East Village, NYC - After four weeks of wandering through one of the most famous neighborhoods on earth, I am still no closer to figuring out what all the fuss is about.  This is discouraging, as you and I both know just how fussable it used to be. This little neighborhood has housed a greater share of superstar artists, musicians and poets than just about anywhere else in New York, as even the most cursory googling will confirm. W.H Auden used to occupy an apartment along one of these streets, just a few blocks away from the bookstores and beat clubs where Ginsburg, Kerouac and the rest kicked American poetry on its ass back in the fifties. A teenage Patti Smith apparently got her start at the back of one of these dingy little bars, and one of Bob Dylan's earlier incarnations was probably in the audience.

As these names gained a following, so too did the village. If this was once the rugged little underbelly of east manhattan where burgeoning creative types went to find themselves in the glamorous grit of venues like Fillmore East or CBGB, it has since become consumed by that celebrity, using its reputation as an incubator for artistic genius to drive up rent and usher in a golden age of yuppiedom. This place is a shrine to its former self. It isn't just that Auden and Ginsburg are gone, it's that their replacements (who, to be fair, DO keep the mystique alive - albeit in a rather scrubbed sense) are merely a collage of clippings from People and Rolling Stone and Us. Ryan Adams, Regina Spektor, Conor Oberst, Madonna and - oddly enough - Iggy Pop all call somewhere near here home. I wouldn't know Lou Reed if I was sitting across from him, but there's the thrill : I might just be!

And though I'm not really headhunting here, all this celebrity activity does sort of act as fuel for the search. Surely two whole generations of ARTSY PEOPLE wouldn't lead me astray. Even if I can't locate that creative nerve center that spawned so much great work back in the day, maybe these second-string front page faces are worth pursuing on their own. But where to look? None of the spots that I've spent time thus far encourage the snoopy sort of listening in that constitutes my basic anthropological MO. Bars are for shouting introductions and then watching TV. Nobody communicates in bars. Clubs - the quiet, jazzy ones anyways - tend to focus on small talk and knowing nods between aficionados (who, I might add, barely inhabit earth, let alone some village). Dance clubs, don't get me started. Shops … well, I'm holding out hope that I wouldn't find anything worth writing about near the discount bin at Duo . Chalk it up to willful ignorance.

And so the scope of my hunt has suddenly shrunk down to a rather humble investigation of those few details from this little cafe on Avenue A that might end up describing more than, well, a little cafe on Avenue A. The main dining area is absolutely packed with villagers, red-eyed and ready to regale their table mates with stories about last night. Two beleaguered waiters - black aproned both - are deftly weaving between tables and chairs and fallen mounds of the same finely distressed denim and slinky feline fur that you'll find neatly draped over wooden costume racks in those vaguely French little price-hikers along 9th. Perfect. After a quick once-over I declare this to be a scientifically suitable sampling, find a seat in the corner and order a small coffee.

It's loud in a convivial, morning way. At a certain point all of the conversations overlap and intensify, and I'm lost in the mess and the murmur of the morning; another one of those highly suspect moments where I have this sense that I'm seeing my surroundings in a particularly lucid way, despite being the totally gomerish newcomer that I am. This is hopeful. The idea - I think - is that because a place is busy, there's a complicated sort of cross pollination of sights and sounds and smells that goes on and if you sit very still and concentrate on that vague middle distance right in front of your nose, the sum of a moment will begin to reveal itself in degrees.

Looking around, books appear to be  a vital  prop. Everyone has one, and though most couples are just holding them for intellectual affect while they munch or text or chat, a few appear to actually be reading. I spot a fresh Joyce. A thumbed Franzen. A little girl in pigtails and green corduroy overalls sits near the window, her breakfast abandoned, gently tracing complicated patterns across the face of an iPad. Beside her, a young woman who I presume is her mother - thick sweater, thin fingers - is staring vacantly in to the drowsy lace of steam hovering above her coffee bowl, her hand resting on a book. They both seem to be on break.

An older couple across the aisle from me is having a scripted argument at high volume, complete with the hollow emphasis and awkward pauses-for-typo-fixing that must be normal during high-intensity script reading. I think they're supposed to be dysfunctional grandparents. They argue about the argument. These two arguments are difficult to keep straight. The inherent meta distance that it creates is an odd echo of fights I've actually heard in the street; bedroom brawls dragged outside that are acutely aware of their audience - their venue - and the dramatic possibilities therein. Thankfully, iPad girl is out of earshot.

"Do you see this? Do you see that I'm crying?!"

"Stop crying, we're out of tissues."

[Pause]

"Fuck you!" "Just fuck you?"

[Thoughtful pause, scribble.]

"Fuck your fucking tissues!"

[More scribbling.]

"Fuck your fucking crying!"

My coffee arrives. A willowy blond with comically long bangs and underlined eyes just sat down behind me. She's wearing layer upon layer of this ethereal, gauzy stuff that looks not unlike huge sheets of kleenex, bound up around an inhuman waistline. Fashion strikes again. The whole ensemble is reminiscent of certain predatory insects that I remember David Attenborough inspecting on public TV when I was a kid. The ones that caused you to flinch away from the screen when they finally went in for the kill; all armor and eyes beneath their camouflage. Definitely a model. I've seen more model-types in the past five days than I had in six months of living in Brooklyn.

