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Ithaca NY, Ann Arbor MI and parts of Upstate NY cities like Westcott in Syracuse, Allentown in Buffalo, Center Square in Albany and perhaps the Monroe Village/Avenue area of Rochester, among perhaps others in those cities. https://maps.google.com/maps?q=allen...,292.93,,0,3.1
"Bohemian" is kind of tough to define. People saw the beatniks of 1950's in much the same way as we tend to view "hipsters." The Beat Generation were a small group of artists and writers, who attracted numerous "wannabes."
I know a couple of original beatniks who tell me otherwise. People definitely didn't view Beat culture back then the same way they view the ever-so-trendy "hipster" scene today. In the 50's, beatniks celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity. Modern-day hipsters celebrate conformity and uniformity, and I don't see much creativity going on with these people. Most of them are too immersed in their iCulture™ to create anything (except maybe new apps or video games. Woo-hoo).
In the 50's, the Beat scene was confined mainly to two cities; New York and San Francisco, and even then only in little pockets like Greenwich Village and North Beach. There was a tiny scene centered around Reed College in Portland, but the point is that it wasn't this nationwide trend like it is today with the neo-hipsters.
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Originally Posted by Frank Bones
Whether they're "authentic" or not, certain cities do tend to exhibit a counter cultural sensibility.
True, but it's a very watered-down and homogenized version of "Bohemian", when compared to Bohemian subcultures of the not-so-distant past.
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Originally Posted by Frank Bones
Often, though, the bohemian look is cultivated by developers and planners.
Yes, the LOOK definitely is. Anybody can put on a costume. Actual culture is a whole different story.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank Bones
It's the 21st Century, there are "bohemians" everywhere.
I know a couple of original beatniks who tell me otherwise. People definitely didn't view Beat culture back then the same way they view the ever-so-trendy "hipster" scene today. In the 50's, beatniks celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity. Modern-day hipsters celebrate conformity and uniformity, and I don't see much creativity going on with these people. Most of them are too immersed in their iCulture™ to create anything (except maybe new apps or video games. Woo-hoo).
In the 50's, the Beat scene was confined mainly to two cities; New York and San Francisco, and even then only in little pockets like Greenwich Village and North Beach. There was a tiny scene centered around Reed College in Portland, but the point is that it wasn't this nationwide trend like it is today with the neo-hipsters.
True, but it's a very watered-down and homogenized version of "Bohemian", when compared to Bohemian subcultures of the not-so-distant past.
Yes, the LOOK definitely is. Anybody can put on a costume. Actual culture is a whole different story.
If that's sarcasm, then I couldn't agree more.
I am old so I remember the original beatniks. But I was too young at the time to actually be one. We had our small share in Chicago's Old Town area. It was Chicago's version of Greenwich Village. These were not anything like today's hipsters. Hipsters, the real ones go as far back as the 20's but that's a different animal not the ones we are discussing here.
Anyway, the Beatniks of the fifties were the bohemians of the day. That is bohemians with a small "B" so as not to confuse them with the ethnic group from Eastern Europe. Your description of beatnik bohemian is apt. As a teen, my friends and I were kind of beatnik wannabes. We read Kerouac, Ginsberg and other beatnik icons. We played bongos and listened to beat music. Beatniks didn't have followers in droves because they were very cerebral and weren't so much interested in changing the world as living it in their own quiet way. They prided themselves as an "underground" movement. They were definitely a subculture and wanted to keep it that way.
Every generation has something of this type. But hipsters are a far cry from anything creative or artistic or anything of merit. At least the ones I see and I see plenty living in Portland. I sympathize with your assessment of Seattle hipsters. But pity us Portlanders. People watch that silly show "Portlandia" and believe it is a documentary rather than a satire. And those are people who live here as well as those who don't. Those who don't live here want to move here and be a part of the hipster crowd to look "cool" or in other words, look like everyone else who is doing the same thing.
I think one word for "bohemian" today is "sheeple" in places in which are touted as being bohemian but are simply magnets for those who want to play at being different but haven't a clue or imagination as to how to do it.
As a teen, my friends and I were kind of beatnik wannabes. We read Kerouac, Ginsberg and other beatnik icons. We played bongos and listened to beat music. Beatniks didn't have followers in droves because they were very cerebral and weren't so much interested in changing the world as living it in their own quiet way. They prided themselves as an "underground" movement. They were definitely a subculture and wanted to keep it that way.
