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[rm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/fashion/27VIEW.html

I think criticizing wealth for the sake of doing so is extremely trite. And I really would like the economy to suck a great deal less, but this is an extremely perceptive piece on life here right now.

I've lived here pretty much my whole life, and I'll tell you, one of the weird side products of the boom times in New York has always been that the city stopped being for the people who lived here, and that's always been frustrating to me, even as, sure I appreciate that I can live where I do and that the subways are not the war zone of my childhood.

I can't stand this stupid smoking ban, because it means the streets of my neighborhood are filled in the evenings with people smoking outside of bars, and flicking their cigarettes about carelessly and obnnoxiously. I do get a kick out of all the places that are ignoring the whole thing, but I certainly don't get a kick out of going to a cabaret night and listening to the MC go on about smoking as if it were some naughty and exotic vice. Have we gotten that boring?

Speaking of which, I love this moment of cabaret and burlesque resurgence. And I love that I am not alone in the things that amuse me, but gods, do I think it's trite that burlesque and girls kissing are some sort of magical solution to our national sexual ennui.

Right now, we're a nation and a city desperately in need of a lot of things -- art, frivolity and sensuality all being high on the list. And they're there, they're creeping up on us certainly. But we're applying ourselves to them with such a grim necessity. Like going out on a Saturday night just to prove we now have the lives we didn't in high school.

We just, need to be a little freer with ourselves right now. There's so much keeping score these days, here at the so-called and not really end of the world.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Thanks for a link to that fascinating and hopeful article. The sorts of yuppification that affected NYC during the 90s made what little I know of the city seem very odd compared to my visits there in the 80s. The part of it that bothered me the most (in both NYC and in all of the other cities that I saw undergo a similar process) was that instead of actually improving the lives of people, poverty and seediness where banished by the simple expedient of banishing the poor to the far suburbs. I am deeply amused that about the only city that I saw that didn't undergo a similar process was LA, in large part because even the most optimistic city boosters there realize that LA is and always will remain an utterly vile place, but that this fact won't stop anyone from wanting to move there.

However, now much has changed, both here in Oregon, and it sounds like also in New York, the nation is changing and with luck these changes will make for a more interesting and less sanitized country.