(This article was pulled from the New Miami Times)

David Beckham is smitten with the idea of constructing a new Major League Soccer Stadium at PortMiami and calls the site perfect because it reflects a city that “is all about the water, all about the culture.” Becks is right. For evidence, simply visit the planet’s most popular port to discover Coral Reef City, Bhakti Baxter’s first large-scale public artwork in Miami.

For his eye-popping project, part of Miami-Dade County’s Art in Public Places program, the homegrown artist created site-specific designs for the port’s toll collection booths that reference the site’s unique role as gateway to the tropics. Baxter collaborated with Coral Morphologic, a Miami-based scientific art endeavor led by marine biologist Colin Foord and musician Jared McKay to create the 18 unique designs that wrap each individual toll booth.

Each delivers a stunning vision of our vibrant local sea life. To accomplish the feat, Baxter and his collaborators enlarged macro photographs of corals that inhabit the waters in and around Miami, creating a striking synergy between nature and art that captures our town’s appeal as a pulsating paradise. The resulting explosion of the brilliant, rainbow-hued colors of the soft corals (technically known as zoanthids) delights not only the likes of Beckham and the millions of other visitors passing through on cruise ships, but also locals, who rarely get a chance to behold the mystery and beauty of the creatures populating our coastline.

Check out the video on the installation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2cWivEuS2I

Just to revisit the discussion about the black museum that we were having last year at  via the Miami Hearld. 

We are wondering what happened to this conversation…

___________________________________________________________

There would have been no official black support when the Miami-Dade County Commission endorsed putting a Cuban exile museum on prime county waterfront land if Dennis Moss hadn’t voted yes — with a caveat: Moss, the senior African-American commissioner, said he would vote for the museum celebrating Cuban heritage but that he expected support once he proposed a black history museum.

Recently, Moss took the first step toward that backing when the commission’s Cultural Affairs committee voted unanimously last week to recommend a county study on how to bring a black history museum to the Miami waterfront. But the particulars of Moss’ proposal — instructing Mayor Carlos Gimenez to explore using tax dollars for construction — promises to inject more tension into the already delicate task of prioritizing Miami-Dade’s cultural institutions.

Organizers of the Cuban exile museum made a point of insisting they would never seek public dollars for their proposed $125 million facility on county-owned land behind AmericanAirlines Arena, saying they could raise enough money from people of Cuban heritage around the world, particularly those with significant fortunes.

In rejecting that approach, Moss is pointing to both the prosperity divide between the Cuban and black communities, and the tax support Miami-Dade gives to local museums backed by two of Miami’s wealthiest citizens. Moss noted commissioners already approved more than $200 million to build the Pérez Art Museum Miami and Frost science museum named for, respectively, condo developer Jorge Pérez and Phillip Frost, a medical-research mogul, and his wife, Patricia.

“There is significant county support for those museums,” Moss, a five-term commissioner, said in an interview. “I don’t see a black history museum being treated any differently.”

Last week, Pérez led a delegation to County Hall seeking the additional $1.4 million for PAMM that Gimenez initially put in his proposed 2015 budget, but later dropped in order to shift the funds to the police budget. The group met with Rebeca Sosa, the commission’s chairwoman and an opponent of the plan to increase PAMM’s funding beyond the annual $2.5 million in hotel taxes it already receives. Sosa said she told the group she couldn’t support the request “when I’m trying to find funding for police and other county services.” A PAMM spokeswoman declined to comment.

The PAMM funding question should come to a head this month, with the commission’s first budget hearing scheduled for 5 p.m. Thursday and a final vote on the $6.2 billion budget needed before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30. And while it will likely be weeks before commissioners take up the issue of a black history museum, the PAMM debate adds another wrinkle to the Moss request.

The concept of a black history museum received strong encouragement from fellow commissioners on July 17 when Moss linked his Cuban museum support to the commission also endorsing a black history museum. But with county funding now in the equation, Moss can’t count on an easy win.

“If he’s exploring public dollars to build, that’s not what the Cuban museum did,” said Commissioner Esteban “Steve” Bovo, the sponsor of the exile museum ordinance. “I’m going to hold everyone to the same standard.”

The Moss resolution heading to the full County Commission this fall only calls for exploring the use of tax dollars for the black history museum, and recommends having voters first endorse borrowing the money to build it.

Moss listed three possible sites: Miami’s Museum Park, near the planned location of the exile museum; Watson Island, home to the Miami Children’s Museum; and the southwest corner of Port Miami, where David Beckham wanted to build a soccer stadium until commissioners voted to block it. Of the three sites, Miami-Dade County controls only the port.

The Moss-sponsored resolution that the four-member Cultural Affairs panel passed unanimously Thursday echoed comments Moss made during the exile museum vote: black immigrants played a central role in Miami-Dade’s history and deserve as much celebration as any community.

According to the resolution, “this County was developed by black people who, while dreamers, made up the bulk of the pioneer labor force that helped make this County into the thriving metropolis it is today.” It noted that black residents provided labor for Henry Flagler’s railroad, construction of Miami Beach hotels, the Vizcaya mansion and the original Dade County Courthouse.

