
David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here - jamesbritt
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/07/new-york-1percent-stifles-creative-talent
======
nostromo
I think New York should welcome the uber-rich with open arms. NY's history is
all about 1%ers, like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller and Bloomberg.

But what is deleterious to the feel of the city, in my view, is the Dubai-
ization of the real-estate market. Entire buildings are empty. Apparently the
global elite buy and sell New York real-estate like they do oil futures: not
to use but as an investment. These folks aren't citizens, like the
Billionaires I mentioned above, but transients.

The New York Times had a good article on these empty buildings earlier this
year: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/nyregion/paying-top-
dollar...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/nyregion/paying-top-dollar-for-
condos-and-leaving-them-empty.html)

> “I was living on the 16th floor, and I was pretty much the only one there,”
> said Charlie Attias, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group who
> rented an apartment at the Plaza for three years and has handled many
> transactions in the building. “We had the occasional visitor — I mean, the
> occasional owner — once in a while. Actually, when we saw somebody, it was a
> big thing,” he added. “Oh wow, somebody’s in my hallway!”

~~~
pessimizer
>NY's history is all about 1%ers, like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller and
Bloomberg.

Not New York's creative history, which is largely based in gradual urban decay
and eventually the default. Affordable housing for artists near affordable
venues for art are what creates art (if that's not too obvious.)

~~~
jamesbritt
_which is largely based in gradual urban decay and eventually the default._

Indeed. NYC in the '70s and '80s was a dangerously magical (and magically
dangerous) place.

Some good resources:

VH1's (no, seriously) "NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell"
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1080761/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1080761/))

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music
Forever ([http://www.amazon.com/Love-Goes-Buildings-Fire-
ebook/dp/B005...](http://www.amazon.com/Love-Goes-Buildings-Fire-
ebook/dp/B0051O9YCU/))

I'd be interested in anyone can recommend good books or movies about the NYC
art scene of the late '70s or '80s. (I've seen Downtown 81; it's good, but not
a documentary. It does capture the downtown NYC of that time, though.)

The whole loft scene was a result of squatting in empty industrial facilities,
thanks to economic downturn.

~~~
l33tbro
“In the 1970s New York City was not a part of the United States at all. It was
an offshore interzone with no shopping malls, few major chains, no golf
courses, no subdivisions. We thought of the place as a free city, where exiles
and lamsters and refugees found shelter. Downtown we were proud of this,
naturally.”

Luc Sante, Low Life.

Interview here:
[http://www.believermag.com/exclusives/?read=interview_sante](http://www.believermag.com/exclusives/?read=interview_sante)

~~~
jamesbritt
He's _almost_ correct. :)

Perhaps surprisingly, there's a golf course in the Bronx, up in Van Courtlandt
Park.

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Van+Cortlandt+Park+Golf+Cours...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Van+Cortlandt+Park+Golf+Course&num=50&fb=1&gl=us&hq=van+cortlandt+park+golf+course&t=m&z=14)

It's not new:

"The Van Cortlandt Golf Course opened on July 6, 1895, as the first public
golf course in the United States."

[http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/X092/highlights/11046](http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/X092/highlights/11046)

------
bradleyjg
Queens is still here and as ethnically diverse as ever. The Bronx, Staten
Island, Brooklyn West and South, and Manhattan North of 110 Street are all
places where people live. You don't see many pied-à-terres on Grand Concourse.

These complaints are from one warring faction of the wealthy. One faction
wants total isolation in their neighborhoods and the other wants a sprinkle of
the right kind of poor person as scenery. To me it's an irrelevant debate. I
couldn't possibly care any less whether young bankers or young artists
dominate the East Village.

Let them have their whole foods and their dog walkers and their prestigious
addresses. We have an income tax -- they are contributing tax money for the
rest of us. Even the absentees are paying property taxes while not consuming
any services.

All of this strikes me as the rich complaining about the richer, while trying
to couch their complaints in populist rhetoric.

