. There are death-defying bike messengers who strike fear in the hearts of even the most intrepid pedestrian. Thousand of shoppers clustered on narrow city streets, all carrying umbrellas, each umbrella made up of 16 sharp metal points, poised at eye level. And despite Interpol’s typically oblique claim, the subways are nothing like a porno – unless your idea of a porno involves the orgasmic chills that ripple through a body after having a briefcase shoved into one’s knee, feeling the breath of strangers on the back of one’s neck, or being harangued by some sort of crazed and crippled Zionist.
VI. Conclusion, or, “The Truth Is a Fucking Lie”
Before you think me a white-knuckled iconoclast, there are some things I like about NYC: Gray’s Papaya and its convenient proximity to Fat Beats; Sammy’s Noodle Shop; Gimme Gimme Records; Sabir Mateen, Tom Bruno, Daniel Carter and Matt Heyner playing in and around Penn Station; most of the folks who work at Mondo Kim’s on St. Mark’s Place; the best drugs money can buy. But it’s not enough.
New York is no better than any burgeoning metropolis, and in many ways, it is far worse. Philadelphia, Boston, Athens, DC, San Diego, and Portland, from the congeniality of citizens to the cleanliness of the streets, are all much finer (and relatively cheaper) places to hang one’s mesh cap. Truth is, this grass is rarely greener, unless you’re a masochist who enjoys squandering daddy’s money on vastly overpriced apartments that look and smell like the kind of places the Misfits used to sing about.
Those who romanticize New York have never driven here. Or tried to park here. Or tried Christmas shopping, getting a job, or having a drink without having to take out a second mortgage here. When Joey Ramone sang “New York City really has it all,” he wasn’t talking about a Starbucks on every corner.
Jacks and Dianes of the world – set your trajectories elsewhere. You are being lied to.
― roger adultery (roger adultery), Thursday, 26 February 2004 04:50 (twenty-two years ago)