She talked about the wonders of paper--about books made of paper, some with velvet covers and gravures, and about her plans to write more books like Just Kids, about her early days in New York City, a time rich with memory.
She told Jonathan Lethem that she liked his sneakers. He said, quickly, apologetically, "They're not vintage," because, probably, when you're talking to Patti Smith, you want to be cool in the right ways. But Patti didn't care about vintage or not vintage. She said, "Doesn't matter, they're classic."
When she was done answering Lethem's questions, she picked up her guitar and sang a song about William Blake. Then she answered questions from the audience. One woman asked if it was still possible for a young artist to come to New York City and do what young artists did when Smith was starting out.
Patti recalled coming to New York without money, when it was "down and out," and you could get a cheap apartment and "build a whole community of transvestites," artists or writers, or whatever.
Today, she said, "New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there’s always other cities. I don’t know—Detroit, Poughkeepsie, Newark. You have to find the new place because New York City has been taken away from you. It’s still a great city, but it has closed itself off from the poor and creative burgeoning society. So my advice is: Find a new city."
You can listen to the whole conversation here.
54 comments:
In an early poem Patti Smith wrote "I will go up...and stay there." You can't do that in NY anymore.
Mivk
http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com
mydem@comcast.net
Lambda Awards Finalist 2010/Bisexual Fiction for Holy Communion. Won the 2009 Rainbow Award for Best Overall Bisexual/Transvestite book and 2nd place for 2009 Rainbow Awards: Best Coming of Age / Young Adult Novel
Wow. Two of my fave NYC writers. Sage advice from Patti: time to explore Poughkeepsie. Do they have a mass transit system? Thanks for another great post.
At this point I only travel back to the NYC area to attend sporting events and then I do my best to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.
I wish I had seen this too... thanks for the recap. Did you see the Smith documentary from 2008, Dream of Life?
Did she actually say Poughkeepsie?
I'm already there! ( http://just-john.com )
Cripes, it's getting harder and harder for me to come up with excuses not to go out and play. The "This isn't NYC" one has just been blown away.
@Roberta:
Potown does have buses, as part of a county system that gets to other towns like Fishkill. I've only used them a few times, but enjoyed the experience more than I'd expected.
http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/Planning/PLLoopSchedules.htm
It's so true. Saturday May 1st I was in NYC to see Bernadette Mayer (one of Patti's peers) Read @ The Bowery Poetry Club. I walked down east 4th from 2nd and as I turned South on Bowery I had no idea where I was for a minute. The cityscape had changed so. I was freaked by the steel and glass and Blue & Cream on East 1st and thought to myself "It really is finished! It's all gone!"
I agree Ewing33Knicks...completely.
Scranton awaits!
To "build a whole community of transvestites or artists or writers" is to start the gentrification process. This can be accomplished in the South Bronx or other places in the "outer boroughs."
Poughkeepsie...apparently the secret's out...
This is true only if you consider downtown Manhattan to be the horizon line for "the city," which would be unfortunate.
Patti is forgetting that the reason artists of her generation moved downtown was because it was, at the time, a periphery; Gentrification has shifted that periphery. Plenty of young and intense artists/writers not being published by HarperCollins know that you can live in the city for cheap and find people if you're willing to live in the city for cheap and find people.
NEWSFLASH: New York City is no longer friendly to struggling artists. Really? People are still asking that question in 2010? It's still a point of discussion? Really?
yes, she really said Poughkeepsie. is it really called "Potown"?
If you don't like Poughkeepsie, Kingston might work.
Every single person I know who has read Just Kids has LOVED it, including me. And none of us would call ourselves massive Patti Smith fans. Its that good. Glad to hear she's planning more. Too bad that movie was a bomb.
there are great peripheries in Denver for young artists to explore. Come!
The whole New York area is too expensive now, Brooklyn included. You need space and freedom as an artist or musician and Detroit or other similar cities offer an abundance. The need to be close to the art scene in New York to get noticed is negated by the internet. We're talking actual freedom here, not just slightly cheaper rent.
