New York City used to be something else: a melting pot fueled by its own rut. The scum, dirt and despicable aspects of the city are what propelled its high culture upbringing.
I’m not old enough to remember this city, but from what I’ve learned, Times Square in the 1970s and 80s was banal, beaten to the brim, filled with junkies, sex shops and crime.
The artists and intellectuals — avoiding the pitfalls of eroding midtown — took their hobbies elsewhere. A second cohort of the Beat Generation emerged as young, ruminating artists left to find a place in the city to call home.
They chose to move downtown and New York’s formative renaissance began.
Downtown presented an empty canvas: undeveloped economies, bustling streets with virgin sidewalks, alleys waiting for graffiti and clubs soon-to-be filled with punk-rock and hip-hop. The arts flourished because there were no rules.
The downtown terrain was sprawling enough to suit an incoming of new settlers while empty enough to personalize. Some of our greatest art — still recognized today — was produced in downtown New York during its creative boom.
The evolution of New York’s subculture is a natural process, and downtown isn’t what it used to be. The city has been gentrified, cleaned up and settled by families. It lacks the rugged, do-it-yourself culture it was built on. Yesterday’s graffiti artist has been replaced by today’s stroller pusher. The artists left for newer, emerging habitats.
Where is the counterweight to today’s mass, consumer culture?
Is the internet the new downtown?