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 Yesterday’s graffiti artist has been replaced by today’s stroller pusher.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?

For whatever reason, I never found myself ready to dive in until recently.

Passing The Baton is a family-saga rich with deep world history and action filled WW2 military warfare. It’s strung together by a narrative that combines educational, research-heavy text with the a coming of age tale of innocence.

The protagonist of the book is Norman “Joe” Hirsch, late-brother of the author Bill Hirsch. The story is told through the eyes and voice of family-friend Jerry Rekned.

Norman, humble but confident, was described as:

…handling himself well in almost all situations.  He didn’t pick a fight and didn’t have an aggressive attitude.  If he got into a fight, I’d pity the other guy.  That’s saying a lot for a twelve-year old.  He wasn’t, and didn’t have to be, an entertainer.  He had all the textbook qualities on the plus side of the ledger.

On the contrary, younger brother Billy was described as being:

…noisy, a jokester, and a so-so athlete.  Billy was a strong little kid, slightly muscular, but on the small side.  Billy didn’t pick fights, either. But he didn’t avoid them, and did get in to them.  He was a scrapper, with more of a flare-up temper than his older brother.  When he got into a fight, he could get furious and dish out plenty.  He was a tough adversary, but there wasn’t much sense to his various one-on-one street brawls.  Sometimes he was self-assured, and at other times he wasn’t.  Norm had friends and was admired. Billy had friends and was amusing.

As Norman and Bill extend to the heights of their adolescence, they both enlist in the air force in 1942. The text makes it clear that they are both too naive to realize the extent of struggle, chance and violence they would face in combat. They both enthusiastically agree to join the battle as flight navigators.

The book has its peaks and valleys of historical context, humor and emotion. An extended metaphor throughout the book was that of chance and luck. Norman’s father, Reuben, was a gambler. Norman had the same love for a game of cards, and understood that as a fighter, the odds of survival certainly weren’t in his favor.

As his final 25th mission, which would mark his end of duty, slowly approached, Norm:

…felt a special discomfort that returned to him from time to time.  It was a sense of disquiet about the odds.  A professor would say “a statistic aberration.”

Norman’s plane was shot down in the heat of battle in Germany in 1944. Although the travels and horrific violence of the war aged him emotionally years beyond his time, he still lost the entire life ahead of him.

He was 23 years old.

Bill, after learning about Norman’s death, courageously agreed to finish his line of duty.  He survived and returned home with the baton in hand at the end of the war. He would eventually pass it on to three children and seven grandchildren.

I’m one of the seven.

So, the baton has already been passed. It just happened to take me completing my grandfather’s story to realize it. I suppose it’s my turn next.

There are traces of quality in music today, but it’s harder to find. The classics used to reign the charts, rightfully so. But, now the best music only gets noticed by the indie audiophiles who look for it. Although Billboard means a whole lot less than it used to, it’s interesting to note the difference in mass appeal between now and then. The music just used to say more, even though I wasn’t there to experience it.

What constitutes quality? Music is entirely subjective, so I won’t attempt to answer that question. But, 30 years from now, will I look back on my era and identify with the message that music sent me? Doubtful. Disco sucked in the 1970s, but it was extremely culturally relevant and people still identify with the movement today. T-Pain sucks, but he’s completely culturally irrelevant and will be forgotten quickly.

I’m just an 80s baby, but I’ll take Neil Young’s rugged, slightly off key guitar solos over the obnoxious auto-tune any day. And you’d still probably call me a hypocrite if you saw my iPod. But, my key argument is backing cultural meaning and identity, not mindless entertainment. There’s room for both, but I prefer the former.

Did the music change, or did we change?

College students used to have the ability to identify and protest the violence in Ohio with their artists. It sounds selfish, and ironically nostalgic–but when will it be my turn to partake in a larger cause influenced by the harmonized voices and synchronized guitars of rock ‘n roll? These guys are about the only ones who make me want to activate political change.

To answer my original question, I believe music does have less cultural meaning than it used to. A whole lot less. Music used to stimulate protest and relevant action, while today’s mainstream sound supports head nodding and dancing. With power comes responsibility, and I’m sensing a lack of both.