I know for a fact that a TON of rich kids from the upper west side were all city writers in the 80s. They were also in a bunch in bands at CB.
In regards to art......
Rich kids rebelling against their parents wealth > Rich kids taking full advantage of their parents wealth
The rich kids of the UWS I went to high school w/ didnt flaunt their money....and yes many did Graff and were in bands.
But these were homegrown kids from NYC not college transplants.
You could say a number of those artists and musicians are uncreative douchebags, and I wouldn't disagree, but I think we'd be saying the same thing about the majority of people in the NYC art scene of the 70s and 80s.
You would say the majority of the NYC art scene in the 70's were uncreative douchbags?
What form of measurement would u use?
The 70's is one of the most fertile times in NYC art and u got this era having the same number uncreative douchebags?
I dont see it.
The various hipster hoods of now didnt even exist in the 70's.
How many NYU students were moving to, staying, creating shops and boutiques on the Heroin infested LES in 1975 after graduation?
I think he's saying that there's always been bad art..
I still dont believe the amount of "bad art" and the amount of "posers" in 2013 NYC is the same as 1973.
Thats like the NBA in '73 vs the NBA in 2013. Money and expansion will have different numbers.
The sheer numbers of douchebags or rich kids is missing the point I think. Its what people are doing with their time and resources.
In my experience, and what seems to be Byrne's point, is that people who interested in upholding the city's budding plutocracy and addiction to mediocrity are crowding out those who are trying to do truly subversive, weird and challenging shit. The playing field is less level than ever so those with the resources will win.
It's weird to expect an underground when everything is online...and even then, who can keep up with it all? So there will always be something on the periphery.
Maybe underground has been replaced with a more accurate DIY. It is a given now, so much so that it doesn't even make sense to call anything that.
I think this is a good point, and is largely why I'm not seeing NYC as the canary in the coalmine or anything.
I think the internet and media saturation are effecting a great leveling in the availability and currents of culture. I think this leveling is traumatic but ultimately healthy, and I think any given city's ability to roll with this reality exists in inverse proportion to that city's romance with itself. People from small towns and obscure places that don't have these heavily formalized ideas of What They Are About seem generally less hung-up and more capable of taking all this now-available cultural stuff and all these hitherto-unavailable outlets and coming up with fresh and exciting shit. The hand-wringing always seems to come from people in capital-C cities who are invested in What They Are About to such an extent that even a perceived loss of exclusivity--or uniqueness or "grit" or whatever the fuck you want to call it--is legitimate cause for alarm. I read something just the other day bemoaning in apparent earnest the fact that none of the good Chicago house records come from Chicago anymore and oh my god what can it all mean?!
I'm not trying to say that the grievances of New Yorkers--of the few long-timers and of the many many many more-recently-minted--concerning rents and money and dumb whities and rich kids and closed delis and whatever else are unimportant; I'm just saying that better art comes from places where people worry less about that kind of shit, not more.
I don't mean this as snottily as it will sound, but for real: In 2013, I'm not sure less cool shit coming from New York City means anything more than less cool shit coming from New York City. The erosion of a big city's character in the post-internet age is a shitty story, but a common one. The good news is that it almost never ends in the death that is so often foretold.
So, I mean, my condolences and all, but you know, welcome to America, New York City. You'll do fine.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
james said:
So, I mean, my condolences and all, but you know, welcome to America, New York City. You'll do an organic cheeseburger donut taco.
I'd been meaning to suggest that this same shit is happening in other big, storied cities, too; but internet access isn't the issue as far as New York is concerned. Is anybody saying that?
As far as New York is concerned it can be boiled down to a some serious things (lack of affordable rent, an overzealous and racist security apparatus, both of which have really affected nightlife) and some things that are not so serious (nostalgia, resentment). The existence of the latter two doesn't render the former less important or urgent.
You could say a number of those artists and musicians are uncreative douchebags, and I wouldn't disagree, but I think we'd be saying the same thing about the majority of people in the NYC art scene of the 70s and 80s.
You would say the majority of the NYC art scene in the 70's were uncreative douchbags?
What form of measurement would u use?
The 70's is one of the most fertile times in NYC art and u got this era having the same number uncreative douchebags?
I dont see it.
The various hipster hoods of now didnt even exist in the 70's.
