Neighborhood in Cultural Production

The Neighborhood in Cultural Production: Material and Symbolic Resources in the New Bohemia
Richard Lloyd Vanderbilt University
Drawing on an extended case study of the Chicago neighborhood Wicker Park, this article examines the role that neighborhood space plays in organizing the activities of young artists, showing how an urban district can serve as a factor in aesthetic production. The tendency of artists and fellow travelers to cluster in distinctive (usually older) urban neighborhoods is well known. While in recent decades many scholars have recognized that these creative congregations contribute to residential gentrification and other local patterns of increased capital investment, the benefits that such neighborhoods offer for aspirants in creative pursuits are generally assumed, not explained. I use the Wicker Park case to show how the contemporary artists neighborhood provides both material and symbolic resources that facilitate creative activity, particularly in the early stages of a cultural producers career. I further connect these observations to the production of culture as a commodity, showing how select neighborhoods fill quasi-institutional roles in the flexible webs that characterize contemporary culture industries.
In the 1840s, the Parisian writer Henri Murger ([1848] 1988) serialized the stories of penniless artists living in the garrets of Montmartre, applying the term bohemia to mark the material and symbolic spaces occupied by these strivers. Murgers romantic imagery of destitution and idealism among a newly constituted creative class drew on a phenomenon of the modern metropolis that has proven both durable and portable, the purposive clustering of young artists as well as various hangers-on in distinct urban districts (Gendrion, 2002; Gold, 1993; Polsky, 1969; Schorske, 1981; Seigel, 1986; Simpson, 1981; Smith, 1953; Snyderman and Josephs, 1939; Zukin, 1982). In the United States, prototypical bohemias emerged in neighborhoods such as New Yorks Greenwich Village (Stonehill, 2002; Stansell, 2000; Ware, 1935; Wetzsteon, 2002), where artists, political radicals, and other lifestyle eccentrics shared space with immigrant laborers. Today, we can still identify spatial practices characteristic of bohemia in large and small cities throughout the United States, even in the face of significant changes in the structural foundations of metropolitan growth. As I will show, contemporary participants draw on the cumulative mythology of past bohemias in designing contemporary strategies of action. Moreover, they continue to derive advantages from the morphology of older industrial neighborhoods, with important consequences for the articulation of the postindustrial city.
Correspondence
should be addressed to Richard Lloyd, Department of Sociology, Vanderbilt University, VU Station 351811, Nashville TN 37235-1811; richard.d.lloyd@vanderbilt.edu.
City & Community 3:4 December 2004 C American Sociological Association, 1307 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005-4701
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Current debates on the contemporary Western metropolis focus on the shifts in the economic contexts within which urban form is articulated, including de-industrialization, globalization, and associated increases in the importance of immaterial labor in areas like finance, technology, and media design (Castells, 1989; Florida, 2002a; Hardt and Negri, 2001; Sassen, 1991). The vaunted LA school of urban studies stresses patterns of de-concentration that seem to obviate the dense neighborhood morphology in which traditional bohemias have been located (Dear, 2001; Scott and Soja, 1996; Soja, 1989). Other studies indicate that alongside sprawling growth we also find the resurgence of older downtowns and select center-city neighborhoods (Kotkin, 2000; Sassen, 1991, 1998; Smith, 1996; Zukin, 1995). This neighborhood-level resurgence, unevenly distributed throughout older cities, no longer follows the impetus of industrial production. Instead, new patterns of production characterize the city and its neighborhoods, with increased emphasis on the production of culture and technology. Bohemia, rooted in the modernist metropolis, persists in the transition to what Michael Dear (2000) calls the postmodern urban condition. In fact, there is reason to believe that precisely because of the postmodern emphasis on culture as a linchpin rather than just a reflection of economic activity (Anderson, 1998; Harvey, 1989; Jameson, 1998), new bohemias are more prevalent and more important to understanding urban fortunes than were their modernist predecessors. In that case it becomes especially important for urban scholars to examine the contemporary advantages that center-city neighborhoods offer for young artists, and to show how this figures into the political economy of cultural production as well as urban redevelopment. During the 1990s, a century and a half after Murgers literary contributions, Chicagos Wicker Park neighborhood emerged as a noted hub for the activities of young artists and a seedbed of hip, funky urban culture. Only recently an obscure and depopulated barrio, ravaged by the effects of de-industrialization, Wicker Park serves as a model of the artists neighborhood in the late capitalist metropolis. Both the press and local participants evoke past bohemian instantiations in accounts of the neighborhoods change. However, a new bohemia like Wicker Park is distinguished from its predecessors by virtue of the structural context within which it unfolds. Via an extended case study of Wicker Park, I have examined this neo-bohemian articulation, arguing both for its thematic continuity with bohemian archetypes, and for the distinct differences that emerge from the encounter of bohemia with the dynamics of late capitalism (Lloyd, 2002). The modernist bohemia has typically been viewed as a marginal space in the city with regards to the urban economy and, indeed, as oppositional to the norms of capitalist accumulation. Cesar Grana (1964) argues that the central ideological feature of bohemian life in Murgers Paris was antipathy toward the newly ascendant bourgeoisie. Daniel Bell (1976) incorporates Lionel Trillings notion of bohemia and the avant-garde as an adversary culture into his analysis of the cultural contradictions of capitalism. These analyses suggest the durability of the oppositional frame despite what were already seismic shifts in the articulation of capitalism, from the bourgeois shopkeeper capitalism of 19th-century Paris to the mass production economy of the mid 20th-century United States. What seems to unite bohemian sentiment during these two very different stages of modernism is the rejection of the utilitarian work ethic; Bell quotes Baudelaire: To be a useful man has always appeared to me to be something quite hideous (1976, p. 17). Ideological objections to perceived norms of capitalist labor in fact persist in Wicker Park, though these idealized constructions appear to respond to the stereotypes of the 344
THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION
mid 20th-century organization man (Whyte, 1956) rather than to contemporary arrangements of flexible accumulation (Harvey, 1989). These oppositional sentiments belie the salient fact of the new bohemia. As a practical matter, the neo-bohemian features of Wicker Park enhance the interests of capital. This utility of bohemia for the articulation of capital unfolds along multiple dimensions and, as we will see, divergent capitalist interests often conflict with one another in the ways that they utilize the neighborhood as a site of accumulation. Two such dimensions are by now relatively well known: (1) the implication of new bohemian space in strategies of residential gentrification and (2) the relationship between the new bohemia and the agglomeration of new media enterprises. These will be dealt with briefly below. Less well considered is the status of a neighborhood like Wicker Park as a privileged site in the production of culture, serving as a de facto space of research and development for culture industries. Industries in film, television, and popular music, whose interest lie in the dissemination of a variegated cultural product as a commodity, require the constant input of cultural innovations. These innovations, however, occur in a process not contained by the formal boundaries of these organizations; contrary to the classic formulation of Adorno and Horkheimer ([1944] 1994), they are not vertically integrated. Places such as Wicker Park emerge as privileged production sites outside of formal organizational boundaries, concentrating cultural activity that can be selected from by industry gatekeepers. In this case, it is useful to examine artists in somewhat unusual and counterintuitive terms, as workers in a cultural production process (rather than as, say, tortured geniuses or the heroes of modern life).1 Then we can ask the overlooked question: How does the space of neo-bohemia operate in the organization and deployment of this labor power?
