NYC hipsters

Download the new TRACE for my article on NYC hipsters, gentrification and fear of America:

http://www.trace212.com/

UPDATE: I can't seem to find back issues of TRACE to download as PDFs, so here's the text from my article:

Liberty in Hipster's Paradise

It was never my dream to come to America. I remember being submerged in Bush-administration hate and thinking: no way am I ever going there. Instead I filled my head with idyllic alpine scenery, trying to forget the industrial drudgery of Wollongong, Australia. ‘Overseas’ became a place of great mystery; I put down roots until transplantation was unbearable. Then I lost my place on a committee and booked a flight to Montreal. But it wasn’t the bilingual city that would welcome me after the nineteen-hour flight. It was the looming metropolis I’d been exposed to for years and yet knew nothing about. New York had called me to her.

In my mind, New York City was a violent frontier. Before I left home I decided that my mission was to ‘toughen the fuck up’. America was to be a testing ground for my character. New Yorkers say you have to be tough to survive in their city, but after a few days I felt more like a bag of jellyfish. In a cab one afternoon I heard a loud bang and slouched down instinctively. I was staying in the Lower East Side on East 3rd near the Projects and my middle-class mindset told me that poverty plus America meant gun battles on the street – even on the sun-drenched afternoon of July 4 weekend. My friend explained that it was probably kids with firecrackers. When she moved to New York in the 1980s the people on her block would barricade the street while cars brought in bags of drugs and took out bags of cash. The next time I caught the subway I paid heed to the NYPD ad proclaiming a 75% crime reduction in the last 15 years. Some might call this ad misleading; it eased my mind regardless.

The best antidote for fear is exposure. On my first day walking in the city I kept my eyes on the pavement, too afraid to look at kids on the street lest they take it as provocative. I held my handbag close like the scared white girl I was, ashamed for how poorly I knew the neighbourhood. But with every foray onto the streets of Manhattan my confidence grew. ‘You can’t be scared for that long’ my friend had told me when I confessed my fear of flying long distance. Her words returned to me as I began to unwind and open my eyes.

I walked Houston by day and night and discovered that beneath the drone of traffic a community was buzzing. In preparation for staying on the Lower East Side I read the underground tour guide, Reverend Jen’s ‘Really Cool Neighbourhood.’ This coupled with 20 years of local knowledge from family friend and Mercury Lounge staff Maggie Wrigley meant that I started to become familiar with the places I explored and the people I met. I learned the story of Rosario’s Pizza: one of the few examples of a hostile corporate takeover with a happy ending. The great wave of Famous Ray’s swept over Rosario’s on Houston, but Rosario’s resurfaced on Orchard and Stanton. I met Sal Rosario when I ordered a slice with Maggie. His eyes watered behind huge frames as he pressed our hands – Maggie had written an article about Sal surviving the merciless march of gentrification.

I was staying with Maggie at Bullet Space, a squat dating back to the 1980s that housed writers, actors, musicians and photographers. As we walked around her city she introduced me to her friend the award-winning journalist, named a famous poet on the street and told me how to find the bartender-cum-bass player for a seminal 90s indie band. I’d list my favourite alternative rock stars and Maggie would tell me how they played Mercury when they were getting signed. Suddenly the coolest art scene in the world seemed much closer than I thought. It wasn’t some Mount Olympus only accessible to gods, it was just people living what they love.

Maggie told me that on New Year’s Day artists come together to share a piece of their work (some years Philip Glass shows up). This tradition is part of what makes New York special – a community of artists supporting one another. It’s a different story to the cashed-up young hipsters I saw prowling the streets. On my way to see Jarvis Cocker I noticed some boys who I later ran into at the venue. ‘I saw you guys on the subway’ I said, ‘how weird is that?’ Evidently the only weird thing was my presence: they walked off with barely a word. I started to wonder, why does cool have to be so hostile?

I tried in vain to work out the hipster phenomenon – I felt that the secret to New York’s shifting character lay in this riddle. Maggie had the answer: instead of poor artists and migrants the city is now populated with career kids who can afford to buy their cool. Okkervil River sing, ‘You’ve got taste. What a waste that that’s all that you have.’ Culture is now manufactured rather than created. But still, the beauty of New York lies in its diversity: you can always find something to counter whatever discovery you have made. In the heart of hipster Williamsburg three guys sat on the street holding a sign: ‘FREE ADVICE.’