How many NYU students were moving to, staying, creating shops and boutiques on the Heroin infested LES in 1975 after graduation?
I just think people look back at that period with rose-tinted glasses, as if every artist of that time was a transgressive genius. For every Warhol you probably had dozens of hangers-on who were making shitty art and have long been forgotten, so we only remember the ones who made a lasting impression. And I also think a lot people at that time were looking at those artists as douchebags (or whatever the appropriate term is).
It's obvious the city has changed significantly since that time, to the point that it doesn't have a physical nexus of culture the way it did up until the 90s. But I also think the field of cultural production as a whole has gone through much more drastic changes, one of which being that physical proximity is no longer necessary for creative collaboration, for better or worse. Back in the 70s you needed a club like CBGBs and a neighborhood like Soho or the LES where people could feed off each other's work. Nowadays you got your Pitchforks and whatnot dictating tastes, and you can have people in Brooklyn, Michigan, and Sweden all making music that would be considered part of the same scene, or at least aesthetically similar. My impression is that the last thing to come out of NY recently that was even close to being considered a scene was those "freak folk" bands like Animal Collective and Devandra Banhart, but that wasn't restricted to NYC bands. I don't think people have the same desperate urge to move to a city like New York in order to get noticed, there are other ways you can do that today.
You could say a number of those artists and musicians are uncreative douchebags, and I wouldn't disagree, but I think we'd be saying the same thing about the majority of people in the NYC art scene of the 70s and 80s.
You would say the majority of the NYC art scene in the 70's were uncreative douchbags?
What form of measurement would u use?
The 70's is one of the most fertile times in NYC art and u got this era having the same number uncreative douchebags?
I dont see it.
The various hipster hoods of now didnt even exist in the 70's.
How many NYU students were moving to, staying, creating shops and boutiques on the Heroin infested LES in 1975 after graduation?
I just think people look back at that period with rose-tinted glasses, as if every artist of that time was a transgressive genius. For every Warhol you probably had dozens of hangers-on who were making shitty art and have long been forgotten, so we only remember the ones who made a lasting impression. And I also think a lot people at that time were looking at those artists as douchebags (or whatever the appropriate term is).
It's obvious the city has changed significantly since that time, to the point that it doesn't have a physical nexus of culture the way it did up until the 90s. But I also think the field of cultural production as a whole has gone through much more drastic changes, one of which being that physical proximity is no longer necessary for creative collaboration, for better or worse. Back in the 70s you needed a club like CBGBs and a neighborhood like Soho or the LES where people could feed off each other's work. Nowadays you got your Pitchforks and whatnot dictating tastes, and you can have people in Brooklyn, Michigan, and Sweden all making music that would be considered part of the same scene, or at least aesthetically similar. My impression is that the last thing to come out of NY recently that was even close to being considered a scene was those "freak folk" bands like Animal Collective and Devandra Banhart, but that wasn't restricted to NYC bands. I don't think people have the same desperate urge to move to a city like New York in order to get noticed, there are other ways you can do that today.
There were pelnty of assholes/dbags in the NYC scene in the 70's. I do think they were a different kind of dbag than we have today, more obnoxious and over the top than pretentious posers.
I'm admittedly an old fucker but I can't see how in 2013 you can create a significant musical or atristic 'scene" over the internet that has no physical home base or real life interactions.
Not long ago I was looking for a couple of players for my company softball team and one young dude volunteered....after our first practice it was apparent to all that he had minimal talent at best.......when asked where he had previously played he said "I've never played on a team but I'm real good at MLB on my Playstation".
Not long ago I was looking for a couple of players for my company softball team and one young dude volunteered....after our first practice it was apparent to all that he had minimal talent at best.......when asked where he had previously played he said "I've never played on a team but I'm real good at MLB on my Playstation".
You could say a number of those artists and musicians are uncreative douchebags, and I wouldn't disagree, but I think we'd be saying the same thing about the majority of people in the NYC art scene of the 70s and 80s.
You would say the majority of the NYC art scene in the 70's were uncreative douchbags?
What form of measurement would u use?
The 70's is one of the most fertile times in NYC art and u got this era having the same number uncreative douchebags?
I dont see it.
The various hipster hoods of now didnt even exist in the 70's.
