RA Real Scenes - New York

A few months ago I watched and reviewed a short documentary by Resident Advisor that was about the Detroit music scene, part of their 'Real Scenes' series.

Earlier today RA released another short documentary that focuses on the music of a city, and this one's about NYC. I thought this latest effort by them was quite revealing in many ways. First, what I liked most was the beginning where subjects are talking about how hard it is to make it in New York; how hard it is to get by and make ends meet while still trying to find time to be creative and make things. I can relate to this 1000%, as that's my life. I've been in NY for nearly 4.5 years now and I'm still struggling just to survive here, while also trying somehow to be creative and make films and things. Being a creative person and trying to make films/music/art is hard enough, add on top of that struggles to pay rent and bills and spending most of your hours at a job instead of on what you really want to do, makes it all immensely more difficult. This RA video is one of the few things I've seen where people really discuss these things in-depth.

Another aspect I liked about the video is that it discusses gentrification a bit. I'm not a clubber and party-goer (for all sorts of reasons) but I've been to some clubs and parties out in Williamsburg, which is kind of where the latest club scene has been for the last few years. The film talks about how lots of places got shut down in Manhattan due to extremely expensive and ever-increasing rents. An article I happened to also come across today (which for some reason is in the NY Post), talks about this, in which I learned venues like the Bowery Poetry Club are now shut down. I've been there a couple times, and I just think, what's gonna replace these places, and where are people going to go now? At the end of the RA film the subjects are optimistic about cycles of change and how there's always new things. However, Dope Jams shut down at the end of January, and I of course had just learned about it a couple weeks beforehand but wasn't able to get to it before its doors closed. I was so excited to learn about a record shop selling loads of house but now its gone, and as these spaces disappear, its a huge loss to the city and to communities. But I guess the folks in the RA video are right, there is always something new around the corner.

One thing that did bug me about RA Real Scenes: New York is that almost all the subjects were white males, save for a couple of brown men. I think we all know that NYC and the house scene is certainly more diverse than that. I guess this oversight by the filmmakers however is also reflective perhaps of how the scene is seen.

Well, here's the video, and the original link.