Another NYC question - Where do the artsy people live in Manhattan?
July 3, 2017 9:16 PM Subscribe
A different tack on NYC housing. If price were no object, and you wanted to live in the most artistically rich and inspiring part of Manhattan, where would it be?
What is the most artsy part of Manhattan, where you can walk down the street and hear people talking about their work or if you ask to go to coffee with a writer or an artist, you're likely to be near their neighborhood? Is it possible in Manhattan? Or only in Brooklyn? And which part? If you are an artist or writer and could live anywhere in NYC, where would you live?
What is the most artsy part of Manhattan, where you can walk down the street and hear people talking about their work or if you ask to go to coffee with a writer or an artist, you're likely to be near their neighborhood? Is it possible in Manhattan? Or only in Brooklyn? And which part? If you are an artist or writer and could live anywhere in NYC, where would you live?
West 11th Street between Washington and West Streets
posted by Ideefixe at 10:09 PM on July 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Ideefixe at 10:09 PM on July 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
Artsy people live in cheap places because the arts pay jack shit. Increasingly, artists don't live in NYC, a process I noticed back in '01 and that hasn't remotely slowed.
(I still know some actual artists who live in Queens, I admit, but they are not in "artsy" neighborhoods--they're in immigrant neighborhoods.)
posted by Joseph Gurl at 11:06 PM on July 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
(I still know some actual artists who live in Queens, I admit, but they are not in "artsy" neighborhoods--they're in immigrant neighborhoods.)
posted by Joseph Gurl at 11:06 PM on July 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
Inwood (was very cheap for a long time, is still cheap by Manhattan) standards, has a high concentration of sort of dull middle-aged people with performing arts jobs. My building has a classical oboeist, a guy who does sets for opera, and few other assorted musicians, and the neighborhood is generally crawling with opera singers.
But they're not really 'artsy people' and it's not an 'artsy neighborhood', just a concentration of grownups with kids who work in the arts.
posted by LizardBreath at 3:15 AM on July 4, 2017 [7 favorites]
But they're not really 'artsy people' and it's not an 'artsy neighborhood', just a concentration of grownups with kids who work in the arts.
posted by LizardBreath at 3:15 AM on July 4, 2017 [7 favorites]
It'd be useful if the OP could elaborate on what this question is about because it feels a bit romanticised? That said, there are really two parts to this question.
1) What is the most artsy part of Manhattan..
People who work in arts and can afford to live in (central) NYC/London/Paris/Token Big City are generally so well-established that they don't go around talking about their work in the street or in coffee shops. They go to their office or studio — or they have lunch at very nice restaurants. Being a high-level professional creative is like having any other job to some extent.
2) ..where you can walk down the street and hear people talking about their work or if you ask to go to coffee with a writer or an artist..
This feels quite a romanticised view of what being a writer/artist/creative is like. I am a writer & a professional creative. I have many friends who are artists, musicians and authors. Most of us work from home (and we live in the cheap, run-down parts of town). We don't tend to walk around in artsy neighbourhoods talking about our work. We are grateful for anyone taking us out to lunch ANYWHERE. Most of our interactions happen via Twitter. Sure, at the moment I'm spending a lot of time writing in coffee shops but I'm in a Well-known Coffee Chain because that's where they've got plugs and wifi and enough tables that I don't feel guilty about spending a couple of hours in here.
posted by kariebookish at 3:47 AM on July 4, 2017 [21 favorites]
1) What is the most artsy part of Manhattan..
People who work in arts and can afford to live in (central) NYC/London/Paris/Token Big City are generally so well-established that they don't go around talking about their work in the street or in coffee shops. They go to their office or studio — or they have lunch at very nice restaurants. Being a high-level professional creative is like having any other job to some extent.
2) ..where you can walk down the street and hear people talking about their work or if you ask to go to coffee with a writer or an artist..
This feels quite a romanticised view of what being a writer/artist/creative is like. I am a writer & a professional creative. I have many friends who are artists, musicians and authors. Most of us work from home (and we live in the cheap, run-down parts of town). We don't tend to walk around in artsy neighbourhoods talking about our work. We are grateful for anyone taking us out to lunch ANYWHERE. Most of our interactions happen via Twitter. Sure, at the moment I'm spending a lot of time writing in coffee shops but I'm in a Well-known Coffee Chain because that's where they've got plugs and wifi and enough tables that I don't feel guilty about spending a couple of hours in here.
posted by kariebookish at 3:47 AM on July 4, 2017 [21 favorites]
East village used to have the artists, then they got priced out and moved to Willamsburg. After that, it's possible they moved further out on the L train to Bushwick and so on...but I don't think there is any actual 'artist community' anymore in terms of an entire neighborhood. Not to state the obvious but NYC is insanely expensive. There are some artist communities upstate, I think.