Huffington picked up the report of Smith's advice to young artists, let me add to the comment storm this topic always generates. The "is it possible to be an artist in NYC anymore" argument is old (I've been hearing/discussing it for about 10 years) and the answer is no. Even in fringe neighborhoods (Bushwick, South Bronx, Red Hook, etc.) studio and live spaces are too expensive and unstable and the relationship between building owners and tenants is at a constant fever pitch of antagonisim. Young artists are constantly being taken advantage of in New York. For a city to be fruitful for artists, artists have to take advantage of their spaces and their environments, not the other way around. It's been the other way around in NYC for some time. Listen to Patti, find somewhere else.
Hey Billy Name (Warhols lighting director) moved to Pough-town. Yeah it's cheap here and the reason for that is there are zero jobs. I mean it is depression city. Ten years ago the Poughkeepsie Journal use to have 300 want ads on a Sunday. Now (in the Bush depression) they have maybe 40. On the bright side the Hudson Valley is one of the most beautiful spots on the planet. Just make sure you bring your money with you cause you ain't making any here.
Art, music community in Houston is pretty damn incredible. The rent is reasonable. The food out of this world and varied. Artists flourish here. Check it out.
I agree with Shawn G. One problem with the outer boroughs is that the city's transportation network is set up in a way that, in the cheap parts of the outer boroughs, it actually takes longer to get to downtown Manhattan than in much of the suburbs. So I think that the thing to do is to skip over the outer boroughs and inner suburbs and go to places like Suffolk and mid-Hudson. Rents in the parts of Brooklyn close to Manhattan are higher than in much of Manhattan.
And its time to get out if you can. It now appears that the yunnie thing isn't a transitory phase, these people will be around for some time.
I could use advice right now for people stuck here due to jobs (not that plentiful in other places, unfortunately) or family ties. If you don't like the current version of New York, what do you do to stay sane? I went away for three weeks and when I came back I found the network of places outside my apartment I spent time in had been ripped to threads between closings, changes of management, etc., changes in the surrounding neighborhood, etc. Do I just stay in my apartment when I'm not at work?
Interesting report on Patti Smith, in particular her advice to the young and to up-and-coming artists to “find a new city” to take the place of the New York that once, supposedly, welcomed them. It is also interesting to consider the alternatives proposed in the comments: Poughkeepsie, Houston, Denver. Why not LA, Seattle, Miami? Well, actually, Miami has, it seems to me, what it may take to make a city friendly to artists. For one thing, it’s a city. For another, it’s also international, which is to say open to influences from the outside. And there’s also money there (how, precisely, it got there is irrelevant to this discussion.) Because money is important, even if artists generally don’t have much, at least at first. Money means there’s a potential market for stuff that artists create – even conceptual pieces (like a Christo-Jeanne-Claude landscape piece) that can’t be sold – and in places like Miami and, at least in the past, Houston, there are or have been people who for one reason or another (status, social climbing, actual interest, a mix of all these) will spend their money on artistic output. There is also the matter of cultural history, and here’s where New York is clearly predominant: the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, the American Museum of Natural History, Broadway – just to name these few historic institutions – these are places artists must go to, interact with, in order to bounce their own ideas off of what’s established, in order to know what they must struggle against, or try to overcome, or to change, or to adopt. For these reasons, New York seems to me to maintain its dominant position, at least in regard to American arts today. Will this change? Undoubtedly, but not, I think, because of New York’s gentrifying or for its tearing down old buildings along the Bowery, but rather because of the United States diminishing importance in the world, and therefore in the world of the arts. This is what happened to Paris – the money left, the collectors also, as well as the openness of spirit (or indifference to difference) that characterized the French capital for more than 100 years – New York offered an attractive alternative to Paris’s primacy and this has lasted for about 70 years, which is not to be sneezed at. But things change. Today artists in Shanghai, for instance, may follow intently what’s happening in New York today, but will it really be surprising if at some point those same young artists decide that New York is old-fashioned, dusty and altogether rather tired. And Chinese collectors, among the richest in the world and with the desire to impress, will be collecting works by local artists, listening to music made by local artists, watching plays and TV shows and movies all made by local artists. We in New York will read about the incredible art sales at Christies and Sothebys Shanghai and we will remember. But it won’t really involve wishing we’d moved to Poughkeepsie, or even to Miami, I think.