How many NYU students were moving to, staying, creating shops and boutiques on the Heroin infested LES in 1975 after graduation?
I just think people look back at that period with rose-tinted glasses, as if every artist of that time was a transgressive genius. For every Warhol you probably had dozens of hangers-on who were making shitty art and have long been forgotten, so we only remember the ones who made a lasting impression. And I also think a lot people at that time were looking at those artists as douchebags (or whatever the appropriate term is).
It's obvious the city has changed significantly since that time, to the point that it doesn't have a physical nexus of culture the way it did up until the 90s. But I also think the field of cultural production as a whole has gone through much more drastic changes, one of which being that physical proximity is no longer necessary for creative collaboration, for better or worse. Back in the 70s you needed a club like CBGBs and a neighborhood like Soho or the LES where people could feed off each other's work. Nowadays you got your Pitchforks and whatnot dictating tastes, and you can have people in Brooklyn, Michigan, and Sweden all making music that would be considered part of the same scene, or at least aesthetically similar. My impression is that the last thing to come out of NY recently that was even close to being considered a scene was those "freak folk" bands like Animal Collective and Devandra Banhart, but that wasn't restricted to NYC bands. I don't think people have the same desperate urge to move to a city like New York in order to get noticed, there are other ways you can do that today.
I still dont think the number of people in 70's Soho and the uncreative douchbags have the same number/ratio as the larger population in 2013 along with access the internet.
There was hardly an art industry back then along w/ a bankrupt city.
If you think about the great creative scenes in NYC, they appear, flame out, and then a lull.
I'm sure Dorothy Parker wrote an essay about how everyone at the Algonquin these days is a privileged poser. The repartee is just not there any more.
Late 50s folk scene, late 60s Warhol warehouse, late 70s punk, early 80s hip hop.
Has there been a single important art/music trend since then that has exploded from NYC?
Who is the post 80s Dylan/Warhol/VU/Ramones/Kool Herc?
How many in that group are true New Yorkers?
I read a story 20, or was it 30 years ago about how off Broadway used to mean - off Broadway - a block or 2, then plays started coming in from Queens, or Brooklyn, and today (meaning when the article was written 20ya) it could mean St Paul or Seattle.
Some day soon there will be a new NYC scene, and a dynamic artist or 2 spearheading it. But until that time keep an eye on Kansas City and Winnipeg.
Not long ago I was looking for a couple of players for my company softball team and one young dude volunteered....after our first practice it was apparent to all that he had minimal talent at best.......when asked where he had previously played he said "I've never played on a team but I'm real good at MLB on my Playstation".
While funny, days are a changin' with respect to the jokes on kids wasting away on video games. Some of those kids are making big money playing games. The military actively recruit gamers and there is HUGE money being made. Blows my mind that GTA made a billion dollars in three days.
Kids nowadays are just as likely to idolize other kids playing video games than sports, music and movie/tv stars.
Not long ago I was looking for a couple of players for my company softball team and one young dude volunteered....after our first practice it was apparent to all that he had minimal talent at best.......when asked where he had previously played he said "I've never played on a team but I'm real good at MLB on my Playstation".
Not only is this completely fucking hilarious but it's also a great analogy. You've posted this a while back and I have since quoted this several times during various old men discussions about the ills of today's society.
You can't even go to a live show anymore without having your view obstructed by people's cellphones. If you can't poast it on Facebook or Twitter it didn't happen. Back in the olden times you felt like you were intruding if you would take out a photo or video camera in a club. Back at my old parties in NYC from '96-'00 I had a large sign saying "no cameras". The bouncers had instructions to seize any cameras, take out the film and smash it right away under their feet to kill any discussion before it could even start and we destroyed quite some rolls of film in those days. Of course all of these were tourists who needed evidence to show their friends how much fun they had in NYC... nowadays everybody acts like a tourist. Kids today have one or two drinks, snap their picture while they're acting like they're having fun and then they go home early so they won't be late for work like the soft and useless little shits that they are. Kids are the new parents.
If you think about the great creative scenes in NYC, they appear, flame out, and then a lull.
Late 50s folk scene, late 60s Warhol warehouse, late 70s punk, early 80s hip hop.
Has there been a single important art/music trend since then that has exploded from NYC?
Who is the post 80s Dylan/Warhol/VU/Ramones/Kool Herc?
