The invitation came by email: I was to present myself at 9 p.m. that Saturday in the lobby of the New Yorker Hotel on Eighth Avenue and 34th Street. Without explanation, I was told to come alone, dress warmly, bring a bottle of bourbon and, on arrival, keep an eye out for a mysterious “agent” in a red beret. I had received the note, in response to one of my own, from N. D. Austin and Ida C. Benedetto, the trespass artists who, to great acclaim last year, secretly — and illegally — turned a water tower in Chelsea into a speakeasy. The day before the invitation, I had written to them, as I had to others, with a question I’d been thinking about for weeks: Was the city’s creative underground really dead, as people often said? What ended up happening that night was proof that it was not. At the appointed hour, 15 or 20 of us gathered in the lobby, eyeing one another and trying to blend into a crowd of innocent tourists. A few minutes later, the agent, indeed in a beret, rose from a sofa and strolled out the door. All of us followed as she ducked around the corner and whisked us into a building — a large commercial structure, empty, dusty, obviously under construction. With no idea where we were going, we were led up 16 flights of stairs, in the dark, and then out onto the roof. There we saw the elevator room, a small brick box, which had been converted into a cramped, clandestine jazz club. A barman in a trilby offered cocktails; a chandelier of candles dangled from the ceiling. As the night went on, musicians played, an illusionist performed and the assorted guests — painters, filmmakers, an aerialist just back from Brazil — stood among the huge industrial motors, talking about the only-in-New-York-ness of it all, which was, of course, the point. Somehow, in the last few years, it has become an article of faith that New York has lost its artistic spirit, that the city’s long run as a capital of culture is over. After all (or so the argument goes), foreign oligarchs and hedge-fund traders have bought up all the real estate, chased away the artists and turned the bohemia that once ran east from Chumley’s clear across the Williamsburg Bridge into a soulless playground of money.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 15:01:59 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015