Where Did Culture Go?

There's a lot of talk about the state of places such as NYC and I find a lot of it dishonest and disingenuous. To say NYC isn't famous because of how bad it used to be is dishonest. To many who live there and travel there it's the sterilization that killed the culture, making it palatable for everyone. That's the city people secretly miss and always loved.

I had been going to NYC for a few years with a friend to take Street Photos and on one trip they wanted to go to Fulton Fish Market. I had to temper their expectations even though NYC is a train ride away. Because they had an idea of what the market would be like, Old NYC, but I had to remind them that times had long changed; everywhere looks like uptown.

People lament the current decline of the city, but what they reminisce about is the old aesthetics and old appeal of the city that was say, 30 years ago.

What is perceived as the current decline is simply the new veneer cracking. What's happening in the city now, is what NYC used to be; the hard times that made it what it was. In everyone's desire for nostalgia, they forget the reality that gave the city the feeling they've been missing or nostalgic for; the rising crime as everything else declines.

A lot of the current NYers complaining about the current decline don't realize they never had the real New York City. They're the children, the inheritors of what the generations before had sterilized and gentrified. Old New York is why many people live in the new City now.

The current residents, most of them, grew up in the aftermath of what made city what it was. They didn't have to live in the eye of the storm or grow up with the clean up. They never lived in New York City when it's under stress and pressure and so, don't know how to survive in that environment.

Even as a photographer, I benefitted from the city in its post-cleanup years. Now if I went it's more likely that now I'd have to physically defend my camera, not from irritated subjects but from someone trying to steal it. It was always a threat but now it's on the surface, everywhere. As an artist this rawness is what you want, what I want; but do I really want to deal with that?

I've always been an outsider there. What we don't see now is the same thing we don't see because we're so focused on the decline of so many cultures and subcultures. In the chaos of their decline there is always the new being made. No one knows if things are at their worst or getting there but within it are people who know how to navigate it like there always are. The people who will be the new underground that don't realize it yet. The people who are or will experiment with the new arts, the sounds, the new styles. The things that will be the pieces are breaking now.

Every scene is dying, it's not just a quality of life issue. With the decline of the city, every scene declines and dies off; this is true in every city all over the world. It's the night clubs, bars, restaurants, movie theaters, sports, etc. The things that were hallmarks of the old paradigm are missing more and more the thing that made them relevant; people. There was schism in the culture somewhere.

The people avoiding these places are the types that can be alone by themselves or know how to entertain themselves with few people. No one's interested in propping up the lame anymore. When having fun requires work, it's not fun. These things were always on life support, they simply had their plugs pulled. The people who lost interest or never had it for these places aren't losing out. Even if you've never experienced it, if you know what you're gonna get, did you miss out on anything? I have older siblings, I've seen the before and after of a night out. I understand the dirty BTS details, it's never sounded like "good vibes." It's people who have nothing to do, going out to do nothing. Who are now complaining they have nowhere to go to do nothing.

One of the biggest incentives for these places and a lot of the culture, nightlife was romance or raw sexual attraction. But we've sanitized all those things out. For a guy, showing or having attraction for another woman and acting on that could get him labeled a creep, harasser, or thrown in jail. So half the value of a night out for men is gone right there. The juice is not worth the squeeze under those circumstances; not for a thinking man. So what does that do for the typical courtship rituals; flirting, buying drinks, dancing, friends intermingling, going from place to place, a spot that a different person knows getting to know each other. All that dies. The women are there for it, but have spent years telling men they don't want it. So men left.

Urban life has always been a concentration of society; it's both an area where culture trickles in and down. From here we can extrapolate the broader dynamics of a society. Because a city is not just its local residents, it's the traveling tourists and passing throughers. When people not used to the same fast city energy, even they can feel the decline, the timidness, the loss of appeal. They can feel it where they live, which is why they're in the city for a moment of escape. But what they find is the feeling's even worse.

So where are all the people? Friends still hang out even if the clubs closed they'll hangout together and do something else. That's how I know this is ultimately a good thing. So many, too many of people think that the clubs are culture when they're not. Business is not and cannot be a culture, you're just being marketed to; it's a place too be marketed to. It's the place a lot of the culture has been trying to get you to; to get your money. If there's no club, throw a party if that's what it's all about for you. The club scene is simply a party or kick back that someone else charged you to go to. That's pretty much all entertainment, things people used to do on their own that someone else charges them to be at. Culture happens at home, it doesn't come prepackaged.

High-end, high class culture, the lifestyles of the rich and famous, those people didn’t create that. It is it the highest expression of the entire cultures values; culture ascends upwards, and falls back down again. A heiress or socialite doesn’t actually create anything. Aside from the fortune that made them famous or the brand their associated with, they don’t actually put out anything that has intrinsic value, nothing cool. Their coolness is that their “it factor” due to their lifestyle has a lot of eyeballs on them. So when they wear something fabulous or luxurious, a lot of people see it. So what is luxury? It’s not for luxury’s sake that’s for sure. It’s a local designer going all out on a dress for a special event; an ordinary person creating their magnum opus because the world is going to see it. It is not a brand making something with rare materials because they can afford to make it common for themselves. It is not beauty for the sake of beauty; luxury is the highest expression of art, which is itself the expression and execution of an idea. Culture trickles upwards. It’s crafted at the low end and expressed at the high end. Beneath all the shine is regular-ass people who're pretty and dull.