------
so_says
Towards the end of the article, Mr. Bryne touches on a topic that is at the
heart of a city devoid of culture --- people who buy large swaths of property
and then do not live here. We don't need rent control, but we do need to build
affordable housing instead of luxury condo after luxury condo for people to
use a few weeks out of the year. The least expensive average rental price for
a studio is $1481/month. Landlords require you to earn 40x the monthly rent.
That's $60K a year. That's a nice living in most places in the US. In NYC,
it's just scraping by.
[http://www.mns.com/manhattan_rental_market_report](http://www.mns.com/manhattan_rental_market_report)

~~~
busterarm
I really think that New York City needs to institute _massive_ tax penalties
for people who don't reside in their apartments as a primary residence. I know
that our property taxes are already high, but just about everywhere else has
big incentives for residing in your property.

There's a lot of apartments in manhattan that are only lived in ~4 weeks a
year and aren't rented out otherwise. I wouldn't be opposed to a higher tax
rate for those properties. They're effectively jacking up other people's rents
and making them have to commute from farther away.

~~~
jlgreco
Would such tax penalties stop the rich from renting/owning in NYC? I doubt it,
they _are_ rich after all. Would those tax penalties convince them to declare
those homes their primary residence? Maybe, if they were American. But would
declaring those homes to be their primary residence actually get them to spend
more time in them? No.

Is it really a problem that rich people aren't living in all of their homes
simultaneously? No. That is their own business, don't worry about what they
do, worry about what _you_ do.

What is next, complaining that middle class families often leave one car
sitting idly in their driveway?

~~~
busterarm
It could put some tax money into subsidized housing to offset their market
effect of increasing other peoples' rents and commute times.

It really kind of is a problem because of the effects that it has on the
housing market. It's completely different from somebody having an idle car in
their driveway because nobody else could park on their property. This is a
situation where this is an apartment somebody else could rent and live in and
decrease sprawl.

~~~
jlgreco
If the objective is just to raise more money for subsidized housing, there are
more ways to do that than just whining about rich people having underused
apartments. Hell, tax caviar; a tax for cheap housing doesn't have to attack
rich housing. The only reason to that is pandering to the envious.

And I stand by my car analogy, a car a rich person has is a car that a poor
person doesn't have. Artificially high demand for cars ('artificially high' in
the sense of people buying more cars than they _need_ ) increases their
prices. If you want more cheap cars for poor people, _then get_ more cheap
cars for poor people. Don't complain about how many cars rich people have.

~~~
busterarm
These arguments don't work when you have supply limitations, which with
housing and cars we kinda do.

It's not about taxing the rich. It's about taxing where appropriate to get the
market effects you want.

This is the same reason we have such high tax on cigarettes.

~~~
jlgreco
Taxing rich people more for having multiple homes isn't going to make them
give up those homes (we _are_ talking about "1%"ers, right?), all it is going
to do is increase your tax revenue. If you plan is to use that additional
revenue to provide housing for the poor, the knock yourself out, I think that
is a swell plan. However focusing on where that money comes from is a
distraction.

Rich people having multiple homes is a distraction that is engineered to tug
on irrational anti-rich sentiment. Tax them if you want, but don't mistake
them for the actual problem.

~~~
so_says
I don't know if taxing is the right idea. I just know that a city void of
actual residents is a city without a soul. NYC is becoming like parts of
Florida, except at least in FL, the residency is tied to a season, so you get
a critical mass of people together in one place.

------
rayiner
I have a book of jokes from the 1970's. One of the jokes is "if it weren't for
the muggings, there would be no human contact in New York." I remember reading
it recently and finding it so anachronistic. The idea of getting mugged in
Manhattan or Queens or Brooklyn seems so alien to me today (though I remember
as a visitor in the early 1990's the same areas seemed quite post-
apocalyptic).

My point is... take off the rose colored glasses.

~~~
moogleii
Quote from the article: "I don't romanticize the bad old days. I find the drop
in crime over the last couple of decades refreshing. Manhattan and Brooklyn,
those vibrant playgrounds, are way less scary than they were when I moved
here. I have no illusions that there was a connection between that city on its
knees and a flourishing of creativity; I don't believe that crime, danger and
poverty make for good art. That's bullshit. But I also don't believe that the
drop in crime means the city has to be more exclusively for those who have
money. Increases in the quality of life should be for all, not just a few."

~~~
rayiner
What he fails to raelize is that the drop in crime is the result of the
"Disney-ization" of New York City. All that "1%" money has been funneled into
policing, redevelopment, etc.

Contrast: Philadelphia. In the 1970's, New York and Philadelphia were pretty
similar. But New York was fortunate to be host to the financial boom of the
1980's, 1990's, and early 2000's, while Philadelphia saw its core industries
continue to decline. Today, the per-capita murder rate in Philadelphia is more
than 4x higher than New York's.

