"And what passed for urbane discourse was rapidly constricting, formerly open-ended lefty bohemianism zeroing in on a feel-good technocratic consensus flattering the wealthy and well-connected... the knowledge class had grown every bit as parochial as any of the flyover nobodies they casually dismissed." - Frame this quote, it summarizes NYC better than anything I've ever seen.
I've lived in Manhattan my entire life as has my wife. We raised our kids here and they've all come back, and two have married fellow lifelong New Yorkers. So, I have zero objectivity about the merits of New York. We deep rooted New Yorkers have a stubborn provincial attachment to the place because it's the only home we've ever known.
In any event I agree that you should not hate on your hometown.
Ah, so you have that famous New Yorker cover view of the rest of America to a Manhattanite? You know what you know and the rest is not mystery, and not worth considering.
By the early 00s NYC had been conquered by global capital and was a Potemkin version of itself.
Real freaks and oddballs and artists had been replaced by those soul-less mannequins known as Hipsters and the city was overwhelmed with Carries and Mirandas, vapid suburban girls hoping to live out their televised fantasies.
NYC at that point was living out a twisted version of the myth of King Midas, everything it touched turned to gold, so it was rich but also sterile and sans flavor and soul.
But the 70s, 80s and 90s....ahhhh! Like Talleyrand said: “Anyone who has not lived under the Old Regime does not know how sweet life can be.”
I do think I managed to get some decent fumes, there was still some remaining pockets of '90s New York that lingered up to the Great Recession, but yeah I'm sorry that I missed the city at its cultural peak(s)! There are still good things, I have learned to love New York even if I wouldn't quite call myself a New Yorker, but it's been in decline for quite some time even if economically that's only recently become more obvious.
NYC historically is constantly being torn up and redone, reimagined, all as various waves of capital and immigrants arrive. It is a place of constant churn. I remember reading Henry James talking about how he left NYC for a few decades and he couldn't recognize anything upon his return—and this was over 100 years ago!
I think we all get our own iteration of NYC, for better or worse, and mine of course is tinted by nostalgia-covered glasses, as I grew up there and stayed till about a decade ago. (It was hard to stick around watching all my fave haunts turned into glass condos with ATMs and/or Duane Reades on the ground floor.)
I did find that the city had grown stale post-9/11, but that was just one jaded libertine's opinion.
My NYC will always be stamped with dates from the 70s through the 90s, but I know other people get to have their own NYC too, as mine fades from memory and a new version comes to life...
Since moving here in 2010, I've always described the St Louis area (I live in South County) as a place of Northern efficiency with Southern hospitality. I love it here. I love the people, the places - two words: City Museum - and the history; Ferguson was genuinely distressing to see used as a hammer against the entire region. Like many other great cities, STL has its marquee problems, but to love the Redbirds, hate the Cubs, cheer against the Rams, swim in the myriad breweries, and puzzle out why provel is still a thing: that's a home.
Sep 20, 2023·edited Sep 20, 2023Liked by The Ivy Exile
mmm...I'm thinking most of the bad-mouth in St. Louis about St. Louis is coming from people who were not born and raised in St Louis, or they are the indoctrinated children of native citizens; lost children who've swilled the Leftist dreck. BTW RE: "...formerly open-ended lefty bohemianism..." Define open-ended. Do you think it's the same as 'open-minded.' I hope not. If Leftists, Democrats, Communists, Socialists and all the rest of that insane hive were open-minded then they would not say and do the stupid cruel expensive and exploitive stuff they do. EDIT: 20SEPT23 Nothing on the Left has ever been open minded or open-ended. The end of all Leftism is enslavement.
I grew up on the left, a son of 60s activists, and our brand of liberalism was supposed to be about hearing all perspectives and finding smart ways to give people a helping hand, a far cry from the hard-edged punitive technocracy that defines today's progressivism. 80s creatives in NYC probably hated Ronald Reagan, but their vision was a lot vaguer and more malleable than today's rigid party lines.
I'd say the bad-mouth is from both natives and transplants, though plenty of transplants are very enthusiastic about the quality of life. It depends on how intensely invested one is in various cultural status hierarchies, or sheer ideological fervor.
So you're conceding it's your fault, then? I'd thought maybe it was the fading of frontier railway and river capitalism in favor of nationalized rail and great lakes reorganization ahead of the rise of highways and globalization, but might be persuaded to blame it on you wicked Illinois-ans if need be.
I fell onto this article cos I was in church of St Louis in Bordeaux a couple of days ago. Falling further, I’ve since found out that St Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris. Poor attachment to name was through Arthurian legends. Shall be revisiting Paris next week (met husband there and religious marriage there 14 years later). Contemplating the Girondists took up most Wikipedia efforts in Bordeaux but as I’m currently in San Sebastián I’m now finding myself researching Catholic Saints. Currently loving the synchronicities and serendipity of Substack rabbit holes!
