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                                             October 3, 2016

   David Bowie:

   "... it's the New York that I want to know about I
   think probabably everybody has their own New York,
   but for me it was always James Dean walking up the
   middle of the road; and it was always the Fugs, the
   village Fugs; and it was the Beats, it was Soho;
   and it was that kind of-- the bohemian intellectual
   extravagance that made it it so vibrant for someone
   like me ..."

                         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4kUmYoc1rE


Previously, I've sketched out the case
that that the scene of scenes,
New York City, has ended:                       EAST_OF_THE_EAST

   "An engine of culture
    has been broken..."

Think about the history of New York,
think about the various scenes and
movements it's given birth too over
the years... then ask what's going on
now, has anything of significance come
out of New York in the last few decades?

At the beginning of the 1900s, there was
a Greenwich Village that gave us the likes
of Eugene O'Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay:

         DUSTY_MYSTERY
         REDS                   JOHN_REED
                                WAR_IN_PATERSON


The 40s gave rise to the "Beat Generation"
and it's beatnik fellow travelers...
                                               And the beatniks gave rise to the
   BEAT                                        hippies of folk and the Fugs...
   BEATNIK_59
                                                       VOID
                                                       VINYL_PUNKS

    Going into the 70s,
    Warhol's circle ruled...

        BASQUIAT                                The birth of punk
                           FACTORY_DAYS         at CBGBs...
        JUST_KIDS          WARHOL
                                                   FIRST_PUNKS
                                                                                             
                                                        And concurrently, the 
                                                        beginnings of hip-hop.

         The no-wave east village,
         and the new-wave 80s nightclubs...              The Downtown jazz scene

              SEEKING                                        ZORN_ADVANTAGE



                                              (January 14, 2014)

   David Byrne has noticed the problem:
   http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/07/new-york-1percent-stifles-creative-talent

     "The city is a body and a mind-- a physical structure as
     well as a repository of ideas and information. Knowledge
     and creativity are resources. If the physical (and
     financial) parts are functional, then the flow of ideas,
     creativity and information are facilitated. The city is a
     fountain that never stops: it generates its energy from the
     human interactions that take place in it. Unfortunately,
     we're getting to a point where many of New York's citizens
     have been excluded from this equation for too long. The
     physical part of our city-- the body-- has been improved
     immeasurably. I'm a huge supporter of the bike lanes and
     the bikeshare program, the new public plazas, the
     waterfront parks and the functional public transportation
     system. But the cultural part of the city-- the mind-- has
     been usurped by the top 1%."


     "... aside from those of us who managed years ago to
     find our niche and some means of income, there is no
     room for fresh creative types. Middle-class people
     can barely afford to live here anymore, so forget
     about emerging artists, musicians, actors, dancers,
     writers, journalists and small business people. Bit
     by bit, the resources that keep the city vibrant are
     being eliminated."



     "What, then, is the future of New York, or really of
     any number of big urban centers, in this new Gilded
     Age? Does culture have a role to play?"



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