ARTISTS AND THE URBAN ECONOMY
There is accumulated evidence of the role that artists now play in the rehabilitation of older industrial neighborhoods, reimagining apparently anachronistic features of the built environment as living lofts, performance venues, and galleries. Thus far, this point is made most strongly in a series of case studies focusing on New York City districts such as SoHo and the East Village (Deutsche and Ryan, 1984; Mele, 2000; Simpson, 1981; Smith, 1996; Zukin, 1982). This impressive research nevertheless raises question of representatives, given New Yorks traditionally outsize role as a center of production in the media and fine arts (see Guilbaut, 1983). But while it is appropriate to question the extent to which we can generalize from these cases, contemporary indicators suggest that attention to new bohemias is illuminating beyond the confines of these traditional urban arts bastions. Our own case study, in Chicago, is indicative of how processes documented in New York also occur elsewhere, even if we can also assume some important variance among cases owing to their historical and geographic particularities. Combined with the comparative quantitative data found in studies that I will examine below, the broad correspondences between cases suggest that the sampling problem is not serious, though the propositions advanced by a sited study, as always, invite refinement via further empirical work. The population of self-identified artists in the United States has increased dramatically, both proportionally and absolutely, in the past half-century (Table 1); arguably it has outpaced the carrying capacity of the small contingent of classic U.S. bohemias. Moreover, 345
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TABLE 1. Artists, Writers, and Performers in the United States, 19001999 Year 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1991 1999 Artists Population 203,000 288,000 291,000 406,000 439,000 524,000 608,000 791,000 1,284,000 1,957,000 2,454,000 U.S. Population 76,094,000 92,407,000 106,461,000 123,077,000 132,122,000 152,271,000 180,671,000 205,052,000 227,224,000 249,464,000 272,691,000 Per/100,000 267 312 273 330 332 344 336 385 565 784 900
Sources: 19001960 from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (1976). 19701991 from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings as Reported in the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States. 1999 from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupation and Employment Statistics (available online). Thanks to Richard Florida and Kevin Stolarick.
cities such as New York and San Francisco, traditional leaders in cultural production, currently evince a cost of living quite daunting for often poorly paid cultural aspirants. But artists, for reasons that will be illuminated below, remain disproportionately committed to center-city living. Thus, as Ann Markusen (2000) points out, they are an especially fastgrowing population in cities not traditionally associated with bohemian activity. Chicago falls somewhere between New York and Cleveland in this regard. It boasts a solid tradition in the literary arts and in music; however, heading into the 1990s its contributions to new cultural production were relatively moribund (Boehlert, 1993). In addition to the increasing population of artists in large cities, recent theorists point out that dynamics commonly associated with globalization promote a new class of urban residents, educated cosmopolitans employed in the postindustrial growth sectors of finance, insurance, real estate, and media technology (Clark et al., 2002; Florida, 2002b; Nevarez, 2003; Reich, 1991; Sassen, 1991). Such individuals, significantly interested in consuming cultural offerings as part of their quest for authentic experience, are drawn to bohemian and offbeat fare, in Chicago ranging from smoky blues bars to avant-garde gallery openings (Grazian, 2003; Lloyd and Clark, 2001; Lloyd, 2002). This development leads artists and other cultural producers to emerge as avatars of urban consumption patterns, a trend not unknown to past bohemias, but one whose scope and impact has increased with the corresponding increase in cosmopolitan consumers. Other studies suggest that the impact of bohemia is not limited to residential gentrification and the development of local entertainment districts. The presence of artists apparently cross-fertilizes with other economic enterprises. Markusen and David King (2003) argue that the concentration of artists in a region increases both local productivity and earnings. Richard Florida uses data from the 1990 Decennial Census Public Use Microdata samples to generate what he names the Bohemian Index. Via this index, he locates a robust correlation between the presence of artists in a region and the location of high-technology firms. He writes: The presence and concentration of bohemians in an area creates an environment or milieu that attracts other types of talented or high human capital individuals. The 346
presence of such high human capital individuals in a region in turn attracts and generates innovative technology based industries. (2002b, p. 3) Likewise, Terry Nichols Clark proposes a model for the postindustrial city that turns old assumptions about economics and population on their head; according to Clark, urban populations no longer follow job creation, but rather employers now create jobs where the desirable population lives, that is, those educated, high-cultural-capital individuals most likely to take their consumption cues from artists (Clark et al., 2002). In his work on the late 1990s digital economy emerging in New Yorks Silicon Alley, Andrew Ross (2001, 2003) indicates that local artists not only attract workers in digital design, but also become co-opted themselves into the local labor force, valued for their own technological savvy and aesthetic competence. I have documented similar patterns in Wicker Park (Lloyd, 2002), though as Gina Neff (2001, 2002) points out, these artists were particularly vulnerable employees following the dot.com market crash of 2001. Nonetheless, artists continue to be available as potential labor in fields like graphic design and digital design, and their value may be enhanced by their amenability to contingent and flexible arrangements such as subcontracted or project-based employment (Zukin, 1995; Neff et al., n.d.). Beyond this cross-fertilization with digital enterprises, new bohemias also must be examined for their relationship to traditional culture industries, that is, film, television, and popular music. This proposition may appear surprising given Adorno and Horkheimers ([1944] 1994) depiction of culture industries as highly rationalized purveyors of standardized product, and Bells (1976) influential image of the avant-garde as staunch enemies of the instrumental rationality that characterizes the corporate economy. These images are misleading given the contemporary situation. The culture industries signaled by Adorno and Horkheimer have grown dramatically, earning substantially increased profits while becoming the United States principal