Note from David
The Death of Cool
By David Hershkovits
Photographed by Dan Monick
Miles Davis' seminal album Birth of the Cool was released in 1957, signaling a break with the past that reverberated for some 50 years, flipping the script and turning our lexicon upside down. Before Miles made his bold turnaround to a more laid back and melodic style, jazz had been dominated by bebop and the scorching saxophone of Charlie Parker, scattering buckshot with his staccato phrasing. "That's hot, man" was replaced by "cool, man, cool." Chet Baker along with his "cool school" cohorts spread the vibe to the West Coast, closing the circle on cool as a metaphor for hip and happening.
And so it went, pretty much through the Beat Generation, the hippie days and punk, up until the '80s. That was when the cultural stream, at least in New York, split in two, one labeled "uptown," representing a moneymaking, corporate and mass-produced sensibility and the other, based below 14th Street or "downtown," a parallel universe variously identified as indie, DIY, underground and alternative with its own galaxy of stars, restaurants, nightclubs, fashion and media flourishing alongside the established portals in its own petri dish of creativity.
According to Philip Glass, the New York Times had a policy of not reviewing anything below 14th Street, leaving it to publications like the Soho News, and later Paper, to fill the gap with reporting chronicling the arts and activities of the downtown demimonde. Though AIDS came along to take many of the best and the brightest of this community -- Keith Haring, Willi Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe to name a few -- the juggernaut could not be stopped. Today, you can't open a pickle store on Hester Street without the New York Times -- as well as every food blog and its mother -- taking notice.
The secret was out of the bag. Cool had become a commodity and cool-hunting a business. A turf that we had practically all to ourselves, was suddenly being trolled by websites and ad agency "evangelists" in search of a zeitgeist shift -- or at least the arrival of a new boutique with an ironic take on fashion. That was the'90s, cool's last decade. When the Internet really kicked in with social media, cool-hunting was officially over. As was the notion of cool, itself. No one turns to media anymore to know what's cool. They have Facebook and Twitter, their friends and trusted sources, to keep them posted on the latest openings, and who or what is in or out.
Cool is dead because no one can keep a secret anymore. What's the point of being somewhere if you can't also announce it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Foursquare or Yelp? Has it really happened if it hasn't been tweeted? In fact, the race to be first has become the sine qua non of online journalism, leading perhaps to the holy of holies -- going viral. And what could be less cool than going viral. I love the AT&T 4G LTE "so 12 seconds ago" commercial. We live in real time and we want our gossip now!
So where does that leave Paper. Well, now that the world has caught up to us, we're all at the same level, right? Well, not really. Truth is we were never cool-hunters. We were always more interested in pointing our finger at what was going to last, not pass in the beat of an eyelash. The search for quality goes on unabated, especially in these times of quantity. Trusted sources--outside of our circle of "friends"--are hard to come by and looking back on our work, I'm proud to say that we were on point about so much that has become ubiquitous one forgets that it wasn't always so.
I expect the same will be said about our prescience in the years to come. The Beautiful People issue is one way to measure our acuity. We're Paper after all, not plastic. And while beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, we are confident that the Beautiful People Class of 2012--from cover-musicians St. Vincent and Gabe Saporta, to folks inside the issue like designers Correll Correll, actors Brady Corbet and Zosia Mamet and musicians Caveman and Nick Waterhouse -- will be exerting their influence throughout our culture in the years to come.
And so it went, pretty much through the Beat Generation, the hippie days and punk, up until the '80s. That was when the cultural stream, at least in New York, split in two, one labeled "uptown," representing a moneymaking, corporate and mass-produced sensibility and the other, based below 14th Street or "downtown," a parallel universe variously identified as indie, DIY, underground and alternative with its own galaxy of stars, restaurants, nightclubs, fashion and media flourishing alongside the established portals in its own petri dish of creativity.
According to Philip Glass, the New York Times had a policy of not reviewing anything below 14th Street, leaving it to publications like the Soho News, and later Paper, to fill the gap with reporting chronicling the arts and activities of the downtown demimonde. Though AIDS came along to take many of the best and the brightest of this community -- Keith Haring, Willi Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe to name a few -- the juggernaut could not be stopped. Today, you can't open a pickle store on Hester Street without the New York Times -- as well as every food blog and its mother -- taking notice.
The secret was out of the bag. Cool had become a commodity and cool-hunting a business. A turf that we had practically all to ourselves, was suddenly being trolled by websites and ad agency "evangelists" in search of a zeitgeist shift -- or at least the arrival of a new boutique with an ironic take on fashion. That was the'90s, cool's last decade. When the Internet really kicked in with social media, cool-hunting was officially over. As was the notion of cool, itself. No one turns to media anymore to know what's cool. They have Facebook and Twitter, their friends and trusted sources, to keep them posted on the latest openings, and who or what is in or out.
Cool is dead because no one can keep a secret anymore. What's the point of being somewhere if you can't also announce it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Foursquare or Yelp? Has it really happened if it hasn't been tweeted? In fact, the race to be first has become the sine qua non of online journalism, leading perhaps to the holy of holies -- going viral. And what could be less cool than going viral. I love the AT&T 4G LTE "so 12 seconds ago" commercial. We live in real time and we want our gossip now!
So where does that leave Paper. Well, now that the world has caught up to us, we're all at the same level, right? Well, not really. Truth is we were never cool-hunters. We were always more interested in pointing our finger at what was going to last, not pass in the beat of an eyelash. The search for quality goes on unabated, especially in these times of quantity. Trusted sources--outside of our circle of "friends"--are hard to come by and looking back on our work, I'm proud to say that we were on point about so much that has become ubiquitous one forgets that it wasn't always so.
I expect the same will be said about our prescience in the years to come. The Beautiful People issue is one way to measure our acuity. We're Paper after all, not plastic. And while beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, we are confident that the Beautiful People Class of 2012--from cover-musicians St. Vincent and Gabe Saporta, to folks inside the issue like designers Correll Correll, actors Brady Corbet and Zosia Mamet and musicians Caveman and Nick Waterhouse -- will be exerting their influence throughout our culture in the years to come.
Your Comment