Moss’ resolution came less than two months after the commission finally agreed to the concept of a Cuban exile museum on county-owned waterfront land. On July 17, the full commission voted 8-3 to endorse a home for the Cuban exile museum. That decision followed years of debate and false starts, including a similar route of commissioners asking Gimenez to study the issue. The vote didn’t divide the commission by race or ethnicity: Xavier Suarez, who served as Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor before winning a county seat, joined two black commissioners, Audrey Edmonson and Barbara Jordan, in voting against it.

And while commissioners instructed Gimenez to negotiate a deal with exile museum organizers, the commission would still need to approve any plan to actually build the museum on the county-owned land known as Parcel B. Nicolás Gutiérrez, an organizer of the exile museum, said last week his group welcomes the Moss effort.

“To the extent we can be supportive in any way, we’re happy to do so. We agree they deserve their own museum, and we wish them the best,” he said. “They’re obviously free to use whatever approach they think is best.”

Moss said it’s not fair to hold a black history museum to the financial pledge made by the exile museum, given the economic disparity between the two. “You’re looking at an African-American community that doesn’t have the resources of the Cuban community,” Moss said. “They’re better positioned to do the museum themselves.”

His resolution calls for the Black Archives, a Miami-based research and heritage nonprofit, to develop the new museum, which would house the archives’ extensive collection of historical memorabilia and materials. The organization owns and operates some of Miami’s top historic sites related to black history, including the Lyric Theater, once a magnet for the nation’s top black performers, and the Dr. Samuel Johnson X-Ray Clinic, which opened in 1939 to treat black residents denied treatment in Miami’s segregated hospital system.

Timothy Barber, director of the archives, said he was asked to get involved with Ross’ effort after the exile museum vote. He sees the museum as a way to showcase Miami’s black heritage in a high-profile location popular with tourists.

“It would allow us to serve as a gateway for this community,” he said from the archives office in the Joseph Caleb center near Brownsville.

“It’s difficult to get people to come to these communities, particularly with the negative stigma the media has put some of these neighborhoods, like Overtown. That’s why you have the Pérez and the Frost and the AmericanAirlines Arena there,” he continued. “The arena was in Overtown, but it closed to move to the waterfront.”

Miami-Dade County budget hearing

New announcements about Red Bull Guest House announcements made on the 305

7 Showcases, 4 Days & 3 Nights at Sagamore, The Art Hotel

Miami, FL – Red Bull Guest House is making its return to Miami this year in its third incarnation, this time taking place at Sagamore, The Art Hotel, March 26-29th, coinciding with Miami Music Week and Ultra Music Festival. This year, Red Bull Guest House (RBGH) hand-selected curators and artists to create seven individual showcases over four days and three nights, returning with its celebrated daytime pool parties and memorable late night breakfast club blowouts, all of which are exclusive to RBGH.

Curators include Lil Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment, whose showcase is the only one of its kind during MMW, and the HARD Pool Party, which promises electrifying B2B sets as their only poolside soiree throughout the week. Debuts to Miami Music Week include Guy Gerber’s RUMORS and New York nightlife icons Ladyfag & Seva Granik present: SHADE: MELTDOWN. Making its North American debut is Seth Troxler presents Big Tittie Surprise, and in what will be the first of its kind is the premiere of new eventKygo + Thomas Jack’s Tropical. A special seventh showcase and the full lineup will be revealed at the start of March, while surprise guests from the music and art world will continue to make Red Bull Guest House an experience unlike any other.

This year at RBGH, International Music Summit (IMS) will host documentary screenings and moderated Q&A’s while the Traktor Cookery School will return with top DJs cooking up their favorite dishes poolside. Red Bull Music Academy Radio will once again hold down the airwaves with exclusive live interviews, DJ sets and broadcasts throughout the four-day experience. Guests will enjoy hospitality from fashion line Public School NYC and bikinis by Miami’s own I SHINE 365 swimwear, grooming and beauty services by Nail Swag, Blo Miami, and Brooklyn’s Heartbreakers Barbershop, and more.

Fans wondered if Red Bull Guest House’s first year in 2013 could be topped, as that inaugural year saw Skrillex, Jamie xx, Pusha T, Carl Craig, A-Trak and more step up to the decks. With high expectations, guests returned in 2014 to see Skrillex curating an entire OWSLA-run showcase, and a true Mad Decent rager with Diplo, DJ Snake, RiFF RAFF, Waka Flocka and Trinidad James. Diddy and Guy Gerber introduced 2014’s 11:11 album in a surprise event and the legendary Giorgio Moroder spun one of his most intimate sets in years. This year, RBGH returns with a lineup that celebrates the taste and ear for talent from a select group of passionate curators and the artists they’re inspired by most.

J Dilla Weekend 2/6/15

J Dilla Weekend
Sunday, 02/06/2015 – 02/08/2015 10:00 pm – 05:00 pm
The Stage Miami
170 NE 38th St,
Miami, Florida 33137
Buy Tickets Link
Cost: $25 – $80

DILLA WEEKEND – FEB 5-8 2014
Performances from Pete Rock, Mobb Deep, Joey Badass, Madlib, Talib Kweli, Slum Village, Dead Prez, Black Milk, Soulection, Camp Lo, and many more.

