Urban Blight and the Artist’s Plight

Transitional neighborhoods and cities are natural magnets to artists. We don’t necessarily look at them and see diamonds in the rough that will one day house fabulous cutting edge galleries, work spaces, boutiques, cafes, bars, clubs, and restaurants. What we do see is affordable living space in an urban setting that still has echoes of a once glorious past. All the aforementioned will follow with our influence, then, said places will draw the wealthy suburbanites who begin by ‘slumming’, then a pilgrimage seeking the elusive ‘cool’, and ultimately culminate by moving in and pricing us out. 

I have always lived in areas that were transitional. My first apartment was in London. During the Thatcher years, I lived on the King’s Road, which still held onto its swinging sixties roots, allowing the punk rock culture to bleed through. Hardly transitional by this time, it was an established, hip and trendy mecca. After a taste of this, and seeing how people my age at the time really lived, I moved into a squat in Southeast London and lived a truly punk rocker meets To Sir with Love lifestyle. We saved coupons to eat take out Chinese and Indian on the weekend, and lived off of pilchards and rice, baked beans on toast, and pints of Best and bags of greasy chips (fries) soaked in malt vinegar during the week.  No TV to get stuck into, we entertained ourselves by creating art, playing music, and listening to John Peel on BBC Radio. When I lived in Prague, I settled into the borough of Zizkov. Long a stronghold of the Proletariat and gypsy populations, Zizkov also housed the hip expat and hedonist communities, consisting of artists from many nations, cultures, and walks of life. It is said that there are more bars in Zizkov per square mile than in all of the Czech Republic, combined. In Boston, I lived in the now untouchable South End. In the mid-80s, this borough housed boarded-up gems of once stately brownstones with basement kitchens and maids’ quarters in the garrets. Ambitious ex-San Franciscans and Irish immigrants came in droves ripping up shag carpeting and pulling down faux wood paneling to expose treasures like working fireplaces, rustic hard wood flooring, exposed brick walls and fabulous carved detail on doors and windows. My English then-husband and I lived in a small flat with these features for a whopping 300 dollars a month (cheap by even 1980s standards). The oval parks and Victorian fountains were enough draw to help us ignore the fact that it was still a crime/gang ridden area, and there were only 3 square blocks we could walk in safety. But even then, artsy boutiques and funky collectable shops were popping up, and there were old spots like Tremont Ice Cream which offered cheap breakfasts and reminded us of the one-time glory days of the neighborhood. And yes, this was the beginning of the Boston Bistro movement which would become the Chef/Owner restaurant renaissance of the 90s. We were all artists in that neighborhood at that time…bands, visual artists, actors and poets could afford to live there. Now, we can’t even afford to breathe the air.

 Now, I have temporarily returned to my hometown of Lynn, Massachusetts. Since the 70s, and the beginning of what they called urban blight, or what I call mallification, Lynn has had a rather dodgy reputation. Everyone knows the old rhyme ‘Lynn, Lynn, city of sin, you’ll never come out the way you went in.’ Contrary to popular belief, this rhyme does not have its basis in drugs, crime, hell’s angels, or tough townie culture. It comes from Lynn’s heyday when it was a thriving industrial city filled with vibrant shops and parks, a bustling downtown, and a second string theater circuit which not only hosted Broadway touring companies, but lively vaudeville and Burlesque revues. The blue noses that descended from the North Shore Puritan population, no doubt had a hand in creating the popular little ditty in response to the passing through of the shameless fan dancers of the day.

Lynn was, during the Industrial revolution, the shoe making capitol of the world; its history still evident from exhibits at the Lynn Heritage Museum, and the fact (not urban myth) that the Lynn Common is shaped like a shoe. Up until the late 1960s, the Common continued its Victorian era tradition of Sousa – type band concerts with synchronized colored water spouting from a large stone fountain, children running everywhere with ice cream and cotton candy, the 19^th century wooden hoops replaced by day-glo shoop-shoop hula hoops.  Rich in Civil War history, High Rock Tower overlooks downtown and the harbor, its ghosts still on the lookout for Johnny Reb, and Lynn Woods is still spirited by specters of marauding pirates who have successfully protected their booty still hidden deep in Dungeon Rock to this day. The General Electric was the city’s industry in my mother’s day, bringing soldiers from far and wide coming from and going to battle in the Second World War. At that time, Lynn was still bustling, with beautiful movie and vaudeville theaters hosting big band swing concerts amidst the velvet, marble and gold guilt décor. Mixed architecture of Victorian and Art Nouveau now comingled with Art Deco, still evident by the old Bell Telephone building and the Edison Hotel, which seamlessly meld with the neoclassic Public Library, and Gothic churches dotted throughout the city. Diners, automats, fine dining restaurants, wonderful old (independently owned) department stores, furniture stores and high fashion boutiques thrived, where the owners graciously accepted lay-away plans of a dollar down/a dollar a day until payment was met. And the beach…Lynn always had the vast and picturesque King’s Beach.

Does Lynn’s history and surviving architecture sound like a magnet that would draw a struggling or working artist community? You bet it does. The colorful multicultural population and wonderful old mill and factory buildings, perfect for loft living/workspace conversion, dictates that it should be a perfect fit. However, it takes more than this to welcome former city dwellers. Lynn’s infrastructure is crumbling. Most people who have lived in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville do not own, nor can they afford cars. By relocating to Lynn they would have to depend upon a sporadic bus service, expensive, unreliable cab companies, and a commuter rail that runs hourly if you are lucky and ends its day far too early. Downtown Lynn/Union Street today is far from aesthetically inviting, and does not house the kind of businesses necessary to make the area attractive. There are no grocery stores, cafes, consignment shops, art supply stores, or bookstores. Now that the Gulu-Gulu has relocated to Salem, there is no comfort zone to hang out in or to meet like-minded people…or to get a good espresso! These are the things potential tenants and buyers look for when they relocate. The powers that be in the city seem to think that by charging top dollar for property, future residents will bring these things with them but this is not so. There needs to be something there to begin with other than just potential and ghosts from the past. 

In all the transitional areas I have lived, even before they were trendy, there was always at least one safe place to go, and grocery and clothes shopping were close at hand. There was a working tram and/or subway system that could get you anywhere at anytime, at regular intervals. These things are not luxury for the urban dweller, but necessities.

Although I plan to return to Europe, I still have nostalgic fondness for the city of Lynn and wish her well. I maintain there was no better place to grow up during the 70s, when even though in decline, Lynn still housed many record stores and clothing stores that made my teenage years worthwhile. We walked from McDonough Square to Central Square scuffing our platform shoes in search of the latest 45, eating Dairy Queen, and boy-watching those on the right side and the wrong side of the tracks. We saw concerts in the Common at all the city parks. The Cars, Heart, and local bands all played for the Summer in The City program designed to keep teens out of trouble. It worked for the most part.

Today, a group of grassroots organizers and activists are in earnest trying to build an artist’s community. One such advocate, Jocelyn AlmyTesta, is a woman with class, integrity and principle. She operates outside of the political machine and works as an artist for the artist, and presents a realistic point of view, keeping carpet baggers and opportunists on their toes. She has spearheaded this year’s Lynn Open Studios, of which I am pleased to be a part, and I hope the event draws out of towners who see the city’s potential and will invest in its future to make it a real transitional community in which anyone with paint under their fingernails would be proud to live.

I hope when I next return to Lynn, it is once again the thriving, bustling city of its heyday, and you don’t leave the way you came in…in a good way.