Comments

1
God bless the New York TImes, but they've never really understood that New York City consists of more than Midtown Manhattan. It's a big city, and there are lots of nooks and crannies where artists have found community and affordability.
2
if only NYC and San Francisco would knock down buildings to make even bigger buildings they wouldn't have that problem.
3
The problem is that the "creative class" isn't interesting anymore, whether it's in New York or elsewhere. They're all devoted to artisanal pencil sharpening and $400 camp axes and bicycle tables and all the other accoutrements of the hipster shopper these days. Meanwhile, the real artists are busy making glossy garbage for the 0.01%.

You can take that shit to Detroit, but it's still shit. You wanna be punk rock? That's old, old like me. What's your inspiration now? Buying things.
4
Fnarf, the problem with asking people if they wanna be punk rock is the perception of what is punk rock. The early New York scene was a diverse lot who were called punk for a lack of anything else to call them, and many of the greats had diverse enough interests for other influences to show in their work. To myiddle age years, music today has far too many lines drawn between genres, and the politics of the various underground scenes place too many ideological limitations on artists who wish to remain credible.
5
Fnarf, in both this thread and a previous one, I've found your criticisms of the current art world intriguing. You've been making some excellent points. It makes me curious: which living artists do you consider interesting, and why?
6
So that's where Cienna's going! Homesteading in Motor City.
7
Write-a-House is four blocks from my house and spun off from a nonprofit that helps low income artists buy and fix up their own home - that's how my partner and I were able to buy our place, something I never imagined possible.
It is most definitely not utopia - housing stock in our neighborhood is total crap because they were all built hastily to accommodate the influx of immigrants who came here in the 1920s and 30s and there's an unimaginable amount of break-ins and a lot of illegal dumping. Overall, I love my weird, complicated, super diverse neighborhood. Not sure that the project "helps rebuild the city," - what does that even mean? For whom? As what?- but I can say that it mean a fuck lot more security and safety (from arson in particular) to fill the vacant houses in our neighborhood.
8
When someone as old as Fnarf says kids today are not "interesting" anymore, what that means is that he is too old, lazy, and set in his ways to actually look at the art being made today (and I am at least as old, if not older than Fnarf).

As Mark Twain is rumored to have said- I hate the ancient Greeks- they already stole all the good ideas.

There is not now, and has never been, a "creative class". There are only creative individuals, everywhere and at all times in history, making interesting comments on the culture they live in.

Dig a little harder, get out of the tub once in a while, and there are better things out there than artisanal pencils.
And if you had ever actually MADE an ax, you would realize that, for a good one, $400 is cheap.

9
Nah, @8, you can get a full-size Gransfors Bruks for $130. If there's a better axe out there, I'm not aware of it.
10
Thats a mass produced factory axe, designed to meet a price point, with markups along the way. Its no comparison to a handmade axe.

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