In recent years, fans have celebrated the legacy of the late, great producer J Dilla with the annual Dilla Day tribute concert in Detroit. In 2015, the festivities will be officially moving to the warmer climates of Miami, FL for a full weekend of Dilla events.

Presented by Dilla’s mother Ma Dukes, this year’s Dilla Day Weekend is set to take place in Miami from February 5th – February 8th. Confirmed performers include Mobb Deep, Joey Bada$$, Pete Rock, Madlib, Talib Kweli, Slum Village, Black Milk, ESTA, Camp Lo, and many more to be announced. The events will take place in a number of different locations around Midtown/Wynwood Miami including: The Stage, Bardot, and LMNT.

Brought to you by III Points, Nature Sounds, Addicted Affairs & DNA Entertainment.

 

Filmgate Interactive, Learn. Do. Share. – An Open Space For Collaboration, Design Fiction & Social Innovation 2/7/15

Filmgate Interactive, Learn. Do. Share. – An Open Space For Collaboration, Design Fiction & Social Innovation
Sunday, 02/07/2015 – 02/08/2015 10:00 am – 05:00 pm
The Wolfsonian-FIU
1001 Washington Avenue,
Miami Beach, Florida 33139
More Info Link
Cost: (305) 531-1001

Filmgate Interactive presents “Learn Do Share,” a roving event that mobilizes social innovation initiatives from around the world. Produced in collaboration with Reboot Stories, this workshop will welcome high-school teens, ages 14 to 19, to prototype, design and storyboard their wish for the future. Each event will take place over a three-day period that’s structured as a think tank, and is geared towards bringing together a tangible and realistic framework for resolution. Topics will range from DIY Urbanism and Youth Unemployment, to The Future of Education and The Sharing Economy. The Learn. Do. Share. at Filmgate will be led by Weiler and Megalis Martinez, Impact Designer of Reboot Stories and Board Member on LA Makerspace.

 

Tomato Festival Farmer’s Market 2/8/15

January 21, 2015 by calendar

Tomato Festival Farmer’s Market
Sunday, 02/08/2015 – 12:00 pm – 05:00 pm
Arts + Entertainment District
90 NE 17th St,,
Miami, Florida 33132
Webpage Link
Cost: Free

Your neighborhood Farmer’s Market just got a whole lot greener: come enjoy fresh produce, specialty vendors, live music and much more as you peruse the stalls of Miami’s freshest farmers. The amazing Rhythm & Vine will be hosting a Pop-Up Beer Garden and culinary demonstrations from Chef Paulette Bilsky.

Stay tuned for a full list of vendors!

Arts + Entertainment District
90 NE 17th St,
Miami, Florida 33132

 

DoMENation: Saturday, February 9th at Forbidden Downtown Miami 11:00pm-5:00am 2/9/15

Ready for more DoMENation?

DoMENation is hitting Downtown Miami again at:

FORBIDDEN
950 NE 2nd Avenue
Miami, FL 33132
(in the Mekka/Discotekka complex, Separate entrance and Parking in Rear).

For masculine men and their admirers…

Doors open 11pm

NO COVER BEFORE MIDNIGHT, $5 cover AFTER.

LATE NIGHT COMPLIMENTARY OPEN BAR 2:30 to 3:00 am

Music by DJ ALEX RAMOS

College Planning Seminar presented by Power Financial Credit Union 2/10/15

January 15, 2015 by calendar

College Planning Seminar presented by Power Financial Credit Union
Tuesday, 02/10/2015 – 06:30 pm – 08:30 pm
Power Financial Credit Union
2020 NW 150th Ave.,
Pembroke Pines, Florida 33028
Webpage Link
Cost: FREE

Power Financial Credit Union and Peter Ratzan, a nationally recognized higher education expert, will present a free seminar to help parents and prospective college students understand how students can attend a great college at a price they can afford. Topics to be covered include:
Why funding should be part of your child’s admissions process
How financial aid is calculated
The biggest myths about college funding

 

Wednesday Morning Birding 02/11/2015

9:00 am – 11:00 am
10430 State Route 185
(937) 335-6273, Ext. 104
www.MiamiCountyParks.com

The Miami County Park District will host its Wednesday Morning Birding program on February 11 starting at 9 a.m. at Maple Ridge Reserve, 10430 State Route 185 north of Covington.  Scour the trails with a park district naturalist to find a variety of feathered friends.  All sightings will be submitted to eBird, an online community of birders, conservationists and citizen scientists.  Stay warm – remember to layer up before you head out.  Meet in the parking lot.  Register for the program by going to the program calendar at MiamiCountyParks.com, e-mailing register@miamicountyparks.com or calling (937) 335-6273, Ext. 104.

 

Bonfire Under The Moonlight W/ Palo 2/12/15

Bonfire Under The Moonlight W/ Palo
Thursday, 02/12/2015 – 07:00 pm – 09:00 pm
Canvas Lot
90 NE 17 ST,,
Miami, Florida 33132
Webpage Link
Cost: Free

Join us for our 3rd Bonfire Under The Moonlight with one of Miami’s spiciest live acts to hit the stage, Palo! Opening tunes are yet to be confirmed, but we can guarantee they’ll be dope. Get your live music fix with free PBR, toasty bonfire smore’s + Ms.Cheezious serving up the grub.

