Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - New York After Rent (II of III)

Episode Date: April 22, 2015

Our series continues with a journey from Avenue B to Bushwick: Kathy Kirkpatrick tells us about the final days of her Life Cafe in the East Village and essayist Tim Kreider tells us about his exile in Bushwick. Plus your host tries to make sense of the first time he got a glimpse of the new New York at a party in late September 2008. *********Click on the image for the whole story about this week’s installment**********

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called New York After Rent, Part Two. I'm living in the Costa Blanca, not very far from the Mediterranean Sea, and it's beautiful here. It's tranquil, it's affordable, it's healthy. And for the past year and a half that my husband and I have been moved here to Spain, we thank the landlords of New York City for cutting me off from the lifeline of my businesses. We thank them. For 30 years, Kathy Kirkpatrick ran the Life Cafe, an East Village establishment made famous by the musical Rent.

Kathy closed the cafe in September of 2011. At the time, media reports alluded to an ironic landlord dispute. But it was unclear what actually happened. So I recently tracked Kathy down to her new home in Spain. And I asked her about that final chapter of her story. The Life Cafe after rent. My leases were up in May of 2009. And in the first week of May, I still didn't have an answer about renewing.

The fact of the matter was, the landlords didn't, they wanted me out. They didn't want me there again. They knew we had a history, but they wanted new, fresh blood. They wanted to have businesses there that were more to a liking to a richer neighborhood. The Life Cafe occupied two real estate parcels at the corner of 10th Street and Avenue B. So Kathy had two landlords. And while one landlord was willing to cut her a deal, the other one was not. I also recall a comment landlord number one had made that in all of their years of doing business, never once, he bragged,

would their family ever give up any money for any reason whatsoever, no matter how unjust. But the nicer landlord, number two, refused to get less money than the scroogey landlord, number one. So when Kathy finally did get a lease in 2010, it was for an insane amount of money. The last year of the lease, the rent, the combined rent from the two landlords would have been $23,000 a month. Now that's what commercial stores were paying in Times Square at the time.

But I so much wanted Life Cafe to go on that I agreed to it. So it was no longer, well, let's get up, let's open the cafe in the morning, let's sweep it, let's sweep the sidewalk, let's set up the tables, let's turn on the gas and get the coffee going and let's make huevos rancheros. It was not like that, about that anymore for me. It was now all about money. It was a struggle of life and death. In the spring of 2011, Kathy discovered a crack in the basement. She showed it to an engineer who warned her that the Life Cafe was in danger of collapsing. So she alerted the landlords. But to her dismay, they didn't want to fix the problem. They put up scaffolding and it was our summer season.

When you put scaffolding up on buildings in New York City, it does nothing but damages business. So we had scaffolding put up and it ruined the whole ambiance in the cafe. People stopped coming. Pigeons started roosting in the scaffolding. It was awful. People let their dogs pee on the posts holding it up. I couldn't conduct business any longer. It was the end. The end was upon us. Now, the reason Kathy never went to the press or publicly turned to the community for help was because of lawsuits.

She sued one of her landlords, and her landlord sued each other. It was expensive litigation with no end in sight. And so on the night of September 11, 2011, Kathy closed the Life Cafe for good. Basically, I couldn't officially close. I was supposed to just leave everything in there, and I was really forced to abandon

the properties because they were unsafe to be in. But there were some things I couldn't leave there. And I took my Life Cafe tabletops. And there was a mahogany bench we had at Life Cafe that I was sure, Jonathan, that's where he sat when he was in Life Cafe researching and writing Rent. And then, interestingly enough, that was the same time when my landlord in my Brooklyn place announced he was not going to renew my lease there. And this business had turned out to be a fantastically wonderful, profitable, happy little business over in Bushwick. That was the time when I realized the universe was trying to tell me something. Interestingly, my husband, who's an Englishman, he says, New York has a short memory.

