Feature

Will The Last Hipster Please Turn Out The Lights?

(Photo: Simon Henwood)

Thirty-one-year-old Kenyah Kaye is an overweight blogger from Williamsburg. But, as he’s quick to point out during a walk down Bedford Avenue, he’s also a D.J. and an illusionist. “I would spin at parties for Absolut, Dewar’s, Miramax, Chloë and Paul Sevigny,” he says. “But I think magic, illusions, are the new D.J.-ing. Because, like a great D.J. set, a fantastic illusion has the ability to blow your fucking mind.” He admits to having written some nasty anti-trucker-hat screeds on his blog, itiswhatitis.com, but claims that’s not why he’s moving to Mobile, Alabama.

“Sure, trucker hats make me nuts, they’re corny as hell,” he begins. “But I think I could handle them, and New York in general, if I felt even the slightest bit of . . . ”—he searches for the word, and finds it—“community. If there was a real feeling of support among the people I know. But people here, especially the illusionists, are such bitches.”

He moved to the neighborhood in 1998. “It felt very progressive then. People would talk to each other. You felt like everyone was rooting for everyone else. Now it feels like everyone is rooting for everyone else to have an accident. And as you walk around, it seems like all anyone is doing is eating Thai food, or falafel, but in complete silence. It’s also become, like, really, really white. I mean, it was always full of white people, but this is ridiculous.”

Then he, too, brings up Gabriel García-Cohen.

“I knew Gabe,” he says, “and I think the real reason why he left is because he felt there was no community in New York anymore. I think he felt like he had no friends. And maybe he didn’t, but there are a lot of people like that here, and that’s not cool. Now more than ever, it’s really important to have friends. Especially if you want to open a store, or start a record label, or throw a party. Or, like Gabe, if you want to make documentaries. Because now it seems like the big thing is making documentaries about your friends. But how can you document your friends’ lives if you don’t have any friends to document? Right?”

He stops walking and looks across Bedford into the window of Tai Thai, a Thai restaurant near North 5th Street. It’s packed, but no one is talking. “You don’t need friends to be an illusionist in Alabama,” he says.

James Ransone, 25, an actor/musician, agrees—except for the part about the illusionists. “I feel like I’m paying $1,200 a month for an apartment in a city that’s lost its character,” he says. “It’s become about ‘Who’s the coolest?’ ‘Who can play it the most cool?’ There’s no sincerity. And if you are ‘hip’ or whatever, then you’re confined to four bars, and then those get written up in the Times and the assholes start coming. I can’t breathe.”

And he’s not sure if he even wants to.

“What’s the fucking point? The city is becoming one giant corporation. I don’t think fashion is representative of what kind of person you are, but if you are creative, then you should live your life by some aesthetic code. But this so-called hip aesthetic . . . Who gives a shit? You wind up looking like you’re in As Four.”

As Four are a downtown fashion design “collective” known for their “circle bags,” which are shoulder bags shaped like . . . circles.

“I could move to an apartment in Portland for $200 a month and get a dog and record music as much as I could, and then go to L.A. when I needed work. I have friends who just went to Moscow and Berlin. In Moscow, there are weird motorcycle gangs that are tough and scary and play Dungeons & Dragons! It may not be hip, but it’s interesting.”

True “hip” culture, he says, is often born of environments marred by poor social and/or economic conditions. “In Mexico City a few years ago, there was a big art movement. No one wanted to live there, so the people created for themselves, and no one fucked with them or invaded their territory . . . I can only imagine the awesome shit the teenagers in Iraq are going to create . . . I’m not saying it would be cool to move to Baghdad or anything, but it might be interesting.”

Finally, upon considering it further, he says he’s “six months away from leaving. I’m wondering—do I become an adult? Do I buy a house in Baltimore? Do I go back and live in squalor? I don’t know.”

There are, of course, those who still believe in New York. Gabi and Angela—like the best Brazilian soccer players, they don’t use last names—are two of the four designers who make up the As Four collective that James Ransone finds so breathtaking. Gabi was born in Lebanon. Angela was born in Russia and lived in Germany before moving to the city nearly twenty years ago. They live on Forsyth Street.

“Hip is something I don’t like,” explains Angela. “I don’t know what it means. It has a negative taste, and feels like somebody is already making a business of it. What is hip for me about this town is that it still makes me curious. There is always something fascinating and intriguing and scary at the same time. That’s what I would call hip.”

Gabi, however, feels otherwise: “The city is as mediocre as possible right now,” he says. “It’s horrible. I’m very turned off to any place. Maybe one event in a million has what it takes.” Two very different points of view from two mononymic fashion designers from the same “collective,” who came to New York and found success with a circular handbag—a bag shaped like a circle, so you can put your arm through it. One remains hopeful, the other extremely “turned off.” It’s impossible, or at least very difficult, not to wonder if somewhere between Gabi and Angela lies the truth, or something.

Either way, it would be comforting to believe that future generations will look back on this time as an aberration, a strange, sad moment in the city’s history when a few vulnerable, frustrated, gullible, acutely un-self-aware New Yorkers cast a pallor over all of downtown, and much of Brooklyn. More optimistic is the hope that those same voices might serve as an alarm, a resounding wake-up call for those about to rock, and create, and document, and style, and open exotic stores and well-lit restaurants. Or maybe New York really is “over”—a once-great metropolis that has, finally, jumped the shark.

But perhaps some clues can be gleaned from an e-mail received only moments before this article was to go to press, from Gabriel García-Cohen, writing from an Internet café in Bruges, Belgium:

“Well, I’ve been here almost 12 days now and I’ve got to say it’s awesome! The people are amazing, and the light is spectacular! Don’t believe what you’ve heard about Bruges, or Belgium as a whole. It’s totally not non-descript and pallid, not skull-crushingly boring at all. And the women! Man, Belgian girls are kool, it’s almost as if . . . No . . . No, that’s not true. None of it. The light is just okay here, and so are the women, and there’s nowhere to eat after midnight. The truth is that Bruges is . . . skull-crushingly boring. I think I may have made a mistake coming here. In fact I’m pretty sure that it sucks here. Last night I fell asleep wondering if there were any new restaurants on Clinton Street. I even miss Williamsburg . . . South Williamsburg.

(Btw/did Bush win???)

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’ll be back for Thanksgiving and I want to maybe throw a party somewhere cool? Any ideas? Thx!

Holler at me wheneva. I’m checking email constantly!

I ;) NY!

GGC”

ADDITIONAL (REAL) REPORTING BY VICTORIA DESILVERIO