RSVP Required: rsvp@aedistrictmiami.com

An older article, but we wanted share some backstory on these concepts of Art Revolutions, which are about access and exposure.

!Women Art Revolution Documents 40 Years of Feminist Art

​After conducting a penis count of major NYC art institutions in the ’80s, activist group Guerilla Girls asked, Do ladies have to be naked to get into the Met?Only five percent of the exhibited artists were women while 85 percent of the nudes were female. While we haven’t done an exact tally, we’re confident that Miami’s weenie count is pretty balanced in comparison.

Think of local art superstars Christy Gast, Agustina Woodgate, Jillian Mayer, Susan Lee-Chun and Jen Stark. Add to that major curators like Bonnie Clearwater and Ruba Katrib at MOCA, and gallerists like Bernice Steinbum, and our feminist art report card looks pretty good. But it wasn’t always this way. A documentary, !War Art Revolution, which catalogs the feminist art movement, Filmmaker and artist Lynn Hershman Leeson has been filming frustrated women artists for over 40 years. Her latest, !W.AR., documents how their work was discredited by art programs, galleries, and museums for decades. Leeson herself sold one of her pieces in the mid-70s, only to have the collector return it when he found out she was a woman.

With an original score by Carrie Bowenstein (of Sleater Kinney and Wild Flag), the film is a collection of interviews with dozens (frankly, too many) feminist artists, female curators, and tenured art professors. It traces back to early activism like a protest at the Whitey where feminist artists projected their artwork on the outside of the building and placed eggs inside the walls where their work was ignored.

Censored from the white, male art world, women sought out rooms of their own by starting their own magazines, galleries, and academic programs. Judy Chicago, while developing the first female art program at Fresno Sate, noticed women were immediately drawn to “act out” via performance art. Another interviewed artist backs this up with “There’s a long tradition of women being looked upon. Performance art was a way of looking back.” (Interestingly, most of Miami’s major female artists work in performance.)

In a scene from 1990, House representatives spend an hour and half raging against vagina art as porn via a bill censoring Chicago’s The Dinner Party as a pornographic collection of ceramic “vaginal areas.” A highlight of the film, Rep. Ron Dellums, who once curated an exhibit of Vietnam war crimes outside his Congressional office, retorts with “Pornography are military weapons that look like phallic symbols capable of doing nothing but destroying human life.”

Even in its current treatment, the patron saint of the film is undoubtedly Ana Medieta, a Cuban exile performance artist (and the subject of Miami choreographer Ana Mendez recent The Body Is Present piece).

Ana Mendieta

​Mendieta was allegedly shoved out a window by her sculpture husband. His art world peers — Robert Rauschenberg, etc. — rallied him and raised funds for his defense. Mendieta’s husband was ultimately acquitted of her murder and went on to exhibit in the Guggenheim.

To some extent, the film wraps around the narrative of the filmmaker. Leeson closes the film by stating that one of her pieces, so undervalued back in to ’70s, was recently bought for 9,000 times its original price — ultimately funding this film.

!W.A.R. is a must-see in that it reveals the decades of struggle on which today’s women artists enjoy their success. As artist Harmony Hammond comments in the film, their fight was “excitement, it was empowering, and it was a lot of fucking work.”

Adopted and Shared from: http://littlehaiticulturalcenter.com/conversations-with-artists-series-part-of-art-beat-miami/

We’ve been thinking about ideas and events – new companies that are combining all of the artistries to create spaces for diverse groups of food, people, music.  

We haven’t gone to check this scene out, but we think its worth investigating. 

Salud! 

Eats & Beats

Eats & Beats is the answer to those looking for an amazing food and wine event without the red velvet stanchion presence that one now expects at food events. The goal was to create an event that will not only satisfy the palate but also stimulate all of the senses. Comprised of a unique team of local hospitality and event consultants, the team behind this new Miami addition all bring unique elements to the equation ultimately, making the experience unique and of value to attendees coming out with “foodie” expectations. None other than Miami’s own DJ Irie put together the musical elements which included local DJ’s and bands adding a perfect ambiance to this fabulous affair.

En Concierto 1/30/15

On January 8th, Emerge Miami provided us all with some thankful updates on Florida’s access or lack of access to justice within the our court systems. Take a look and share your thoughts.

Florida’s Access to Justice Crisis

There’s no better time to be a Miami-an than when the rest of the country is freezing. These are the moments when social media in Miami comes alive with hilarious weather-themed memes, tweets, Instagrams, and pins rubbing in that we live in paradise. This week, while the Northeast is coated in 20 to 30 inches of snow, the reaction has been no different. And, while we hope the nor’easter will continue being gentle to our east coast friends, we can’t help but also revel in our incredible subtropical climate by sharing a winter outfit post that is 100-percent Miami. Because, who else can refer to a skort and t-shirt as their winter whites? Continue reading “#ThankYouMiami for Fashion – 100-Percent Miami” →

This Article is a repost from ArtPulse. http://artpulsemagazine.com/art-vs-real-estate-gentrification-and-urban-artistic-scenes

Do you agree with Miami being a place where there is hope in disrupting the cycle of gentrification? Let us know your thoughts.

