is New York City dead?

NYC seems genuinely out of fashion for the first time in my life, and maybe its history? Williamsburg is a punchline, Manhattan both above and below 14th St is just rich fuxors, seems like everything that used to happen in only NYC or LA now happens in LA or some other ascendant metropolis. I am not particularly worldly or sophisticated or mobile these days so I can't offer much more evidence, this is just my lay observation. What u think?

New York isn't dead.
There are still lots of great things about this city.
The things I value might not be the same things others value, of course.

https://saysomethingvague.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/lcd-soundsystem-t-shirt-losing-my-edge.jpg

no you're dead

okay

I mean, IDK, I was out in bushwick recently on a saturday night and it still seemed happening and teeming with young artsy cutting edge types brimming with energy. However it's been rough for a good amount of time now as far as being a city that young people without a bankroll or a professional job can live in, and that definitely cuts into the creative energy of the city some. I mean I don't even think the bronx offers the kinds of rents today that could be had 20 years ago in brooklyn.

like if you mean "dead" as in "no longer can birth a 'scene' the way it could in the 60s/70s/80s/90s, that might be true just because rents are so high.

I think that is what I mean. Although "scene" sounds a little tinny/reductive, scenes kind of matter. A city births a scene which creates stuff that matters.

Is Paris dead? How about London? Those cities are pretty expensive too, and have been for some time. New York is still a place that attracts ambitious young people, including artists, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

well yeah, I mean a scene as in the beats or the greenwich village folk scene or disco or no wave or whatever. Like the combination of cheap living and high density and educational and arts institutions and economic activity that allows for a scene that actually produces something of worth. Like I just don't think there are many corners of the city left where a bunch of musicians could live close to one another and work more or less full time on their music and pay rent waiting tables part time or whatever. And to the extent such pockets exist, they're scattered at the edges of the city instead of centralized.

All cities are dead because culture travels faster through the Internet than it ever could geographically.

Rising rents making it hard for young people to live there unless they're being bankrolled is basically true for all major international cities now. Even Berlin's getting expensive these days.

But hey, there are always aspiring artists with trust funds, so the city will never die

i don't know the deal w/rents in NYC but i find it funny when people come out to L.A. from there and rhapsodize about how comparatively inexpensive the rent is here.

I don't go out much anymore, so maybe there's some lively cheap shit I'm missing out on.

It's also really hard for some people in late middle age (w/out a LUCRATIVE CAREER) to live here.

I'm also old and have a family and work a lot, and I just don't really know what's happening anymore. When we went out in Bushwick, we saw some local DJs/electronic artists in a little club and it was absurdly packed and seemed pretty alive.

I guess another thing I've noticed is that galleries tend to show artists from all over the US and world, and I'm guessing that's more true than it used to be. But that's also an internet-erasing-borders thing.

All cities are dead because culture travels faster through the Internet than it ever could geographically.

― treeship 2, Tuesday, February 6, 2018 3:28 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is pretty otm

it's all about the rust belt, my friend

we eat the cheeses here too

they are artisanal

our cities are the envy of all, their livability is primo

Here's how I think about New York, after my last visit there last summer:

New York is good and the only actual large city in America on the metric of everything existing there. Big cities are the ones where there is everything; you can tell Seattle is a small city because there are things that are not here.

New York is bad in that it smells of garbage. In the summer, hot garbage.

If more American cities grow to populations in the millions, New York will be more dead by comparison due declining uniqueness. Is this going to happen? Who knows.

i kinda want to leave, but i have a job i like okay and an unusually fortuitous living situation. there's no real reason for me to be here; i don't partake of the cultural opportunities available

it'll probably be the subway that finally drives me away

NYC: where if you can make it there as a successful artist, you can also have a successful time crowdfunding your medical bills.

Telecommuting will finish it off.

Less of a joke, not as dead as San Francisco?

Feels like people have been waiting for a rust belt/flyover city to take over since our traditional metropolises are more 'playground for the rich' than ever but I still don't hear kids looking to move to Columbus or Pittsburgh.

Have the media decided where the New Portland is?

There was a Tooze tweet recently, where he showed stats on how professional actors in the USA, vastly outnumber coal miners. I forgot by much, but it was significantly much.

I do hear murmurings about ppl aspiring to move to Pittsburgh, Detroit, Denver, a few others

According to @BLS_gov and @TheEconomist there are 51,200 people employed as coal miners in the US v. 785k in 1920. In 2017 there are more florists, actors and personal fitness instructors than miners. pic.twitter.com/m913tHokI2

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) January 2, 2018

Less of a joke, not as dead as San Francisco?

