Much to Unpopular Opinion, the Scene Isn’t Dead

“I want to write a piece about the state of the New York scene,” said an overexcited girl over the Zoom call. I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear her voice, quick and careless with her words during this week’s meeting for a magazine’s next issue. I was there in the flesh, my legs stiff after sitting on the downtown A for an hour and now crouching uncomfortably in my seat. “And how it’s not really there anymore, and how subculture in general is kind of dead because you can just buy your way in now, and that New York isn’t really producing anything significant like it used to.”

The editor nodded before moving onto the next idea, and I almost wanted to call this girl out for plagiarism. Maybe she didn’t realize it, like a comedian accidentally using a Tweet they read in an improvised set. Regardless, I’ve heard the exact same sentiment regurgitated in a number of reactionary TikToks and self-important Substack essays. How the scene is dead, not like it was when we had real artists, and the artist can vary depending on the person; Ginsberg if you’re literary, Casablancas if you’re indie, Warhol if you’re annoying, but the idea is the same. New York is dead, art is gone, insert other cynical buzzwords here. 

Of course, I can’t blame my generation for feeling so hopeless about the state of culture; as we leave any era, we can’t help but feel doomed about the next (looming elephant-in-the-room politics aside…). Hell, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is just Hunter S. Thompson’s self-insert bemoaning the end of the American Dream, as he dreads the impending 1970s, which we famously remember as unartistic and insignificant. I get the lack of faith in New York’s scene right now; if you’re a young person reading on Twitter and TikTok over and over again that culture has been killed, you’re going to start to believe it. Especially when the biggest “alternative” scene that has been written about so far is Dimes Square, a subculture that’s mostly Daddy-funded (biological or otherwise) pseudo-intellectual podcasts. That’s just the problem, though; as 21st-century philosopher The Dare put it in his generational anthem “Good Time”, “I’m in the city while you’re online.”

While people worried about the state of the scene read about its end online, they’re missing out on a still very lively, vibrant music and arts scene happening as we speak. These bands aren’t going to be at the top of your Spotify Discover, nor have their songs spread around TikTok (or however people find music these days). They’re playing in bars, tiny venues across Bushwick and Ridgewood and Williamsburg, maybe Lower Manhattan if they can make the commute. And you discover them by leaving your couch, taking the L, and seeing them play live. You want to solve the issue of Ticketmaster overcharging you to see your favorite bands? Just support your local scene for a 15-dollar cover charge. Follow these bands on Instagram, where they post where they play next, then see the bands they play with next weekend. Or, if you really want to feel special, talk to the oldest person at the show (ideally old enough to have seen Lady Gaga at The Knitting Factory for eight dollars), and they’ll tell you about events that aren’t even being advertised (mostly because they don’t know how the internet works). 

Yes, it requires two of my least favorite things: going outside and talking to people. Yet, when I’m at a band’s show for the fifth, fiftieth, hundredth time, and I’m still not bored of their set even though I can sing every word at this point, the last thing I’m thinking about is how the scene is dead. It just needs to be found, like people have done for decades before us. It’s not like in 2001, Is This It was outselling Britney Spears’ self-titled, and that’s the beauty of today’s indie scene. In a time when you don’t need a label to put out songs or an album, these tiny bands aren’t going to be promoted in ways where you can easily discover them. But when you put in the work to find these bands, go to their shows and support them, you’re a part of the scene. Best case scenario, one of these acts blow up, and you can have the ultimate hipster cred of saying “you knew them before they were cool.” Or even if they never get signed, never get the recognition they deserve, you still have the privilege of seeing art and seeing it live.

Of course, that girl at the meeting was talking about the internet, and I can’t deny that reducing subcultures down to their aesthetics has stripped meaning from them, at least to younger people who don’t know the difference between emo and punk. But if you can use the internet right, you can even participate in scenes you may not have known existed. You can take a look at other people’s lives, whether they go to central Jersey’s punk shows, or whether they go to bluegrass concerts in Kentucky, and understand that New York isn’t the sole provider of art and culture. If it weren’t for TikTok, I would have never known about Molchat Doma, a Belarusian post-punk band. To most people, they’re that one band that made that one song, “Судно,” that blew up on TikTok awhile back. For me, that one song led me to do a deep-dive across all of their albums, leading to my current interest in post-punk and dark wave in post-Soviet countries. TikTok, for all of its faults, gave me the chance to discover a new favorite band and see them live twice – and it might have given them the opportunity to play in America in the first place. 

I won’t deny that it’s harder to be an artist in New York now, because back in the day you could survive off of nothing and devote yourself to your craft. But artists themselves haven’t changed. If you’re so concerned that New York’s art isn’t what it used to be, feed into your local scene. And if you have the guts, create art yourself – or at least something that isn’t another thinkpiece.