linked here from HuffPost: Love Patti. Love how she spits on stage while reciting poetry (saw it myself at Carnegie Hall-majestic).She's right. NYC is not for the faint of heart. I remember the last days of Basquiat. before soho was a giant iPod commercial. If you want to touch the old vibe. Go to Walter DiMaria's "Earth Room" on Wooster.
I paint--had space in Bushwick ("da bush") for 13 years. Lived all over Manhattan. in 03' felt the city was like a trauma victim, soul damage. Bought a shack in the Catskills for cash and built my own studio. That's Freedom! Now i make my work upstate, and keep a small space in da bush. Many others are doing this type of thing. Perhaps the swamps of Jersey will give us another Patti Smith!
good question, Ed. i don't leave my apartment much. writing about this stuff helps me "stay sane." i don't know--Poughkeepsie sometimes looks pretty good. anyone else have advice for Ed?
Live where you want to live. Live where there's work. That's what the internet allows you to do as an artist. It allows you to create where you like to live and send the results to the world at large.
I went to Poughkeepsie two years ago and had the best dinner at a really creative Mexican restaurant not far from the train station - better than anything I've had in NYC and as good as places in Mexico. It was just superb. But also loved the worn down yet gorgeous architecture and full of possibility vibe of the town. Went back maybe 6 months later (restaurant was that good!) and it was gone, replaced with John McCain/Sarah Palin posters. Oh well. I definitely thought Poughkeepsie could be a good place to start something new.
I got to the P. Smith/Lethem talk late on Saturday (the crazy R train took forever to come - this city can make you so disheartened - and I was already running late) so I missed almost all of it. I wonder if it's on YouTube somewhere. Thanks for the recap. It helps me feel like I actually saw some of it.
ProTip: Get a Job...even it if is below your personal entitlement.
I'm young...somehow I have been able to manage on my own just fine.
Seattle was good for some time. I was young there just as grunge came out. The prices are now a bit inflated over what they were. You can still live in the Rainier Valley, and in west Seattle fairly cheaply, and up by Greenlake.
My novel Temping (Black Heron Press, 2006) discusses Temping as a temporary solution for young people who want to live in the cities but don't have much in terms of job skills except maybe a B.A. and the ability to type.
I'm going to regret this but ... oh well ....
Austin Texas
Houston Texas
There. Don't everyone move here at the same time, ok?
Patti Smith is a legend. She’s exactly the type of person that NYC used to attract before the Wonder Bread Invasion took hold and killed all worthwhile creativity in this city. When a true artist like Smith is telling you as a young, supposed “creative” person, that NYC is not the place to be, you should probably listen.
Notice how that Jonathan Lethem dude is dressed up in the Park Slope/Carroll Gardens “I’m a writer” hipster-yuppie douche uniform: Converses, a plaid flannel, doofy jeans and thick eyeframes. Terrible.
oh no, i think i dress like that, too.
Patti is cool, but she's not a young person living in New York City. My advice to her is, ask a young person if it's possible to grow in New York City.
NYC has been un affordable since the early 80's. I don't know how anybody could get a foot up there, especially on low wages!
I grew up just outside poughkeepsie and used to play music in the city's old theaters and clubs as a teenager. It was not good. The Hudson Valley has plenty of beauty to offer but the city of poughkeepsie is hostile to artists and decent music. The creative outlets are overrun by meatheads and scenester types. I and others I knew used to get robbed and we would get our equipment ripped off. Approach with caution.
