Rent Is the New Cops

David Peel — Street Corner Rant

You know how they used to shut us down? Cops. Cops with badges, cops on horses, cops in riot gear. They'd come to the park and say, you can't play here. You need a permit. You're causing a disturbance. And we'd play anyway because that's what you do when someone tells you to shut up.

But they figured out something better than cops. Rent. You don't need a nightstick when you got a landlord. You don't need handcuffs when you got a lease that triples every two years.

The East Village used to be ours. Artists, musicians, poets, weirdos, junkies, dreamers. Nobody had money. Everybody had something to say. You could rent a storefront for four hundred bucks and turn it into a gallery. You could split a railroad apartment four ways and eat rice and beans and make the most important music of your life.

Now? A studio apartment on Avenue B is thirty-five hundred a month. Who's making art at thirty-five hundred a month? You're making rent. That's all you're making. You come home too tired to pick up a guitar. Too broke to take a risk. Too scared to lose the apartment.

They didn't ban the music. They priced out the musicians. Same result. Quieter method. And nobody even had to say move along, buddy. The eviction notice says it for them.

See also: CBGB Is a Clothing Store — what gentrification did to punk rock. They Turned My Block into a Hotel — what it did to Avenue A. Washington Square — the one place they can't evict. They Made the Village Expensive — the letter to Lennon about what the rent did. The Loft — Sun Ra on the frequency that doesn't check the lease. Thirty Million Views — thirty million views and the rent is still due. The Landlord — a calculator with a mailbox.

David Peel

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