Archive for September, 2007
Taylor Clark has a fascinating article in Slate about Portland’s rise as the indie music capital. His thesis: There is no “Portland scene” that is attracting great bands, rather it’s the city itself that is key.
Why, you might ask, haven’t you really noticed Portland’s incredible concentration of musical talent before? Because unlike, say, Seattle’s grunge boom in the ’90s or the Bay Area’s recent hyphy movement, Portland has neither a distinctive “sound” nor a “scene” to speak of. Sonically, there’s not a whole lot that the twisty pop of the Shins has in common with the “hyper-literate prog-rock” (to borrow a phrase from Stephen Colbert) of the Decemberists. And virtually none of these groups can be considered “Portland bands” since, with very few exceptions, they all moved to town after gaining some level of fame. (Generally speaking, it’s rare to meet a young, creative Portlander who’s from Portland.) You might see Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss parking her Volvo station wagon in front of Stumptown Coffee Roasters, for instance, but you seldom feel these luminaries exerting any influence on the local musical landscape. They all just kind of live here. Which is why it’s often quipped that Portland is the place where hipsters go to retire.
So what’s luring them here? The rockers themselves have somewhat confusingly praised Portland as a city “entrenched in juvenilia” (Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein), a place with a sense of “calm longevity” (chief Decemberist Colin Meloy), and a home of “really great public transportation” (the Shins’ Mercer, who, it’s safe to assume, didn’t come here for the bus routes). If there’s any alluring indie mystique to Portland, it’s most likely due to the late Elliott Smith, who attended high school on the west side of town and recorded his most-loved work here. (Mercer even owns Smith’s old house.)…
The city overflows with hipsters, artists, and independent-minded do-it-yourselfers, to whom someone like Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker is nothing less than a living legend. … It’s easy to live here. In the words of a friend of mine who used to be the music editor at the local alt-weekly, Portland is like a resort community for indie rockers who spend half the year working themselves ragged on tour. You can venture into public dressed like a convicted sex offender or a homeless person, and no one looks at you askew. It’s lush and green. Housing is affordable, especially compared with Seattle or San Francisco. The people are nice. The food is good. Creativity is the highest law. For young, hip Portlanders, financial success is a barista job that subsidizes your Romanian-space-folk band or your collages of cartoon unicorns.
And, crucially, indie groups always have good experiences here, because the city produces very enthusiastic rock crowds. Ask a musician why they relocated to Portland and, from Britt Daniel on down, the most common response is: “We came through on tour and I thought it was awesome.” It might not be enough to lure the glitterati, but Portland’s combination of affordability, natural beauty, and laid-back weirdness is an independent artist’s dream. Plus, I hear the public transportation is incredible.
Read the whole thing here.
The Guardian writes:
The unofficial battle for the title World Capital of Cool is about to resume. There are only two big beasts in the jungle: New York, once the undisputed champion, and London, seen by many as rapidly closing the gap. Debate about their respective merits raged earlier this year when London emerged as a threat to the Big Apple’s financial dominance. It is about to start again as the cities go head to head in an autumn culture war.
New York has struck an early blow after being voted the ‘coolest city in the world’ in research published today. An online survey of more than 2,500 people aged 18-35 was commissioned by STA Travel and CoolBrands, part of the Superbrands consultancy. New York was rated number one for ‘coolness’ with 14 per cent of the vote, followed by London on 10 per cent. It is a measure of how far the British capital’s thriving bars, restaurants and shops have come in recent years that it beat perennial favourites Sydney, Barcelona, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Bangkok, Paris, Tokyo and Berlin in the top 10.
I have come to thoroughly dislike the adjective “cool” when used to modify cities. The full story is here. Some of my related thoughts, here.
The Guardian profiles a fascinating new study (hat tip Charlotta Mellander):
It shows how the area in which an individual lives can be a strong predictor of their identity not only in terms of class but also health, family structure and likely lifespan. It can even reveal the likelihood that a person is divorced… and when they are likely to have their first child.
The story is here.
Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of
FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of ‘heat maps’ that show
the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some
preselected criteria. The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts
of the country or see how your current city compares to others.
Good Second Home Map
Come back Monday to see next week’s map: Retired, Not Dead
Ed Glaeser offers his thoughts on how to deal with the deepening lending debacle, here.
Airoots on New York’s homogenization and Tokyo’s dynamism (pointer via Where Blog).
Chris Leo explains in this most interesting post.
Tear holes in your city and stick in as many highways as you can. Highways that will divide and cut through existing business districts are the best. You must have major highways cutting into your downtown!! Remember, you don’t want people to live in the city, especially wealthy people.
Raise taxes in the city to pay for it and your other plans. Well, just raise taxes for any reason really.
Cut and remove as much mass transit as you can. Transit is needed to have a dense city and you don’t want that …
Put huge sports stadiums in or near the key areas of the city. Since they are usually empty, they are like putting extra-fancy holes in the town. They waste lots of tax money and best of all they need tons of parking!!! (Remember, you don’t have mass transit.) The key is to put these holes in or just near the downtown and make sure that a sea of parking lots sit on the most useful city land …
Use all kinds of anti-walking policies. Shoppers usually walk and you don’t want that. Get rid of sidewalks and use highways with walls to cut up areas.
Basically, it’s a progressive strategy. You set in motion a chain reaction that requires more and more of the same — more holes and lower densities require more driving and more holes in the city and so on.
It’s amazing to me how many cities and regions hold fast to this plan. It has a bizarre logic all its own. The reason is: certain groups benefit a great deal from it. Question: Who are they?