Feels like people have been waiting for a rust belt/flyover city to take over since our traditional metropolises are more 'playground for the rich' than ever but I still don't hear kids looking to move to Columbus or Pittsburgh.

― louise ck (milo z), Tuesday, February 6, 2018 6:27 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hear rumblings about Pittsburgh now and then. Also tons of my friends moved to Philly over the years and it did seem to be producing bands at a good clip for a while.

And no one talks about how many administrative assistant, secretarial and receptionist jobs were lost in NYC due to automation, because... women, a lot of woc. Breadwinners for their families. Fuck coal miners and their sooty tears.

I’m moving back to new york soon bc of my job but it’s not a nice place to live.

I still have my apartment in Astoria. But I really don't want to go back. I dread having to deal with the subway.

The subway is inexcusably unpleasant

i get more anxious/aggro in nyc in my old age. i don't know what it is. impatient. people bug me more. i think its just a case of the olds. i will always love the city though. in general. i've loved hanging out there my whole life.

it really is me being set in my ways. we stayed in brooklyn one summer with the kids and i seriously didn't want to leave the hotel room. get on a subway to go to a museum in manhattan? kill me now.

Everything here is comically more stressful than any other place.

I car commute to the suburbs now and it's glorious to not be taking the subway anymore

Why is the ceiling always dripping down there?

Second and third tier cities could attract people by just showing how messed up the MTA is in their promo material.

I haven't lived in nyc full time for almost two years now. I miss it, but I really don't miss it. Just the thought of having to take the subway to work gives me anxiety.

Part of me really regrets accepting another job here. As a teen my dream was living here but it’s not that fun.

NYC misses Yerac and Znarf

Fix the subway and get rid of GOP madness and I am there!

fuck the subway, i drive most places now. and when i do take the subway it's in the middle of the day.
sorry can't do anything about the GOP.

Do you have to go in and out of manhattan a lot or no?

I remember taking the subway maybe 1-2 times a month when I worked in Williamsburg. It was the best. My tweety truck got sold like 3 years ago.

i've honestly not experienced the subway horrors that many have, but i will say that the subway is nearly unusable on nights and weekends

just not enough trains

I want to get myself to love it again.

Not the subway—the city

The last job I had there, I almost had a breakdown every time I took the subway. I would sometimes using the plodding R so I wouldn't have to deal with the insaneness of the 4,5,6 during rush hour. That train really has the worst people to be stuck with in the tunnel.

I do drive into the city regularly. Many mornings I drive in and drop my wife off at work and then drive home. It helps that we live near the Manhattan Bridge and her office is in chinatown. We also might drive in and park for any number of special events.

you should share that to one of the climate change threads too, do you have a gift link?

i do not

but a tl;dr of the article is that one of the ways to deal with heat is to have more shade and trees. would that nyc get a bosco verticale one day

https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/cBoeri-Studio_ph.Dimitar-Harizanov_Vertical-Forest_DSC5835-scaled.jpg

Oh hi!! Yes, I did win my individual position, and also it seems like the "reform" movement inside the Bk Democratic party may come out of this with a mandate to bring change to the political machine!!!

io did you win??

Michael Caley
· 2h
we won!
the court just declared the Brooklyn Democratic Party's attempted coup null and void

in a victory for democracy and common sense, Justice Jill Epstein finds that outgoing District Leaders had no right to change the rules after an election they lost

I haven't been involved with the legal stuff, just watching from the sidelines. But the soc media campaign the outgoing chair has been waging is WILLLLD STUFF. Absolutely unhinged videos of her eating messily and pretending to be unaware of the camera, and flinging an expensive handbag about in another. Also one of her staff was quoted as saying that the insurgent political club members should "respect Mommy," which is simply batshit messaging. MOMMY???

The big meeting where the chair is elected/re-elected by the district leaders (only 42 of them, god willing) is 9/23 or next Wednesday. I assume the party side is getting desparate at this point and I'm starting to wonder what the incoming leadership is going to find hidden in the filing cabinets tbh.

get 'em

As for next week, I've been to a handful of these "general membership meetings" in the past 6 years and honestly I really enjoy the insanity of them. We've always gone in with a strategy of having people cued up to ask questions, object, request to speak, how to vote, etc. Tragically the party always tries to have them at the most difficult times and places so normal people can't attend. This one is during the work day so I'll have to send my proxy, alas.

