Creative Class

Paul Goldberger’s article in the September Vanity Fair about the runaway success of 15 Central Park West, the new building designed by Robert A. M. Stern, made me wonder if Robber Barons (domestic or otherwise) are the only ones buying anything here these days.

Reports from my circle of designers/architects and store owners are a little surprising – sure there are slow and even flat sales, and some busts, but more than a few are up from last year even without the big windfalls that the uber-wealthy generate – this from people selling carpet, lighting, furniture, toys, etc.

Calm before the storm? Maybe, but let’s be somewhat hopeful. Stacations may belie that new sofa purchase, but who’s complaining?

Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair:

It isn’t possible to quantify the extent to which society and culture are
indebted to Bohemia. In every age in every successful country, it has been
important that at least a small part of the cityscape is not dominated by
bankers, developers, chain stores, generic restaurants, and railway terminals.
This little quarter should instead be the preserve of—in no special
order—insomniacs and restaurants and bars that never close; bibliophiles and the
little stores and stalls that cater to them; alcoholics and addicts and deviants
and the proprietors who understand them; aspirant painters and musicians and the
modest studios that can accommodate them; ladies of easy virtue and the men who
require them; misfits and poets from foreign shores and exiles from remote and
cruel dictatorships. Though it should be no disadvantage to be young in such a
quartier, the atmosphere should not by any means discourage the veteran. It was
Jean-Paul Sartre who to his last days lent the patina to the Saint-Germain
district of Paris, just as it is Lawrence Ferlinghetti, last of the Beats, who
by continuing to operate his City Lights bookstore in San Francisco’s North
Beach still gives continuity with the past …

Those who don’t live in such threatened districts nonetheless have a stake in
this quarrel and some skin in this game, because on the day when everywhere
looks like everywhere else we shall all be very much impoverished, and not only
that but—more impoverishingly still—we will be unable to express or even
understand or depict what we have lost.

The rest is here (h/t: Brian Knudsen). Photo from Vanity Fair.

Whenever these issues come up, I recall what Jane Jacobs once said to me: “When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.”