BALLAD DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN

When I moved to New York, one of the first tasks I set out for myself was to find a few good novels to augment the limited knowledge I had of my new metropolis. The first book I picked up happened to be Salman Rushdie’s “Fury”, set in Manhattan a financial bubble or two ago (2000). He describes a city that “boiled with money. Rents and property values had never been higher, and in the garment industry it was widely held that fashion had never been more fashionable.”

I was sheltered in academia when the excesses of that dotcom-inflated era went pop, but by the time I had arrived, life in New York had once again begun to imitate Rushdie’s art. In 2006, the booming real-estate market deluded city leaders into approving a municipal bond-backed boondoggle, the controversial Atlantic Yards stadium/office tower/luxury condos complex. And in 2007, punk couture became more fashionable than actual punk rock: CBGB, the legendary concert venue and birthplace of punk in America, was bought by designer John Varvatos.

James Murphy, a New York native and the frontman for LCD Soundsystem, expressed his dissatisfaction with the city's debt-driven frenzy on the band’s second album, “Sound of Sliver”. Released in spring 2007, the album concluded with a wallop: the bitterly heartfelt track "New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down". The song expressed Murphy's sense of alienation from the culture of fast money that had taken over:

And so the boring collect—I mean all disrespect
In the neighbourhood bars I'd once dreamt I would drink
New York, I love you but you're freaking me out

It wasn’t until the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy that I, like many other New Yorkers, realised that “the boring” people—the overleveraged real-estate developers and fashionistas and the derivatives traders—were poisoning more than just the local bar scene.

As a modest Midwesterner, I never fully adjusted to the culture of excess that has always pervaded this manic metropolis. After every relaxing spell away, I always returned with a distinct ambivalence towards the city. While I’ve always wholeheartedly embraced Frank Sinatra’s vision of New York, I wanted to make it and then get the hell out.

And yet the last few times I’ve returned to its stinking subways after a breath of fresh air, I’ve been surprised to find that I’m happy to be back in the stench of it all. This may be because the New York of today has more in common with the hardscrabble city of early CBGBs than with the stratified millionaires’ playground that turned a musical monument into a fancy coat rack.

While I don’t take pleasure in seeing the real suffering the financial crisis has wrought, I’ll admit that Wall Street's woes have it much easier to scrape by in one of the world's greatest, hardest cities. James Dario, my first landlord in New York, used to wax on about the joys of the city during the dark days of the mid-1970s. In his thick Brooklyn accent, he would grow wistful over the cheap rents and flourishing culture that accompanied New York's floundering on the edge of bankruptcy.

“Life is fury” Rushdie wrote, and nowhere is that more true than in the New York of today. “Out of furia comes creation, inspiration, originality.” By all indications, the city's return to prosperity will involve a long and difficult journey. But if the bad old days are any indication, we will surely have some good music to listen to along the way, and maybe a bit more room at the bar.

Picture Credit: fluzo (via Flickr)

~ CORBIN HIAR