My wife and I live in a former factory on Knickerbocker Avenue in Bushwick. The building is directly off the Morgan Avenue stop in a neighborhood sometimes idiotically called Morgantown. When we moved in two months ago, we were one of the first tenants in the building. Like pioneers, we had neither heat nor electricity. We built a sod hut and burned old copies of The Nation to stay warm. I read Willa Cather every night by candlelight. But now the apartments are filling up, warrens of cubbyhole-sized drywall rooms are being erected and last night, a truly horrendous loft party was thrown in one of the empty apartments. The techno lasted until 7:30 am. Fucking shit, I realized, we had moved in to the new McKibben Lofts.
The party was thrown in the apartment of a 34 year old anime loving Brazilian graphic designer. It featured the truly uninspiring music of No Regular Play. How do I know? It was on this kid's fucking Twitter. But it was more than the mmm-tsk mmm-tsk music that kept me up. It was the pure rage, blind seething impotent rage. Why would someone listen to this music? Why so loud? Why so late? Could they not have given us a quick heads up. "Hey guys," he could have said, "I'll be playing horrible music very loudly all night long on Saturday. Just wanted to let you know." I even entered into the den of techno--it was lit by a blue light!--at six in the morning to ask that they turn the sonic rape down. "I'll ask," said the party's host. Ask? ASK? FUCK YOU MEAN YOU'LL ASK. IT'S YOUR FUCKING PARTY. YOU TELL! TELL!
But it was more than just his bad taste in house music and sullen sodding indifference that drove me mad. I was angry that this building, which we had simply through the timing of our arrival come to think of as at least partially ours, was being hijacked by the beer-drinking sticker-sticking bad house music-listening twenty somethings. (Even if the primary perp was fucking 34 years old.) But the true waking nightmare wasn't the moment. My anger and fear wasn't inflamed merely by the hellish bump of the music nor the smoke wafting from the hallway nor even the beer pooled in the stairwell. It was that this might just be the future.