Art vs. Real Estate. Gentrification and Urban Artistic Scenes

By James Lough

To avoid hearing about gentrification in U.S. cities over the last five years, you would have to live in a bomb shelter. In February, film director Spike Lee’s swear-word-studded rant against gentrification in Brooklyn went viral. Lee is only one in a series of well-known artists who have weighed in on the topic. Former Talking Head David Byrne recently wrote of Manhattan, “There is no room for fresh creative types. Middle-class people can barely afford to live anymore, so forget about emerging artists, musicians, actors, dancers, writers, journalists and small business people.” Patti Smith advised young artists: “Don’t move to New York.”

While gentrification displaces the poor and working classes, it is also a threat to young artists, more so than Joseph McCarthy, Jesse Helms or Tipper Gore ever were. It upsets a nearly 200-year-old tradition of artists and writers moving into cheap garrets in places like Paris’ Montmartre district, boarding houses in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, or apartments in San Francisco’s Mission and North Beach neighborhoods. Big, vibrant, tolerant cities offered cheap rent, freedom from staid bourgeois values, and the stimulating company of other artists.

Such urban bohemian enclaves have launched legions of revolutionary art movements: Impressionism and the armies of “isms” in early-20^th-century Paris; Abstract Expressionism and the Beat movement in 1940s New York and San Francisco; and in the ‘60s through the ‘80s, Warhol’s Factory workers, punk rockers and the spirited Neo-Expressionist visual arts scene—just to name a few.

But it’s all over. For emerging artists without trust funds, these major cities with vibrant artistic pedigrees may as well post “No Trespassing” signs. We’ll explore gentrification’s effects on artists in five U.S. cities once known for being artist-friendly: Miami on the East Coast, and on the West, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland. We’ll look first at the cities where it’s nearly impossible for young artists of modest means to afford to rent apartments or studio space, and therefore are excluded from benefitting from the cultural stimulation, cross-pollination with other creative people and mentorship of mature artists—all factors essential for making an artistic scene. Then we’ll explore some cities where there’s still hope.

Manhattan’s gentrification hit full steam during the real-estate bubble in 2008. According to a CBS News study, a one-bedroom apartment runs, on average, $2,950 (1). The story of Manhattan artists flocking to Brooklyn for affordable living and workspaces is now passé. According to The New York Times, Williamsburg and Bushwick—two of Brooklyn’s hippest neighborhoods—are now too expensive for all except the well-heeled. An average bedroom in a Bushwick apartment runs $1,900 a month. As for trendy Williamsburg, its bartenders and baristas can’t afford it anymore. They commute from Queens, now Williamsburg’s bedroom community. Even some real-estate developers, too cash-strapped to buy Brooklyn property, are looking at Queens (2).

Spike Mafford, Framing Progress, 1988, 35”x36” (Portland).

SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco’s story is similar to Manhattan’s but with a high-tech flair. Employees of Google and Twitter are buying up the Mission District, a long-time home to a large Hispanic community and countercultural artists. Highly paid tech workers from Silicon Valley, 70 miles south, discovered San Francisco’s vibrant Mission was more attractive than San Jose. The black-windowed, private “Google buses” that ferry them between Silicon Valley and the Mission actually outnumber city buses in the Mission. The tech workers’ influx has spiked housing prices, crowding out artists and working-class families and replacing them with chic boutiques and hip, pricey restaurants.

San Francisco’s average one-bedroom apartment rents for $2,950 (3). The average rent per room in the Mission, according to SFGate, is $2,125 a month. In Haight-Ashbury, once the epicenter of the Summer of Love, the median home price is $1.14 million (4).

In a city known historically for its progressive outlook—think North Beach Beat poets and the ‘60s counterculture—conflict over gentrification and Google buses has been vicious. Demonstrations have erupted over the eviction of working-class families and increased police presence near posh new businesses. Protestors have blockaded Google buses, which use the city’s bus stops at taxpayer expense. According toSalon, it’s been hard to organize protests by the labor movement because so few laborers actually live in San Francisco anymore. After eviction, they move to the East Bay and must commute back into the city and their jobs (5).

Writer and cultural archivist D.S. Black moved to San Francisco in the early ‘80s, lucking into a rent-controlled two-bedroom apartment in the Mission. He paid around $625 a month. “I modestly named my place Mission Control,” he says. In the mid-‘90s, his landlady, chafing under rent control, tried to intimidate him into moving out, once claiming his many shelves of books were a fire hazard.

Around this time Silicon Valley tech workers were driving up Mission real-estate prices. “Anyone who follows the news of the street,” says Black, “knows that San Francisco is now beholden to the hyperthis and the cyberthat. The life I had in the Mission of genteel but low-rent bohemia is now a true ‘Mission Impossible.’” Black finally succumbed to the coercion and economic pressures. His 2010 rent, even under rent control, had reached $1,400, so he moved across the bay to Berkeley. He now pays $1,500 for an apartment around one-third the size of his Capp Street place, plus $500 to store the books his new place couldn’t hold.

