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August 11, 2005

Steven Heller interviews "Punk" Magazine Founder John Holmstrom,

Holmstrom: "The battle over CBGB's is really–the astronomical rents, the elimination of crime in our beloved city and the suburbanization of our street culture, block by block–having the unintended effect of wiping out all the art and culture that made New York City an 'interesting' (although frightening) place to live. New York was the center of world culture for most of the 20th century. It's now becoming a gated community for the rich–ironically, the opposite of John Carpenter's vision in the film Escape From New York, where it was an out-of-control crime zone. Most of the reasons so many of us moved here in the 1970s, '80s and even the '90s was to be near the nightlife and the art scene and the culture. Now that culture is disappearing, and CBGB's has become the icon for this lost scene."

Isn't this what many U.S. urban centers, including Austin, are facing this decade?

Posted by timothompson at August 11, 2005 08:37 PM