~~~
jlgreco
Philly is _way_ better than it use to be, it just hasn't improved nearly as
rapidly or dramatically as NYC has. The blight of urban decay is being pushed
back, but that push isn't driven so much by the ultra-rich as it is by college
kids and yuppies getting a tad more 'adventurous' in where they live. (I think
the effect of universities and their students is most noticeably around Temple
in north Philly, though I would still refuse to live there.)

The result is that you don't get articles like this one complaining about rich
people (since they basically just aren't there, compared to NYC) but renewal
is taking _much_ longer as well. No rich people means that a student can
afford to live anywhere in that city that they want, but they are more likely
to be killed as well.

In other words, Philly is exactly what the author seems to want, but he
doesn't really seem to understand what he is asking for.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
I think you're a bit delusional about crime in Philadelphia. It's intolerably
bad by all reasonable accounts.

It makes zero sense to put a business in Philadelphia as opposed to
surrounding areas because of the tax and regulatory situation. The city of
Philadelphia is a financial basket case, just like Chicago, LA, and Detroit.
All these cities are getting closer and closer to the inevitable precipice.
New York is not.

~~~
jlgreco
Chicago and LA perhaps, but there is no way in hell Philadelphia is in the
same basket as Detroit. Philadelphia is improving (slowly), Detroit is
_rapidly_ decaying.

I'm not accusing Philadelphia of being clean or safe, I am asserting that it
is ( _slowly_ ) improving. I think you are delusional about just how bad crime
in Philadelphia use to be.

 _(And to be clear, there are extremely livable portions of that city, but the
presence of those areas are obscured in course metrics by north and west
philly which, to be honest, do bear some resemblance to what you would expect
of Detroit. However those boundaries are being pushed back every year, street
by street.)_

~~~
rayiner
My wife and I just walked from 10th street to 38th street along mostly
Walnut/Chestnut/Market yesterday. It's great except for the portion of Market
after 37th street. It's a continuous strip of gentrification now, which wasn't
the case 10 years ago.

That said, I think gentrification is happening faster in Chicago. I haven't
seen a construction crane yet in months of living here (I rarely leave Center
City/University City, to be fair), but I can see half a dozen at any given
time in River North/Loop. But Chicago's economy is still largely finance
driven (and derivative industries: insurance, consulting, accounting, law).

I guess my point is: you can either embrace the 1% and be New York or San
Francisco, or reject the 1% and be Baltimore, Detroit, or any of the other
American cities in decline.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
Both Chicago and Philadelphia will go bankrupt and all bets are off. They are
heavily corrupt municipalities. The pension obligations will not be met. New
condos here and there don't really enter into it.

~~~
rayiner
What does that have to do with my point about gentrification? The finances of
the local government are related to but not coextensive with the economic
health of the surrounding region. At the end of the day, changes in the $500+
billion GDP of the Chicago metro area are going to have a much bigger impact
on gentrification in Chicago than the deficits in the $3 billion Chicago city
budget.

The danger is, of course, that pension obligations cause a rise in taxes that
push out wealthy people and businesses, hitting GDP. That's a concern, but I
think at least Chicago will fight to reneg on pension obligations before
raising taxes. Rahm may be corrupt, but he's corrupt in the right direction.
He sounds like a republican these days. Controlled bankruptcies may be the
smartest course of action for cities like Chicago, allowing them to avoid the
choice between raising taxes and cutting crucial services. The key thing to
watch is whether Detroit's bankruptcy results in significantly reduced pension
liabilities.

Which circles back to my point about embracing the 1%. The way to see
continued improvement in your city is to keep your 1% where they are, and
ideally attract new 1%. Those few condos here and there are upper middle
class/rich people moving into Chicago and spending money and paying taxes.
Since major U.S. cities have a dearth of middle class people (who mostly live
in the suburbs), and poor people don't really pay much taxes, it's these folks
that keep the show going. You can't afford to let writers like the OP push for
policies that encourage these people to move out.

------
tootie
I don't think he really proved his thesis. It seems like NYC is churning out
artists at a faster rate than ever before. Most of our finest amenities and
cultural institutions are thoroughly available to the 99%. I was at Brooklyn
Bridge Park this weekend and it just felt like the pinnacle of urban society.
The underpriveleged get cheap lacrosse lessons
([http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/nyregion/adding-
diversity-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/nyregion/adding-diversity-to-
lacrosse-in-new-york-city.html?pagewanted=all)), Smorgasburg was grillin' up
maple bacon, the hibachis in the picnic area were firing, kids were swinging
on tires, there were soccer teams and amateur anglers pulling in East River
bluefish. It was utterly spectacular.

------
Pxtl
The only way to fix the crazy housing market of NYC is to make more places
_like_ NYC. As long as NYC remains a completely unique singular jewel of
successful urban living while the rest of the country embraces suburban sprawl
and terrible transit, NYC will remain almost comedically expensive.

