[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9ZrmYtTcEkAZeeiJjqnX9vpz85XUHyUt"] TECHNO-utopians, heartless neoliberals and market-worshipping optimists will tell you that when creative destruction hits, it's only weeding out the losers, casting off the dead wood, allowing the invisible hand -- which works in mysterious ways -- to do its work. And it's easy to imagine, say, an acoustic folk club or a jazz cellar … [Read more...]
Will Nashville’s Gentrification Destroy Its Music Scene?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Qwm7a4AXHZhLoHI5Q02SruYLg3cIgNWX"] ONE of the most pressing issues for culture-makers (and fellow travelers, like your humble blogger) is rapid gentrification. Often driven by the arrival or artists and musicians to a neighborhood or city, winner-take-all capitalism often means that investors and Trump-like developers arrive soon after and squeeze out the creative … [Read more...]
Artists and the Cost of Living
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="32NG0O50Xp95O5D44s23SJZqusoP0VKy"] WE see it again and again: A marginal -- rough, industrial or just boring -- neighborhood attracts artists and musicians and generates an "edgy" reputation. For a few years, good things happen. But after a while -- and, often, a benign explosion of coffee shops and bike paths and cheese stores -- the artists and musicians and fellow … [Read more...]
What Do Brunch and Jeff Koons Have in Common?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="R4kldjR8qVAyVN11JBzIOTVFaYGRTE3D"] THE current backlash against mimosa-drenched Sunday meals is not a central concern of this blog. But I cannot resist posting part of a New York Times story (already denounced by some in my circle) which connects the rise of brunch with skyrocketing rents and the rise of the 1 percent. (Both, incidentally, major concerns … [Read more...]
The Commodification of Cool
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="cA06WrBWrX1QdeSrOH4sa9wEJQ8lEH07"] READERS of this blog know that one of my primary concerns is the way economic shifts -- especially as they affect rents and the costs of living -- have direct and profound meaning for the creative class. So I want to go back to The New Republic story on Berlin and other "cool" cities But the greatest risks posed to the “next … [Read more...]
“An Arts District without artists?”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="sm1yCVkC5n9okJnqnTpzTSDYpQTHApRe"] WE'VE heard this before, but it's always painful when it happens: The visual artists who have helped tame downtown Los Angeles and given it a hip sheen are now being forced out by gentrification and rising rents. The process is just starting, but it seems destined to pick up speed quite soon. A new story in the Los Angeles Times … [Read more...]
What Does Death of Net Neutrality Mean for Culture? And, Women of Paris
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="xGDWAexoDrHPFCevaXgcNYzALx2EWaaG"] THIS week, it seems, has brought us closer to the end of net neutrality, with the FCC getting closer to approving a pay-to-play "fast lane." The fear among purveyors and enthusiasts of indie culture is that there will be a tiered Internet, one for wealthy corporations and a slow one for the rest. Enormous power would go to broadband … [Read more...]
How Do Visual Artists Survive? A Conversation
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="bf0FrQh0qNpnPUaXjMY1eGrcVaOQV5gc"] IT’S never been easy to make a living as a creative being, and recent years have made it even more difficult for anyone without a trust fund. So I’m quite cheered by the recent appearance of a handsome, useful book, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life. Edited by the Brooklyn-based, Yale-educated artist Sharon Louden, it's … [Read more...]
Housing for Artists, Upcoming Doc and What Twain Tells Us
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hLRQi16APGHGAa7vr6agsGJdgdO8X6ef"] IT’S taken a while, but as rents and real estate prices have surged over the last few years, the issue of living space for artists has started to get the attention it deserves; David Byrne and Patti Smith have helped shine a light on the plight of creative folk in New York. A new story by fiction writer Catherine Lacey highlights … [Read more...]
Middle-Class Crush, Cassette Fetishists and New Jazz
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="ogAgvEbhEk1KhQ645pd9wWfUDmJyWJe3"] MOST of us have read about the high cost of new homes in a handful of cities. But new data shows that even renting in a wide range of places -- Chicago, Miami, LA, Salinas, parts of Texas -- has become impossible for the middle class. This may seem to have nothing to do with art or artists, but most of us who have joined the … [Read more...]