exporter. However, their organizational forms have been substantially transformed since mid-century, providing excellent examples of the general economic trend away from Fordist mass production and toward flexible specialization (Piore and Sabel, 1984; Storper, 1989). In this case, Fordist-style vertical integration gives way to the new style webs of flexible production described by Lash and Urry (1994). In contrast to the old image of the culture industry artist as a studio owned and operated commodity (Gamson, 1994; Storper, 1989), the new trend is toward project based labor markets (Bielby and Bielby, 1999) in which Peterson and Anand (2002) argue that chaotic careers create orderly fields (2002). Although flexibility liberates labor from conventional organizational boundaries, this does not mean a democratization of the rewards. Media oligopolies and a select stratum of privileged cultural producers continue to dominate profits under new arrangements (McChesney, 2004), while less formal relations of exchange with cultural producers in general absolve large but vertically disintegrated corporate concerns of bearing many associated market risks; in Wicker Park this includes especially the risks associated with new product development. Under these circumstances, as I will argue, the commitment of contemporary bohemians to the romanticized images of starving artists and the primacy of the aesthetic does not confound the instrumental interests of the culture industries. Instead, the ideological features of bohemia work to the benefit of these industries, sustaining a pool of potential labor that largely bears its own costs of reproduction. Neo-bohemian neighborhoods help make this possible by clustering employment opportunities in areas like entertainment 347
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provision that help aspiring artists to subsidize their creative pursuits. The local ecology of neo-bohemia combines these opportunities with appropriate residential, work, and display spaces, creating a platform for artistic efforts that may then be mined by extra-local corporate interests, who recruit talent and co-opt cultural products from these settings at their discretion. This indeed did occur in Wicker Park during the 1990s; music industry scouts, for example, routinely scoured the neighborhood, signing many local acts to recording contracts. Likewise, the works of selected fine artists made their way into prestigious and profitable galleries on both sides of the Atlantic. Traditionally, the cultural production of the bohemian avant-garde is considered to be an entirely different matter from the presumably crass and generic popular culture commodities disseminated by formal organizations (see Gans, 1999). However, as Jameson points out, such artistic innovations in fact directly impact the mainstream of the contemporary economy: Commodity production . . . [is] now intimately tied in with styling changes which derive from artistic experimentation (1998, p. 19). This insight neglects to specify the social process through which these influences intermingle, or to locate these interactions spatially; more recent work by Harvey Molotch (1996, 2003) directs attention to the way that locality operates in the development and diffusion of design principles. In fact, Molotch advances a provocative thesis, which exceeds the scope of this article, arguing that the creative work of local artists impacts not only culture industry production, but in fact becomes inscribed in the more ordinary products that emanate from a distinct region, as in the case of Los Angeles. In neo-bohemia we can see the material conditions through which different modes of cultural production cross-fertilize. As Molotch points out: Culture workers are typically each interdisciplinary and spark one anothers energies across genres. The great majority of artists are active in more than one art (2003, p. 179). Leaving aside normative judgments of cultural value, we can note that in fact new bohemias are characterized by the intersection of participants oriented to cultural forms that are obscure and unlikely to be valorized by the market under any circumstances (i.e., performance poetry) and to those that are intended to find a mass audience (i.e., popular music or film). Not infrequently, the same individual will bridge these distinctions, as in the case of a Wicker Park informant who combined his personal commitment to directing avant-garde theater with the career ambition of writing mainstream Hollywood screenplays. Bernard Gendrion has extensively documented the intersections between popular music and the avant-garde in bohemian sites from Montmartre to the Mudd Club (2002). One colorful example involves famous denizens of New Yorks 1980s bohemian scene; Madonna was a stalwart of the East Village club scene and temporary paramour of bohemian icon Jean-Michel Basquiat before becoming one of the best-selling pop musicians of all time (Hoban, 1999). The cross-fertilization of comparatively obscure cultural pursuits in the fine arts with the more popular forms of the mass media therefore alerts us to an often overlooked way that bohemia can act as a generative field useful to culture industry interests. Thus, in the Wicker Park case, even residents who went on to produce for highly popular media like television or Hollywood films were likely to be conversant in high art traditions, and to have been avid consumers of the more avant-garde fare produced locally. I argue that a neo-bohemian neighborhood like Wicker Park fills a quasi-institutional role in the production of culture, interacting with more formal culture industries. By concentrating talent and potential new products in a visible milieu, the neighborhood acts as a site of de facto research and development, with large amounts of innovative work 348
contributing to a small amount of marketable product. What differentiates this from other sites of R&D in areas like aerospace and biotechnology is that it is formally distinct from its potential industry beneficiaries and unsubsidized by them. This sort of innovative work may be particularly difficult to perform within the more formalized organizational structures of global corporations. The art historian Thomas Crow argues: In our image saturated present, the culture industry has demonstrated the ability to package and sell nearly every variety of desire imaginable, but because its ultimate logic is the strictly rational and utilitarian one of profit maximization, it is not able to create the desires and sensibilities it exploits. (1998, p. 34) In this analysis, Crow suggests that the informal but structured space of bohemia can serve as a staging ground for such creation. Typically, cultural products produced in Wicker Park are not market ready; the neighborhood does, however, facilitate the incubation of talent and the piloting of innovative designs that may eventually contribute to market output. Such output is mediated by formal institutional structures. Thus, Wicker Park is best understood not as a self-contained space of innovation but as a privileged site in a networked geography of cultural production.