~~~
MrZongle2
Causing a problem to spread to more areas so the original area's problem isn't
as bad _relatively_ isn't a solution.

That's madness.

~~~
jlgreco
Being a desirable place to live isn't a "problem" it is a feature.

Being the _only_ desirable place to live might be problematic to some people
who want to live in that desirable place cheaply, but the solution to that is
not to tear down the desirable place to the same level as other cities,
"Harrison Bergeron" style.

~~~
pessimizer
Being a desirable place to live for the boring rich, driving up the prices so
that the interesting poor all leave, is a problem for both the rich and the
poor.

Taking away money isn't the plot of Harrison Bergeron, taking away ability
was. Ability is spread throughout the population, not just (or even mostly)
the rich part. The rich tend to pay people with ability, rather than to be
people with ability (other than the ability to figure out who to pay.)

~~~
jlgreco
> _" boring rich"_

This anti-rich "occupy" shit is getting real old. We get it, you don't like
people who have more than you; give it a rest already.

> _Taking away money isn 't the plot of Harrison Bergeron, taking away ability
> was._

Harrison Bergeron is about equalization via crippling. If you want to make it
just about muscles and brains, then fine, but you are only taking away a very
limited message from it. Stripping NYC of it's primary asset over other cities
like Philadelphia and Chicago is one way to make NYC resemble those cities in
terms of _' housing for poor people'_, but it is absolutely the wrong approach
to take. Don't smooth inequality by tearing people or cities down, smooth
inequality by building people and cities up _(figuratively and literally, in
the case of cities)_.

------
gaius
Has there ever been a time _without_ massive inequality in NYC? It's been a
standard theme in TV and films for as long as I can remember that Manhattan is
stunning wealth right next to Harlem's grinding poverty. Look at Eddie Murphy
films from the 80s, Coming To America, Trading Places, etc. What's different
now?

~~~
saidajigumi
There's a vast difference between an NYC that has massive inequality and the
NYC that's being created today -- one where gentrification that squeezes out
not just "crime" but anyone below an upper class income status. That's the
trend and future that Byrne describes:

> If we look at the city as it is now, then we would have to say that it looks
> a lot like the divided city that presumptive mayor Bill de Blasio has been
> harping about: most of Manhattan and many parts of Brooklyn are virtual
> walled communities, pleasure domes for the rich (which, full disclosure,
> includes me), and 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.

He goes on to describe a number of elements that contribute to these trends:

> The talent pool became a limited resource for any industry, except Wall
> Street. [...] any businesses that might have employed creative individuals
> were having difficulties surviving, and naturally, the arty types had a hard
> time finding employment, too.

Environment drives out creatives -> creative industries have hard time hiring
(start moving elsewhere) -> Environment gets even worse for creatives.

~~~
gaius
Right, but gentrification is nothing new. Look at London. All the creatives
(how I hate that term, as if everyone else _isn 't_, but I digress) clustered
around Old Street because it was cheap. They were edged out by hipsters with
trust funds, like vampires sucking out the cultural blood. Earlier Islington
was where the creatives lived, but they weren't edged out, they gentrified the
place themselves, getting jobs in "the meeja"! But London is still a vibrant
city. Now all the low-budget art is happening in formerly rough area Dalston.

------
jlgreco
What's he want, more rent control? To put "the 1%" 'up against a wall'?

What is this article other than a whiny complaint, pandering to the envious
masses?

~~~
busterarm
Rent control is <40,000 units citywide. Rent control is not the problem.
Floor-Area Ratio zoning and parking requirements are. Both are keeping more
dense housing from being built which is keeping rents up.

Who do you expect to do for service workers? Honestly. Do you expect those
people to live in squalid conditions 20 to a room like we did 100 years ago?

