What are we doing down here?
This thought comes to mind with swift anxiety after reading a classic Jay McInerny article online. From an old New Yorker Magazine, published on October 31, 1994, Chloe’s Scene is an expose on an early 1990’s jaunt through downtown New York City with then underground muse Chloe Sevigny.
It’s great. Jay gets in the passenger seat and follows Chloe through Tompkins Square Park and down to Stingy Lulus and Liquid Sky and Shelter and The Tunnel and flop houses and movie sets and fashion shows and Paper Magazine and unreturned phone calls and missed dates and awkward encounters and thrift store Chanel and St Marks Place silver picture frames and Harold before he died. These kids are such a beautiful mess.
What are we doing here embedded in the jungle? Us immigrants; us expat misfits hiding in the small towns, behind our gates and walls and hedges, debating food additives and vaccine protocols, gossiping about cartels and marriages, obsessed with deforestation and the price of dinners and the conditions of the roads. What are we doing in this sweaty gumbo mess waiting for it to rain?
We are a long way from Lafayette Street here. A fair distance from Washington Square Park. From Astor Place and St Marx Place and West Broadway. From the publishers and the long martini lunches and the pool at The Four Seasons and the expense accounts and magazine stipends and cross town cab rides.
We are light on IT girls (although Miss Cherry has been having a Nosara moment). We are thin on content creators and thoughtful dialogue and original voices. We are void of education and book stores and magazine shops and discussions and panels. We are occasional on exhibitions and readings. Oddly casual with current events and progress and economies both financial and intellectual.
But you didn’t come here for that.
I’m not sure if anyone came here for that. This really may not be the place you come to for stylistic inspiration or fashion envy. People don’t really come here to shop or dress or be seen or be noticed or be counted.
This is a great place to hide. A fine location for civilized escape artists and rogue entrepreneurs. For retired acolytes and burned out geniuses. A grand habitat for neo colonial conspiracists and their opinions. This is fertile land for permaculture communities and societal outliers and tax dodgers and light weight cult leaders and amateur influencers and simple chefs and bad accountants and lifestyle lawyers and thwarted fund managers and spiritual fuck boys and nomadic divorcees and storied fisherman who were too “out there” for the Florida Keys……
It is slow here. Like molasis in a bottle that never moves. Like relationships that do not grow. Like local small businesses that just make the rent and never paint the walls. All day and nobody comes but the rent is cheap. Shaping a singular piece of foam with the music on and no idea what time it is. Slow like Miles Davis in the late 50’s. Slow like the Old Man Run Club. Slow like nobody can muster the energy to venture outside the property unless it is the hardware store or the local bodega or the construction site. It’s is slow here and there are two legit food options.
As Jay writes:
“Down low” is a cherished concept: secret, alternative, not commercial — everything one wants to be. Except one also sort of wants to be famous, and here is the contradiction at the heart of Chloe’s world, the dilemma of subcultures that ostensibly define themselves in opposition to the prevailing commercial order, the dilemma of all the boys and girls who want to be in Paper and Details: What do you do if Harper’s Bazaar, or Calvin Klein, comes calling? In Chloe’s case, so far, you sort of blow them off.”
We have moved way beyond down low here. We are onto something very different now. We are at the corner of Renegade and Isolation. Nobody here knows Keith McNally or Paper Magazine. Few even know Chloe Sevigny. Yes there is a generation gap to consider, but this is deeply cultural. No judgement, just that these characters whom represent a time of change and flimsy and gossip and nothingness and empty expertise and empty pockets and uniquely lower east side fabulous and legendary new wave art icon and Edie Sedgwick (nobody talks about Edie Sedgwick here) and cheap rent and walk ups and exposed brick walls and blunts and film makers and actual paint artists and junkies with character and thrift store legends and shop icons, they don’t hit the same here.
Or do they…..?
“Chloe can speak with some confidence about what’s happening in the street. Some say Chloe is what’s happening in the street. In addition to her jellies Chloe is wearing a very short white dress made of a shiny, flame-friendly space-age synthetic. It looks sort of familiar (Gaultier? X-Girl?), although you won’t see anyone else on the street wearing one, at least not yet.”
What is happening on the street here in Marbella? It’s a different kinda conversation. It’s a wide open avenue for creation, as in you can come here and do and be anything, almost, but the audiences are maybe different, and the crowds are simpler, and the earth is wilder.
This land is like a dream and we are all caught in an odd slumber. Suspended in a balmy palm tree existence, making coffee and playing records and shaping boards and reading about the marvelous Chloe Sevigny, and the legendary New York City in the fabulous 90’s.