THE CASE
During the 1990s, Chicagos west side Wicker Park neighborhood garnered significant local and national attention as a center for creative production, recognized by media outlets as cutting edges new capital (Boehlert, 1993) and the Windy Citys burst of bohemia (Shriver, 1996). Although the initial burst of national acclaim, around 1993 1994, focused on its rock music scene, in fact the neighborhood was home to aspirants in a variety of creative pursuits, including film, theater, literature, performance poetry, and the fine arts. By the mid 1990s it was widely considered to contain one of the largest concentrations of working artists in the United States, with more than 100 local artists sharing studio spaces in the neighborhoods Flat Iron building (Huebner, 2001). Although most of these have labored in comparative anonymity, the neighborhood boasts among its alumni several widely acclaimed successes in their respective media, including film (Rose Troche, Steve Pink), the fine arts (D-zine, Alan Gugel, Adam Siegel), and pop music (Liz Phair, Veruca Salt, Urge Overkill). Corresponding to its arts notoriety were several local developments that have come to be viewed as emblematic of the new bohemia in U.S. cities. Characterized by industrial disinvestment during the 1980s, with a relatively high rate of poverty and depressed property values, Wicker Park during the 1990s was marked by significant residential gentrification. Median home values and household incomes within the neighborhood increased dramatically from 19902000 (Table 2). The attraction of this new bohemia for the cosmopolitan new class is further illustrated by the change in educational levels among neighborhood residents, with the proportion of adult (over 25) residents possessing a college degree or higher increasing from 20 percent to 50 percent. In the latter part of the decade, the neighborhood also received increasing attention for the presence of new media companies, typically small firms that cited the local creative ethos as a key source of comparative advantage (Jaffe, 2001; Karp, 2001; Kotkin, 2000; Littman, 2001). 349
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TABLE 2. Income, House Value, and Rent in Wicker Park (Dollars), 1999 and 2000 1990 Cook County Median household income Median house value Median rent 32,673 102,100 411 Wicker Park 23,327 109,913 325 Cook County 45,922 157,700 648 2000 Wicker Park 54,791 400,100 802
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census (16-Tract Area)
I conducted ethnographic research in the neighborhood during two discrete intervals in the 1990s. The first period was in the years 19931995, corresponding to the initial explosion of neighborhood notoriety mostly associated with the success of several local musicians. I took up this case study again in 1999, continuing through 2001. During these periods I visited artists residences and studios, local entertainment outlets, galleries and performance venues, and the offices of local Internet and design firms. I buttressed direct observation with formal, recorded interviews with over three dozen local informants. Informants included not only local artists, but also property entrepreneurs, service workers, designers, and other professionals. Collectively, their association with the neighborhood spans the period from the late 1980s to 2001. Data from the census, the Chicago Artists Survey of 2000, and from media accounts has been incorporated to contextualize and extend my ethnographic observations. This work comprises the data for this article. Case studies are not randomly selected. As biased samples, they pose problems of generalizability, and invite comparative work in other locales. What is necessary is that the given case possesses demonstrable features of more general phenomena. For a number of reasons Wicker Park seems to be a promising site for generating propositions about the nature of the contemporary artists neighborhood. It has become well known as a leading center of arts activity and during the period of interest has contained participants in a wide range of creative pursuits. It shares many features that have come to be recognized as important by scholars of the arts and neighborhood change. Finally, it is not in New York, and therefore it offers a comparative counterpoint to the many ethnographic studies of artists neighborhoods that have been focused there. We will now turn our attention to developing how Wicker Park worked during the 1990s to sustain the activities of creative participants, meeting both material and symbolic requirements.
MATERIAL SUPPORTS
THE ECONOMIC PROFILE OF BOHEMIAN ARTISTS
The opportunity exists to earn large fortunes in both the mass media and the fine arts. Jeremy Seabrook identifies the celebrity class, including highly successful cultural producers, as comprising a key component of the rarefied strata of the global rich (2002, p. 23), and as the designation suggests, their rewards are ample in terms of both monetary compensation and social status. Plattner argues that the (short-lived) boom in the market for living artists in the United States during the 1980s led to the belief that even avantgarde producers in the visual arts could realize fantastic payoffs for their efforts (1996, p. 83). Such an outcome is not, however, a common occurrence and few aspirants in the 350
TABLE 3. General Demographics for Chicago Artists by Percentage Income from Art, 2000 (Number and Percent) Household Income (Annual) Income from Art 0 to 25% 26 to 50% 51 to 75% 76 to 100% No. Respondents 562 107 28 217 With College Degree or Higher 85 85 91 85 Under 25K 26 38 39 22 25 to 40K 29 29 36 30
Source: Chicago Artists Survey 2000, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
arts will ever realize it. From a distributional perspective, artists show a high variance in income. Poverty rates among US artists are higher than for all other professional and technical workers (Menger, 1999, p. 556). The distribution of rewards is a classic example of a winner-take-all market, with a relatively small number of participants reaping the lions share of monetary gain (Frank and Cook, 1996). Even for those fortunate few, the receipt of fame and fortune is often preceded by a de facto apprenticeship, perhaps lasting many years, during which remuneration for artistic efforts is intermittent and paltry (Filer, 1986, p. 63). Despite possessing relatively high levels of cultural and formal educational capital, most artists find their creative pursuits significantly unrewarded by formal art markets of any kind. Results from the 2000 Chicago Artists Survey, conducted by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs with over 900 respondents, further illustrate this point. First, we must note the strikingly high rates of formal educational attainment; in total, 87 percent of respondents reported a college degree or higher. Still, in keeping with bohemian mythology of the starving artist, the return to this education in terms of household income is relatively low. Indeed, in excess of a third of these respondents report household incomes under $25,000/year. Seventy-three percent report making less than half of their income directly from art; 61 percent report less than a quarter (Table 3). Thus, most artists must support their creative pursuits with other income-generating activities. Bohemia is typically occupied by younger artists and fellow travelers, and Wicker Park is no exception. Indeed, Ephraim Mizruchi ([1983] 1990) identifies youth as a fundamental feature of bohemia. In his formulation, bohemia is a space of abeyance, in which participants forestall adult commitments, and he suggests that the age of 30 is the tipping point beyond which such a slack existence ceases to be socially acceptable. Although in Wicker Park most of the more visible and active scene participants are in their 20s, many still students at local arts institutions, there is a significant minority who pursue la vie boh`me into their 30s and beyond. Despite their advanced age, these individuals continue e to evince the styles and strategies typically associated with youth culture; they are more extreme examples of the American trend in which once standard markers of adult life such as marriage and children are increasingly deferred (Laumann et al., 2004). In any event, the overall youthfulness of the scene means that local incomes are likely to be even lower in a neo-bohemia than they are for the total population of artists. Filer notes: Although artists earn an average of 6 percent less than the general work force, the differential varies substantially over the life cycle . . . Income differentials shift in favor of artists as workers grow older, so that above the age of 40 artists typically earn more than the control group (1986, p. 63). This convergence, coupled with the fact that overall the 351
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population of artists skews young (Menger, 1999), suggests that many failed bohemians follow Mizruchis advice and drop out. Income pressure for young artists is elevated by the decline in public funding for the arts. Federal funding sources such as the National Endowment of the Arts, founded as part of Lyndon Johnsons Great Society program, have been the object of significant controversy, decried by conservatives for moral laxity as well as government waste (Vance, 1989). Federal funding for the arts peaked in 1981, and has declined since, although funding at the state and local levels has intermittently made up some of this shortfall (Plattner, 1996, p. 39). Meanwhile, private funding for the arts via corporations tends to be project based rather than taking the form of individual grants, and it therefore tends to reward already established artists rather than aspirants (McCarthy et al., 2001; Toepler and Zimmer, 1999). This financial profile impacts the spatial requirements of young artists. They require living/work spaces that are comparatively inexpensive, and are therefore drawn to transitional neighborhoods, areas where what Neil Smith describes as a rent gap between potential and actual rents prevails (Smith, 1996, pp. 5174). Beyond low rents, these aspirants also require access to display venues in order to enhance their visibility in nascent careers; because their profiles are typically low during the bohemian phase, such venues must have relatively low barriers to entry, welcoming new and experimental work. Finally, the artists must be able to find work to subsidize pursuit of their crafts; ideally, they seek work that is flexible around their lifestyles, including both time requirements and aesthetic predilections. We will see how these material requirements are satisfied in Wicker Park; we will also see how they are in tension with one another, producing a precarious environment.