Very well-stated and right on the money. I'm 49, so I was obviously FAR too young to be a beatnik, but just like you I read all the literature and related to it. I was a punk. As in punk rocker. Really I still am, though I've mellowed considerably since my teens and early 20's. The point is, the punk scene was the closest thing my generation had to what the beatniks were burning to, though it was a very different kind of scene obviously. Still, we were unfairly viewed and judged by society as total violent lunatics, which prior to the mid-80's couldn't have been further from the truth. Everyone I knew in the scene back then, for the most part, was heavily into beat literature. In the early days of punk, many of us were informed by that.
Punk was a very underground thing until the 90's. Most of us weren't out to change the world either. We just wanted to vent our disgust with it in the loudest and most cathartic possible way, and make the most of living in a society that was in the grips of decline and decay. The beatniks existed during a time of prosperity, but also a time of extreme conservative social repression and conformity. Their whole thing was about breaking free from all that repression and conformity, and living life to the max. In that sense, punks and beatniks were basically after the same goals, just in two different eras/social climates.
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Originally Posted by Minervah
But pity us Portlanders. People watch that silly show "Portlandia" and believe it is a documentary rather than a satire. And those are people who live here as well as those who don't. Those who don't live here want to move here and be a part of the hipster crowd to look "cool" or in other words, look like everyone else who is doing the same thing.
Hahaha! Yeah, Seattle and Portland seem to have caught the same hipster virus, only it's more pronounced in Portland I think. That show, though in some ways pretty accurate in it's satire, can't be helping matters much down there. Kind of like when the whole grunge thing happened here in the 90's. Seattle became a magnet for every kid with a flannel shirt in America for a while. I wasn't living here in the 90's, but I visited a couple of times and was overwhelmed by all the grunge kids everywhere, who all seemed to have recently moved here from somewhere else.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Minervah
I think one word for "bohemian" today is "sheeple" in places in which are touted as being bohemian but are simply magnets for those who want to play at being different but haven't a clue or imagination as to how to do it.
San Francisco, Key West, Austin, Portland, Seattle. You can also find such communities in Chicago, LA, NYC, Boston, Philly or even Miami and Washington DC.
San Francisco, Key West, Austin, Portland, Seattle. You can also find such communities in Chicago, LA, NYC, Boston, Philly or even Miami and Washington DC.
To which community in Portland would you refer as bohemian? Just interested in your opinion.
I know a couple of original beatniks who tell me otherwise. People definitely didn't view Beat culture back then the same way they view the ever-so-trendy "hipster" scene today. In the 50's, beatniks celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity. Modern-day hipsters celebrate conformity and uniformity, and I don't see much creativity going on with these people. Most of them are too immersed in their iCulture™ to create anything (except maybe new apps or video games. Woo-hoo).
In the 50's, the Beat scene was confined mainly to two cities; New York and San Francisco, and even then only in little pockets like Greenwich Village and North Beach. There was a tiny scene centered around Reed College in Portland, but the point is that it wasn't this nationwide trend like it is today with the neo-hipsters.
True, but it's a very watered-down and homogenized version of "Bohemian", when compared to Bohemian subcultures of the not-so-distant past.
Yes, the LOOK definitely is. Anybody can put on a costume. Actual culture is a whole different story.
If that's sarcasm, then I couldn't agree more.
Read Dwight Macdonald's 1960 essay "Masscult and Midcult," which laments the commodification of the avant-garde. Much of Macdonald's critique resembles today's diatribes against hipsters and places like Urban Outfitters. The essay also discusses the Beats and notes the role the media played in hyping them. Many critics like Lionel Trilling didn't find their work provocative: like today's hipsters, they just thought the Beats were unoriginal compared to older writers like Joyce and artists like Picasso.
Even people like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie (whom the Beats idolized) were amused and sometimes annoyed by the Beats' fundamental failure to understand Bop.
Then came the Beatniks. Kerouac and other Beats detested them, believing them to be scenesters who grossly misinterpreted their work.
By the early 1960's, Greenwich Village was rapidly becoming a tourist destination (watch the Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home) much like Portland is today.
The point is that the world is becoming more connected (through television, the internet, etc), which makes it easier for people to emulate certain styles (or as you rightly said, "costumes"). But the scenester debate is hardly a 21st century phenomenon.
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