Those “ refined “ St. Louisans who deprecate their city for not being New York should think for themselves. Have they forgotten the beauty of an early autumn day spent in Forest Park? Or don’t they allow themselves to think independently even that far?
I'd say a lot of STL-averse St. Louisans really do mean well, and truly love Forest Park and the museums and farm to table restaurants, but see those great things as in some sense their side's cultural opposition to the general horribleness of the region, as opposed to something representative of all.
Still don’t see any objective source of their disdain. The cultural elite of the ‘40s and ‘50’s would recognize the liberalism you describe in your father, but not the “ liberalism “ of today’s deranged “ left “.
You blamed Giuliani and Bloomberg? I grew up in North Jersey in the late Fifties through the early Seventies and spent plenty of time in NYC, but I didn't move there until 1988, at the height of the crack epidemic and during Koch's last administration. Then I had to endure David Dinkins, who had to be among the worst mayors NYC was ever cursed with. The subways were extremely dangerous and muggings were routine everywhere, with criminals snatching gold chains off people's necks and running off. You simply could not take children to Times Square and expose them to the filth there, and the Port Authority bus terminal was pretty much a no go zone as well.
Giuliani and Bill Bratton cleaned the City up, and middle class folks who had fled over the previous decade returned. I was fortunate to be able to leave in 2008, before the execrable DeBlasio took over. I don't know when you moved to NYC, but if it was after 1993, you really have no idea of how bad things were before that.
My generation had the luxury of being nostalgic about the "gritty" more "real" New York without much memory of the actual unpleasantness because it looked so damn romantic in photographs and on film. In a way Giuliani and Bloomberg were to blame for much of the mythic bohemianism disappearing by stabilizing things enough for mass gentrification, even as it massively improved a lot of things. But then de Blasio made things so much worse, and then came Covid, and Adams has been kind of a non-entity.
"And what passed for urbane discourse was rapidly constricting, formerly open-ended lefty bohemianism zeroing in on a feel-good technocratic consensus flattering the wealthy and well-connected... the knowledge class had grown every bit as parochial as any of the flyover nobodies they casually dismissed." - Frame this quote, it summarizes NYC better than anything I've ever seen.
I've lived in Manhattan my entire life as has my wife. We raised our kids here and they've all come back, and two have married fellow lifelong New Yorkers. So, I have zero objectivity about the merits of New York. We deep rooted New Yorkers have a stubborn provincial attachment to the place because it's the only home we've ever known.
In any event I agree that you should not hate on your hometown.
Ah, so you have that famous New Yorker cover view of the rest of America to a Manhattanite? You know what you know and the rest is not mystery, and not worth considering.
Take a look at David's posts, he's a thoughtful guy and not in any way an example of that New Yorker cover.
Fair comment. It appears I have misread the comment.
2006! You got to the party too late!
By the early 00s NYC had been conquered by global capital and was a Potemkin version of itself.
Real freaks and oddballs and artists had been replaced by those soul-less mannequins known as Hipsters and the city was overwhelmed with Carries and Mirandas, vapid suburban girls hoping to live out their televised fantasies.
NYC at that point was living out a twisted version of the myth of King Midas, everything it touched turned to gold, so it was rich but also sterile and sans flavor and soul.
But the 70s, 80s and 90s....ahhhh! Like Talleyrand said: “Anyone who has not lived under the Old Regime does not know how sweet life can be.”
I do think I managed to get some decent fumes, there was still some remaining pockets of '90s New York that lingered up to the Great Recession, but yeah I'm sorry that I missed the city at its cultural peak(s)! There are still good things, I have learned to love New York even if I wouldn't quite call myself a New Yorker, but it's been in decline for quite some time even if economically that's only recently become more obvious.
NYC historically is constantly being torn up and redone, reimagined, all as various waves of capital and immigrants arrive. It is a place of constant churn. I remember reading Henry James talking about how he left NYC for a few decades and he couldn't recognize anything upon his return—and this was over 100 years ago!
I think we all get our own iteration of NYC, for better or worse, and mine of course is tinted by nostalgia-covered glasses, as I grew up there and stayed till about a decade ago. (It was hard to stick around watching all my fave haunts turned into glass condos with ATMs and/or Duane Reades on the ground floor.)
I did find that the city had grown stale post-9/11, but that was just one jaded libertine's opinion.
My NYC will always be stamped with dates from the 70s through the 90s, but I know other people get to have their own NYC too, as mine fades from memory and a new version comes to life...
Cheers!