CLAIMS ON SPACE
Young artists are typically compelled by financial constraint to seek out living and work spaces in areas that offer affordable rents. Additionally, many artists require studio spaces that combine qualities such as high ceilings, ample wall and/or floor space, and adequate natural light. As researchers such as Charles Simpson (1981) and Sharon Zukin (1982) point out, artists have creatively adapted underutilized industrial structures, former factories and warehouses, to meet these demands. Such spaces may also be advantageously adapted as performance venues and galleries, lending artists local platforms from which to display their efforts to a wider audience, including potential buyers. Wicker Park in the 1980s was a formerly thriving enclave of immigrant industrial labor fallen on hard times (Lester, 2000). As such, it provided both relatively low rents and a built environment amenable to meeting these needs. Many neighborhoods in Chicago share this basic profile. Indeed, the sprawling South Side offers even lower rents and a greater abundance of unused loft space. However, Wicker Park also provides a strategic location well placed on transportation arteries and near both the downtown gallery district and the North Side off-loop theater and performance venues. The Elevated Train provides a convenient conduit to the Art Institute and Columbia College (Figure 1). Moreover, the majority population of Wicker Park in the 1980s was comprised of recent Latino immigrants rather than African Americans, who dominate the South Side. Assessment of gentrification trends during this period in New Yorks East 352
FIG. 1. Map of Wicker Park and Chicago.

Note: Map created by Richard Lloyd and Todd Schuble, University of Chicago
Village and Chicagos West Side indicates that a preponderance of brown rather than black faces serves as less of a deterrent for white residents, including young artists. Still, while informal channels among Chicago artists may have indicated that the neighborhood was an advantageous place to be during the 1980s, this was a fairly well-kept secret. Moreover, artists in Wicker Park found it difficult to make contact with one another, and reaped comparatively few benefits from this agglomeration compared to during the 1990s. The sculptor Alan Gugel, who moved into Wicker Park in 1988, illustrates the point: When I moved into this neighborhood, thats one thing they kept saying: Theres a lot of artists, a lot of artists, move down there. And when I got there, there were no artists. I couldnt see them. Thus, even as artists were beginning to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the local built environment, the scene remained nascent, and did not provide the significant advantages for collaboration, material and symbolic support, and display to a wider audience that would emerge during the 1990s. This achievement required increased public visibility, which occurred only as artists began to realize claims on a number of local institutions. The possibility of these claims on institutional spaces in the neighborhood was not only an effect of artists activities; it also reflects the strategic decisions of local actors who were not artists, particularly small entrepreneurs. For example, by the late 1980s, a small number of nightspots that had formerly catered to a Hispanic or Polish working-class clientele began to actively address the needs of local artists. Phyllis Musical Inn, established in the 1950s by the Jaskot family, had long been the home of Polish folk music, but by 1988 it had made the switch to cuttingedge rock and roll, providing a performance venue for local musicians and a hangout for local bohemians. Other local drinking establishments, such as Czar Bar, the Rainbo Club, 353
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FIG. 2. The Urbus Orbis building.
Dreamerz, and the Bop Shop, likewise became popular meeting grounds in the nascent bohemian scene, reflecting not only the preference of patrons, but also the active attempts of entrepreneurs to court this new and growing artistic population. In 1989, Tom Handley opened the Urbus Orbis Caf in a brick warehouse structure e on North Avenue, just off the six-cornered intersection of North, Damen, and Milwaukee (Figure 2). This caf , with its cavernous, brick-walled interior, quickly became an essential e congregation site for artists and like-minded individuals living in the neighborhood. As Handley indicated to me: Our initial clientele was definitely from the art community. There wasnt much of a gentrification scene at the time, so the art community was definitely our first prop. In fact, Urbus Orbis proved to be more of a prop for the arts community than the other way around, in part because of Handleys ideological commitment to providing a place where artists could spend time regardless of their willingness or ability to purchase his goods. As Michael Watson, a local writer during the early 1990s, put it: If you went to Urbus Orbisand in those days I would spend so much time there Urbus was such an institution at that point because you could literally sit at a table, you get into a conversation, and the next thing you know youre involved in six conversations. You come in at 2:00 in the afternoon, you look up its 9:00 . . . Wed all [local artists] sort of end up at Urbus Orbis and sit there, nursing a bottomless cup of coffee for $1.35. Handleys intention was to create a place of congregation amenable to the exchange of ideas; he in fact alerted me to Ray Oldenburgs book The Great Good Place (1989) as expressing the model for what he hoped to achieve. Oldenburg describes caf s as potential e third places, neither work nor home, which serve as generative milieu for the creation of community. In fact, the caf did not meet Oldenburgs (overly simplistic) criterion e of being a social leveler welcoming to alllike bohemia in general it was cliquish and exclusive. However, it did enhance the general feeling of solidarity for those whose bohemian credentials were in order. This was helped by Handleys tolerance of unprofitable 354
FIG. 3. The Flat Iron building (exterior).