I think it's hilarious that anyone would think all the broken down small industrial towns of upstate New York offer some sort of refuge for creative youth. Those small towns are DEAD, and they're going to stay that way. As bad as NYC gets, it's still better than some broken down post industrial wasteland of losers and inbred nincompoops. And I think if you hang around NYC long enough, you'll eventually see another major evacuation of wealth, leaving room for creativity and starving artists to flourish again. It may take another 5 to 10 years, but it will happen. Time marches on.
People need to listen to those who actually live in Po-town.
It's literally depression era. And not in the cool way that NYC was in the 70's. Just burned out people and no culture of ANY KIND IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.
But go ahead and move there. Have fun eating at McDonalds and working at 7/11.
if you want to be in NYC then you'll be here, you won't be able to resist it... if you don't, you won't. The city will kick your a** out faster then you can spell poh-kip-see.
Comparing NYC to any of those upstate small towns is ridiculous. The only time an artist moves up there is after they already establish themselves in the city/country/world. Then they can afford a house, property taxes and the commute, and still get called for gigs.
sheesh, if you read that and even for a second thought about moving to poookeepcey because it would be good for your art you should pack your bags and get out so someone with some guts can live here.
Yeah, NYC sucks right now for struggling artisits, but that's the point. It's hard to live here. If it was easy everybody would do it, and then it would really suck. Are you really gonna get the energy, culture, freedom from hick-dom.
Yes, if you leave for more than a few weeks you might come back to a bunch of changes. It's always been that way. When your NYC starts disappearing that's a sign you're starting to make this your home. We all have a different version of NYC that we carry with us our whole lives and lament for many years. It never stays the same for very long. Just like a healthy art scene. Always trying to find something more, sometimes sucking, sometimes soaring...
love it or leave it...
settle down Francis
I moved to NYC from Hudson, NY and 6 months later the recession hit. I moved back up to Hudson and have never ben happier. NYC is 2 away by car or train and cost of living is 40% cheaper. The Hudson Valley is the new East Village.
as a struggling artist living in brooklyn, i KNOW that i CANT move to any other american city because there are NO JOBS ELSEWHERE.
at least i have a community of struggl'ees here. like you, patti, once upon a time. hmmm
I'm going to go off point here, but I lived in Detroit back in the late '70s when Smith's then husband used to play at a bar called Bookies. What I have to say isn't going to be popular, but she wasn't a nice person. Not only wouldn't she talk to anyone, she wouldn't make eye contact. I find it odd that New York has embraced her as an elder stateswoman of cool when she was anything but cool on Thursday nights at Bookies. I wish more of us Detroiters - former and current -would talk about this time in her life.
Move to Fishkill! Awesome advice...actually, I don't know why everyone thinks artists need so much community...isolation is good...find a place that is cheap...and beautiful... live cheaply, focus and forget about a community of like minded folks (very late 19th century notion actually...get modern, get alone) and you will be fine...
When I was an art student in Montreal in the late 70s, the school studios were in "little Burgundy," a black neighbourhood founded by railway porters and their families that produced such jazz greats as Oscar Peterson, Oliver Jones, Charlie Biddle and Ivan and Nelson Symonds. As the passenger trains dwindled, the neighbourhood changed. One day a self-reflective graffito appeared on the wall of Rockhead's Paradise Nightclub at Notre Dame and Mountain St.:
"Artists are the shock-troops of gentrification"
Houston? The scene may be killer and the jobs abundant, but the weather is filthy and Texas is a strange land.
Now Toronto, (bigger than Houston...imagine!) and apparently a global warming winner (however temporarily)is way more international than NYC (ducks) Artists sometimes seem to be the only people making a living here.
NYC was always a tough town. The process of homogenization has been going on for 10 or 15 years at least. *And* the psychosis and criminality infecting the financial industry ramped both these things up to a crazy extreme - I really do think it's worse now. I know there are smart, adaptable young artists who are surviving in New York, and I am glad for it. I actually really like NYC, though I miss a lot of the texture and character. (When I was there last December, I was kind of heartened to see some trash rolling around in the street.)
