First, the wonderful Jeremiah Moss, author of the fabulous Jeremiah's Vanishing New York blog, now has a book out titled, "Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost its Soul." You can check it out online here, but it is being widely distributed and sold, so check your local book shops. (Jeremiah would encourage local, independent book shop patronage!)
For the past ten years, Jeremiah has chronicled the horrifying gentrification of the Lower East Side of New York City, in particular the doubling and tripling of rents on retail spaces to make room for stores, restaurants, and pubs directed toward the rich and trendy. This practise has put hundreds (thousands?) of much-loved and much-patronized small businesses out of business or forced them to move out of their neighbourhoods. This practise has changed the entire landscape of New York City (not just in the Lower East Side), removing a lot of the heart and soul and quirky independence by which it was once characterized.
Jeremiah lovingly documents the vanishing businesses of the Lower East Side - that so many people patronize and love - before they disappear. And I love him for it!
(Aside: I also love Jeremiah's Vanishing New York blog because it's still a blogspot. Blogspots represent!)
The hyper-gentrification Jeremiah has so heartbreakingly and painstakingly chronicled in New York City for the past 10 years is a ubiquitous Pluto in Capricorn-era theme, displacing people from homes and businesses around the globe.
(All Art of My Heart articles)
The hyper-gentrification Jeremiah has so heartbreakingly and painstakingly chronicled in New York City for the past 10 years is a ubiquitous Pluto in Capricorn-era theme, displacing people from homes and businesses around the globe.
It's the abusive and coercive power of all mighty fiat currency - a type of phony and corrupted power too often worshiped on Planet Earth and never so blatantly as during the Pluto in Capricorn years (2008 - 2024).
Entire cities are being re-made as playgrounds for the rich and trendy, driving rents and real estate prices up to the point that lower income people are forced out. Make no mistake about it - it's socioeconomic cleansing, a fundamental characteristic of the Pluto in Capricorn agenda.
My own beloved
Art of My Heart store (seen to the left in its second - and more orderly - incarnation on the ground floor of the mall) was gentrified out of the TD Square Mall in
Calgary, Alberta in 2009. This beautiful, soulful, independent, and utterly unique store was pushed out by the Pluto in Capricorn steamroller to make way for such thrilling and unique high-end chain stores as Brooks Brothers.
The end of Art of My Heart broke my own heart into a million pieces and threw my life into a state of chaos. At the same time, I knew that what happened there was going on all over the place. The owner and I were far from alone in our unceremonious displacement.
This article is from May 23, 2009, at the point when I realized Art of My Heart was dead and that it wouldn't be resurrecting in a new location due to sky-high rents all over the city. The article is full of grief and rage and Plutonic horror, and it's bang-on as far as what was going on (and is still going on) and what it was doing to the people involved.
"R.I.P. Art of My Heart":
"R.I.P. Art of My Heart":
"I'm just waiting. Inside the fortress that is me. The only place that feels good.
I'm waiting for this wave of hyper-gentrification to run out of steam, so that I can properly assess the situation. At the moment, even walking down the street feels like a blast from an overexposed dystopic imagery furnace. Fake light and happy, grinding its pointy high heel into my eye. A nouveau rich nightmare. Teenagers in brand new, sickeningly overpriced clothes designed to look "lived in." Street-tastic! Carrying Chanel purses (yes, high schoolers with Chanel), cell phones and iced coffees.
They look straight out of the pages of InStyle (Star/People/US Weekly) magazine, so I can see why they feel entitled. That takes a lot of effort.
Mount Royal Starbucks where you'll get the snobby once-over just for going in to get a take-out coffee. They can sniff out non-upper-mid-class-yuppie status.
It's a fucking wasteland. Sorry, but it is.
The so-called alternative crowd drinking overpriced beer, eating overpriced breakfasts in pseudo-retro diners, sitting around in carefully chosen "styles" being all alternative and shit. Talking about how to market their band. Hoping to be noticed, to get famous. Even the indy crowd in this town has this marketing veneer lacquered over everything.
No one just living their lives. It's all an agenda. Gotta be someone. Gotta get somewhere. Gotta play the game.
Calgary, Alberta. Schlepping phony Western Canadiana for kicks, but the mean, mean underlying vibe is always there. Vicious millionaires bulldozing soulful establishments and people's livelihoods in favour of clean, cleansed luxury for its clean, cleansed luxury-deserving patrons. A city run by and for young souls. You can throw in a few newly-minted mature souls just to give it that fake "artsy/cultured" thing. Garbage. Trying to lure the people who don't know any better into dropping their money on overpriced drinks and food, clothing and accessories. Paying for fake experiences with fake money.
The downtown mall has kicked all the real stores out in favour of luxurification plans handed down by Torontonian property management overlords.
Brooks Brothers is coming to town! How thrilling.
Spaces are empty all over town. All over the country. All over the world. Bulldozed livelihoods. Lost our lease. Lost our lease. We're closing shop. And in a way, the independents are relieved. Because trying to keep your head above water in this increasingly corporatized climate is bloody exhausting. They tighten the vice little by little. Priced out. Squeezed out. And when the death of the business finally comes, it's accepted with a sigh.
And so I wait for the bulldozer to run out of gas. Or to at least take a fucking coffee break.
I can see it starting. "Luxury" stores aren't lining up to fill those empty spaces. The spots are sitting empty. Stalled monster condo projects all over town. Massive, gaping holes left in the ground with fences all around. They got ahead of themselves, trying to build on phony foundations.