If money was no object, I guess the most 'romantic and writer-centered' area would be the West Village. But even then, even the writers may just be out talking about their mortgages, dogs or any thing else on their minds during the normal non-working course/parts of their day!
posted by bquarters at 3:57 AM on July 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
If money was no object, I guess the most 'romantic and writer-centered' area would be the West Village. But even then, even the writers may just be out talking about their mortgages, dogs or any thing else on their minds during the normal non-working course/parts of their day!
posted by bquarters at 3:57 AM on July 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
For art: commuting distance of a studio in Bushwick.
Writers are around in lots of neighborhood. For example, Sackett Street workshops are generally held at the writers' homes, and you can see from the linked listing that they are in all different neighborhoods.
posted by xo at 7:16 AM on July 4, 2017
Writers are around in lots of neighborhood. For example, Sackett Street workshops are generally held at the writers' homes, and you can see from the linked listing that they are in all different neighborhoods.
posted by xo at 7:16 AM on July 4, 2017
Nowhere. If you're looking for a concentration of (young, struggling) artists, you gotta look in Queens at this point, and maybe Brooklyn, although Brooklyn is IMO too expensive for this anymore, unless you go down to Sheepshead Bay or something, and artists don't live in Sheepshead Bay.
posted by Automocar at 8:20 AM on July 4, 2017
posted by Automocar at 8:20 AM on July 4, 2017
The writers I know don't live in NYC unless they have money or lucked into a cheap apartment some time ago. I can't detect any particular pattern in which neighborhoods they live in.
The film/theater artists I know (who have to stay in NYC to find work) are living wherever they can find cheap rent, aka, apartment shares with six other people in locations inconvenient to the train.
The artists I know have studios in Bushwick for the moment (or they've left NYC for upstate, where space is cheaper).
At this moment, Bushwick is probably the closest approximation to what you're asking for, but the inexorable march of gentrification is already well underway. As this proceeds, expect to see the actual artists displaced by wealthy folks looking to live in an artistic-neighborhood theme park. Overall, the neighborhoods that had lower rents a few years ago are getting expensive too fast to keep up. I have a few friends who have found (relatively) reasonable places in the transit dead zone of Alphabet City; others are moving out even farther, to New Jersey or the Rockaways (or Pittsburgh or Cleveland). The rent pressure is relentless.
posted by ourobouros at 8:56 AM on July 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
The film/theater artists I know (who have to stay in NYC to find work) are living wherever they can find cheap rent, aka, apartment shares with six other people in locations inconvenient to the train.
The artists I know have studios in Bushwick for the moment (or they've left NYC for upstate, where space is cheaper).
At this moment, Bushwick is probably the closest approximation to what you're asking for, but the inexorable march of gentrification is already well underway. As this proceeds, expect to see the actual artists displaced by wealthy folks looking to live in an artistic-neighborhood theme park. Overall, the neighborhoods that had lower rents a few years ago are getting expensive too fast to keep up. I have a few friends who have found (relatively) reasonable places in the transit dead zone of Alphabet City; others are moving out even farther, to New Jersey or the Rockaways (or Pittsburgh or Cleveland). The rent pressure is relentless.
posted by ourobouros at 8:56 AM on July 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
others are moving out even farther, to New Jersey or...
Oh, New Yorkers...as usual, you mistake Jersey City with part of the planet Neptune.
It's easier to get to New Jersey than it is to get to Central Park from midtown. Also, you can use your metrocard. (And Brooklyn? You might as well move to L.A. Soo many hipsters...soo much $15/slice "pizza" with broccoli or some other stupid shit on it) Journal Square is what you're looking for. (Also for theater)
posted by sexyrobot at 9:36 AM on July 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
Oh, New Yorkers...as usual, you mistake Jersey City with part of the planet Neptune.
It's easier to get to New Jersey than it is to get to Central Park from midtown. Also, you can use your metrocard. (And Brooklyn? You might as well move to L.A. Soo many hipsters...soo much $15/slice "pizza" with broccoli or some other stupid shit on it) Journal Square is what you're looking for. (Also for theater)
posted by sexyrobot at 9:36 AM on July 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
If you could somehow jump the very long waiting list, Westbeth Artist Community in the far West Village. It is literally what you are looking for, a concentrated and subsidized artists' housing and work space in a former Bell Labs factory, been there since the 1960s and holds a number of famous arts organizations. But an anachronism for sure.