The cult of personality that RBH has tried to gather around her is...Idk what they're playing at or if this is just something I don't understand. I always get the impression that she wants to appear revered and feared in some combination, like a mafia don or a local deity. The "Mommy" reference adds an unwelcome erotic maternal...is there a psychology word for this? Why are grown people, mostly men, afaict...in her entourage, always playing very silly games? Don't they realize/worry that no one will ever take them seriously again? Idk idk

In taking these bozos down i’m getting a lot of “mr simpson may not be the strategic genius we were fearing…” vibes

Yeah you almost have to wonder how long they thought this dynasty would hold up to scrutiny once it fully saw the light of day? This amount of corruption was just "the cost of doing business" in a different era of NYC politics but the Bk stuff has held on this long thanks to I assume Frank Seddio and the entire South Brooklyn conservative infrastructure. The corruption and capture of the Democratic Party of Kings County has among other things been a way for Republicans and conservative interests to have a strangle-hold on both parties.

The meeting on Wednesday was the expected shitshow btw. I wasn't there but I listened in on Youtube the whole time and it was kind of staggeringly corrupt & broken. https://hellgatenyc.com/brooklyn-dems-shambolic-organizational-meeting/

New topic: What's everyone doing during the Nor'easter this weekend?

Seeing Cabaret Voltaire at the Knockdown Center tonight.

Brooklyn Book Festival Children's day saturday.

Maybe Shawn O'Sullivan DJing Weird Science at Nightmoves sunday.

Emptying out my kitchen so landlord can repaint it on tuesday.

Maybe just hiding from the rain.

I apologize if someone answered this another thread - What printed sources/websites do y'all use as a relatively-comprehensive way to keep track of live music in NYC, in our post-Village Voice/BV world?

Yeah! I didn't have any plans and looks like the Atlantic Antic (I've never gone but maybe I will!, I say every year. To be fair for at least a decade it was on the same weekend as the Cloisters Medieval Festival which I had to perform at) is rescheduled for next weekend.

Plans are to make....some kind of soup...avgolemono?? must buy chicken...and maybe sew some pants! Psyyyyyyched to stay in.

Then I have jury duty on Monday.

xp I don't see live music anymore since I never want to be out of my neighborhood post 8pm, sorry to say.

Not into expensive large scale stadium kinds of shows and I truly don't know where anyone keeps up with the broad range of scheduled events unless it's a literal friend playing who cross-posts it to their socials.

Gunk

unfortunately i think a lot of show info is circulated through instagram stories / tiktok

I haven't been to the atlantic antic in decades. Would like to go back.

I don't think I look at any resources for show listings any more, I just see targeted ads all over facebook and instagram I guess. I probably miss a lot of stuff now.

Gunk

https://www.instagram.com/gunk.nyc?stkn=MWJpYmNxMGIwaWxmNg==

dada strain

instagram accounts from bands/venues I follow
emails from venues (bowery presents, warsaw)
emails from songkick
oh my rockness newsletter

dreaded nor'easter turned into like three days of intermittent rain, none of it very hard. much like living in pittsburgh

Speaking of whether NYC still has any juice, I had jury duty this morning at the same time as Jimmy the Mod. I belatedly remembered his irl name as it was called just before mine to be dismissed without serving. (I actually want to do jury service but the trial I would have been on was expected to take TWO WEEKS and I cannot take two weeks off right now.) Restrained myself from calling him "Jimmy!" as he motored away.

Looooooooooooool

I mean what are the odds????

that is crazy!!

has anyone ever gone hiking in pelham bay park / done anything similar that is accessible via MTA? aka what can i do that is sorta hike-y and woodsy w/o getting on metro north

I've done PBP; 6->bus (so check that schedule!) Worth looking at tide charts as some of the trails loop past water and you can get in some extra clamoring if you're so inclined. There are actual deer milling about and it seems more like a suburban park than NYC.

Rockaways->breezy point is fun

I also love all parts of JBAY NWR. I know you said MTA but if you feel like zipcaring there's Great Swamp NWR in jersey

...and the seastreak to Sandy Hook NJ dumps you out on the beach.

jamaica bay is nice although not really a woodsy hike

went off trail there once (as permitted by the rangers there - part of a program - don't go offtrail unless you have permission!) and got completely eaten up alive by sand flies on the beach. it was really awful. so be careful of that

ty JTM. i like the idea of PBP bcuz it's not quite beachy, if you've walked any of the trails or have any more specific recommendations i'm all ears

we take seastreek to sandy hook multiple times a summer to go to gunnison but the ferry stops running after labor day i believe

zigzagging across hunter island is p dope

Might be obvious but walking around the woods at Ft. Tilden can be hikey with beach there for before/after, although there's not much space. Parts of Fort Tryon / Inwood Park are hilly/woodsy, plus The Cloisters are there for before/after.

