Last Friday, my band Blackout Shoppers was fortunate enough to be one of several
bands to play for the last time at The Trash Bar. A great music venue,
The Trash Bar has been a great place to see a show. They have a great sound
system and manage to bring a wide array of music there.
Trash Bar is the kind of live music
venue that used to thrive in Manhattan, and now it’s found itself priced out of
Williamsburg. It’s the latest victim of the city’s own success and Brooklyn’s
transformation from downtrodden borough to one of the most expensive places in
the world to live.
The Williamsburg section of
Brooklyn used to be a bad place. Frank Serpico was shot not far from
the Williamsburg Bridge. Apartments in that building are now listed for sale at
up to $1 million.
Williamsburg is where young
artistic types began moving to at the end of the last century because space was
cheap and the area was close to Manhattan. But creative young people can’t
afford to live in the popular parts of Brooklyn anymore. The kind of people
more likely to move to these areas now are wealthy people who had traditionally
occupied the more upscale parts of Manhattan. A recent episode from the TV show
Broad City captured
this perfectly. One of the show’s main characters is chatting with three
high-priced lawyers. They all tell her that they currently live in Murray Hill
(a high-priced part of Manhattan) but that they are all moving to Williamsburg.
It follows a familiar pattern, a
pattern we saw in the East Village and Lower East Side of Manhattan: A run-down
area attracts enthusiastic artists and musicians because living is cheap. Those
artists make the area desirable, which raises property values. Those property
values drive away the artists and their venues that began the rejuvenation.
While it was the place that music
venues fled to when Manhattan became too overpriced, Williamsburg is losing the
art and music that made it attractive.
Bushwick has become the new Williamsburg,
although the pace of gentrification seems to speed up in some respects. Prices
on apartments start to rise in advance of the vanguard of gentrification that
makes a neighborhood safe. Williamsburg has been relatively safe for a while
now, but Bushwick is still more dangerous with higher crime.
This kind of gentrification has
been going in the city for years. Since the time of the Dutch settlers, this
has been a city in flux. Nothing stays for too long. The churn of commerce and
change is constant. The city wouldn’t thrive otherwise.
It’s true that the city is losing
some of its trademark characteristics and grit. No doubt part of Big Apple lore is lost
forever. It’s not all bad though. I’m glad I can walk down the Bowery without
being afraid for my life, though I’m sad that there aren’t as many music venues
there.
Williamsburg been overpriced for
years, but I didn’t think that Trash Bar would get priced out of existence in a
decade. It brought in big crowds and even catered to the obnoxious yuppies and
hipsters with some of its live music and its karaoke. The show we played Friday
night was well attended. The bands played great and it sounded excellent.
Everyone left it all on stage and we walked out with our heads held high.
And that’s all you can do as a New
Yorker. Change is never going to stop, so don’t let it stop you. There will be
new places to make and see music. The pioneer spirit that brought the Dutch to
the New World and brought rock clubs to formerly desolate and dangerous parts
of the city can’t be killed off, it’s just moving to a new neighborhood.
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