Plenty of very well known artists (writers and actors and fashion designers at least) live in this neighborhood, which I know because I do too. But it's not a place for struggling artists and street conversations about brush technique. More likely the artists around here talk about the interest rates they are getting on their portfolios of stocks and real estate, and if they bought years ago, when to sell out to a Russian or Saudi oligarch willing to pay anything for a view.
Because if you had bought in this hood (which you could do as a modestly successful artist back then) before about 1995 you probably made more on real estate than you ever made painting.
posted by spitbull at 9:39 AM on July 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Plenty of very well known artists (writers and actors and fashion designers at least) live in this neighborhood, which I know because I do too. But it's not a place for struggling artists and street conversations about brush technique. More likely the artists around here talk about the interest rates they are getting on their portfolios of stocks and real estate, and if they bought years ago, when to sell out to a Russian or Saudi oligarch willing to pay anything for a view.
Because if you had bought in this hood (which you could do as a modestly successful artist back then) before about 1995 you probably made more on real estate than you ever made painting.
posted by spitbull at 9:39 AM on July 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
So a lot of people have rightly responded that this is a romanticized question, and given that, we don't have enough info to help you. If you can specify what disciplines of arts you're most interested in (different disciplines have different core hoods), that would help people advise you. More broadly: given that there's no real center of artsy anymore, it's not clear what you're actually looking for.
It's definitely true that people who've devoted their lives to doing interesting work in the arts don't have the time or desire to walk down the street talking about it. I lived in NYC for a decade (in a number of different neighborhoods, and as pointed out above, they were the cheapest, not the most "artsy") and my colleagues were not at all centralized. Almost none of us lived near the venues where we performed or displayed our work.
If I had to pick a single hood currently populated by the highest % of actual working artists making interesting work/events/culture *in their neighborhood*, yes, I'd say Bushwick. But that's not a particularly quiet, comfy, green, or resource-filled hood – i.e., it's not a place one would generally recommend to somebody for whom price weren't an object.
posted by kalapierson at 10:33 PM on July 4, 2017
It's definitely true that people who've devoted their lives to doing interesting work in the arts don't have the time or desire to walk down the street talking about it. I lived in NYC for a decade (in a number of different neighborhoods, and as pointed out above, they were the cheapest, not the most "artsy") and my colleagues were not at all centralized. Almost none of us lived near the venues where we performed or displayed our work.
If I had to pick a single hood currently populated by the highest % of actual working artists making interesting work/events/culture *in their neighborhood*, yes, I'd say Bushwick. But that's not a particularly quiet, comfy, green, or resource-filled hood – i.e., it's not a place one would generally recommend to somebody for whom price weren't an object.
posted by kalapierson at 10:33 PM on July 4, 2017
Price not an object? West Village.
Real World? Bushwick, living in Ridgewood.
Or, moved to Detroit. Or Berlin.
(Or, just as far away, Jersey City)
posted by From Bklyn at 6:42 AM on July 5, 2017
Real World? Bushwick, living in Ridgewood.
Or, moved to Detroit. Or Berlin.
(Or, just as far away, Jersey City)
posted by From Bklyn at 6:42 AM on July 5, 2017
Nothing in Manhattan, not even in Inwood. In Brookyln, north-west Bushwick/northern East Williamsburg. The part with all the industrial buildings, some still vacant. Also, Gowanus. It smells a bit, but there are a bunch of studios in the area.
posted by Hactar at 11:02 AM on July 6, 2017
posted by Hactar at 11:02 AM on July 6, 2017
This thread is closed to new comments.
2. A corollary of 1. means: most neighborhoods that are such are inconvenient (read: 15 min or more walking distance from a subway)
3. There are no parts of Manhattan left that is conducive to creating work or artists' studios (see 1, 2). Many older, established artists live in large rent-controlled lofts or studio spaces in Soho, but those are a remnant of a different NYC of a past.
4. Most places known as "artsy" are overrun by people interested in "creative, hip" neighborhoods, which really means that there are cute coffee shops and restaurants. (see: Williamsburg, Chelsea) Productive spaces = warehouses, art studios, freight elevators, access to art supply / hardware stores, etc.
5. As a result, areas where you can walk down the street and hear people talking down their work are few and far between, since the only people who can afford to live there aren't actually creating work there. The people who are creating work do so in spaces that are industrial, far away from nice residential neighborhoods.
6. The keywords that you're looking for, though, are East Williamsburg and Bushwick. Williamsburg is long gone and part of a spectacle of "creativity" than being actually productive. Once full of artist cooperatives, Soho and Chelsea is Williamsburg's future: full of high-end art galleries, fashion, and expensive luxury condos with built-in elevators for cars.
posted by suedehead at 9:44 PM on July 3, 2017 [18 favorites]