patronage; as an article in the Chicago Tribune indicated: There are few places where it is acceptable to table hog, and Urbus Orbis is one of them (Sall, 1993, p. 7). Although Handley was exceptional in the degree to which his commitment to the arts superseded the desire to run a profitable business, other local entrepreneurs also indicated in interviews that they acted as much to realize a vision of creative community as they did to make money. If we take these claims seriously, and in many cases observed practices suggest that we should, it confounds a simplistic but common assumption that entrepreneurs are no more than cynical manipulators of the organic bohemian community, quick to sell it out for a more affluent client base. In fact, many business owners identify strongly with the local artists and their concerns, viewing themselves as world builders, and basking in the prestige of association as the neighborhood became a nationally renowned center of creative energy. At the same time, they did not necessarily welcome corresponding advances in gentrification, even where these developments would appear to enhance their profit-making potential. For example, across the street from the Urbus Orbis building is the Flat Iron building, whose upper floors provide studio space currently shared by over 100 artists (Figures 3 and 4). The majority owner and director, Bob Berger, insists that he rents these spaces significantly below market value and vets tenants according to their artistic commitment. At the sidewalk level, Berger rents storefront space to businesses he considers consistent with the neighborhoods neo-bohemian ethos, refusing lucrative applications from chain outlets such as Starbucks. Berger claims that in the decade he has controlled the building (since 1993), it has operated mostly in the red as a result, losses he subsidizes with the profits from commercial property he owns elsewhere in the city. Handley, meanwhile, had no comparable source of outside income, and Urbus Orbis, never profitable, succumbed 355
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FIG. 4. Flat Iron building (interior studio space).
in 1998 to rising overhead as gentrification increased operating costs but not necessarily profits (Vitello, 1998). These strategies of action adopted by nonartists are important to creating the distinct bohemian milieu of innovation. As the recollections of informants suggest, a quasi-public space like Urbus Orbis is conducive to fostering productive interactions among local artists, interactions that arguably enhance individual creativity. Michael Warr, the director of the Guild Complex, a local nonprofit dedicated to supporting literary pursuits, made the point: When Urbus Orbis was open in Wicker Park, it was huge caf that was full of people e doing creative things, and you could literally go from table to table and a poet could wind up collaborating with a visual artist because their art may have actually been on the walls. Where you can actually be on the ground floor of creative ideas, people starting projects, and I think artists find other artists supportive, and thats a critical part of what an artist needs when [the art] isnt necessarily monetarily rewarding. In addition to collaborative benefits, the caf also provided opportunity for emotional e support networks to developnetworks fostering the sorts of symbolic advantages that will be dealt with below. Urbus Orbis, along with the several other bars and coffee shops in the neighborhood that local artists, musicians, and hipsters claimed as their own, is therefore important for more than just understanding the recreational ethos of Wicker Park. Apparently a space of leisure, Urbus Orbis contributed to the real work of artists by facilitating interactions and collaborations. It also created a general culture amenable to the arts, where a collective 356
disposition coalesced that supported bohemian values of self-sacrifice and the primacy of the aesthetic. Antonio Negri argues that work processes have shifted from the factory to society, thereby setting in motion a truly complex machine (1989, cited in Terranova, 2000, p. 33). But while creative labor may resist the routinization of the factory floor, it still occurs in the context of material, spatialized social relations. The practical interactions in these Wicker Park locales shed light on how this complex machine operates in concrete locales. These spatial practices link the new bohemia to culture industry profitability in a variety of ways, but they are contingent and vulnerable in the face of ongoing neighborhood dynamism.
EXPOSURE
The existence of the admittedly vast marketplace of cultural offerings like popular music and film reflects an even more extensive selection process from among cultural aspirants, mediated by culture industry gatekeepers (Hirsch, 1972). For every cultural object that enters into relatively broad circulation and enjoys enhanced potential profitability, an unknown number of actual or potential objects do not. But when we view the production of culture as a social process, rather than a case of genius revealing itself, we can come to understand that these failures are a key part of the social condition that allows some to succeed. A dense community of young artists will necessarily contain only a handful destined for real success (measured by the standard indicators of media recognition and big dollars). But when a large amount of cultural work becomes concentrated in a particular place, the job of industry gatekeepers responsible for discerning potentially marketable products is made easier. Wicker Park serves as a site of specialized production for culture industries, one conducive to fostering nascent products and careers. Particularly in the early 1990s, when its reputation achieved national proportions but gentrification processes had not yet dramatically raised local rents, the neighborhood contributed to the flourishing of young artists and musicians in the early stages of their careers,2 as well as a number of hip, funky hangouts where these artists could work and play. Typically, those Wicker Park artists who achieved real acclaim and financial successonly a small fraction of the total applicant poolpromptly deserted the neighborhood, often for New York or Los Angeles. This is consistent with the traditions of bohemia since Parisian origins; Grana indicates that Balzac considered bohemia a stimulating interlude until the chance for real work arrives (1990, p. 3). This standard denigration of bohemian activities as something other than real work misses the point of Wicker Parks active contributions to cultural production, however. The excess of cultural activity made visible by neighborhood notoriety provides the platform from which those lucky few stars emerge. Moreover, the movement among hierarchically differentiated locales, as well as diffusion into mass markets, further indicates the way that Wicker Parks contribution to cultural production gains its meaning as a distinct node within a networked cultural geography. Venues such as Urbus Orbis increase the visibility of the neo-bohemian scene. Recalled Handley on the eve of Urbus Orbiss demise in 1997: There was already a huge scene here [in 1989]bands, musicians, visual artistsbut we gave the scene a real focal point (in Huebner, 1997). This site not only helped young artists in the neighborhood to find one another, it also helped shine a light on their activities for outside interests, including the 357
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media. Indeed, in 1994 the national popular culture magazine Rolling Stone indicated that Urbus Orbis was the coolest place [in Chicago] to suck down a cappuccino ( J. H. K., 1994, p. 22). The caf afforded outsiders a point of entry into the neighborhood, and e they were exposed to the work of local artists, many of whose efforts Handley used to decorate the walls. Within Urbus Orbis, the plan for the annual Around the Coyote art fair was hatched, a venture that attracted significant media attention as well, and helped to advertise both the artistic community and the neighborhood as a potential site of investment and more upscale residence (Huebner, 1997, p. 3). Thus, we can see the important mediating role played by both local institutions and the print media. Wicker Parks national reputation as a creative center is socially constructed through the decisions of institutional gatekeepers as well as the activities of local artists. When Billboard Magazine creates a buzz about its music scene, this increases the future likelihood of music scouts, journalists, and art buyers entering the neighborhood, making it a more advantageous place for artistic aspirants hoping to be seen. The media thus both reflects and drives the development of neo-bohemia, just as Thornton (1996) argues is the case for dance subcultures. Despite the pretentious bandying of the word underground, Wicker Parks postmodern bohemia is highly visible to a variety of relevant publics, from culture industry scouts to local consumers, and that is also part of what keeps the local artists coming back to the neighborhood. The common image of the aspiring American artist has him or her