> It’s because of this harsh reality that romanticizing the lifer lifestyle in 21st century Brooklyn, or any other major American city, as anything other than the struggle it is can be incredibly dangerous. Millennials and Zoomers have been sold the lie that the big cities remain a bastion for cutting edge arts and culture, let alone that they are even livable for working artists. What year do they expect us to believe it is? The New York Times loves to gloat about the local renaissance happening in Bushwick in the Arts Section while covering a tech CEO who recently bought a brownstone in Bed-Stuy for a cool five million in the Real Estate section.
A unique paragraph. People fall in love with a story they’ve never been apart of, never will be apart of, that is told by people who only caught of glimpse of it.
I see a lot of today’s dedicated artists who don’t want to have to grind like mad just to afford rent moving to mid-size cities or even small towns. It’s really the only economically rational move.
Big cities have priced out any culture that is not either subsidized somehow (e.g. trust fund) or already established.
I’d argue that many have even priced out entrepreneurship that is not lavishly funded by VC or founder capital.
My generation (I am on the young gen-X / old millennial cusp) believed, with some truth, that one had to go to one of maybe six to ten cities to do anything cutting edge in most fields. For young people today I don’t think this is true anymore, and if anything these cities have become traps that will destroy your ability to become established.
As would be predicted by the “law of rent,” real estate costs have grown so as to soak up any advantage in being in these places.
A unique paragraph. People fall in love with a story they’ve never been apart of, never will be apart of, that is told by people who only caught of glimpse of it.