vip-1
03.09.04, 19:10
Oczywiscie nie dla "Amerykanow" jak VIP-ki, Waldki i inne Szkale25, bo ini
sraja co rano w majtki rzadka kupa z radosci ze sie obudzili w Ameryce...
He he .
Dla tego 1% co troche kuma po angielsku, polecam lekture.
Troy Pierce's perfect apartment has a huge glass dome, three bedrooms, and 20-
foot ceilings. At $900, it's one of the more expensive and extravagant
dwellings he looked at. "It was one of those insane places," he says
wistfully.
There's one catch. It's 4,000 miles away, in Berlin. But after many months of
mulling the possibility, he, like many other New York DJs and musicians,
jumped ship early this year.
What took him so long? Before he left, he admitted, not a little shamefully,
that "the only reason I am staying here now is because I have a nice
apartment."
A generation of expats has abandoned a city of New York where for cities
where rent is closer to $400 than $1,200, and apartments are way more
spacious than most New York rat holes and they can hop on a plane for 100
euros and land in club-friendly Madrid, Paris, or London.
"New York has become prohibitively expensive for people without professional
careers," says house-music producer Wang. "A very spacious apartment in
Berlin for 400 or 500 euros a month can still be found; in the East Village,
$950 for my cramped studio was a steal. Downtown New York now seems overrun
with drab NYU students and tacky yuppies from the show Friends."
A Guy Called Gerald, a British expat who lived in Brooklyn for years, has
also resurfaced in Berlin.. Richie Hawtin left his beloved Windsor, Ontario,
hometown for Williamsburg in 2002 and lasted just a year before moving to the
German city. "Europe and Germany are so much more open than America these
days," he says. "If you're into anything which is under the radar or left of
center, America is not the place to be. Even the most progressive city in
America, New York—even that is not the place to be anymore. Berlin—this is
like how New York was, and how New York should be."
"I was never a political person during the Clinton administration," says
Walker. "I just felt like I was free to pursue life's work. But the growth of
conservatism in America has caused me to be political against my will. All of
a sudden, I can't do what I want to do, because there are laws against what I
do."
Richie Hawtin, who is Canadian, chose Berlin because "I really don't want to
be part of what's going on in America. The lack of freedoms and the lack of
privacy, it's unbelievable." He continues: "You can hardly even do parties in
New York. You can't do anything in America, it's so locked down. The fact
that powers that be have taken the unfortunate incidents of the last few
years to further clamp down is ridiculous. For music which is based upon
development and experimentation and progression, you need freedom."
Spain is a huge anti-war center—its citizens ousted its pro-Iraq war
president immediately after the terrorist attacks in Madrid earlier this
year. In Barcelona, Sherburne says he's even seen anti-war posters on the
walls of the post office.
In Berlin and Barcelona, there is no MARCH, no nightlife task force. When
techno DJ and lifelong New Yorker Dave Turov hit Berlin, a friend of his
pulled out a bag of weed and rolled a joint in plain view at the bar. There's
no smoking ban, no "No Dancing Allowed" signs on the wall. "The cops don't
interfere so much," says Turov. "Sometimes they show up, but they very rarely
close a party down." Beer costs two euros, clubs never close, and drinking is
a 24-hour sport: Here's the sleazy vibe that's been missing from New York for
years. It's a weird role reversal—New York City is the prim and proper
maiden, Berlin and Barcelona the slutty mistresses.
"Spaniards, in general, have a history of socializing that is very different
than in the U.S.," Sherburne says. "Life is really lived on the streets." In
Barcelona, Sherburne found himself spinning to a packed dancefloor on Monday
nights till five in the morning. In New York these days, that's rare even on
weekends.
Before he left New York for Barcelona in early 2003, Ariel Danziger says, "I
felt like someone had given me a really strong sedative tablet like Valium
and prescribed me a long stroll through the Lower East Side and left me to
drool over the pretty store displays."
Of course, New York City wasn't always this difficult. Consider 1978: Studio
54 is in its heyday. The Loft is going strong. Club culture is thriving.
Apartments in the East Village go for $220 for a one-bedroom. Krivit, a
lifelong New Yorker, remembers when high-end Balducci's was a "rotten food
stand" in the West Village, and when a cab across town cost $3. Clubs didn't
charge a cover, and you could go out with $30 in your pocket and come home
with change. Now, "that's one round, if you're buying for you and somebody
else," he says. He remembers when everybody rented and nobody owned, and when
cops laughed at noise complaints. Now, "as an apartment owner, as an
investment you don't want [a loud club] on your block." So now, the cops will
visit, "and say it's too loud."
In New York, "when I was growing up," says Krivit, "it seemed like there was
just an endless amount of places opening." But by the Giuliani years, any new
clubs had usually been another venue before.
Danny Wang points out that many New Yorkers are more appreciated in Europe
than in their hometown.
