Response 3 - Skye Nguyen
March 20, 2018, by Skye
“Downtown 81” is a film written and produced by Glenn O’Brien that features different artists from the punk/post-punk era of Manhattan. The film opens with Jean-Michel Basquiat waking up in a bed at what appears to be a hospital. He seems pretty confused and the film is narrated in a way that reminds me a lot of Fight Club— poetic almost? But detached. The background music gives the film an even weirder vibe on top of the narration and the different angles the film is shot in.
At only three minutes into “Downtown 81,” a line stuck out to me: “I was free, but the city wasn’t. The subway fare had gone up, but that was okay. I knew my way downtown.” When the subway fare had gone up a little bit last year, I was annoyed because like everyone else that lives in New York, I relied on the public transit system because there’s not many other ways to get around the city. You could take a car, but then you’d pay at least twenty dollars to get anywhere, and you could take the bus, but you’d just end up smushed in a corner shoved against a bunch of other people. The best way around the city is taking the train, or if possible, by walking. The New York subway system isn’t all that consistent though, and the trains are often down or running with delays, but compared to other cities, our public transit system is awesome. In Washington DC, where I’m from, it takes twenty minutes to drive to a train station in the suburbs outside DC, then you have to pay for ticket and hold onto it, since you pay per ticket (if you lose your ticket, you’ll pretty much end up stuck in the train system), and then the train drops you off a mile or two away from where you’re trying to be. Basically my point is that New Yorkers take their public transit system for granted and it’s a lot better in comparison to other train systems.
Anyway, I was annoyed that the subway fare had gone up, like Jean-Michel Basquiat, but I also didn’t mind because it allowed me to explore my neighborhood more. I really only used the train to get to work, but it was definitely walkable. When it got warmer out, I was able to walk to work and each day I came in, I tried to take a new route so I could see something new each time.
As Basquiat tries to sell his artwork and meets other New York artists and musicians, we learn more about what it was like during this time period. It wasn’t too long ago, about thirty-ish years, but everything seems so different and you really get to see how much New York has changed. Downtown is still “arty” but not the way it used to be. The music and arts scene seems to have moved to Brooklyn— but deeper Brooklyn, not Williamsburg— and it’s interesting to see parallels and differences between this era and what we’re currently seeing on the streets of Bushwick. I brought this up in my second derive, but seeing New York change reminds me of the concept of a “true village place” and what that means. It’s obviously not the new coffee-shops we see all over the village and Brooklyn, but since so much has changed over the years, what constitutes a “true village place” anyway?