From Rant to Reason

This began as a rant against Ted Rall. Ted Rall is the best editorial cartoonist alive, but he wrote a heap-o'-shit essay that pissed me off.

First, I advise you to read his column about the death of "cool" New York. Check it out online, then come back if you want to.

Now, here are some amusing excerpts from my spontaneous, raging rant responding to this column:

In any case, It exhausted me to read another "New York was cool when I was first here" essay. In the late 1600's, Native Americans probably said, "New York was cool before we traded it for 24 dollars in beads and shells." And sure, the 1980's were nifty, with AIDS and graffiti and all, but they didn't have anything on the Sweet Smell of Success New York of the 1950's for sheer smooth evil badass cool, the New York Dolls and Keith Haring be damned. Ted Rall isn't really lamenting cultural shifts, anyway--he's lamenting getting old. His twenties are over; he's got an official job as an angry liberal. The squalor moved from his apartment on the Upper West Side to other parts of the city, but he stayed where he was, and he misses it. I suppose I'll whine about the cultural richness of 1990's New York when I hit 35, too.

Why should we miss squalor, grime, fear, and crime? Nostalgists want it back, AIDS-free, all the heroin and skinny-tie coolness, with scary punk rock for the soundtrack. It's tough to face up to assimilation: anymore, a mohawk haircut is about as interesting as a mohair sweater, and people wear leather pants to work.

Missing the old, badass New York is a kind of psychic colonialism. The misery of others provided a dramatic backdrop to a young artist's New York life. It provided inspiration; there was always something scary, or infuriating, right in the alley. I doubt little old ladies or people with new jobs miss it much, though. As for the old, filthy New York, it's still here. A year ago, my friend Alex, who lived on 45th St, watched crack hookers blow grandpas in the "porking lot" behind his apartment. He moved. My roommate got a bottle thrown at him when I lived in Jersey City, and teenagers harassed us when we walked around. We moved. I know a gay guy who just stopped having lots and lots of many-partnered sex. He got tired of it.

Sometimes, in my new neighborhood, someone rolls a blunt in my lobby, but danger stops there. If you want a living Hogarth, move far uptown, or out to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where artists still live in factory lofts and there's plenty of heroin for sale. I'll stay where it's safe.