He was thinking, you know, as things were wrapping up, he says, we'll soon be forgotten and replaced by whatever. Everything falls apart in the end, and we've got to look to the future and keep moving on. So, Kathy, you mentioned in the email that you sent me that you came back to New York last summer for the first time since you left. And I'm kind of curious, like if you had to point to one thing that might sum up the new New York,

what would it be? Benjamin, I can't believe what happened in Bushwick. It exploded. One thing that encapsulates the new New York for me is the Leslie Entrepreneurs Lab, a 6,000 square foot facility in the heart of NYU's Washington Square campus. This is where entrepreneurs from across all of NYU's schools and colleges, be they students, faculty, or researchers, come together to turn their ideas and dreams into startups. They have writing on the wall that says start a startup. They can't stop saying starting a startup. Lauren Graham and Hannah Salwin are the co-founders of one of these NYU startups, Borrow. Borrow is a platform for renting. You can rent anything you want on our platform.

That at least is the ultimate goal. As of right now, we have a 3D printer, a drone, a GoPro, things that you may not want to buy but you want to play with. You can make a lot of money off of that. Like many young people today who hope to make their fortune in New York City, Lauren and Hannah cite the influence of Airbnb. Airbnb has been an inspiration to us from the start. We're really taking cues from what they're doing.

In the future, will startups enable us to rent out our memories, feelings, and dreams the same way we now rent out our extra bedrooms and the stuff in our closets? Will every flight of fancy eventually be commodified? Well, the form of a city Airbnbs more quickly, alas, than the human heart. I caught my first glimpse of the new New York in September of 2008 at Crystal Decord's annual birthday party.

But it's taken me years to make sense of what went down that night. Crystal was an influential advertising producer who lived on the Lower East Side at the time. She connected filmmakers, animators, actors, photographers, models, and graphic designers with automobile makers, fashion labels, kitchen appliance marketers, and snack food conglomerates. The financial collapse magnified her power. Overnight, she became an arbiter of life and death for freelancers like my friend Brendan, who brought me with him to her party. As we ring the buzzer to her apartment,

Brendan confesses that he's having trouble sleeping. I'm terrified I'm going to have to leave New York, which is why this party is so important, he says. I have to make Crystal understand the gravity of my situation. And then the doors open and we are whisked inside. Brendan and I are showered with high fives and kisses and drugs. It's like a conga line, a cocaine-fueled conga line that takes us up the stairs, past the elevator, and into Crystal's apartment. Crystal has an amazing place, an endless number of rooms, an internal staircase that connects two floors, and on the roof, a private terrace. It's a decadent amount of space, especially since Crystal spends most of her time in Los Angeles.

In the kitchen, I start talking to this guy who says he does motion graphics. Everyone laughs when I admit that I have no idea what this is, except my friend Brendan. He just gives me a dirty look, and then he disappears into the crowd. Everybody I meet at this party works in advertising, and everybody knows that it is now or never. And thus, everything is on the table, not just drugs. But there are a lot of drugs on the table, and I try most of them. I want to have a good time. I don't want to feel so out of place. But with each tope, puff, and sniff, the dread and

discomfort and distance intensifies. I get unbearably off. I can't even speak, so I park myself by a window and stare out at the darkening sky. There's a couple smoking a joint. The woman is talking about her apartment. I need to find someone to take my place for October so I can go to London. Put it on Craigslist, the man says. I did, the woman replies, and I got the strangest email yesterday. This website wrote me and said that if I use their service, I can rent out my room like a hotel by the night, by the week, or even by the month. And they'll take care of everything. What is this website, the man asks.

Airbedandbreakfast.com, the woman replies. When I'm finally able to steady myself, I set out to find my friend. This turns into an epic quest. I float through a number of rooms that all seem to contain the same people, consuming the same substances and repeating the same phrases. I start to freak out again. But eventually, I locate Brendan in Crystal's bedroom. He's crawling on all fours, weeping and pulling at her pants leg, pleading about a job animating Keebler elves that she says she just can't possibly give to him.

I first met Brendan back when he used to draw comics, back when he had a cheap rent in the East Village, back when the New York Alternative Weeklys had comics pages and audiences. It is devastating to see him reduced to this. Crystal's leaning into a mirror, putting on her makeup. She's unmoved by my friend's misery. But she does jump when she sees the horrified expression on my face, staring back at her like an apparition in her giant looking glass. I spin around and duck into a bathroom. But when I close the door behind me,

I realize that I've just barged in on two beautiful women doing lines. Excuse me, I say, I'm escaping. For this, one of them offers me a few millimeters of a smile, while the other one taps the mirror in her hand. She has shooting stars painted on her nails, stars that jump and animate in the light. Both of these women look like they've just emerged from a magazine. There is so much I would like to tell them, but I decide that in this situation, actions will speak louder than words. So I open the window and climb out onto the metal ladder I hope will take me to the roof. As I climb, I can see the Williamsburg Bridge. The sun is setting, or has set, because on the Brooklyn side there is already a darkness.