Since moving here in 2010, I've always described the St Louis area (I live in South County) as a place of Northern efficiency with Southern hospitality. I love it here. I love the people, the places - two words: City Museum - and the history; Ferguson was genuinely distressing to see used as a hammer against the entire region. Like many other great cities, STL has its marquee problems, but to love the Redbirds, hate the Cubs, cheer against the Rams, swim in the myriad breweries, and puzzle out why provel is still a thing: that's a home.
mmm...I'm thinking most of the bad-mouth in St. Louis about St. Louis is coming from people who were not born and raised in St Louis, or they are the indoctrinated children of native citizens; lost children who've swilled the Leftist dreck. BTW RE: "...formerly open-ended lefty bohemianism..." Define open-ended. Do you think it's the same as 'open-minded.' I hope not. If Leftists, Democrats, Communists, Socialists and all the rest of that insane hive were open-minded then they would not say and do the stupid cruel expensive and exploitive stuff they do. EDIT: 20SEPT23 Nothing on the Left has ever been open minded or open-ended. The end of all Leftism is enslavement.
I grew up on the left, a son of 60s activists, and our brand of liberalism was supposed to be about hearing all perspectives and finding smart ways to give people a helping hand, a far cry from the hard-edged punitive technocracy that defines today's progressivism. 80s creatives in NYC probably hated Ronald Reagan, but their vision was a lot vaguer and more malleable than today's rigid party lines.
I'd say the bad-mouth is from both natives and transplants, though plenty of transplants are very enthusiastic about the quality of life. It depends on how intensely invested one is in various cultural status hierarchies, or sheer ideological fervor.
As a guy who also grew up in Chicago, I love St. Louis. Truly a gem of a city.
Shame what we did to you with our railroad hub. You could have been a mega city!
So you're conceding it's your fault, then? I'd thought maybe it was the fading of frontier railway and river capitalism in favor of nationalized rail and great lakes reorganization ahead of the rise of highways and globalization, but might be persuaded to blame it on you wicked Illinois-ans if need be.
I fell onto this article cos I was in church of St Louis in Bordeaux a couple of days ago. Falling further, I’ve since found out that St Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris. Poor attachment to name was through Arthurian legends. Shall be revisiting Paris next week (met husband there and religious marriage there 14 years later). Contemplating the Girondists took up most Wikipedia efforts in Bordeaux but as I’m currently in San Sebastián I’m now finding myself researching Catholic Saints. Currently loving the synchronicities and serendipity of Substack rabbit holes!
Before the City of St. Louis in Missouri had the famous Gateway Arch, the city's iconic symbol was a glorious statue of Saint Louis that still stands atop Art Hill in Forest Park. I love it so much that I've bought a couple of scale miniatures of the statue from the Art Museum's gift shop over the years. https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/stltoday.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/4c/f4cb87ea-e664-11e9-a171-7f70db5f5463/5d96d3b8eb7a9.image.jpg?resize=1200%2C960
I'm currently in Shell Knob, Mo sleeping in a garage.
As Mantrid said in the Lexx, "Life has been unkind to me"
I did sounds and lights for Raves there a long time ago.
Those “ refined “ St. Louisans who deprecate their city for not being New York should think for themselves. Have they forgotten the beauty of an early autumn day spent in Forest Park? Or don’t they allow themselves to think independently even that far?
I especially treasure the view from Art Hill!
I'd say a lot of STL-averse St. Louisans really do mean well, and truly love Forest Park and the museums and farm to table restaurants, but see those great things as in some sense their side's cultural opposition to the general horribleness of the region, as opposed to something representative of all.
Bingo!
Still don’t see any objective source of their disdain. The cultural elite of the ‘40s and ‘50’s would recognize the liberalism you describe in your father, but not the “ liberalism “ of today’s deranged “ left “.
You blamed Giuliani and Bloomberg? I grew up in North Jersey in the late Fifties through the early Seventies and spent plenty of time in NYC, but I didn't move there until 1988, at the height of the crack epidemic and during Koch's last administration. Then I had to endure David Dinkins, who had to be among the worst mayors NYC was ever cursed with. The subways were extremely dangerous and muggings were routine everywhere, with criminals snatching gold chains off people's necks and running off. You simply could not take children to Times Square and expose them to the filth there, and the Port Authority bus terminal was pretty much a no go zone as well.
Giuliani and Bill Bratton cleaned the City up, and middle class folks who had fled over the previous decade returned. I was fortunate to be able to leave in 2008, before the execrable DeBlasio took over. I don't know when you moved to NYC, but if it was after 1993, you really have no idea of how bad things were before that.
My generation had the luxury of being nostalgic about the "gritty" more "real" New York without much memory of the actual unpleasantness because it looked so damn romantic in photographs and on film. In a way Giuliani and Bloomberg were to blame for much of the mythic bohemianism disappearing by stabilizing things enough for mass gentrification, even as it massively improved a lot of things. But then de Blasio made things so much worse, and then came Covid, and Adams has been kind of a non-entity.
Did raves in St. Louis BITD