Remember Rock Beach? (Photo by John Huntington)
According to some list put together by a hotel review site, Brooklyn has lost its edge and slipped to fourth place in the best live music city category. We're assuming that Brooklyn has been at #1 since long before MTV infiltrated its DIY venues back in 2008, so if we're to believe Carly Pifer of Oyster.com, this is a pretty hard fall. However, Pifer may just be a robot machine set to make controversial and pageview friendly rankings lists on summer Fridays... who knows! We didn't Google her, but we've never heard of anyone with that last name before, have you?
Anyway, let's take Ms. Pifer's list as word, and find out what caused this fall. Did the Wythe-ification of the borough's most popular music hub, Williamsburg, kill off its ability to remain on top? Are the city's high real estate prices causing all of the non-Bowery venues to close? Is it because McCarren Park Pool is actually a pool now? Is the music here just not that that good anymore? Can we just blame this guy?:
Photo by Jen Carlson/Gothamist
At the very least, the DIY venues should be holding us strong at at least 2nd place, and as Pifer herself notes, you can find shows in "surprising locales like kitchens in Bushwick." That's so Brooklyn! But apparently not good enough, as Portland, Austin and New Orleans all came out ahead of us, with Los Angeles coming in at #5. Poor Manhattan didn't even make the cut—but they lost all of their good venues ages ago.
