Brutal New York - 1965/95
skyscrapercity.com
skyscrapercity.com
Now look at today, not so many years after and against large odds; those kids have created an international culture with music, dance, stories, poetry - a veritable complex art form that touches the lives of hundreds of millions of people all over the world and gives, gave hope to those who had nothing else. This, at least is something that a community of hackers and entrepreneurs can appreciate. That is the true message of hip hop that has been lost by the bastardizing filteration process of media and people not so intimately connected to its origins - including descendants of the visionaries, who despoil the art and see it as only a means to get rich quick and stack up on some biches. Damned Entropy.
It speaks something of both the human ability to persevere and the unique aspects of the U.S. where people in such adverse coordinates can still go on to create. such great things.
I was a teeny bit hurt (not offended) by the Cr48 warning agains't exposure to rap.
yes i am aware that rap, heck music is a subset of hip hop
self.StepOfSoapBox()
And then mainstream rap took a dive off a cliff into meaningless misogyny, bling, and euphemisms involving skeet shooting.
Listening to, and I mean really listening to the lyrics of true rappers that started and built the movement up is inspiring. Much of it is the obvious "Hoes & Cash", but there is almost always a reason they bring it up. It was either about what they strived to get to, or the rewards of their hustle and struggle to break out of the streets they grew up on. It truly is a unique form of expression that very few other music forms can touch.
Mainstream rap, sure. But I don't think "rap" generally is worse. It's just that it's become popular enough for there to be a crass mainstream that didn't exist in the 80s.
It's common to bemoan the modern state of many things but we should recognize that while the mean quality may have dropped, the median probably hasn't. There's a lot of great rap still out there - it's just not the common definition anymore. (It's like bemoaning the commercialization of blogs or the low quality celeb accounts on Twitter - the good stuff still exists on both.)
The fact that you don't like the content/style/message/whatever doesn't make an art form any less an art form.
http://www.amazon.com/Scratch-Afrika-Bambaataa/dp/B00006AL1G...
"NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1080761/
When I first heard about this project I was positive it would be a VH1 suckfest, but when I saw it was stunned. It's really good, quite accurate. Those were wild times in New York.
1965ish. This is where, when Hip Hop was born.
I agree, though I was a bit offended. I made a (downvoted) comment that I didn't get the joke on the original article, even though I understood that it was "peppered" with humor. Honestly, being exposed to hip-hop was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Despite this environment -- or because of it -- there was also a lot of interesting cultural activity taking place in the city. Someone mentioned hip-hop originated there; it was also where American punk rock got off the ground, not to mention all kinds of art and theater activity. The food then, as is now, was excellent.
"In other words, Messrs Donohue and Levitt did not run the test they thought they had—an “inadvertent but serious computer programming error”, according to Messrs Foote and Goetz"
The ability to exist with a minimum of cash would tend to make casual theft much less appealing.
[edit] By "these sights", I am responding to the question on where "Drug Addicted People" go. "These sights" = "Drug Addicted People" not the specific content of these pictures.
I just said there are still areas in New York City that can have these characters. I was responding to that specific question. It's not like you can't find druggies on the streets anywhere in NYC. Just because a lot of the city has cleaned itself up doesn't mean there isn't anywhere that's still in ruins.
An example: Some areas of The Bronx are still run-down, no?
"Taxi Driver" is an excellent depiction of the mood of the city during this era.
The rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer. This is not unique to New York city.
The fact is, if you're going to be poor or work a menial job there is no better time in history to be that way than now. The standard of living amongst even the poorest in the developed world is better than that of the richest just a century or two ago. Life expectancy, literacy, access to technology and financial freedom are unparalleled.
Does that mean the gap between rich and poor isn't widening? No it doesn't. But rather than focus on the disparity between the poor and the mega-rich, why not just examine the circumstances of the poor? Who really cares if there are more billionaires than ever (a function largely of inflation)?
What's more, society is far less classist than it has ever been. Throughout history you've had the aristocratic classes. If you weren't born to them, too bad (with very few exceptions). Now? Some of America's richest people were born to nothing (Gates, Page, Brin, Buffett, etc).
There are certainly advantages to being born to parents who are better off than poor: better access to education, the fact that the right choices made by parents tend to be repeated by their children and so on.
So maybe we should have less hand-wringing about how badly the poor have it in the developed world and look at a real problem like how badly the poor have it in the developing world where diseases than are for us either extinct or simply nuisances routinely kill and many can't even get access to clean drinking water.
Levels of inequality are important for many reasons: notions of justice and respect, regressive taxation, access to quality education, etc.
The Nation commissioned a symposium on the matter: http://www.thenation.com/article/36894/inequality-america
Many developing nations have far worse poverty than United States, but the cause is often rather unsurprising: US and global destabilization of economies, forced "liberalization" and economic reform (that end up tipping the already vulnerable citizens into extreme poverty), etc.