And it is from this darkness that the car commercial director emerges. I take his outstretched hand and he pulls me up onto the roof. Now, I don't remember the car commercial director's name, but I can still feel his strong manly grip and his swaggering confidence. And I'm taken aback when he tells me that he directs car commercials. I have no idea how to even talk about car commercials, so I ask him if he does anything else. Like what, He snaps. Weaving? Yodeling? Fucking? I've made a terrible mistake.

And the night starts pulsating like an alarm. His buddies close in around him. Oh, I didn't mean it like that, I stammer. I just was wondering if you do other stuff besides directing car commercials, like art. This makes him angrier. Are you saying that commercials are not art? This is a serious and direct question, and his three buddies who have now taken up positions behind him make it clear that he is also serious about getting a direct answer.

This time, I carefully measure the words in my mouth before letting them out. He is also serious about getting a direct answer. This time, I carefully measure the words in my mouth before letting them out. No, I don't. The car commercial director's posse erupts. Who invited this pretentious loser? Yeah, didn't he just climb up from the street? I bet he doesn't belong here. Toss his ass back down. And then the two girls from the bathroom show up on the street. I bet he doesn't belong here. Toss his ass back down. And then the two girls

from the bathroom show up on the scene. The one with the nails drapes her arm over the car commercial director's shoulder, who is genuinely shocked by my answer. Like it's obvious that he's never even considered the idea that his commercials are not art. And all of his friends feel the same way. It's now six against one. And this is when it hits me. What if I'm outnumbered because I'm wrong? What if I'm not at a party filled with people who work in advertising, but a party filled with artists, an emerging generation of new New York City artists?

Perhaps art historians in the future will call this new movement post-commercialism or post-commodity. Well, I'm certain it will definitely make it into the canon, though. Because look around. That car commercial director and his buddies? They make everything now. I suppose I should have stuck around that night. But it was all just too much for me. The drugs, Brendan, the car commercial guy

getting the girl with the shooting star nails. Plus, I didn't want to end up a footnote in their story. Some old guy who kept screaming that there's a difference between saying something and selling something as he fell to his death, thrown from the roof of a legendary party. I fled. I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, and then I ran all the way to my apartment in the East Village, and I dove into my bed, and I pulled the sheets tight over my eyes. to burn the world with their greed. We just want to have a good time.

Just one good time. Just one good time. Just one good time. Just one good time. Just one good time. Just one good time. Just one good time. All the time. On a CV or on Facebook, the trajectory of my life reads like a success story. I used to be a cartoonist, making $20 a week drawing for an alternative weekly.

I'm now a writer, a regular contributor to the New York Times, with a published collection of essays. Viewed on a real estate map of New York, though, my life's trajectory looks more like a story of gradual, forced exile. My first apartment in New York, where I moved in my early 30s, was in Alphabet City on Avenue B, which was at that time the epicenter of New York City cool. Now, 15 years later, I've been incrementally driven seven stops outward on the L train, deep into the borough of Brooklyn to Bushwick. It's often pointed out that if Brooklyn were its own city, it would be the fourth most populous one in America. I'd just like to point out that if it were its own city, it would also be Pittsburgh.

I live in Brooklyn for the same reason everyone else does, whether they know it or not, because it's adjacent to Manhattan. My first apartment in New York, the one on Avenue B, was a crazy little cabinet of Dr. Caligari Place, none of whose floors or walls were quite level or met at right angles, painted in bright artsy colors with swirls of gold on the walls. It was a couple of blocks away from the Life Cafe, which was apparently a destination for musical tourists. It was also near Tompkins Square Park, where I'd smoke the occasional cigar and watch outdoor movies. There was a really good pizza place and a relatively undepressing

laundromat downstairs. Across the street was a new condominium with large circular windows, through one of which I once saw a topless woman who noticed me looking at her and did not seem to mind it one bit. In New York, you can have either a crappy apartment in a nice neighborhood or a nice apartment in a crappy neighborhood. My current apartment is very nice. Bushwick is an ugly industrial neighborhood of warehouses, parking lots, corrugated steel doors, and chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. There's nothing for the eye to fall on here that isn't gray or brown or done. Concrete, asphalt, cinder block, rust. Even the vinyl siding on the row houses here is in the same waiting room palette. A beautiful day in Bushwick is sort