making the pilgrimage to the meccas of New York or Los Angeles, toting a single suitcase packed with dreams. Chicago is less likely to figure in this popular imagery despite the fact that both culturally and economically it is a world-class city, with a significant corporate sector oriented to cultural production, especially in advertising (Abu-Lughod, 1999; Lilley and DeFranco, 1995). Still, Chicago does not compare to New York and Los Angeles in terms of culture industry concentration. Despite this, Chicago has certain advantages over those locales when it comes to incubating new talent. Particularly compared to New York, its cost of living is far less prohibitive for starving artists. Moreover, in Chicago, new artists often find opportunities for performance and display much easier to come by. Shappy Seaholtz, a comic writer and performer, graduated with a degree in theater from Eastern Michigan University in 1991 and came immediately to Chicago and Wicker Park. He insists that it was much easier for him to get started there than it would have been in New York. I knew a lot of people that had already moved to Chicago and told me it was really easy to start your own shows and stuffwhich it was. I couldnt believe how easy it was for us to get a space. With all the creative people . . . it was very easy to collaborate, to come up with scripts. I remember we were writing and producing our own material like the minute I got into town. Wicker Parks surplus of emerging performance and display venues, coupled with the large theater and live music scenes already established on the nearby North Side, thus made it relatively easy for young artists to quickly go public. Along with his collaborators, Shappy almost immediately mounted a comedy sketch show called Every Speck of Dust That Falls to Earth Really Does Make the Whole Planet Heavier, staged in the upstairs of Urbus Orbis before that space converted to a futon outlet. Over the years he developed a substantial local and national following for his poetry and comedy, hosting comedic Shappenings at Wicker Park venues such as the Note and the Empty Bottle, and traveling with the 358
heavily sponsored summer music festival Lollapalooza as part of the poetry tent. In 2001, he relocated to New York. Steve Pink, a native of the North Shores Evanston community, founded the New Crime Theater Company in Wicker Park following his graduation from UC Berkeley in 1990. In 1991, the company mounted a production of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, opening at the Chopin Theater on the neighborhoods southeast Division and Ashland intersection. Pink recalls the work his company did to rehab the venue, which continues to operate in the same location. We opened the theater. It was owned by a Polish immigrant named Ziggy, whos still there. We approached him because he had this great space . . . We made a good deal with him . . . we were like, ok, you dont charge us that much of anything for the entire space and we will build out the space, well build everything. Well build out your space entirely, well put in a grid, well put in the risers, [and] well build the stage. This sort of exchange, with artists offering brow sweat rather than rent, was especially common in the early 1990s and it contributed to development of enduring performance and display venues. Pink relocated to Los Angeles in 1994. This veteran of small Chicago theater now works developing film and television projects, earning writing and producing co-credits on the major studio releases Grosse Point Blank (1997) and High Fidelity (2000), both starring Pinks Evanston high school classmate John Cusack. According to Pink, despite the enormous number of writers and performers that concentrate around L.A.s film and television industries, the scene there is comparatively atomized, undermined perhaps by the intense competition for film and television dollars. There is culture [in L.A.] but there is no interaction, theres no interconnectedness, theres no people being expressive. When we were doing theater [in Chicago], everyone came and saw our shows, and liked them or criticized them and then we saw everybodys shows and everyone knew what we were doing. Id see people from 20 theater companies every week, you know, you dont see that [in L.A.]. In LA, the Industry is film and television . . . thats what people do. On a much higher kind of financial and class level, thats all happening. Thus the lower stakes in Chicago, where the opportunities for big culture bucks are far more circumscribed, make it a likely spot for the development of new talent, which can then relocate, and for the trying out of more innovative products. As Pink indicates, the critical mass of artists that coalesced during the 1990s was essential to producing a local audience for comparatively obscure art offerings. Local writer Sid Feldman indicates the high levels of commitment that locals were exhibiting vis-` -vis their a medium as the community was taking shape: You had people who were very serious about what they were doing . . . At the time all the artists could talk at length about their medium, about its history. Hence, participants are well versed in the codes and conventions of cultural production. This competence may or may not enable them to produce cultural work of their own that will find its way to market. Regardless, these individuals, who have invested time and energy into mastering cultural conventions that are complex, become exceptional consumers of culture. They are positioned to get in early on other cultural innovations, to value and reward new artistic efforts before a wider audience does. 359
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Indeed, participants pride themselves on their ability to do so, and the constitution of bohemia involves a commitment by members to being ahead of the game, on the cutting edge as it were. An internal status system emerges in such communities, where practitioners receive local rewards for their efforts mostly in the form of prestige, which must sustain their work during the uncertain wait for actual material compensation. This local selection process raises the visibility of some artists, making the work easier for more formal cultural gatekeepers on the lookout for potentially marketable cultural objects. Other consumers, who are also attracted to some notion of the cutting edge, use the consumption practices of artists as a model as well, and thus the number of participants in such a scene swells. Thus for most of the subcorporate cultural offerings in the neighborhood and nearby areas, including musical acts, poetry readings, and art openings, a substantial portion of the audience will be artists themselves, although not necessarily working in the same medium. As Pink indicated above, a collective bargain is maintained, essentially that Ill go to your shows if you come to mine. Indeed, William Bullion, a founder of Sliced Bread Productions, tagged the email announcement of his last play with the plaintive reminder, I go to your shows. Art openings, musical performances, and theatrical productions fill the social calendars of local artists. Particularly strong new cultural offerings will generate local buzz among the creative community, another factor facilitating the eventual selection process by formal industry gatekeepers.
LOCAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Pierre Michel Menger offers a succinct recap of several features of artists as an occupational group: Artists . . . are on average younger than the general work force, are better educated, tend to be more concentrated in a few metropolitan areas, show higher rates of self-employment, higher rates of unemployment and of several forms of constrained underemployment . . . and are more often multiple job holders (1999, p. 545, emphasis added). These multiple jobs are not limited to the plying of strictly artistic trades. As Molotch points out: [Artists] do still other things as well, mostly out of necessityonly 15 percent of LA union actors, for example, are working at any given time as actors, and that means that they take their creative multipliers to sectors beyond the arts themselves. As they do so, they work differently than others who perform the same tasks. New York restaurant waiters, as one example, bring a theatrically specific manner into serving food . . . The consequences magnify when a painter switches to a dot.com, a costume maker develops a line of clothing, a set designer works on industrial products, packaging or print. (2003, p. 179180) During the 1990s, two sectors of Wicker Parks local economy emerged as important sources of employment for young artists: entertainment, in the form of bars, restaurants, and coffee shops, and design, especially new media design, a field that flourished in the late 1990s but that has since declined as a source of opportunity. A map of neighborhood establishments in 2001 shows the dense intermixing of art, design, and entertainment within the neighborhoods boundaries (Figure 5). Both the entertainment and design sectors met artists demands for flexible terms of employment, as well as satisfying to 360
FIG. 5. Art, entertainment, and design in Wicker Park, 2001.

