Lost New York

How I feel about New York, both before I moved there and after I moved back has been well summed up in this Vanishing New York interview with Chris Stein of Blondie. Sad, sad, sad. I think New York has lost its cool--temperwise and culturally too. It used to be the center of the scene. How many artists, writers, musicians, directors and actors got their starts there? Countless numbers of young people moved there, broke and idealistic, to follow their dreams. They created their own music, clothes, style and culture. It was co-opted by a hungry nation, hungry for the percieved air of cool in New York. And then, slowly young college grads moved there to be part of the scene, developers discovered this rich cache of iconography and hipness associated with the dirt poor styles that started there. It's been gentrified and swept up, tidied into a place tourists can marvel at but never really see. And of course it's brought millions to the city, but those tourists' dollars come at a price. Lose what you used to be and what are you left with?