Do you also feel a bit uncertain about what and where our spaces are right now? I feel disoriented, physically & digitally, and I suspect I’m not alone in that.
The Path Cafe, on Christopher Street in the West Village, circa 2014/2015. Instagram screenshot of a pic by Baltophoto
Congess banned Tiktok. 24 hours later, around the inauguration, Congress un-banned Tiktok. Elon Musk bought Twitter & renamed it X. So many people left Twitter. Sorry, X. Some of them now post on Bluesky. Facebook shifted from the cultural hub for young Millennials to a haven for Baby Boomer grievances. It also brims with Millennial grievances. Facebook, now Meta, bought Instagram. Meta is openly, and increasingly, conservative-turned-fascist in both its User Agreement & in the political affiliations of it’s C-suite. Folks, especially leftists, are migrating to Substack and other non-Meta platforms. Correlation is not causation. However, all this movement in the digital sphere of our lives is a feature of our times.
Across the entirety of my life, from personal conversations with friends and partners to what the algorithm sends me on socials (all the socials… there’s so many of them), a lot of discourse revolves around the idea of colonialism. What does de-colonial praxis look like, actually, in our day-today lives? How is the intellectual scaffolding we inherited, that we were raised with, so rooted in expansion & the practices of empire that our imaginations struggle to conceptualize other ways of living? I wonder how much of this is the echo chamber of my own social spheres and how much is a wide-spread experience for Americans, especially us left-leaning urbanites, living online in the current version of the world.
I moved to NYC 12 years ago. Williamsburg had just exploded with artists, gentrified quickly, and then, when the last of the working class artists & trust fund culture vultures were priced out and moved to hip “new,” “up-and-coming” neighborhoods, it filled with high-end strollers passing by small boutique windows, pushed by wealthy couples from well-off families who made smart marriages. I hosted an open mic for a year in 2016 at the Two Boots pizza right in front of the Bedford L stop. I remember in 2013 getting out of that station for the first time and feeling like I’d stepped into the physical embodiment of tumblr. The whole neighborhood, but especially that block. It was already different in 2016, and that much more-so now in 2025. Tumblr isn’t really tumblr anymore, nor is Williamsburg. Several years later I lived in Bushwick, just as the pandemic began to recede, because it was closer to so many of my musician friends. Now that wave, seemingly crested, slowly pushes into Bed-Stuy & PLG.
Dogwood and Cherry Blossoms on W11th Street at night 2014/2015
That same expansionism drove out most of the clubs, bars, and small music venues I frequented in my first few years here, including the entire Greenwich Village folk music scene, which had existed since the 50s and finally died out in 2015 with the closing of Cornelia Street Cafe and Caffe Vivaldi - both just a couple minutes walk from each other between Bleaker & W4th in that magical block between 6th & 7th Avenues. My first gig playing my own original music, after moving here, was a solo acoustic set at Vagabond Cafe on Conrelia Street where 2 friends (folk singer Raye Zaragoza & keyboardist Christian Nourijanian) stopped by, giving me an audience of 3 (if you include the grumpy bartender, visibly unhappy about such a sparse room that night). Shortly thereafter I quit my job at Starbucks on 7th avenue & 11th St to work at The Path Cafe, which was the center of the NYC songwriting world for a minute. During that time (2013-2015) on Monday’s I’d frequent the open mic and Vivaldi, Tuesdays the mic at Vagabond, Wednesdays were Niall Connolly’s Song Club at Ceol in Brooklyn, Thursdays I would play (and bartend) at the mic at The Path Cafe, and Fri-Sun were for bigger gigs in bigger rooms (Rockwood, Arlene’s, Pianos, The Knitting Factory, Trash Bar, and so many others). I met most of my best friends in those rooms (especially The Path), as well as many of my long-time artistic collaborators. The Path closed too. Unfortunately, commercial rent kept rising, and none of those places (as well as so many of the other small spots that fostered musical community) were able to survive the 2010’s wave of hyper-gentrification.
A decade passed. A pandemic came & went. Wars began. Rent didn’t get cheaper. Wages didn’t adequately rise in relation to the cost of living. Groceries are more expensive. So, where we spend our limited attention exists in a quickly changing cultural context. As much as I lament the erasure of the physical spaces I’ve loved, it is comforting to have digital spaces to connect. As those digital spaces change, by virtue of the same market and cultural pressures, I find myself unmoored. Where do we meet? When do we meet there? Can we hug? If not, in what ways can I share my emotions; can I experience yours too? Or, is it all just, increasingly, theatre performed on the stage of ever shifting online platforms for some, small modicum of social caché?
Rockwood Music Hall, Stage 2, from a gig with Jenny Kern in 2019… I think…?
Speaking of rooms where I’ve lived my life, loved, performed, and connected with people, I spent a long time playing regularly at Rockwood Music Hall in the Lower East Side. I played as a sideman with many bands, with my own singer-songwriter project, Dan Saulpaugh, as well as my jazz trio, Stoop Pigeon. After Ken Rockwood’s “Save Rockwood” series succeeded in raising the money he needed to stay open last year he closed the club. It just re-opened under new management as Baker Falls. I’m glad to see a familiar room evolve & still exist, unlike so many others, but it’s different. I feel similarly about Tiktok. In migrating away from Meta-owned platforms, and with such a de-centralized in-person music community, I wonder if the future is a matter of reclamation of old spaces, or if it’s something new. Is everything living room salons and long-form online discourse as the next chapter? I’m not sure yet.
Your history is interesting. Mine starts in 2006, but overlaps yours a lot. I did a lot of shows at spike hill and attended path, sidewalk, and Pete’s open mic. I probably met you at Path, early days? I played a couple solo shows there for sure.
As for location, NYC is a place without a location. If nyc has a soul, it migrates with the scaffolding. It welcomes you the moment you arrive, and forgets you were even there the moment you leave. You take your history with you. When I visited there in August, I was reminded of this. I suppose only a fool would think a city could be ‘theirs’. During 2020, my friends left in waves, they barely said goodbye - if at all. And now, many don’t communicate at all. The pandemic kinda like Batman’s smoke bottle. It’s as though it all never happened.
Now, when I see nyc in the background of a tv show , I may be able to tell you the exact street corner from a couple frames of video, but it’s not any place I remember, even if google says it is. Those people (like you) keeping memories and scenes ablaze are my New York. That’s what I visit. That’s why I was so excited to catch everyone at Vale in Aug.
Still, I lived in nyc for 16 years and the day I left, I still didn’t feel like a real New Yorker, even though I exhibited all the symptoms.