SEATTLE

Along with New York and San Francisco, Seattle’s gentrification seems to be a fait accompli. The city that launched a tidal wave of rock music by the likes of The Ventures, Jimi Hendrix, Heart and the massive grunge scene with bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, is too expensive for young musicians. According to the CBS study, an average one-bedroom apartment in Seattle runs $1,525 a month. Only 17 percent of its houses are priced lower than the median average (6).

According to gallery owner and artist Spike Mafford, Seattle’s gentrification, like San Francisco’s, came with the tech boom. And it’s not likely to slow down. Microsoft and Amazon continue to grow and plan to eventually add around 145,000 jobs. “The influx of the tech community and the dollars that go along with it,” he says, “will continue to transform the city for the next 10 years.” His gallery, Spike Mafford Photography, is now located in Magnuson Park, a converted U.S. Naval base—its fifth location. Every time his landlord raised his rent in his previous gallery spaces, he moved on, from Pioneer Square, to Ballard, to Belltown and then to Capitol Hill. At each new location, he did all the renovation required to utilize the space.

Gentrification affects more than artists, though, and Seattle’s gentrification has hit African Americans the hardest. According to the U.S. Census, in 1990, the black population of Seattle’s Central District was three times higher than the white population, but in only 10 years, whites outnumbered blacks, who were pushed to surrounding cities like Kent and Renton. Even so, in 2006, Seattle’s only African American mayor, Norm Rice, conceded that the gentrification was rooted in economics, not race (7).

Long-time Seattle resident Eli Hastings, an author and therapist, witnessed the process first-hand. Hastings, a white male, grew up and attended school in the Central District, then Seattle’s predominantly African American community. “At the time, things were really hairy. You had Crips and Bloods and crack cocaine. The neighborhood was not safe for anyone.”

Around 2000, gentrification encroached. Central District real-estate prices rose, drawing wealthier residents. Hastings is ambivalent about the changes, concerned that African Americans who don’t own property are powerless against big real-estate developers and affluent whites. Nevertheless, he concedes, some of the changes were positive. “When I was in high school, there was this deserted, dirty, dangerous vacant lot we cut through to get to a really down-at-the-heels supermarket,” he says. “The lot now is a Starbucks. And now there’s a nice supermarket there. So it’s tough to say that it’s entirely negative.”

Hastings’ ambivalence reflects a larger debate about negative and positive effects of gentrification. Pro-gentrification advocates cite improved living quality, cleaner streets and lower crime rates that “improved” neighborhoods provide their residents. But which residents? The neighborhood’s less-affluent residents can’t enjoy a neighborhood’s new amenities if they can’t afford the neighborhood. At the most basic level, the gentrification debate hinges on whether you see housing as a commodity, subject like all commodities to larger economic peaks and valleys, or whether you see affordable housing as a fundamental human right.

Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood, south of the Central District, has undergone a more typically “artist-inspired” gentrification. Georgetown was a more industrial neighborhood featuring factories and warehouses, since converted into lofts. “You’ve got your bars and lounges,” says Hastings. “You’ve got your import-beer shop. Xanadu Comics moved in. It’s very hipster now.” And yet it remains more affordable than most of Seattle, with the average home selling for $203,000.

WHAT’S BEEN LOST: WHY ARTISTS NEED BIG CITIES

Manhattan, San Francisco and Seattle are largely lost to young artists without means. As gentrification pushes young artists out of these fertile cultural ecosystems, it deprives them of the qualities only big cities can provide: creative collisions, encouragement and support of like minds, and mentorship. Studies show that people are more creative when densely clustered together in urban areas. Routinely encountering people of different ethnicities, social classes and worldviews exposes them to new ways of perceiving. The bigger the city, the more connections, the more creative they become. As a city grows, its occupants grow more productive (8), as measured by the number of trademarks and patent citations originating in the cities (9). An individual’s productivity is directly proportional to his or her city’s population.

So size matters, but it’s not everything. A city’s character also matters. The right city encourages free exchange of ideas, which relies on a city’s intellectual atmosphere, its open-mindedness and tolerance of difference. Often, institutions within the cities help provide this tolerance, institutions that appreciate, nurture and showcase artists and their work. Examples of such institutions are galleries, cafes with literary readings, performance venues like little theaters, concert venues like CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City, and even living spaces like New York’s Chelsea Hotel.

WHERE THERE’S HOPE: MIAMI, LOS ANGELES, PORTLAND

If New York, San Francisco and Seattle are out of bounds for most fledgling artists, there is hope in other cities. Two of them, Miami and Portland, are less populated, and the third, Los Angeles, is huge, covering a sprawling array of neighborhoods, some of which remain affordable.

Wynwood Walls. Miami’s Wynwood Art District. © Martha Cooper.

MIAMI

Since the launch of Art Basel Miami Beach in 2002, the city has experienced a renaissance of sorts. In response to Art Basel, dozens of smaller, satellite art fairs have mushroomed. And the 2013 reopening of Perez Art Museum Miami (formerly the Miami Art Museum) served as a capstone, the $131 million project securing Miami’s status as an arts city.

Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, also known as “Little San Juan” or “The Barrio,” has in the last 15 years developed a lively arts and culture scene. The Wynwood Art District houses dozens of galleries and studios. In 2012, Forbes magazine put Wynwood in the U.S.’s 20 top “Best Hipster Neighborhoods.” While the average one-bedroom apartment in metropolitan Miami rents for $2,648 a month (10), in Wynwood the rents start as low as $1,100 (11).

