There is a certain type of review one finds at Pitchfork[Ed: a website that reviews a particular kind of music that envisions itself as somehow distinct from the tradition of pretentious rock critic-dom all the while absolutely upholding it]: it signals exhaustion on the part of reviewer, or aspirations for the postmodern prose stylings initially endured, and later, earnestly pursued, at an appropriately alternative liberalarts college that wishes it were Bennington. It becomes a review about a review, and then possibly even a discourse on that type of review, all of which is geared towards highlighting the cleverness of the reviewer, at the expense of those who have, you know, made a record. It is often used for negative reviews, to make clear that actually making and releasing a bad album is not intrinsically superior to the 45 minutes one spends crafting such a witty dismissal (and, to be sure, there are times this is true, given the highly indulgent nature of indie music). All of these strategies find a comfortable home with bloggers. Though we have our own rote styles, there is a plenty of obvious overlap. Sometimes it even makes sense.
The most acutely meta building in town is one that may have launched a blog empire, single-handedly transformed a neighborhood, provided years of fodder for stodgy traditionalists (who, um, look just like 70’s punks), and it still hasn’t even opened. I think. That particular point is so meta that no one even cares if it is ‘officially’ open. We could even get all October on it and interrogate the relationship of open and closed in post-critical age where valuation and signification hinge on markers so slippery that the oscillation between privileged and unprivileged poles (hip/unhip) is so indeterminate that it becomes an active strategy to situate oneself in the nether region between, a status that actively frustrates the maniacal categorization that any cultural landmark is subject to by equivocal and capricious taste-makers (boy do I feel young again).
But that is part of the point, isn’t it? Schizophrenic design, schizophrenic identity, a scrim of jet setting and aristocracy that is a sham, instead a highly leveraged existence siphoned off from a featureless conglomerate, mortgaged to pay for expensive drinks in a dank and akimbo lounge where you would run into the ironic chandeliers if there weren’t tables under them.
I haven’t been in the rooms, and my visit preceded the new restaurant, but each new accoutrement that gets stapled to the inside or out attenuates the sense that this project was designed by rooms full of third-tier GSD students toiling in seclusion from each other in carefully decorated offices that certainly couldn’t have been funded by fees. Nothing makes sense, even if that was the point.
I see it from most sides most days, and it is the unchallenged landmark of the LES (until Big Blue presents itself). Thus, the effort to make a intentionally ‘difficult’ form in a town where designing all four sides of a structure almost never happens starts out ballsy and ends up bathetic. Then again, I might be ‘misreading’ the intention, and instead relying only on my direct powers of observation, poorly credentialed and distinctly outside the orbits of fetishization that either venerate the effort in full celebration of its bankrupt enterprise, or the sleek, ironic disaffection that permeates those who find themselves just far enough above that they can dip their toes in the pool and not feel unduly soiled.
The best side is the east, a blank wall of metal panels, not a symbolic rejection of the authenticity it appropriated in favor of opening its arms and views to the west, commodified urban future of SoHo and TriBeCa creeping inevitably this way. No, it’s probably only the exigencies of circulation and adjacent air rights. But it is the nicest treatment this side of the short ends of the Secretariat Building.
But what does this building look like? Where is it? If you can’t tell already, don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. A long time ago, someone thought not that it would be a good idea, but only inevitable that a slick, soulless magazine that hoisted high the colors or design as somehow a bulwark against a charge of mindless consumerism (or maybe not, maybe they revel in their unironic insipidity) would build a hotel. Then they went broke, or something. In steps a hotelier, an appellation one drapes about themselves to indicate that they don’t rent rooms by the hour, or if they do, you can’t afford them. Various bad ideas, found in the selfsame pages of said magazine, are pilfered and pasted together: blobs, angles, dangerously sexualized ‘sculpture’, vaguely baroque repeat patterns, a dash of Stephen King redrum, and, when you run out of ideas that would do any issue of Tokion proud, slather it over with rectilinear patterns of glass. And really tiny balconies overlooking parking lots. But if none of that works, you take the whole thing, squeeze it through a pasta maker and plant it in Astor Place.