And here I sit. I'm not sure what things are going to look like or if there will ever be a place I can stand being in again.
Art of My Heart is dead. And every fucking brainless weasel in this town can go to hell."
I'm waiting for this wave of hyper-gentrification to run out of steam, so that I can properly assess the situation. At the moment, even walking down the street feels like a blast from an overexposed dystopic imagery furnace. Fake light and happy, grinding its pointy high heel into my eye. A nouveau rich nightmare. Teenagers in brand new, sickeningly overpriced clothes designed to look "lived in." Street-tastic! Carrying Chanel purses (yes, high schoolers with Chanel), cell phones and iced coffees.
They look straight out of the pages of InStyle (Star/People/US Weekly) magazine, so I can see why they feel entitled. That takes a lot of effort.
Mount Royal Starbucks where you'll get the snobby once-over just for going in to get a take-out coffee. They can sniff out non-upper-mid-class-yuppie status.
It's a fucking wasteland. Sorry, but it is.
The so-called alternative crowd drinking overpriced beer, eating overpriced breakfasts in pseudo-retro diners, sitting around in carefully chosen "styles" being all alternative and shit. Talking about how to market their band. Hoping to be noticed, to get famous. Even the indy crowd in this town has this marketing veneer lacquered over everything.
No one just living their lives. It's all an agenda. Gotta be someone. Gotta get somewhere. Gotta play the game.
Calgary, Alberta. Schlepping phony Western Canadiana for kicks, but the mean, mean underlying vibe is always there. Vicious millionaires bulldozing soulful establishments and people's livelihoods in favour of clean, cleansed luxury for its clean, cleansed luxury-deserving patrons. A city run by and for young souls. You can throw in a few newly-minted mature souls just to give it that fake "artsy/cultured" thing. Garbage. Trying to lure the people who don't know any better into dropping their money on overpriced drinks and food, clothing and accessories. Paying for fake experiences with fake money.
The downtown mall has kicked all the real stores out in favour of luxurification plans handed down by Torontonian property management overlords.
Brooks Brothers is coming to town! How thrilling.
Spaces are empty all over town. All over the country. All over the world. Bulldozed livelihoods. Lost our lease. Lost our lease. We're closing shop. And in a way, the independents are relieved. Because trying to keep your head above water in this increasingly corporatized climate is bloody exhausting. They tighten the vice little by little. Priced out. Squeezed out. And when the death of the business finally comes, it's accepted with a sigh.
And so I wait for the bulldozer to run out of gas. Or to at least take a fucking coffee break.
I can see it starting. "Luxury" stores aren't lining up to fill those empty spaces. The spots are sitting empty. Stalled monster condo projects all over town. Massive, gaping holes left in the ground with fences all around. They got ahead of themselves, trying to build on phony foundations.
And here I sit. I'm not sure what things are going to look like or if there will ever be a place I can stand being in again.
Art of My Heart is dead. And every fucking brainless weasel in this town can go to hell."
My little beading zone at the second incarnation of Art of My Heart, TD Square Mall, downtown Calgary, Alberta
(All Art of My Heart articles)
The funny thing was that after the richy-rich gentrification of much of Calgary, the oil bust came along! They poured millions into renovating the TD Square mall, putting in fancy sky lights, and booting all the independent retailers in favour of high end chains. And then people couldn't afford to shop there anymore!
From what I hear, downtown Calgary has been pretty much a ghost town for
the past number of years - compared to the oil boom days, anyway. That city really could have used the oasis of soul that Art of My Heart provided.
They blew it!
Second of my publishing-related announcements: my recent article on Leslie Demeniuk and pharmaceuticals-caused violent crime has been published in the Ripe with Rage zine out of Nashville, Tennessee. You can check the 80-page zine out here. This is the second issue of the Ripe with Rage zine and has a theme of Asylum.
My own self-published zines are also available in some interesting places at the moment. They can be found at Spartacus Books in Vancouver, B.C., at Camas Books in Victoria, B.C., or at the University of Victoria Zine Library.
I have to say, I'm most excited about the zine library. When my own local library accepted Hexagon Astrology Magazine onto its shelves, I had a little 'squee' of delight, and when I noticed that someone had actually checked it out, that 'squee' was magnified even further.
I have to say, I'm most excited about the zine library. When my own local library accepted Hexagon Astrology Magazine onto its shelves, I had a little 'squee' of delight, and when I noticed that someone had actually checked it out, that 'squee' was magnified even further.
WWA zines
My efforts will continue to be focused on writing articles for the blog and for WWA patrons, but it's nice to have a physical medium to work with like zines. They create some cross-pollination and get the writing to people who may not come across it otherwise.
2 comments:
I can relate to your post. I lived in a town in Upstate NY, grew up there. We always moaned and groaned about it being a "dump" and we all wanted to flee out of there as fast as we could. It wasn't, of course, We had a train station, boat launch site, beautiful old Victorian houses, and old beautiful cemetery and tons of other interesting things there.
Now, fast forward to the late 80's when it started being gentrified. To the 90's. To 2000, to now.
We visited in 2012 and it was very strange and surreal. It was only a place in my memories like some old Polaroid pictures--now a "playground for the rich and famous", as you said. We couldn't afford a bathroom there!
I have Mercury in the 1st so I am lucky to find humor where there really isn't any. It was sad to me.
Yeah, there's a huge push in the town I'm currently living in to gentrify it and attract hordes of tourists. I'm praying that doesn't happen because I won't be able to afford to live here if it does.
It is really sad. And actually tragic for the people pushed out.
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