How many in that group are true New Yorkers?
The last "scene" my old ass witnessed in NYC was Electoclash in the late 90's.
Certain kids had a style of dress that was different from other cats during that short time.
But that wasnt born by itself in NYC on top of being super derivative anyways.
Wasnt there a NYC Rock "movement" at the turn of the century? Band w/ The ____________ before the name?
And i doubt natives were the dominant participants by then.
Not long ago I was looking for a couple of players for my company softball team and one young dude volunteered....after our first practice it was apparent to all that he had minimal talent at best.......when asked where he had previously played he said "I've never played on a team but I'm real good at MLB on my Playstation".
Not only is this completely fucking hilarious but it's also a great analogy. You've posted this a while back and I have since quoted this several times during various old men discussions about the ills of today's society.
You can't even go to a live show anymore without having your view obstructed by people's cellphones. If you can't poast it on Facebook or Twitter it didn't happen. Back in the olden times you felt like you were intruding if you would take out a photo or video camera in a club. Back at my old parties in NYC from '96-'00 I had a large sign saying "no cameras". The bouncers had instructions to seize any cameras, take out the film and smash it right away under their feet to kill any discussion before it could even start and we destroyed quite some rolls of film in those days. Of course all of these were tourists who needed evidence to show their friends how much fun they had in NYC... nowadays everybody acts like a tourist. Kids today have one or two drinks, snap their picture while they're acting like they're having fun and then they go home early so they won't be late for work like the soft and useless little shits that they are. Kids are the new parents.
Frank....while what we are saying is 100% true, we are just two old men yelling at clouds.
To pour some more gasoline on. Just another reminder to me and my non-BK/MN people that we aren't immune to this shit either. Can't wait to see the condos with "artistic flavor."
Deal Reached For '5Pointz' Development In Queens (NY1 News)
While a shrine of the street art scene is still being knocked down, a deal is reached to bring some of its artistic flavor to the new buildings.
5Pointz, the group of Long Island City warehouses which served as a canvas for graffiti artists for years, will be demolished, according to the agreement, but City Councilman James Van Bramer says residential towers will provide 1,000 jobs and affordable housing, and preserve the area's artistic history.
"The new building will have graffiti and aerosol art on the facade, at the base of the building," van Bramer said. "That's a great opportunity for artists to display their art, to become known in the art world. I'm glad we preserved that heritage and that's legacy of 5Pointz, and that's as a result of the deal we did today."
The owners are offering one of the advocates for 5Pointz a chance to curate the nearly 12,000 square feet of art panels and walls in the building.
Late 50s folk scene, late 60s Warhol warehouse, late 70s punk, early 80s hip hop.
'97-'02 Williamsburg underground loft party thing had its moments. The weekend galleries had some strengths (Tomaselli, Paine) but nothing really congealed into a cohesive scene unless you count the brief, embarassing gasps of Electroclash as cited above.
Even back then I knew it was a wrap, like a long in the tooth imperial Rome just importing everything. New chefs, new bands, new culture from the hinterlands. Very little homegrown product.
...people who interested in upholding the city's budding plutocracy and addiction to mediocrity are crowding out those who are trying to do truly subversive, weird and challenging shit.
It's happening everywhere, a lot of the musicians in the UK I know are bemoaning closures and lack of venues who are unwilling to host anything besides nights for bottle-service douches to sit in a "VIP" booth to the soundtrack of an ipod and photograph each other. No dancing. And pay ??50 in, for the privilege.
Venues without private or government funding are all asking how they can make money for themselves, rather than how can they raise the level of culture available to the city. To be honest, when you look at the kind of money being thrown around on the "EDM Scene", it's not hard to see why they all want a slice of that moolah.
Not long ago I was looking for a couple of players for my company softball team and one young dude volunteered....after our first practice it was apparent to all that he had minimal talent at best.......when asked where he had previously played he said "I've never played on a team but I'm real good at MLB on my Playstation".
You can't even go to a live show anymore without having your view obstructed by people's cellphones. If you can't poast it on Facebook or Twitter it didn't happen. Back in the olden times you felt like you were intruding if you would take out a photo or video camera in a club..
I thought this pic from the Tyler/FlyLo gig in LA the other night was ridiculous.