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Meta, Meta, Meta, Meta.
There is a certain type of review one finds at Pitchfork [Ed: a website that reviews a particular kind of music that envisions itself as somehow distinct from the tradition of pretentious rock critic-dom all the while absolutely upholding it]: it signals exhaustion on the part of reviewer, or aspirations for the postmodern prose stylings initially endured, and later, earnestly pursued, at an appropriately alternative liberal arts college that wishes it were Bennington. It becomes a review about a review, and then possibly even a discourse on that type of review, all of which is geared towards highlighting the cleverness of the reviewer, at the expense of those who have, you know, made a record. It is often used for negative reviews, to make clear that actually making and releasing a bad album is not intrinsically superior to the 45 minutes one spends crafting such a witty dismissal (and, to be sure, there are times this is true, given the highly indulgent nature of indie music). All of these strategies find a comfortable home with bloggers. Though we have our own rote styles, there is a plenty of obvious overlap. Sometimes it even makes sense.
The most acutely meta building in town is one that may have launched a blog empire, single-handedly transformed a neighborhood, provided years of fodder for stodgy traditionalists (who, um, look just like 70’s punks), and it still hasn’t even opened. I think. That particular point is so meta that no one even cares if it is ‘officially’ open. We could even get all October on it and interrogate the relationship of open and closed in post-critical age where valuation and signification hinge on markers so slippery that the oscillation between privileged and unprivileged poles (hip/unhip) is so indeterminate that it becomes an active strategy to situate oneself in the nether region between, a status that actively frustrates the maniacal categorization that any cultural landmark is subject to by equivocal and capricious taste-makers (boy do I feel young again).
But that is part of the point, isn’t it? Schizophrenic design, schizophrenic identity, a scrim of jet setting and aristocracy that is a sham, instead a highly leveraged existence siphoned off from a featureless conglomerate, mortgaged to pay for expensive drinks in a dank and akimbo lounge where you would run into the ironic chandeliers if there weren’t tables under them.
I haven’t been in the rooms, and my visit preceded the new restaurant, but each new accoutrement that gets stapled to the inside or out attenuates the sense that this project was designed by rooms full of third-tier GSD students toiling in seclusion from each other in carefully decorated offices that certainly couldn’t have been funded by fees. Nothing makes sense, even if that was the point.
I see it from most sides most days, and it is the unchallenged landmark of the LES (until Big Blue presents itself). Thus, the effort to make a intentionally ‘difficult’ form in a town where designing all four sides of a structure almost never happens starts out ballsy and ends up bathetic. Then again, I might be ‘misreading’ the intention, and instead relying only on my direct powers of observation, poorly credentialed and distinctly outside the orbits of fetishization that either venerate the effort in full celebration of its bankrupt enterprise, or the sleek, ironic disaffection that permeates those who find themselves just far enough above that they can dip their toes in the pool and not feel unduly soiled.
The best side is the east, a blank wall of metal panels, not a symbolic rejection of the authenticity it appropriated in favor of opening its arms and views to the west, commodified urban future of SoHo and TriBeCa creeping inevitably this way. No, it’s probably only the exigencies of circulation and adjacent air rights. But it is the nicest treatment this side of the short ends of the Secretariat Building.
But what does this building look like? Where is it? If you can’t tell already, don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. A long time ago, someone thought not that it would be a good idea, but only inevitable that a slick, soulless magazine that hoisted high the colors or design as somehow a bulwark against a charge of mindless consumerism (or maybe not, maybe they revel in their unironic insipidity) would build a hotel. Then they went broke, or something. In steps a hotelier, an appellation one drapes about themselves to indicate that they don’t rent rooms by the hour, or if they do, you can’t afford them. Various bad ideas, found in the selfsame pages of said magazine, are pilfered and pasted together: blobs, angles, dangerously sexualized ‘sculpture’, vaguely baroque repeat patterns, a dash of Stephen King redrum, and, when you run out of ideas that would do any issue of Tokion proud, slather it over with rectilinear patterns of glass. And really tiny balconies overlooking parking lots. But if none of that works, you take the whole thing, squeeze it through a pasta maker and plant it in Astor Place.