New York, I Love You

In the days leading up to the New York City mayoral election, I was taking personal inventory of past mayors, from Bloomberg to de Blasio to Adams. I squinted into my memory, wondering if the general quality of life had been so different under each regime I’ve experienced. What I do know is that it wasn’t always so expensive or stultifying to exist in the city. This is something I talk about often with friends, but to hear Zohran Mamdani plainly say the rent’s too damn high, the buses should be free, and corporations and the mega-rich should be taxed more? And then win on that platform? As New York’s first millennial, Muslim, and Democratic Socialist mayor? Even my jaded ass couldn’t help but feel inspired. 

For as long as I’ve lived here, New Yorkers have seemed to dislike the mayor. I always think of LCD Soundsystem’s “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down,” off 2007’s Sound of Silver: an ode to bygone eras of citywide grime, and a mayoral diss track if there ever was one. “New York, you’re safer and you’re wasting my time,” crooned James Murphy, with a mix of dejection and sarcasm. He had lived in the city for nearly two decades by then, spanning the tail-end of Ed Koch’s mayorship, Dinkins’ brief reign, Giuliani’s clean-up campaign in the ’90s, and Michael Bloomberg’s post-9/11 technocracy. Bloomberg’s probably best known for his stop-and-frisk policies, an indoor smoking ban, and the redevelopment of “undesirable” neighborhoods along the water. “Your mild billionaire mayor’s now convinced he’s a king,” Murphy sang. “So the boring collect, I mean all disrespect.” (LCD often closes with this song live, and Murphy tweaks his criticisms to fit the current regime.) 

This was roughly the New York I arrived to, in 2009. I was 20 and thought I’d just missed NYC’s big indie-rock boom, but decided to show up at the party anyway. I didn’t have any better ideas for my future, so I found myself a Craigslist sublet and a Billboard internship, got dropped off by my parents, and began my new life in Williamsburg. I tried to get a Blockbuster card on my second day in the city, after an intern shift spent sorting CDs. I carried a Not for Tourists Guide to New York with me at all times and memorized the routes of every subway line that intersected with the L train. Also memorized around that time: the people and places mentioned in LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge,” a cheeky Not for Tourists Guide to hipster music. Or at least that’s how I looked at the song then—as my portal to the Slits, Modern Lovers, Paradise Garage, Suicide, GIL! SCOTT! HERON! At this point, I relate more to Murphy’s anxieties about being replaced in the scene by cooler, prettier, younger people.

I couldn’t see it then, but I can see it clearly now: I was coming of age in a moment of change, both locally and technologically. New York was in the midst of rapid gentrification by young people like myself, particularly in Lower Manhattan, and the North Brooklyn communities adjacent to Williamsburg. Smart phones and streaming services were two years away from changing how everyone navigated the city, and the music industry. But I was too busy worrying about what I’d missed—that I’d never gone to a Misshapes party or one of the Jelly NYC shows at McCarren Pool, let alone Max’s Kansas City and CBGB in the late ’70s—to notice that I was in the middle of something else, by and for my generation. 

I’m particularly aware of nostalgia’s toxic allure right now, having just finished reading Simon Reynolds’ excellent 2011 tome Retromania. The most depressing big-picture thought that I’m left with is that culture stopped focusing on the future decades ago, stopped caring about innovation, and now everything is a remix of the past. But fuck that. I want something new to believe in. I want to stop thinking I missed an idealized past, only realize in hindsight that I lived through a genuine moment. Because it’s only in recent years that I can look back longingly at the early 2010s, when independent DIY venues like 285 Kent, Glasslands, Silent Barn, Death by Audio, and Shea Stadium were still able to afford space on the outskirts of Williamsburg or Bushwick. It’s only as I age that I can think: How lucky was I to pay $750 for a windowless room near all these venues when I was young and poor? 

Instead of feeling purely wistful, I’ve recently found myself more hopeful about the possibility that New York won’t continue to become merely a playground for the wealthy, led by a corrupt imbecile. Rents in the city have gotten out of control, which Mamdani says he’ll curb with a rent freeze and the construction of more affordable housing. Where there is cheap(ish) rent, there are artists—this is rule number one of fostering a creative scene. There’s the potential for more explicitly artist-friendly policies as well: One member of the United Musicians and Allied Workers recently told my colleague that the artists’ rights organization could have a voice in shaping the Mamdani administration’s policies involving streaming and live music.

Voting for Zohran was one of the few times I’ve felt energized by a politician in my life, and certainly the only time I’ve felt that way about New York’s mayor. He squashed the cockroach that is Cuomo with his progressive ideas about how to make New York less financially miserable for the middle and lower classes, drawing out a record number of young, first-time voters. In other words, the kids think it—the hope and dream of New York—still exists. And I do, too.