Are you aware that that rents even within a 2hr commute distance do not
decline enough to be affordable (except in a declining number of bad
neighborhoods)? You can live on the Metro North/Amtrak routes as far up as
Poughkeepsie and still pay $1200-$1600/mo for a studio/1br. Commuting is also
expensive on its own with monthly passes often costing ~$400/mo. Plus having
to have a car and car insurance in those areas on top of that.

Where do want to put people who do low-wage jobs that can't be automated?
What's your plan?

~~~
harryh
That 40k number is flat out wrong.

"But even in Manhattan, nearly half of all rental apartments are rent-
stabilized."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/realestate/rent-
stabilized...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/realestate/rent-stabilized-
apartments-ever-more-elusive.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

~~~
busterarm
We're talking about two different things here. I'm talking specifically about
rent control.

I know what I'm talking about, I live(d) in a rent controlled apartment since
birth.

~~~
harryh
But that's not what the OP was talking about. He was surely using the phrase
"rent control" in its colloquial sense.

------
rwhitman
Having lived in both NYC and Los Angeles for extended periods of time, NYC for
the last 3 years and LA for the previous 7, I was surprised by how little of
the underground creative DIY energy is left here. When I first moved to
Brooklyn 2 years ago I was invited to some loft parties and underground art
events, but compared to LA they felt "manufactured" \- as if trying to
nostalgically reproduce something that was lost - rather than the unabashed
fuck all mentality of the downtown LA underground art scene. Which is bizarre,
because everything I had known to date had told me it was supposed to be the
other way around.

From my perspective NYC has already begun its final transformation into total
yuppie assimilation - it takes a good half hour subway ride from Manhattan
before you can run into any genuine 'starving artists' any more. Even places
like Bed-Stuy are now loaded with wine bars and upscale restaurants. A loft
space even deep into Queens is a coveted piece of real estate.

There's really not much compelling left for someone who spends their nights
being creative while squeaking by day on a coffee shop barista salary. While
there are ample opportunities there isn't much of a way to invest the time
into making them work - anyone squeaking by can't afford to live here without
spending their evenings and creative time working a second job, and the living
space that they have to work in is in many cases literally a creativity-
stifling closet with no windows. Thats why so many people in this situation
are migrating to rural suburbs or cities like Portland or Philadelphia where
the low cost of living allows you to have both affordable workspace and some
free time for art.

There really isn't a way to undo this situation unless the cost of real estate
in NYC drops precipitously, and I don't see that happening anytime soon.

------
dannowatts
i've been a fan of david byrne for some time and so i may be a bit biased in
saying that i think he is spot on.

as an artist myself, it's refreshing to hear someone who has 'made it' be
honest and authentic in his representation of struggling as an artist. it's
comforting as well that he isn't disillusioned about his success, his talent,
the luck, the struggles. and he wants to use _his_ success to help the
current/next generation of artists and creatives get a foothold in the city?
cheers to him!

------
busterarm
This is pretty on point. I already left but I'm coming back to give it another
shot.

After 25+ years in the city, those hardships really do take their toll though.

------
zwieback
This is a good time for a plug of William Dean Howells' "A Hazard of New
Fortunes", a 100+ year old book about the difficulties of starting a new
creative endeavor in NY. It features a countryish financier who made his
fortune in natural gas and lots of anecdotes about apartment hunting in NY of
the 1890s.

~~~
qohen
Available for free download or reading online at Project Gutenberg:

[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4600](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4600)

Or, if you prefer, here's the tl;dr version:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hazard_of_New_Fortunes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hazard_of_New_Fortunes)

------
alexnorman
I am not a huge fan of this thread but I am compelled to comment being a
native New Yorker. The 1% clearly refers to a "post-Guiliani" New York which
has both positive and certainly negative sentiment from most who live here.
However, to better understand the creative complexities of the city is to
think of it as just that, a city... with 5 boroughs not just certain areas of
Manhattan and certain areas of brooklyn but also Bronx, Queens, Washington
heights and all the other areas that still blossom with creativity that once
were clearly visible in the now over commercialized areas of soho and tribeca.
Don't fret, creativity still abounds just not in plain-view, but in those
areas that are less frequented by the "rag & bone" set...

------
codemonkeymike
Well you could always move to New Jersey, Not much better but for me I have no
plans to move away from the east cost.

