ETCETERA
NIGHTCAP
Where Is The Art?
By Harry Kirsbaum
'd like to apologize to the tech
startup wizards up front and hope
that what I write in this month's
column isn't taken the wrong way,
and you won't seek revenge by mak-
ing my smart phone and computer
unusable.
You're only a microcosm of the
problem at hand, and I'm using your
takeover of Venice Beach, Calif., as a
prime example.
For you have discovered Venice
Beach — once home to artists and
actors, muscleheads and gang mem-
bers — and turned it into a rich mess
now referred to as Silicon Beach.
I watched a riveting story about
it on PBS News Hour recently (http://
tinyurl.com/oren473).
So forgive me Juan Bruce, co-
founder of EpoxyTV, who showed off
his work loft, and said,"Venice has
always been like kind of an experi-
mental and artistic community. And
so startups pretty much fit perfectly
in that kind of ethos"
Sorry, but startups like yours that
I
•
market YouTube channels to other
platforms for a fee is just pure promo-
tion. And they don't fit "perfectly" into
an artistic community when artists
like Laddie John Dill are forced to
move.
Laddie, who once owned the Frank
Geary building that your company
now occupies, had rented that space
since 1968, until the rent increased to
$42,000 per month.
One of Laddie's most expensive
pieces of artwork is an untitled origi-
nal painting, and ironically, an oil on
epoxy bas relief on mahogany that
sells for $6,500, or a little more than
four-and-a-half days of rent.
When I think of an artist colony, I
think of an area filled with artists and
paintings and sculptures and galler-
ies.
I don't think of Google employees,
or"ennployees" of Panjo, a market-
place for enthusiasts of all types
who can buy anything they want, or
Snapchat employees who take up an
entire block in Venice, so people can
take and send "private"
photos or videos from –
their cell phones that
will self-destruct after
10 seconds, unless of course they
don't, and then they're off the hook.
(Just read their terms and conditions.)
So Mr. Bruce, you currently lease
a property that also was part of
Dennis Hopper's studio. That doesn't
make you or your employees artists.
You don't create anything except
buzz.
Promoting anything on YouTube,
whose most subscribed channel is
a Swedish 25-year-old video game
commentator who calls himself
PewDiePie, isn't art either. And the
thought of 19 million subscribers
watching someone else play video
games makes me, well, nauseated.
Are those 19 million just too tired to
use the joystick themselves?
And to Tami Pardee, the Venice
Beach real estate broker who said,"It's
really creative, the technology sector,
and Venice is known for its creativity
in the art — in the whole art world
in the past, so it's actually a great
meshing of cultures. There's been a
little — as we have talked about, little
gentrification issues going — you
know, not issues, but gentrification
going on, I would say. And that's —
it's difficult."
Sorry Ms. Pardee, there's no "mesh-
ing" if the current residents are forced
out. And "gentrification" is when a
Whole Foods comes into a rundown
area of a city, followed by a Starbucks
on every corner.
There has to be a better term for
property values that rise 20 percent
a year, forcing out even the middle
class who have lived there for de-
cades. And there has to be a better
term for what will happen when
these new tech royals grow tired of
beaches.
It's a term we've heard before. It's
called a "bubble"
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30 January 2015
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