Maybe one thing is there is not just the gritty-challenging urban kind of art and NYC is too big a city not to allow ideas to perspire through all the apparent conformism and uniformity. Can't we trust people's minds?
Comments
The rich kids of the UWS I went to high school w/ didnt flaunt their money....and yes many did Graff and were in bands.
But these were homegrown kids from NYC not college transplants.
I still dont believe the amount of "bad art" and the amount of "posers" in 2013 NYC is the same as 1973.
Thats like the NBA in '73 vs the NBA in 2013. Money and expansion will have different numbers.
In my experience, and what seems to be Byrne's point, is that people who interested in upholding the city's budding plutocracy and addiction to mediocrity are crowding out those who are trying to do truly subversive, weird and challenging shit. The playing field is less level than ever so those with the resources will win.
I think the internet and media saturation are effecting a great leveling in the availability and currents of culture. I think this leveling is traumatic but ultimately healthy, and I think any given city's ability to roll with this reality exists in inverse proportion to that city's romance with itself. People from small towns and obscure places that don't have these heavily formalized ideas of What They Are About seem generally less hung-up and more capable of taking all this now-available cultural stuff and all these hitherto-unavailable outlets and coming up with fresh and exciting shit. The hand-wringing always seems to come from people in capital-C cities who are invested in What They Are About to such an extent that even a perceived loss of exclusivity--or uniqueness or "grit" or whatever the fuck you want to call it--is legitimate cause for alarm. I read something just the other day bemoaning in apparent earnest the fact that none of the good Chicago house records come from Chicago anymore and oh my god what can it all mean?!
I'm not trying to say that the grievances of New Yorkers--of the few long-timers and of the many many many more-recently-minted--concerning rents and money and dumb whities and rich kids and closed delis and whatever else are unimportant; I'm just saying that better art comes from places where people worry less about that kind of shit, not more.
I don't mean this as snottily as it will sound, but for real: In 2013, I'm not sure less cool shit coming from New York City means anything more than less cool shit coming from New York City. The erosion of a big city's character in the post-internet age is a shitty story, but a common one. The good news is that it almost never ends in the death that is so often foretold.
So, I mean, my condolences and all, but you know, welcome to America, New York City. You'll do fine.
There, fixededed.
As far as New York is concerned it can be boiled down to a some serious things (lack of affordable rent, an overzealous and racist security apparatus, both of which have really affected nightlife) and some things that are not so serious (nostalgia, resentment). The existence of the latter two doesn't render the former less important or urgent.
I just think people look back at that period with rose-tinted glasses, as if every artist of that time was a transgressive genius. For every Warhol you probably had dozens of hangers-on who were making shitty art and have long been forgotten, so we only remember the ones who made a lasting impression. And I also think a lot people at that time were looking at those artists as douchebags (or whatever the appropriate term is).
It's obvious the city has changed significantly since that time, to the point that it doesn't have a physical nexus of culture the way it did up until the 90s. But I also think the field of cultural production as a whole has gone through much more drastic changes, one of which being that physical proximity is no longer necessary for creative collaboration, for better or worse. Back in the 70s you needed a club like CBGBs and a neighborhood like Soho or the LES where people could feed off each other's work. Nowadays you got your Pitchforks and whatnot dictating tastes, and you can have people in Brooklyn, Michigan, and Sweden all making music that would be considered part of the same scene, or at least aesthetically similar. My impression is that the last thing to come out of NY recently that was even close to being considered a scene was those "freak folk" bands like Animal Collective and Devandra Banhart, but that wasn't restricted to NYC bands. I don't think people have the same desperate urge to move to a city like New York in order to get noticed, there are other ways you can do that today.
There were pelnty of assholes/dbags in the NYC scene in the 70's. I do think they were a different kind of dbag than we have today, more obnoxious and over the top than pretentious posers.
I'm admittedly an old fucker but I can't see how in 2013 you can create a significant musical or atristic 'scene" over the internet that has no physical home base or real life interactions.
Not long ago I was looking for a couple of players for my company softball team and one young dude volunteered....after our first practice it was apparent to all that he had minimal talent at best.......when asked where he had previously played he said "I've never played on a team but I'm real good at MLB on my Playstation".
I still dont think the number of people in 70's Soho and the uncreative douchbags have the same number/ratio as the larger population in 2013 along with access the internet.
