I owe Patti Smith an amazing debt of gratitude for what she has done for my life.  She changed and helped open new directions that were foreign to me, more than any other artist before her.  I was still under the spell of David Bowie and the Ziggy Stardust tour magic.  He'd left me with this d but then came Patti to solidify even more of this fantastic catharsis my life was about to experience.  What a metamorphosis had taken over my young¸ (and at that time, body).

I am just looking for other serious Patti Smith fans,not casual fans but the serious enthusiast such as myself. I am interested in what she means/has meant to others.

Acai Max Cleanse

You can e-mail me at MommySeahorse@aol.com if you want to chat about Patti sometime :)

Patti Smith moved to Detroit in 1980 to be with her husband Fred Sonic Smith and I think she stayed there until her kids were old enough to go out on their own. So yes she did spend some time in Detroit but not as a struggling artist and not as someone trying to raise a family in Motown's current meltdown economy.

As for Poughkeepsie, ??? don't know where that came from.

I wonder if Smith just picked those cities out of her hat without actually living in either of them. No one who looked and acted like she did when she came to NYC would survive a week in today's Detroit, and not simply because she was an emaciated white waif (she still is). Lawrence Taylor would have a tough time surviving a week in Detroit without money, friends, and mo' money.

It's a different generation, with a different attitude towards artistic process and success. They are children who like generations before them benefitted from the struggles and achievements of their parents and elders. Kids in the 60's were said to "have it easy" by the standards of those who came of age in the Depression and the WW II era. It's the same now. I LIVED in Harlem in the Sixties..it sucked!

Can someone please interview David Byrne about this same subject? We'd get a totally different point of view. Here's a man who's in the trenches, who is constantly going to art shows and seeing bands. Here's a man who's curious. He's still got a hunger for good art and culture. Once people lose that hunger, and develop the kind of sour attitude that Patti Smith has, they've outlived their usefulness as cultural bellwethers. Patti Smith = Debbie Downer.

Says the person with the kissing cherubs avatar.

The problem is the failure of square culture. Squares used to be proud of being squares. Now many of them, as soon as they get anywhere in the world, want to be bohemians, so they come to large cities and price the hippies and hipsters out of their slums. I was looking at a loft a few months ago and most of the other people who showed up to look were SUV and stroller types -- people who would have been the Man In The Gray Flannel Suit and his wife and spawn fifty years ago.

+1 !

She's right. The problem is that it's the same in every major city now.

Crank the hipster meter all the way up to "f*ck you Dad" and move to Flint, MI. They'll have a Uniqlo by Christmas.

YOUR ALL FULL OF SHIT. NOBODY COOL FUCKING LIVES HERE CEPT TRUST FUND WALL STREET ASS SUCKERS

Now THAT'S ribaldry!

Now THAT'S ribaldry!

My heart tells me Patti is correct...AND YET...where ever you have humans gathered together magical things happen. Life goes on and by shear force of will we can defy augury and make life AND art work.

Apparently you've never been to Denver.

yes.

Replace her every utterance of "New York" with "Manhattan-south-of-96th".

Agreed brandonz, the old girl definitely needs to get off the island or walk north before she talks shit again. There she'll find our "new city".

40 years from now some curmudgeonly grande-dame of the hipsters of Detroit will mutter to the arrivistes of how the town used to be "cool" and not "closed off". Circle of Life.

Plenty of neighborhoods in NYC where its relatively cheap to live. Far Rockaway anybody?