Matt on Sante & Bohemia
March 19, 2018, by Matt
I found these four chapters of Low Life to be a fun read. His writing is enjoyable to get through, and I always learn about New York in the process. I found “Rubberneckers” to be fascinating, and was the judgmental tourism that he described was very interesting. I always knew that, during its first century, the United States was rather rudimentary compared to Europe, but for some reason, I had assumed that New York was the best the country had to offer. Maybe I only thought this because of Hamilton, but I always thought that New York had always been the best of America.
I clearly couldn’t have been more wrong, and the accounts of tourists really amused me. Mrs. Trollope’s account made me smile, and Charles Dickens was particularly funny: “What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us? …reeking everywhere with dirt and filth” (Sante 292). What an advertisement for New York that was!
These accounts make me smile because they make me think of how friends or strangers react when I tell them I live in New York/go to NYU. Usually there’s a look of fascination and envy, as most people think that New York is how it appears in Gossip Girl or Sex and the City. I then tell them that those fantasies are far from the truth, and that New York is actually often quite dirty and frustrating. This made me think of a time that I landed at JFK to be greeted by a promotional banner that read “New York! The glamour of it all!” underneath a run-down, leaky ceiling that was marked off by CUIDADO tape. Of course I love New York, but it’s always funny to compare those shiny fantasies with the reality of smelly hot trash in the summer and men clipping their nails on the subway.
After reading these chapters about New York’s poor and bohemian populations, I also got to thinking about what New York is now, and whether or not a true bohemian culture could ever thrive here again. Since its founding, New York has had ups and downs which have allowed groups like Bowery boys, tramps, and the bohemians of Basquiat’s time to live in Manhattan. I’m not an expert on Manhattan’s history, but it seems like there are very few places on this island where a poor community would be welcome and able to thrive. Since the 1990s, New York has been on such an upswing, and the city has become a fantasy and fairytale myth which lures in throngs of rich transplants.
It goes without saying that this is an extremely impractical island and a difficult one to live on financially. So, under these circumstances, can a true bohemian culture ever truly thrive in Manhattan ever again? Certainly not below 14th street, where some of the city’s most expensive real estate is. Only those rich enough to afford prices in Manhattan can move here to take part in a new kind of inauthentic bohemia. Ada Clare described bohemians as first and foremost to be “for all things above and beyond convention,” and I think that might be harder and harder to find in Manhattan nowadays (Sante 323).
Works Cited Sante, Luc. Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991.