If the culture is in decline, it’s because the bottom is falling out. The people who make cool aren’t making it anymore. Or at least most of us don’t see it. Those of us without ears to hears or eyes to see. They can’t perceive the Mind that thinks. The new culture, the new scenes, the cool all begin as an idea some has. With the current culture and lifestyles in decline, there’s not enough old pieces yet for the uncrowned cool kids to make something new.

Culture doesn’t come from money, that should be obvious. We’ve all heard the saying about people born with silver spoons. These are the dull shiny people, the ones lamenting about the state of things, most impacted by the decline. What did they inherit when wealth didn’t come with culture, when they mistook the wealth for culture?

They alienated the cool kids.

Money isn’t culture. Money collects culture, displays culture, packages culture, sells culture. The decline is a lack of shit to sell by uncool people; middlemen. People pretending they have their fingers on the pulse. The marketers have nothing to market. The cool kids who made their market took the market away. This should be a wakeup call to people to realize how much of their culture was and always has been a marketing plan. Think a bacon, egg, and cheese, sandwich is a cultural thing? Nope, a marketing team came up with that way early in the 20th century. Does being thought up by a team trying to make money make it less cultural? My favorite sandwich began as a pitch to push pork.

The importance of that story is the importance about the control of narrative. Someone can pitch a sandwich, but they have no control over what the cool kids, the people, do with the idea; how they might run with it and make it their own. Suddenly the push to get people to eat more pork feeds itself. It came along at the right time and plugged a hole.

Something becomes a part of culture when it can be lived, when it has been lived. The cool kids in the declining cities don’t have time to be cool, right now they’re trying to survive, preparing to survive without realizing it if city life isn’t at its peak decline yet. Not enough has broken yet, and what causes the break? What causes the break that leads to the new pattern of life that gets called culture that’ll look cool people people, and sellable by the lame? The new culture that’s a collection of lifestyle of necessities for some > which becomes a thing of admiration by others > which becomes a thing of pride by participants.

That’s the train everyone romanticizes; the chain of events that so many want to be a part of. But no one ever wants to be part of the squeeze that makes it. The current generations don’t want to admit it’s their lifestyles and politics that creates the subcultures that mock them. The subcultures their own children welcome with open arms, because it says what they can’t about their parents.

Then one day Netflix makes a ‘doc about some by gone era or movement, and the lames get nostalgic for what they killed off, sanitized, or allowed to metastasize. We the millennial and older Gen Z crowd don’t want to accept that we have become the systems kids will rebel against. The same people who loved Nirvana, The Strokes, Mobb Deep, rave flyers, illegal graffiti, basement shows, and drugs now run HOA boards, local councils, Twitter callouts, workplace HR departments. We are the rule makers, the filters, the filter makers, the censors; the new normies. What’s true today is true yesterday and last week; the revolution eventually became the establishment.

In a city like New York, any city, people don’t miss the hardships, they miss the hard-ass creative people they made; the tension and angst they carried. Right now today it feels like people trying to be angsty, the “real problem” is they have nothing to really complain about. Things are so good that most issues both civil and social are propped up. They’ve been solved, but actually admitting that would destroy a lot of people’s relevance.

Right now the rich kids who were pretending to be cool are still pretending. LARPing at rallies and “protests” trying to recapture or imitate the protest era, when that stuff mattered and actually worked. Eras their now rich parents and grand parents who forged those times lament in their wealth. We can order food on our phones to our exact location, and at the same time while we’re placing that order we can bitch and moan to an invisible audience on that same phone. So what exactly are people so complaining about, we have simple solutions to historically complex problems. No had to think about where their food came from. That’s why someone say an opportunity to save money and make it shit; things were so good we didn’t care to pay attention to how the things keeping us alive were slowly killing us.

Now in a vain, and it is vain, effort to score points, these same people who are about these higher morals. Who descend from these classes that spout these higher morals, protest people who come from the same class or higher as they do. Because unlike them they’re actually trying to do something good not just for their own gain.

We’re in a declining age where the pillars that held up society are crumbling, and people still haven’t realized that even the rage and angst were sold to them; If the slogan fits on a shirt, it’s supposed to, think about it. Bricks delivered to the organic protest that turned into a riot. “They” didn’t sell the riot, they invested in the escalation so that down the line they can sell you stories about the riots, the struggle, the oppression, the redemption, the journey. Sell us a narrative. Whoever is selling the IP in the future, invested in the research in the past.

It’s not always a sinister mastermind, they’re sinister but not masters of Minds, least of which their own. A “mastermind” would have new ideas. Instead they can only rehash, retread, remake.

Today’s outrage is someone else investing in their future, someone trying to make money.

Today’s brick delivery > tomorrow’s headline > next year’s documentary > the anniversary think piece > the college courses > the commemorative whatever and Never Forget > the streaming special > the “inspired by true events” dramas > the nonprofits in their honor > the corporate ad campaigns > the political ad campaigns > the museum or art exhibit > the next cycle with the same old new bricks. They get a new story to sell tonight. And an old story to keep selling ten years from tonight fifty ways.

People can only see this pattern so many times before they just choose to opt out. The people that made cool took a step back and everyone who thought they were cool because they sold and bought into cool are stuck now trying to be cool. Trying to find their cool, which is thee most uncool shit to witness ever. The posers look like posers.

How be cool when things get hot.