The words ‘gentrification’ and ‘hipster’ continued to surface as I explored New York. Like curse words they were spat out darkly. I got the impression that people now question New York’s prestige. It’s no longer the sole financial or cultural capital of the world – it doesn’t even have the tallest building. LCD Soundsystem sing, ‘New York, I love you but you’re bringing me down.’ The safeness that reassured me when I landed is lamentable: ‘New York, you’re safer and you’re wasting my time.’ A visit to the Lower East Side Tenement museum shows you what people endured for the opportunity to live in this city – why give up on New York now? Reverend Jen writes, ‘I am tired of hearing people bemoan the fact that, “New York sucks now.” New York may not be as cool as it once was, or as cheap as it once was, but it is still a home to misfits worldwide’. New York offered something to the misfits I met in my travels (at karaoke in a Brooklyn gay bar a guy from Macy’s sang love ballads off-key with abandon), and to me, a lifelong misfit.

I believe that the following quote from Franz Kafka embodies New York: ‘By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.’ My friend wrote this in a letter I read on the plane as I left my country behind and ventured into unknown territory. Only now do I realise its relevance. New York is what you make it. You can find whatever you are looking for, purely because enough people have come to the city with the desire to create a new world. My great-great-grandparents on my father’s side came to America from Eastern Europe to escape persecution (a history I share with many New Yorkers); I arrived, unknowingly, to find myself. I came from fear to a place I was scared of and discovered that the only thing I had to fear was the power to transform myself. This power was bestowed upon me by a city in which anything can happen.

New York City was an unexpected love affair. Leaving for the airport I pressed my face to the cab window, not wanting to let go of the cityscape. I wanted to cry, but not like when I left Sydney – back then I was filled with dread. Then I came to New York and started living. Even amongst the stinking mounds of garbage, even in the suffocating subway, even with my lungs full of pollution I started to grow and be nourished. I felt layers of small-town paranoia peel away to reveal the wide-eyed kid I have always been. This city filled me with confidence – I walked the streets at night and thought: ‘This is New York, and I’m in it. I brought myself here. I did it alone.’ Liberation. I came to New York, like my ancestors, and I found liberty.

Soliloquy on my love for the fox

When I was in the Czech Republic I used my email account a lot. One day I discovered Gmail skins. I chose one called 'Tea house' and was pleasantly surprised to find a cute fox in a little house drinking tea. The skin asked for my location, which I was confused about. Later I discovered that the fox does different things depending on the time of day. If your day consists of waking up in the morning, doing stuff in the day and going to bed at night, chances are your activities might resemble what the fox gets up to in his tea house.

As the Czech winter set in I spent more time online late at night, and got to see the fox getting up to all sorts of activities. I liked it when the fox was sleeping and ghosts would sit at his garden table and drink tea. Very early in the morning a giant tortoise comes into his garden. He never even knows because he is asleep! When the fox was asleep I would sometimes feel that it was time for me to go to bed, and I would turn off my computer and crawl into my bed/couch.

I especially liked it when my life and the fox's life would correspond, like when I was cleaning and then the fox was cleaning too. Or when I had company and he was up in his roof having tea with a monkey. I felt a strange affinity with this computer image. It gave my Gmail account a personal feel, but more than that, the fox's daily schedule gave his life a narrative I could trace.

When I had seen all the phases of the fox I started to get a little less excited when I saw him pruning a bonsai or doing calligraphy. That was until a few days ago when I discovered iGoogle. This is probably not new to you, but I had never heard of it before. I started building my homepage and noticed that the tea house skin was available for iGoogle as well! I applied it, set my city, and discovered something amazing. The fox's world has been expanded. His tea house actually backs on to a river and is surrounded by an orange grove in the shadow of a snow-capped mountain. So far I have seen the fox having a picnic on the far bank, picking oranges, eating dinner outside his tea house, rowing a boat, sitting on his pier with a lantern, sending paper boats bearing candles downstream, feeding ducks, playing the lute for his ducks, and, right now, looking at the moon with a telescope.

Tonight I have been waiting for the full moon to come out from behind the clouds. Last night I was meant to go to the Observatory but it didn't work out, so the excursion is postponed. It is unfortunate, but I am happy that at the very least, the fox gets to look at the stars for me.

The fox appears to have an excellent life. The simple domesticity is very compelling. The fox leads a life of solitude and contemplation, with time devoted to good meals and creative pursuits. He plays host to friends, but also takes responsibility for his home and garden and the animals that share his space. There are lots of animal friends in his world that go about their own business but seem to trust his peaceful nature. I realise it might be strange to be inspired by something that should have no real meaning. But I guess that's what life is like: you find meaning in strange and unexpected places.

Exploding into the new year!

