There's no bohemia in today's New York. Nothing resembles Greenwich Village in its various incarnations
OH, am I pissed off this week. My neighbors yelled at me for having people talk on my balcony at 1am on Wednesday, then proceed to hammer audibly at 8am every day since. Then I have to read this garbage in Slate, written by some pompous know-it-all psuedo New Yorker named Inigo Thomas.
I hate when people make the argument 'it's not like it used to be.' What a pathetic point to make,that things change. Attention pompous authors and historians, not every great event will have happened in the past, and while we're at it, not every great event in the past was hailed as being a great moment at the time when it happened.
Consider the picture on the article of CBGB's. A classic image meant to grab nostalgia from the NYC 70's, when the kids where really punks and things really mattered to them. Did they really?
In interviews of Ramones fans from circa 1980, heavily accented idiots from Long Island who dressed up and commuted to the city talked about living in their mom's basement, just like now. Everyone who knows punk knows it emerged primarily a fashion trend in the late 70's, which means the majority of people that where into it at the time where just trying to get some lovin' from the opposite sex, much as Strokes fans, Emo kids, or 2-step garage junkies might be doing now. All those kids have an equal chance of later being marketed as the next Warhol, don't they? Not so much a Bohemian revolution, is it?
And as for the argument that there is no bohemian community in the world anymore, this man obviously is too esconsed in reviews of The Great Gatsby from the 50's to realize that tons of neighborhoods are all but infested with kids with bad haircuts and vintage jeans who all fancy themselves low level Che Guevaras. Beyond that, these idealogeus share a common political goal and jean-cuff style with 20-something kids from all sorts of other cities, including Chicago, La, London, and of course Buenos Aires. Lastly, they're working, and creating, and living the lifestyle as we speak, although it is of course a markedly different lifestyle than in the 60's. Replace the LSD with a G4 Mac, and you're getting closer...
Could we make the argument that through the revolution of instant and inexpensive communication, the Bohemian lifestyle has transcended the traditional physical boundaries of a neighborhood that once existed? Kind of like, when I post stencil graffiti on my site from Buenos Aires, bohemians from London (or how bout Philly?) take a look at it and create with it based on their own locale?
Could we say that we have one huge community made up of different kinds of schools of thought, working together loosely to create things, and from that we will have great works that will propel us forward in the arts and beyond (hmm - JayZ's Grey album, banksy's stencil graffiti, and god-forbid the dreaded Ipod shuffle).
No, why make that point, £h!t was just better in the 60's and 70's. Warhol was there. Nothing important happened since then, and we're so sure that it won't ever happen again, that we just write about the past and bore ourselves to death with the present. What a stupid b!tch. Comments please.
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