I am in the Midwest - I've made a home here on purpose - and though it's a very different way to go about pursuing an art practice, I don't think you can just discount it. And I absolutely don't think you can say that good art is not being made here. In 2008-2009, the Van Abbemusuem in the Netherlands curated a huge show called "Heart Land." The artists represented all made their homes near "the Mississippi River and its tributaries from the south to the north, taking in an area from New Orleans up to Minneapolis in the north and including Omaha, Kansas City, Detroit and Chicago." Here is the link, if anyone wants to take a look: http://www.heartlandeindhoven.nl/program_EN.php
I almost moved to NYC after college to become a writer. I had enough support from mentors and family to make it feasible, & I'm nothing if not stubborn. So I don't think it's that I couldn't have done it. But during some preliminary trips to look at apartments and such, I had this intuition that living there would destroy my ability to stay vulnerable enough to tell good stories. The noise and the fracas and the extremely competitive atmosphere - it fried my nervous system. So I decided to find a place where it was easier for me to concentrate on my work, is all. I still love visiting NYC. I think it is a marvelous place. I totally understand why young artists want to be there. But I think it's also time to realize that there can be a larger, broader American art landscape, with art being made in lots of places. This whole sports-league type mindset, "my bike is cooler than your bike," BS, I think is the tired old thought here.
I tried Buffalo. Don't try Buffalo.
What about Staten Island or Queens? Last I checked, there were still deals there for struggling artists. I think what Patti Smith is saying is that, for her vision of what a struggling artist ought to be, a different town is better.
There is an energy to New York that you don't find in those other towns and that's why people continue flocking to New York (that, and the fact that there still are jobs here you can do part-time while you're working on your art).
Detroit is becoming an excellent place for artists and entrepeneurs, not just for the relatively cheap cost of living but because of the community. The suburbs have some of the highest per capital income in the US and there are many collectors in this area as well as lots of galleries. We also have a world class art museum, symphony, opera, excellent universities and art colleges (Cranbrook and CCS)& due to the recent tax breaks for filmmaking, we're seeing a number of people in the creative arts staying here instead of moving to NYC or LA. And, unlike upstate NYC, you can get direct flights in and out of the area, which is convenient. I also spent some time recently in Kansas City - it's a little gem - great people, a thriving artist community, charming neighborhoods and loads of parks and greenery. I lived in Astoria in the late '80's - it was manageably affordable then, but now I'm guessing its less so, due to it's proximity to Manhattan. For too long we;ve paid attention to the coasts - I can't think of a better place to start up a new artistic center of the US than the middle of the US
I'm a musician living in Philly, about to move to New York and I find these comparisons ridiculous. Yes, rents are cheap here, but you get what you pay for. You can see more variety and quality of music walking around Central park on a nice day then you ever would in Philly, and having been to several other major cities I think this is the same for other places. No other city in America offers anything close to New York, and size-wise, the entire downtown of Philly is roughly comparable to a random neighborhood in Brooklyn, and Philly's downtown is big compared to most cities.
In terms of cultural life, bigger is just better.
In every aspect, the variety and quality of music in New York is just not comparable to anywhere else, besides places like Nashville which are very genre-specific. Of course you can live in a cabin in the woods if you're already established, but if you're not you would just end up being a hermit....
Took the plunge and moved to Philly in 2010 after 14 years in BK. I'm glad she is urging artists to be realistic- it will help them.
Other commenter is right- Philly is not without its share of problems, but if space is what you need, you can have it here and be within reasonable distance to NYC for business. Plus you don't have to live in Jersey. I have 2250 square feet of beautiful home. Get it while financing is cheap!
Please do keep in mind, there are cities in other countries that exist to foster fruitful lives... Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tokyo, Rio just to name a few of the heavy hitters. I'm not saying these cities have the same cultural context NY had in the 60's but there are ways to meddle with alternative systems that allow artists and young people to thrive in ways they never knew imaginable.
