Madonna Thinks NYC is Boring

Coming to a newsstand near you this Wednesday: Madonna's hate mail to New York City. Well, sort of. In this coming month's issue of Vanity Fair the material girl says New York has lost its magic.

"It's not the exciting place it used to be. It still has great energy; I still put my finger in the socket. But it doesn't feel alive, cracking with that synergy between the art world and music world and fashion world that was happening in the 80s. A lot of people died."

Odd, wasn't one of her last videos for a track called "I Love New York"? Guess we shouldn't expect any love songs on her upcoming release, Hard Candy.

When Madonna first came to New York in 1977, she worked at Dunkin' Donuts while dancing in modern dance troupes. She said of that time, "When I came to New York, it was the first time I'd ever taken a plane, the first time I'd ever gotten a taxi-cab, the first time for everything. And I came here with $35 in my pocket. It was the bravest thing I'd ever done."

We're guessing the excitement wears off as you near 50-years-old and have enough money to buy your former employer out. Either that or, as NY Mag says, living in "Marylebone, London is so CBGB circa 1983." Chances are she'll frequent the John Varvatos boutique that took over CBGB more than she appeared at the venue itself.

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By Jen Carlson in Arts & Entertainment on March 31, 2008 3:47 PM

Comments [rss]

west side Michael

So kids today will tell stories in time future

of that Starbucks and Best Buy and CVS on their

block?.

WTF I will take to the grave my memories of NYC

growing up during WW2.

Oh Boy & Girl, do I have Sto-REES.

bklyngrrl

Recommend she spends some time in Brooklyn.

The more money one has, the less creative and more complacent one becomes.

bonoboist

NYC thinks Madonna can go fuck herself.

Loopus

That's BS Matty. London is indeed expensive, especially to those this side of the water but in cultural terms it blows NYC away. Not so on food and the weather sucks but it is absolutely more hip and "edgier"...it leads where NYC follows. None more so than in music and clubs.

matty

And by the way, if anywhere has lost its edge it's London. The place is so expensive that no one actually lives there unless they have corporate housing.

London in the 90s was filled with happening clubs and a bourgeoning music scene.

Not anymore.

matty

You know what's really hip and cool? Newark. Or the South Bronx. In fact people should move to West Sid of Chicago and get "authentic" heroin! I mean it doesn't get more real than that!

kcin122

wtf is "authentic" new york.

NYC in the 50's was nothing like it was in the 60's. 60's was nothing like the 70's. 70's nothing like the 80's...

so on and so on in either direction in time. Just because you lived at one point in the cities history doesnt makes it any more "authentic" than any other.

glennQNYC

I guess I care *just* enough to post that I don't care wtf Madonna and her fake British accent thinks.

seemingmeaning

#53: No kidding. I returned to NYC--after a 14 year hiatus--in 2005 and, after two months, I thought to myself, "this is not the city I remember." (i.e. 1979-1991). Despite all of the gentrified hullabaloo, as someone pointed out, (and as a Harlem native) NYC is a city that constantly renews itself almost every decade. If you want to explore authentic New York, go to outer limits of Brooklyn (i.e. Bay Ridge or Sheepshead Bay or Bensonhurst).

MurphGuide

This sounds like a headline that The Onion might write:

"Middle Aged Person Starts Tirade with the Words: 'Back in my day...'"

heel_e

Madonna is absolutely right. The city has lost it's edge. You could once find so much diversity between neighborhoods but it has become more and more homogenized. Even American Gangster had to go deep into the Bronx to find the real NY City. Manhattan is well on it's way to becoming a gated community filled with corporate entities on every corner.

bentb

or maybe the tired old crone is just projecting...

TN

NYC may be cool to someone who just arrived from Ohio or wherever, but to us who grew up/lived here during the 70s/80s, this decade makes us feel like we're almost in another US city than ever before. Thankfully, this city always changes and a bad change may be a good change.

chuzzlewit

E.D. has it right. keep your finger fresh, and the socket will take care of itself.

osmium

"CBGB circa 1983." hardcore?

it costs $250 to blow your nose in london. not that things are cheap here ...

starrygordon

There is still some life out in the periphery, but it's being pushed away pretty rapidly. Gentrifiers go into some poor neighborhood, set themselves up in little pockets, and breed like rats. In a way they're worse than rats -- rats don't run your rent up.

Snoopy

I've lived in SoHo since 1973 and it was never what everyone thinks it was. There were no places to buy food except some poorly stocked bodega places. And the Spring Street bar along with Ken's Broome Street bar were the only "things happening." The only thing good about it was there were loft parties going on all the time. Large spaces with people drinking and dancing to the wee hours of the morning were great. That hasn't happened for a long time. Actually it was done by the time Madonna the slut came on the scene.

Dave Hogarty

This is so lame. Greenwich Village went from squalor to arthouse bohemia, to a parody of bohemia where hucksters would show uptown residents faked coffee shops where fake writers and fake artists faked hanging out for the benefit of gullible upper-class rubes. Finally, it became fully gentrified. The same can be said for any NYC neighborhood.

"Creative" neighborhoods contain people who can't wait to sell out (i.e. succeed) and become the filthy rich people who initially came to currently gawk at their "authenticity."

30 years later they'll revisit the old hood and sniff at how it's not as credible as it was before they themselves ruined it. Madonna deserves a beating in my opinion. Then again, that's pretty much the NYC dream.

Lesliepbg

I think she's partially right. Back then SoHo wasn't a suburban shopping mall. Gentrification has sucked the life out of NYC.

MightyBoognish

Madonna should take cues from Michael Jackson and move to Dubai.

Dubai is the new Manhattan, circa 1977, for the filthy rich. Or maybe it's rich and filthy? Whatever...

Rock On!