of like being in a really good mood and spending it all at the DMV. Real estate types like to call Bushwick a hot spot. At the beginning of every month, you see U-Hauls being unloaded by bearded dudes. The white man has come, driving out the aboriginals, bringing where artists paint murals that local kids spray paint over with their tags, like dogs pissing on each other's territories. Or in local Yelp reviews. Quote, A neighborhood coffee shop, served up simply and with a nod to the building's original architecture, is the perfect business to replace the withering Wyckoff Paints hardware store that

had been here for who knows how many years. On Avenue B, I lived alone. Here I live with a roommate, a tech writer, with whom I shared a tent at Burning Man in 1997. He's always going out into the night with his little one-hitter, having raucous and sordid adventures. He's always going out into the night with his little one-hitter, having raucous and sordid adventures. He's befriended local barmaids, drug dealers, hot Russian girls. He even has his own blog, celebrating Bushwick's esoteric pleasures. It's comparatively cheap eats and drinks, it's funky art, local characters, and his anecdotes. My own knowledge of the neighborhood is pretty much limited to the route from my front door to the subway stop where I get the L train into the city.

If I stand in the middle of Wyckoff Street I can see the Empire State Building. It looks a lot farther away than it did 15 years ago. The skyline has recently been skewered by a disproportionately tall, skinny, multi-million dollar condominium, like middle fingers a thousand feet high, stuck up at the rest of us. As artists have been driven outward in favor of high finance, this former artistic capital of the world has come more and more to resemble a high-end mall with a really well-reviewed food court. We inhabitants of Bushwick are now like clovers picking pre-masticated gobbets out from between

Manhattan's crocodile teeth. I suppose mine is a typical American trajectory. Immigrants do menial labor and live in squalid, impoverished neighborhoods. Their children get union jobs and move to working-class neighborhoods so that their children can become professionals and move out to the suburbs so that, finally, their children can become artists and move to squalid, impoverished neighborhoods. But my trajectory is also typical

of another, larger trajectory in this country. Ours is the first downwardly mobile generation in America since the Great Depression. An affordable apartment in New York is now a quaint retro fantasy, like a bubble-dome lunar colony. Of course, there's a third angle from which we might view my trajectory, the same arc we all follow, regardless of our fortunes.

I got old. I recently learned that the first girl who ever told me, matter-of-factly, that I was too old for her to date, now works in the coffee shop where I buy a bagel every morning on the way to the train. She didn't mean to insult me or hurt my feelings. To her, it just seemed self-evident. I'm sure that Bushwick would seem like the place to be if I were 24. But I'm now at an age when your respectability and seriousness, your whole status

as an adult, seems largely defined by what stuff you can afford. It's easy to make compromises and forfeitures and live in hilarious filth in your 20s, but contemplating 50 with a roommate and negative $300 in checking can cause you to second guess your entire life. This winter, I tried to survive by writing freelance articles while finishing my next book. One day, I had to buy red beans and rice with handfuls of change from the same place that sells whole flayed guinea pigs in plastic bags. Watching these Bushwick 20-somethings, enjoying the coffee shops and bars that are burrowed into this post-industrial landscape i'm reminded of kids playing in a junkyard

to them it's a playground a fantasy land but to me it just looks like a fucking junkyard. This long, dark, frigid winter is finally beginning to break, and the craggy black heaps of ice have melted to reveal what's been frozen underneath all along. Cigarette butts and dog shit. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called New York After Rent, Part 2. This episode was produced by myself with Celeste Selye, and it featured Kathy Kirkpatrick and Tim Kreider, who read an original essay that he wrote for this series. Special thanks to all of the folks who've been helping me with New York After Rent, including Mathilde Biot, Graham Griffith, Sam Greenspan,

Jesse Shapins, Glenn Otis Brown, John Bracken, and Liz Berg, the official TOE 2008 music consultant. And for all of you who want to go out and buy the music you hear on this podcast, check out the TOE SoundCloud page. This is where I'm posting all the info on the songs and artists that I use. The Theory of

Everything is also a founding member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia from PRX.