Class is, in fact, as entrenched as it ever has been. The list of rich people you mention (white men, all of them) were all born of considerable privilege (parents were millionaires or at least upper class). Even a quick look on Wikipedia will tell you this much. This is a common misconception about wealth in the US. The old Horatio Alger story that Americans' want to believe in.
Here's a few examples of just how bad some Americans have it (no one with a conscience should need such a reminder, but evidently some do): http://www.pbs.org/klru/forgottenamericans/ http://southernspaces.org/2010/worst-times-children-extreme-...
This list of examples could, of course, go on forever.
This idea that survival and happiness is all about how you're doing by some absolute scale of quality of life is absolutely bonkers. The plight of third world people has about as much to do with the poverty of your countrymen as the plight of political prisoners in North Korea has to do with Bradley Manning. Which is to say, we have our standards of justice and wealth and they have theirs - that's why this is the United States and that's North Korea.
It is completely legitimate for someone in the United States to be upset that Warren Buffett can make his billions while they can't make rent, even though they're willing and able to work. They are trying to maintain this idea that we live in one nation, after all.
Not at all. However, if they're doing pretty well....
> It is completely legitimate for someone in the United States to be upset that Warren Buffett can make his billions while they can't make rent
It may be legitimate to be upset, but that doesn't imply that it is legitmate to claim that poverty in the US is at all comparable to poverty in, say, the Sudan.
If you can't, or won't, distinguish being poor in the US from being poor elsewhere, you're either dishonest or ignorant. Which one is a reason to listen to you?
Yes, it is. What isn't reasonable is pretending that destroying Warren Buffett's wealth (reducing inequality!) would make anyone better off.
Obese mice on a ton of insulin can literally starve to death without losing weight.
The poorest people around us probably aren't dying of hunger anymore. But there is more to life than a full belly. The welfare state destroyed the notion of an intact family completely -- to the point that a household with a father present is an unusual event.
People need dignity and a purpose. If you moved into the "big city" from the farm with a 6th grade education 100 years ago, you could get a job in a factory or get into a union and support a family. Life was hard, but you had a purpose.
Picture yourself as a 12 year old in the hood: - You can barely read. Your teacher doesn't know your name - You have a single parent who may or may not be present. She's 27 - You probably don't have a computer - There's a 1 in 5 chance that your father is in prison. - Of the adults that you are acquainted with 80% are not employed. - You live in decrepit housing in an area with high crime. You're literally surrounded by violent criminals, molesters and misery.
How would you do?
Which makes them better off than previous generations, right?
> The poorest people around us probably aren't dying of hunger anymore. But there is more to life than a full belly.
Sure but what's that got to do with poverty? If you're not poor you don't necessarily have purpose either. The world is full of idle, clueless rich people who live off inherited wealth and contribute nothing. Just look at Paris Hilton.
Oh and my point wasn't that Bill Gates wasn't rags to riches: but he has accumulated wealth in his lifetime many orders of magnitude to what he had when he started. That's the point. What we take for granted today didn't exist centuries ago in an era of the birthright aristocracy and serfdom little different to slavery.
> If you moved into the "big city" from the farm with a 6th grade education 100 years ago
100 years ago, relatively speaking, that would've been a lot better education than a 6th grade education is in today's terms.
> How would you do?
It's hard to say because that's a life story I simply don't have. Statistically speaking however, pretty poorly would be the answer. Like I said: the circumstances you're born to (parent's education and so on) correlate positively to the choices the children make.
But in all honesty your post reads like a "bleeding heart" infomercial (and a request for donations). The sad truth is that many are poor because they make poor choices. It's just unfortunate that their offspring tend to be detrimentally affected by that.
Let's also consider that the definition of poverty is extremely political. What is poverty? In the developing world, being largely disease free (to the extent the developed world is) and having shelter, food and a clean drinking water would mean a lot. Here? There is a subjective definition covering far more than that.
Consider: 91% of Americans use cell phones [1] but 12.7% of Americans are below the poverty line [2]. So at least one quarter of all those deemed poor use cell phones, which can still be considered a discretionary expenditure.
Add in other discretionary behaviour like alcohol, tobacco and even drugs and what you see is a pattern of people making poor choices. Not in all cases but certainly a lot.
Look there are genuine social problems in America. Health care is almost inextricably tied to employment. Insurers can dump you over trivial terms like being two cents short on your payment [3]. The war on poverty has had many detrimental effects such as Section 8 Housing [4] creating ghettoes. Quality of education seems to largely be a factor of how wealthy your district is. The powerful educational unions stifle any attempt at teacher and school accountability. The list goes on.
But if you think the poor of 100+ years ago didn't have problems--problems of life and death, forced servitude, disease, etc--and that those problems aren't relatively speaking worse than those of the so-called poor in the developed world, you're kidding yourself.
[1]: http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/03/wireless-survey-...
[2]: http://www.soundvision.com/Info/poor/statistics.asp
[3]: http://abcnews.go.com/US/cancer-patient-vietnam-vet-ron-flan...