Brook Dorsch, who has run Miami art galleries since 1991, bought a building in Wynwood in 2000 to house Dorsch Gallery. Around the same time, Martin Margulies opened the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse. Wynwood was still an industrial area with a few houses dotted between warehouses and old clothes factories. But artists followed Dorsch and Margulies, creating a scene of “probably 30 galleries in the area,” says Dorsch. “It began very organically.”

It wasn’t until 2004 that New York real-estate developer Tony Goldman noticed Wynwood’s artistic potential. He bought some two dozen properties for around $35 million, according to The New York Times (12). Goldman converted an old warehouse into the Goldman Warehouse, an exhibit space run by MOCA. He co-created ArtSeen, the New World School of the Arts public studio and performance space. With Jeffrey Deitch, he created Wynwood Walls, an outdoor mural display. He opened a restaurant, Joey’s, in order to increase street life (13).

Those skeptical of gentrification feel Wynwood’s growth has come at too high a cost. WLRN Radio’s Nathaniel Sandler sums up this view: “The neighborhood is changing in a way that people don’t really want it to, and almost becoming a cartoon version of itself.” Higher prices are forcing artists to move out, to be replaced by corporate banks and a Ducati dealership. Sandler, however, does not see this as a problem. Artists, he says, didn’t make Wynwood as much as the working-class Puerto Ricans, who arrived long before the artists. New businesses boost the economy, making it better for everyone. It’s all part of what Sandler says is “the greater narrative of the city’s constant and diverse growth (14).”

Dorsch concedes that the rapid construction of high-end apartments and condominiums drove many artists to move into poor and blue-collar neighborhoods like Little Haiti, home to predominantly black and Latino residents. Crime rates are high there, so it has been slower to gentrify. Little Haiti’s median home price is $266,617 (15). Nevertheless, since Little Haiti borders Wynwood, and real estate is affordable, it seems a prime candidate for young artists who are resilient to challenging living conditions.

LOS ANGELES

Ironically, L.A.’s traffic-clogged sprawl turns out to have its perks. Gentrification in Los Angeles’ expansive metro area has been mellower than in San Francisco or Manhattan, where there’s no room to grow but up. Los Angeles’ average one-bedroom apartment rents for $1,740, just over half that of San Francisco’s (16). Forbes magazine named Silver Lake, in central L.A., the nation’s “Best Hipster Neighborhood.” Its artistic community—not precisely the same as its hipster community but overlapping it—has had moderate success gaining a modest foothold.

But an unlikely L.A. suburb has enjoyed a renaissance since 2005. Culver City, formerly an unhip, burned-out industrial warehouse zone, now sports wine bars, chic restaurants and over 20 well-attended art galleries.

“Culver City is full of shops and hipsters,” says James Daichendt, a professor and dean of performing and visual arts at Azusa Pacific University, who covers the L.A. art scene. “It has become quite a place to go out to eat, or even live now, which was unheard of before.”

Harley/Coagula Archives, Cody Critechelow Installation at Peres Projects, Los Angeles

Central sections of Culver City are nearly as expensive as West Hollywood or Venice, the median price of a three-bedroom home averaging around $750,000. The median rent runs between $1,100 and $1,400 per bedroom, only slightly more affordable than Brooklyn (17). But Daichendt says it depends on where you are. “It is still is affordable if you’re not in a good part of Culver City. There are still some industrial parts where there’s a lot of poverty, off the beaten track.”

Daichendt remains optimistic about L.A.’s creative scene. “What’s so different about L.A., compared to New York, is that it’s so spread out. There is no center to it. So the art community has developed in that way as well.” Culver City’s galleries show diverse work matching its diverse locale. “It’s incredibly exciting in terms of range. You have lowbrow, Juxtapoz-looking places like Thinkspace and Cory Helford. And then you have Blum & Poe, which has blue-chip artists like Murakami.” Daichendt acknowledges that Culver City may eventually price out young artists but counters that artists will simply find other, cheaper neighborhoods in the city where neighborhoods are legion.

PORTLAND

Portland’s liberal city planners have wrung their hands over gentrification’s negative effects on the poor. An average one-bedroom apartment can run between $776 and $996 per month, depending on the part of town (18). But prices are rising.

According to Anna Griffin at Oregonlive.com, the planners use computer modeling to locate formerly low-income neighborhoods (St. Johns, Eliot and King) in the hip, mid-sized city that are attracting high-income gentrifiers. Their goal is not to stop gentrification but to limit its negative results, “to preserve economic and cultural diversity” in neighborhoods so “everyone enjoys the same quality of life regardless of zip code (19).”

This may sound like a pipe dream out of Portlandia, but specific policies—already tested in other cities—can prevent gentrification from running roughshod over poor and emerging artists. Tax subsidies can encourage poor homeowners to stay put. Cities can offer developers financial spurs to pepper new, expensive condo complexes with more affordable housing units. They can also hire working-class locals to build them.