I'm a big stan for Forest Park in Queens - it wouldn't scratch the full-on hiking itch the way that say Bear Mountain might, but it's big and just genuinely "the woods," which is often what I really need.

Bike-related and not on foot but still MTA-accessible and absolutely the best bike ride available before all the leaves fall: 1 train to Van Cortlandt Park / 242 St. -> head to Van Cortlandt Golf Parking Lot and pick up the Old Putnam Trail / Empire State Trail, and just take that as far north as you feel like. A good down/back is to the North County Trailway Bridge, about 25mi from the Van Cortlandt.

Staten Island greenbelt is pretty cool, woodsy hiking trails and all, the SIRT goes right there

Have been having a great day in NY environs, arrived early on the bus, got a coffee and did a bit of necessary work, then saw the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha show at Artists Space (well worth your time!). After, went to Bed Stuy and ate some good ramen, then met up with my pal Dave at Better Read than Dead Books and shot the shit and looked through paper for a few hours, now at a nice little bar in Greenpoint before heading to the reading venue. Staying with one of my oldest friends tonight, whom I haven’t hung out with one on one for several years.

that sounds lovely! was your ramen at Samurai Papa? that used to be a staple when my partner and I first started dating and they lived a couple blocks away.

It was!! good bowl but the noodle to chicken ratio was a little off imho— i always want less of the former and more of the latter

two observations from today's trick-or-treating in the Sunnyside Gardens.

1. A bunch of people setting up on corners offering candy, sometimes out of the back of their SUV. Tailgating halloween. Just people who wanted to take part and live in more boring neighborhoods? Never seen that before.

2. My 9yr old and 5 of her school buddies stuck together for a good chunk of trick-or-treating. The treat that got them the most excited, little potatoes. Somebody was giving out little raw potatoes. They thought that was the most hilarious thing ever.

i saw a tailgate guy whose car was all halloween decorated. i think jt makes sense if you live in an apartment building where you dont get trick or treaters

I think the potato is a viral/social media thing. My kids got some as well

That's such a funny coincidence! I was at a party w a friend yest and she said when they trick-or-treated as kids there was the one weird old people's house where they gave kids onions and potatoes and called them "moon rocks" and had a whole schtick, and she said the kids were into it just bc it was a bit. Everyone knew what to expect and it was fun/funny. Weird that it has come up again?

I think trick-or-treating in DAYLIGHT is weird. We would never go out before dark! In NYC and esp with younger kids I can understand why the parent-organized walks start at 4pm and are mostly wound down by 6 and after that you see more older kids and adults going to parties. It's just a contrast with my Midwestern experience of everyone traipsing around grassy lawns in the dark.

My experience growing up in the Midwest in an evangelical house where Halloween was a satanic holiday was shutting all the lights out in the front of the house so no one would stop by and my sister and I staring longingly out the window at the trick or treaters having fun.

Oh no!!! I'm so sorry. I have to say our evangelicalism didn't extend quite as far as forbidding us to dress up as non-demonic things (my brother was a Care Bear one famous year), even though our church would have a substitute dress-up party sometimes that was still fun but was carefully non-pagan/non-demonic or whatever. This was kinda mid-to-late Satanic panic period.

The timing was weird this year. We started later than usual and the Facebook chatter was about how everyone was going to wait till late so the candy wouldn’t run out early but all the houses were tapped really early. Maybe because it was Saturday and people got started early.

was Mischief Night and wreaking havoc with cartons of eggs and shaving cream on Halloween an East Coast phenomenon for older teenagers? I feel like I never hear about kids doing that anymore.

It's never been a thing in NYC as far as I've seen since 2000-ish. Was more of a rural Midwestern thing--our trees & driveway got toilet-papered every year until the guys that lived on my road got too old/bored with that. My dad could be pretty scary if he thought they were coming near the cars or house. (Also we knew all their parents so a phone call was inevitable.) Eggs and shaving cream and sticking lots of plastic silverware upright in someone's lawn and then greasing the handles with crisco are all more or less apocryphal tricks.

In a really weird/sad example in the Hudson Valley a few years back, our neighbors actually got their WINDOW BROKEN by kids throwing....onions iirc??? At their house? Not on a holiday, just on a random winter day walking by. The residents were out of town and I found it while checking on their property for them. Very unsettling because wtf??

I can't afford mamdani's new york, selling records at the WFMU record fair sunday. While we still have our freedom. Come say hello. All profits will be donated to bring back Bill Diblasio and Eric Adams. Green pepper on pizza for all.