-American artist living in one of these cities, 24, just starting out and doing it raw and loving it. Get a passport and get that global education. You might find your future passion, career, lover or all of the above with just one spontaneous decision to move out of NY to one of these cities.
The vanishing artist, NYC style.
Hello I am native New Yorker, musician and a working middle class professional. First off this city sucks for any artist who needs supplies, equipment and space do their work if they cannot net 120k a year unless they have a rent stabilized apartment. That I would say is the law.
I live near that stupid little Blue Cream shop on the Bowery and 1st Street. I never see anyone in there. It's just like that stupid John Varvatos shop that sells Converse for 150 bucks and used MC jackets for over 5 hundred. Does anyone where that stuff? How do they pay their rent??????
It's strange times here in the city. Patti was fortunate enough to know where to go as an artist. She set her course and was able to execute her desires.
Rent is killing all art big and small. Rent is killing the creative alternative communities of the city. Currently my wife, son and I have to move. Croman Real Estate / 9300 Realty is doubling our rent from 2100 a mo. to 4100 a mo. My wife is a nurse at the local hospital and I have a teaching job at the local university. WE CANNOT AFFORD THAT KIND OF RENT! We are a college educated hard working family that just wants to get ahead. We want to live in a community of creatives.
I've been researching where to go. Looking for other university jobs. Austin I read is old hat. It's compared to Williamsberg Bklyn. A has been town. Detroit sounds depressing and the work scene is not desirable. Miami... Houston, LA, Upstate NY... nope. Pennsylvania will keep me dreaming about NYC.
In writing this my thoughts keep circling. The only thing here that made sense was when that other person said to wait for the economic downswing. Not everyone can be in finance and not everyone's trust fund will last forever.
i must have missed this post. i have been asking where is the "new" place? guess there are some. penn seems the best to me, as its close to NYC on the train. as for patty smith, i never "got" it. i have been to her reading @ st.marks church like maybe late 60s or early 70s. fair, but not anything i remember. but this music, sounds like noise. i never thought she had much talent, most of my NYC friends agree. we say, go figure. she did make lots of $$ & is able to live in the west village. patty lived across the street from me around 1971, but we traveled in different circles.
Anon, April 6, 2013 at 1:06 PM:
Yeah, I've spent a few years struggling with "where do I go" too. In order to make art and only work part-time at a job that doesn't exhaust me, the cost of living, rent especially, has to be so low that it eliminates most cities. I'm a single woman who want to live alone, so the top 10 most violent cities are eliminated. Sorry Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis. Plus, white artists "urban homesteading" in majority AA cities and framing it as an act of "charity" has more than a whiff of creepy colonialist entitlement.
It feels like almost EVERY city has become either an overpriced "artisan" boutique or warzone. A by-product of the destruction of the middle class in this country. Here's my personal list, based on the national median income of $50K (middle class) with $25K as the earnings that most successful artists can expect to earn from a combined day job and art sales.
Unaffordable to even middle class wages:
NY, SF, DC
Affordable with a middle class income, art part-time:
LA, Seattle, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Portland, Austin, San Diego, Santa Fe
Affordable to work part-time in limited areas/situations, or outer suburbs:
Chicago, New Orleans, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Albuquerque, Raleigh-Durham, Dallas
Affordable to art full-time, with high crime rates:
St. Louis, Memphis, Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Wilmington, Houston, Birmingham, Orlando, Buffalo, Albany, Hartford, Cincinnati, Columbus, Nashville
Affordable to art full-time with low crime rates:
Louisville, Iowa City, St. Paul, MN, past the exurbs of cities is the last 2 categories.
Mostly every place is unaffordable or too dangerous. Commerce seems to be moving past their need for artists to displace the working classes, especially on the coasts.
Anon, good list but what about Sacramento?
Not true. I'm in I'd 30s been here for nearly 15 year, some prestigious awards under the belt too and NYC is terrible standard of living for many great artists... it's cool at 25 but at 35 its necessary to have a home, not just living in small cramped rooms, in poverty with roommates and an uncertain future. In general this country should treat creative people better.
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