Last night I experienced New Year's Eve in Berlin. Natalie and Ollie told me this is terrifying, so I thought I'd give it a go. I drank at the hostel until 11pm (oops) then bought some strong Polish beer and went off into the night. Things were exploding all around me: on the street, in the sky, on the platform in the U-Bahn. People were drunk and friendly, wearing plastic 2009 glasses that would soon become tomorrow's refuse, along with the scattered paper remains of spent fireworks. I was on my way to some kind of indie disco in a shed built by architecture nerds, but I arrived at the station just a few minutes before midnight, walked in the wrong direction and found myself caught in the crossfire of families setting off fireworks. Too scared to turn back, I pressed myself into an alcove and waited for it to end. After half an hour I made a break for it, slipping in behind a family casually strolling amidst the chaos of smoke and noise and bright flares of light. When they turned down a sidestreet I sought refuge in a group of people my age. I felt like I was in a warzone, running for cover every 20 metres. I asked one, 'How long will this go on for?' and he said 'About 10 days.'

I'm going to see you soon in Amsterdam

Nelle and I arrived from Berlin on a Eurolines bus at 4.40am. We killed a few hours until we could store our luggage, and then we walked off down unknown cobblestone paths, narrow streets winding in unpredictable directions, crisscrossing quiet black canals, the sky still dark and streetlamps swinging in the chilly morning breeze, everything feeling like a shanty town of long ago, half expecting drunken sailors to fall out of alleyways, yet nobody around but bakers and early morning bike riders, red lights still glowing over doors and in basements, an occasional glimpse of posed and exposed women who shift quickly to natural stance as the faces of two travel-weary girls peer curiously into windows, and then slowly the colour changes in the sky above the tall, narrow apartment buildings with black, red, yellow window frames and tasteful brickwork, and the signs of life come in the form of bicycles shooting over the bridges, one, two, threefour, five, six, and the people are old, young, male, female, hipsters, mothers with children in wooden prows that make the bikes resemble the small boats now moving about on the canals, and Nelle and I are exhausted, hungry, cranky, starting to clutch at fraying edges, when finally we find a buffet breakfast and gorge on beans, toast, eggs, muesli, yogurt, fruit, coffee, tea, juice, chocolate milk, and we even sneak some apples, oranges, gingerbread and a boiled egg, still shelled, into our bags for the long day ahead. and it was a long day. we walked for 15 hours, mostly mapless, saving our euros for food and warmth, completely without a plan except to meet our couchsurfing host from Utrecht at 9pm. everything was hilarious. reaction time was slow. no drugs were needed, except caffeine. we watched some ducks for quite a long time. we discussed what was insane, including ourselves. we bought hats at a flea market. and finally, we ate expensive thai food - delicious, expensive thai food - as a celebration of our friendship and what we've seen and done. living in central europe, travelling east, travelling west, and between us north and south as well, and now we are just a few days away from saying goodbye for now, not forever.

Bedtime

My hair smells like bug spray. My eyes sting. My stomach is full of fried cheese and stale bun. My bloodstream contains a few types of alcohol. Another successful night of erasmus partying. Last night at Mandarin. Tick. 3rd last night in Brno. Tick. It's all winding down. I'm going to miss my bed. I confessed this to a few other erasmus and they looked at me like I was crazy. But I like the novelty and practicality of the convertible bed/couch and the firmness of the mattress. And I have to admit, it's kind of nice to share a room with someone. Who knows what my living conditions will be like when I return. All I know is that this familiarity is about to come to an end and be filed away in memory. I'm not sad. Everything is impermanent. We're forever in the waiting room until we discover that's all there is. Then we live.

first snow

It's snowing in Brno. Looks like powdered sugar on the dirty streets and cars. I woke up this morning and hung out my window with my camera. Snowflakes swirled down between the two identical dorms. Everything was beautiful.

Round two of the fruit fly massacre.

1015 hrs

Status: critical, but improved greatly after last night's attack.
Fruit fly traps were moderately effective. The bodies have been disposed of and fresh traps laid. A third trap was established in Zone 1 of fruit fly territory. The trap in Zone 2 has been relocated to higher ground to draw their forces away from computer desk base camp. Little to no assistance from comrade. Status: dormant.

I don't know how much longer I can keep up the fighting spirit. I lost control last night and went on a killing spree at 0230 hrs, armed only with a plastic-covered guide to Iceland. I changed weaponry half way through - deflated milk carton also effective. If the enemy is not eradicated by Wednesday I will evacuate. Location: Vienna. My comrade will have to fight this battle alone. I wish her well. The enemy is entrenched in our territory and multiplying by the day. We're going to need everything we've got to win the war.

Over and out.