There was hardly an art industry back then along w/ a bankrupt city.
I'm sure Dorothy Parker wrote an essay about how everyone at the Algonquin these days is a privileged poser. The repartee is just not there any more.
Late 50s folk scene, late 60s Warhol warehouse, late 70s punk, early 80s hip hop.
Has there been a single important art/music trend since then that has exploded from NYC?
Who is the post 80s Dylan/Warhol/VU/Ramones/Kool Herc?
How many in that group are true New Yorkers?
I read a story 20, or was it 30 years ago about how off Broadway used to mean - off Broadway - a block or 2, then plays started coming in from Queens, or Brooklyn, and today (meaning when the article was written 20ya) it could mean St Paul or Seattle.
Some day soon there will be a new NYC scene, and a dynamic artist or 2 spearheading it. But until that time keep an eye on Kansas City and Winnipeg.
While funny, days are a changin' with respect to the jokes on kids wasting away on video games. Some of those kids are making big money playing games. The military actively recruit gamers and there is HUGE money being made. Blows my mind that GTA made a billion dollars in three days.
Kids nowadays are just as likely to idolize other kids playing video games than sports, music and movie/tv stars.
Not only is this completely fucking hilarious but it's also a great analogy. You've posted this a while back and I have since quoted this several times during various old men discussions about the ills of today's society.
You can't even go to a live show anymore without having your view obstructed by people's cellphones. If you can't poast it on Facebook or Twitter it didn't happen. Back in the olden times you felt like you were intruding if you would take out a photo or video camera in a club. Back at my old parties in NYC from '96-'00 I had a large sign saying "no cameras". The bouncers had instructions to seize any cameras, take out the film and smash it right away under their feet to kill any discussion before it could even start and we destroyed quite some rolls of film in those days. Of course all of these were tourists who needed evidence to show their friends how much fun they had in NYC... nowadays everybody acts like a tourist. Kids today have one or two drinks, snap their picture while they're acting like they're having fun and then they go home early so they won't be late for work like the soft and useless little shits that they are. Kids are the new parents.
The last "scene" my old ass witnessed in NYC was Electoclash in the late 90's.
Certain kids had a style of dress that was different from other cats during that short time.
But that wasnt born by itself in NYC on top of being super derivative anyways.
Wasnt there a NYC Rock "movement" at the turn of the century? Band w/ The ____________ before the name?
And i doubt natives were the dominant participants by then.
Frank....while what we are saying is 100% true, we are just two old men yelling at clouds.
Deal Reached For '5Pointz' Development In Queens (NY1 News)
While a shrine of the street art scene is still being knocked down, a deal is reached to bring some of its artistic flavor to the new buildings.
5Pointz, the group of Long Island City warehouses which served as a canvas for graffiti artists for years, will be demolished, according to the agreement, but City Councilman James Van Bramer says residential towers will provide 1,000 jobs and affordable housing, and preserve the area's artistic history.
"The new building will have graffiti and aerosol art on the facade, at the base of the building," van Bramer said. "That's a great opportunity for artists to display their art, to become known in the art world. I'm glad we preserved that heritage and that's legacy of 5Pointz, and that's as a result of the deal we did today."
The owners are offering one of the advocates for 5Pointz a chance to curate the nearly 12,000 square feet of art panels and walls in the building.
'97-'02 Williamsburg underground loft party thing had its moments. The weekend galleries had some strengths (Tomaselli, Paine) but nothing really congealed into a cohesive scene unless you count the brief, embarassing gasps of Electroclash as cited above.
Even back then I knew it was a wrap, like a long in the tooth imperial Rome just importing everything. New chefs, new bands, new culture from the hinterlands. Very little homegrown product.
It's happening everywhere, a lot of the musicians in the UK I know are bemoaning closures and lack of venues who are unwilling to host anything besides nights for bottle-service douches to sit in a "VIP" booth to the soundtrack of an ipod and photograph each other. No dancing. And pay ??50 in, for the privilege.
Venues without private or government funding are all asking how they can make money for themselves, rather than how can they raise the level of culture available to the city. To be honest, when you look at the kind of money being thrown around on the "EDM Scene", it's not hard to see why they all want a slice of that moolah.
I thought this pic from the Tyler/FlyLo gig in LA the other night was ridiculous.