My father worked in public housing projects, and I used to go along with him to block parties and sometimes hang out with him at work in the summertime when I was young. I'd play with the kids hanging around who were 8 or 10 years old. You know what? They were all the same as my friends at home -- just kids. I didn't understand then that they were poor and I wasn't. Those same kids a few years later would have a harsher introduction to the world than I would.
It's amazing to me that you'd equate my perspective to an infomercial, than proceed to castigate people who dare to have a cheap telephone or complain about their miserable condition because they have water and foodstamps.
I'm not a proponent of the welfare state. I drive around my city past the idle factories and dilapidated relics of the prosperity of ages long past and get angry. Then I drive outside the city, away from the "welfare state" and past the new prosperity: sprawl shopping centers and subdivisions -- all artifacts of tax policy, loan guarantees and subsidy of infrastructure and get angry. (You probably wouldn't call that "welfare" though.)
Free internet cafes (with locked-down linux boxes, and no flash, to discourage most games), nutrition programs, public libraries ... but I'm thinking like a 30-year-old geek who would actually like those things.
What kind of services, that kids actually want, should we be providing? Sports clubs? Music clubs? Just something to teach them a few moral lessons - work in a team, follow reasonable instructions, look after the facilties, work hard, try to learn new things, short term pain for long term gain ... those kinda lessons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Early_life
- His father was a prominent lawyer
- His mother served on the board of directors of a bank and the United Way
- he attended an exclusive prep school
As the process continues it might be that some of the first suburban areas built in the 50s and 60s become the new "inner cities." Transportation costs serve as a pressure to drive people back into re-developed spots in the city and next lowest cost of living are many of these first suburbs that haven't seen development and investment keep up with the times.
Parts of Nassau county and even Westchester (ie. Southside of Mount Vernon) have been rough for a long time. Ditto any of the cities in North Jersey, which have been swallowed up and discarded by the greater New York metropolis.
The truth is that a confluence of bad policy and economic conditions converged to create the mess our cities were in during that time. Some cities (Detroit, Baltimore?) have yet to recover.
Read 'The Corner' by David Simon (creator of The Wire and Treme) if you're interested in a more modern take on the ghetto.
Take home message: the war on drugs in its current form is not working and the side effects are places like this, completely cut off from normal society, almost completely out of reach outside of an economic revival (like happened in Harlem).
I see the fate of NYC--at least Manhattan--as being very much like that of Paris. Paris is now basically an enclave for the wealthy (in the 20 arrondisements). The people who keep the city that way live somewhere else. Singles come to the city and live in expensive cramped apartments for the Paris life.
You see the same thing happen increasingly in Manhattan.
Up until the 1960s there was (and still is) a view for NYC being for all the people, not just the rich. For this reason you have programs like rent control/stabilization so "key workers" (as they'd be called in London, which faces similar issues) can afford to live there. Up until the 1960s, NYC had a very socialist mentality. Education for NYC residents was free at NYU.
In the 1970s the golden goose that paid for all this died. Crime rose. The middle class moved to the suburbs. The tax base dropped and industry (NYC had a heavy port industry up to this point) went elsewhere, creating unemployment.
In the 70s, NYC almost went bankrupt until it was bailed out by union pension funds and ultimately the Federal government.
Starting in the late 70s with Koch and then with Guiliani the city, from my understanding, radically changed. This was due to a combination of economic change as well as a change in policing and other policies.
I think it would be fair to say that NYC--particularly Manhattan--is now largely gentrified. Where there were race riots in Alphabet City in the 80s and you'd only go to Avenue D at your own peril, now they have a Whole Foods.
Even in the 90s Times Square was the butt of many jokes from the likes of David Letterman and I can remember his standup bits often talking about the hookers in Times Square. It was up until the 80s and 90s a red light district. Now? It's basically Disneyified.
Some complain about this change, either saying the NYC has lost its grit and charm (probably true) and that NYC is no longer for all people (also possibly true), but NYC has an important constraint: the available land is limited. As the city grows, this will inevitably go up. Of course it can go down if the city is abandoned, much like parts of Baltimore have been and NYC was in the 70s and 80s.
So I see NYC as becoming America's Paris--possibly Monte Carlo. This shift if anything is hugely responsible for drops in crime. The sad fact is that crime doesn't travel far. Move the poor people elsewhere and the crime goes with them. It's why the Bronx, which has had much crime and poverty, can still have rich enclaves like Riverdale just a few miles from a ghetto.
There are huge advantages to urbanization. I don't see this trend diminishing. As people tend to move to cities, New York will grow. While it grows (or at least doesn't shrink), it will become increasingly gentrified.
This says nothing about the state of poverty in the US. You cannot take the state of NY as a barometer for that, good or bad.
Additional tidbit. Where once (late 90s early 00's) there were bodies dropping weekly in Bushwick, Brooklyn, a block away there is a brand new 24 hour organic grocer: http://bushwickbk.com/2011/02/03/after-long-wait-hana-grocer...
The author needs to read this and get a life. Stop focusing on the downsides and actually do some work. It's as though people want to entirely forget the past and merely see the present.
This post is, entirely, ignorant and racist.