But for Mike Phillips, musician turned tech entrepreneur, it’s too little too late. Having lived in Portland since 2004, he has recently relocated to less inspiring Vancouver, Wash., a Portland suburb just across the Columbia River. “I don’t consider myself an artist anymore. I got sick of having financial stress all the time.” Much of the stress was rooted in paying rent. “In 2008, I got a one-bedroom apartment, and the rent was $450. When I moved out in 2012, four years later, my landlord had jacked the rent to $700 a month. That probably doesn’t seem like that much money to people with normal jobs,” he says, but for an artist with a limited income, it was enough to propel him out of both Portland and the arts.

While Vancouver isn’t as stimulating as Portland, or as overrun by “well-to-do hipsters who can sit around in cafes all day,” as Phillips puts it, it is far cheaper. “In Vancouver, I could have a much nicer house for a fraction of the cost in Portland.” And Vancouver may itself be resurging. “For years, it’s been kind of this dumpy place where you walked around and you’d feel like you’re going to get stabbed,” he says. “But now they have nicer cafes and bars and restaurants.”

While living in Portland proved difficult for Phillips to sustain on his income, it’s still borderline affordable compared to the other cities featured here. Young musicians I spoke to there did, however, wonder how long it would last before they themselves would be forced to confront Phillips’ choice: stay in Portland and stay poor, move somewhere cheaper and continue to make art, or find a new career.

SOLUTIONS

There is a prevailing attitude that claims gentrification is inevitable. Even Seattle artist and gallery owner Spike Mafford, after switching location five times to escape high rent, accepts the truism. “Gentrification is a natural part of expansion and growth,” he says. “You really can’t fight it.” But fighting gentrification, while not easy, is possible. A number of cities have done it. Rent-control laws, for example, protect poor and working-class people as well as emerging artists. Some lucky tenants in Manhattan still live in apartments with rents harkening back to the 1980s. But powerful real-estate interests find rent control anathema. Landlords do everything in their power to evict protected tenants, often making life miserable enough for them to leave on their own. Some cities have experimented with mixed-class communities, where zoning laws allow some gentrification alongside low-income housing, though these have proved less successful.

According to The New York Times, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Boston are freezing property taxes, so when house prices rise with gentrification, higher taxes don’t make it difficult for working-class people to live in their own homes. But this approach only helps property owners—those who rent have no such protection (20).

The old-fashioned system in which wealthy patrons sponsored emerging artists has survived in interesting permutations. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, the Bard family at the Chelsea Hotel, Hilly Crystal at CBGBs, and Mickey Ruskin at Max’s Kansas City provided the infrastructure where vibrant art, music and literary scenes were born. Let’s hope there will continue to be people in positions of power to take interest in artists and support their careers. And let’s hope young artists are resourceful enough to find their own ways.

NOTES

1. 1. “Top 10 priciest U.S. cities to rent an apartment,” CBSnews.com, July 15, 2013.
2. 2. “Costly Rents Push Brooklynites to Queens,” by Michelle Higgins. The New York Times, August 18, 2013.
3. 3. “Top 10 Priciest…” CBSnews.com, July 15, 2013.
4. 4. “S.F. rents up more than 3 times higher than national average,” by Anna Marie Erwert, January 30, 2014.
5. 5. “San Francisco’s rightward turn: Why it may no longer be America’s iconic liberal city,” by George McIntire, Salon.com, February 16, 2014.
6. 6. Gentrification and Financial Health by Daniel Hartley, (Federal Reserve 11-6-2013).
7. 7. Henry W. McGee, Jr. “Gentrification, Integration or Displacement?: The Seattle Story,” BlackPast.org.
8. 8. Luis Bettencourt et al., “Growth, Innovation, Scaling and the Pace of Life in Cities.” PNAS, vol. 104, No. 17, 2007.
9. 9. Adam Jaffe, M. Trajtenberg, and Rebecca Henderson, “Geographic Localization of Knowledge Spillovers as Evidenced by Patent Citations,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 108 (1993).
10. 10. <http://www.realtor.com/local/Miami_FL/rent-prices>
11. 11. <http://www.apartmentguide.com/neighborhoods/Florida/Miami/Wynwood-Art-District/>
12. 12. Terry Pristin,“A SoHo Visionary Makes an Artsy Bet in Miami,” The New York Times, March 30, 2010.
13. 13. Terry Pristin, Ibid.
14. 14. “Wynwood is Dead: Long Live Wynwood” <http://wlrn.org/post/wynwood-dead-long-live-wynwood>
15. 15. <http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Little-Haiti-Miami-FL.html>
16. 16. “Top 10 Priciest…” CBSnews.com, July 15, 2013.
17. 17. <http://www.city-data.com>
18. 18. <http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country=United+States&city=Portland%2C+OR>

19.http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/06/portland_study_targets_neighbo.html

20. 20. Timothy Williams, “Cities Mobilize to Help Those Threatened by Gentrification,” The New York Times, March 3 2014.

James Lough teaches nonfiction writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design in the writing department, which he formerly directed.His book This Ain’t No Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 was published by Schaffner Press in 2013. He is also the author of Spheres of Awareness (University Press of America, 2009) and Sites of Insight (University Press of Colorado, 2003), as well as over 70 articles, essays and short stories.