"No, that's wrong. You sound too simplistic when you say fatalism. You need to add sarcastic emphasis."

"Is fatalism sarcastic?"

[Thoughtful pause]

"Sure!"

I'm sitting near the kitchen. Like most kitchens in the city it's narrow and white and run by three Mexican guys. They all sport tropically patterned pants and one has his thick hair combed straight back; glossy and black with those thin grooves that a dude comb makes with gel. The other two are wearing baseball caps; the brims rounded and low, sandlot style. Their hands move with unbelievable speed - pulling ingredients out of those shallow aluminum bins and sliding the plates left across the scarred white plastic of their prep counter - but their heads stay oddly still, detached almost. Supervising.

Ray Charles is playing through speakers that point out towards the cafe, but the guys in the kitchen have something brassy and rhythmic coming out of their tinny little radio and the ensuing battle for acoustic space - which now includes the deeply percussive sound of heavy pots being dropped in to a sink and a whispered discussion that the blond is having about 'him' - only heightens this overwhelming sense that the scene is bigger than its component pieces; that I'm staring at something that I can't quite see.

Now the little girl is grasping her iPad and tilting it back and forth and occasionally holding it above her head, squinting as though she's looking at something very bright or very far away. She is clearly resisting the urge to blink.

"That's sounds wrong too, you're assuming the audience is stupid." "Well, maybe the audience IS stupid!"

[Pause]

"Maybe say 'suicidal bitch' instead."

It's not that this place is totally devoid of that grungy magic that I was hunting for earlier, its that what texture it does have seems controlled; carefully arranged to appear both edgy and tasteful, whimsical but arranged; desperate for you to believe in its authenticity. This is something that I've felt while wandering through especially tourist-heavy neighborhoods in other countries, but it was unexpected here. There were no blinking signs, no street hawkers hustling me inside.

But then again, I'm looking for my mythical median of types in a friggin coffee shop. I should know by now: this isn't Portland. And although even a local might not be able to tell me about that spot where some of the past forty years can be peeled back for a revealing glimpse of what was, I know they exist. Those spots set the best sort of brunch story: that underground bar without a listing, that jazz show in that guy's living room (he used to play at the Vanguard you know) that party on the roof that moved in to the basement at dawn. If I've learned anything over the past year it's that this city adapts. The real east village just moved. The CBGB didn't die, it shut its doors and burrowed down through a century's worth of concrete and sewage so that it might resurface again along Bedford Ave. The Fillmore goes by a new name these days, you'll find it somewhere along the eastern edge of Williamsburg, blaring away as it always has, with a handwritten sign out front.

But here we are in a new east village. One whose identity might be a little easier to tease out. From this perspective - limited to this microslice of a particular crowd at a particular time through the particularly wide-eyed outlook of a newbie that probably blows common details way out of proportion - the answer begins to gel in a few unlikely pairings around me. This new east village is wine with breakfast. It's fur lined work boots with silver tassels and huge floofy scarves that make a fork's journey from plate to mouth look like a circus routine. It's sarcastic fatalism. It's tucking your cell phone in your book so it looks - from a certain angle - as though you're reading. It's exposed brick under luxurious amounts of red velvet. It's Ray Charles smothering a Mexican fiesta. It's nudie shots from the 20's as restaurant decor, stylishly set in quaint family portrait frames. It's a certain dismissive attitude towards the waitstaff: polite, but never (ever) full acknowledgment. It's a single strand of Christmas lights that will be there until May. It's linen lampshades on the chandeliers.

That is all.

---

PS. (Can you add a post-script to brain dumps? I think you can.) For anyone who hasn't already, go check out Andrea's blog over at andreabailey.org. She's in Africa, and she writes really well.

Comments

Carla
Portland is faking it too. Just with less money and less traffic. I think there is something to say for lack of polish in general. A little rust, a dropped stitch, a moment in the music where the key falls awkward. Character, charm, endearment. I talked to a sculptor once who said "When I get too good at something, I stop doing it". He felt that perfection was devoid of life. Bob Dylan, did the majority of his recordings in one take, without giving the band any music to work with at all. He hired musicians he respected, and counted on them to jump in after 4 counts. And it is the rugged-ness that makes his music so fresh. People today are afraid to leave things to chance. Me included. But what is more rateable than failure and success that comes with taking chances. The humanity of it all. Tossing away the dread of absolute failure is practically insane today when everything wears a price tag. In NYC especially I would expect. It makes it more difficult to be on the fringe, and survive. Portland has somehow stayed comparably cheap. And don't forget the people who will still let an artist live in their basement or on their couch (basically the underground railroad of the art community). But that polish is required now to sell anything to anyone. Grungy does not cut it. The most successful Etsy sellers alter what they make according to what sells. Packaging is almost as important as what is inside because that is what catches the eye of the typical shopper. That stuff is made to be thrown away! Big red MacDonalds fry box anyone? Blah.