Note: Map created by Richard Lloyd and Todd Schuble, University of Chicago
varying degrees their ideological predilections with regard to desirable work. Moreover, consistent with Molotchs analysis, each capitalized on the distinctive properties of local artists. Entertainment venues benefited from artists performative competence as hip or cool individuals, while design firms benefited from their aesthetic competence and attentiveness to current cultural trends. Entering the 1990s, only a small number of entertainment venues existed serving the ethos of hipness and creativity that would come to define the neighborhood by the end of that decade. As the neighborhood achieved celebrity status, the number of such venues expanded dramatically. By 2000, the neighborhood, while still retaining traces of its older industrial character, had become a Chicago hub of culture and entertainment-oriented business. In fact, the extensions of local celebrity and associated entertainment venues grew dialectically, as new entertainment outlets enhanced local notoriety and attracted participants. 361
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Participation was not limited to young artists; neighborhood gentrification and a growing tourist trade brought professionals onto the scene whose higher levels of disposable income sustained the profitability of many more local bars and restaurants. But these outlets also improved the opportunities for young creative types to support their pursuits, offering them employment as waiters, doormen, bartenders, and managers. Therefore, while gentrification created problems for local artists by raising rents, it also enhanced employment opportunities insofar as it was accompanied by an expanded service sector. Starving artists are not a viable base for sustaining a large entertainment scene, almost by definition. Venues that retained a dogged commitment to this clientele, such as Urbus Orbis, in fact found themselves vulnerable as rising rents increased the cost of doing business. Still, while the desirable patronage for local entertainment venues may have in fact been gentrifying professionals or nocturnal tourists, local artists continued to be disproportionately charged with conferring the aura of neo-bohemian hipness that these venues thematized. Both local and national media consistently celebrate the neighborhoods restaurant, bar, and performance outlets for evincing the quality of countercultural cool (Belluck, 1999; Fiedelholtz, 2002; Fowler, 2002; Shriver, 1996; Wheaton, 2002), and the hiring of local bohemian types in front-stage service positions is one way that local entrepreneurs strategize to maintain this marketable image. Matt Gans, a former manager at the trendy neighborhood restaurant Mirai, made this plain to me. [The staff] is very representative of Wicker Park. The girls are very artistically inclined, very imaginative, very creative. The guys are the same, theyre musicians. We specifically hired very funky looking people because of wanting to appeal to Wicker Park. Meia [the owner] specifically hired these girls that looked crazy. They looked totally different than everybody else. Its eye candy. Its something you dont normally get up close and personal. Piercings, different colored hair, no bras. Its whats going on. Other local employers expressed similarly explicit justifications for hiring from the local arts community. Work in the service sector tends to be relatively flexible, allowing actors and musicians, for example, to exchange shifts when necessary to make performance dates. Service jobs typically leave days open, potentially available to devote to creative interests, and they reward the nocturnal dispositions that characterize bohemian culture. Moreover, local artists perceive that these jobs offer greater latitude to express themselves aesthetically than would jobs in the corporate work world. They are pleased by the opportunity to wear their own clothes and to perform their high levels of aesthetic competence within the confines of a hip entertainment setting. David Grazian refers to this competence as nocturnal capital (2003), and as noted above, its display also rewards the expectations of local employers. Poorly paid in terms of salary, most local service workers in Wicker Park indicate that tips are lucrative enough to allow them to live on less than a 40-hour per week schedule. According to one local writer and bartender, Krystal Ashe: Artists and writers work in the industry because where else can you work for four hours and make two hundred, three hundred dollars? If youre a waitress you can make one or two hundred dollars in four hours. Thats why artists flock to the service industry. You can support yourself on twenty hours a week. 362
Actually, detailed ethnography suggests that this income is overstated by failing to take into the account that much tipped income comes from the largely symbolic practice of local service workers extravagantly tipping each other. Local musician and bartender Bret Puls sums this up cogently. Its funny, all the bartenders in the city make like two hundred and fifty bucks [a shift] but if they go out they have to spend a hundred bucks on tips to the same bartenders. So it goes right back into the other bartenders pockets. You know, theres all this circular motion, no money is made, just changing hands. Yet even if the rewards turn out to be less than commonly indicated, these service jobs provide incomes adequate to maintaining circumspect bohemian lifestyles, while also providing free time and flexibility to pursue nonremunerative artistic activities. Further, while service sector work is not highly regarded in the society as a whole, the artists as service worker in Wicker Park may enjoy status rewards among their peers, especially if their place of employ is well respected. On the other hand, such jobs also contain significant drawbacks; they offer comparatively flat trajectories for advancement, and they expose participants to significant hazards associated with drug and alcohol abuse (see Workplace Resource Center, 1999). Especially during the years 1998 to 2001, at what would prove to be the tail end of the dot.com boom, some Wicker Park artists began to find frequent opportunities for work in Internet and graphic design, often as subcontractors. In doing so, local artists leveraged their aesthetic competence, as well as the comparatively high comfort levels with new technology many acquired by incorporating digital presentation into their repertoires (Pariser, 2000). Much of this work came from the large Loop-based advertising sector tapping neighborhood networks; however, as we can see in Figure 1, the neighborhood also became home to several boutique-style media design firms such as Streams, Buzzbait, and Boom Cubed, with offices in local lofts or in the landmark Northwest (Coyote) Tower, and these also employed participants in the arts community. As Dave Skwarczek, the founder of Streams, indicated in 2001: It was not hard to find creative talent [in the neighborhood]. Many of the folks that we hired throughout the years lived around here because there were always a lot of really cool people around that were really ambitious and talented . . . We always tried to stay tied in with the people that were doing the [creative] stuff, and whenever we had opportunities those were the folks we turned to. In addition to technical assets that young artists might bring in terms of design competence, they also posses high levels of hip cultural capital. Their immersion in local youth-oriented musical and artistic subcultures keeps them abreast of the putative cutting edge, and this knowledge is considered to be an asset, particularly in accessing the coveted youth market. Says Brad Cowley, the co-founder of Boom Cubed: We know that [youth] age group. We have so many people with so many different [subcultural] interests. We use that knowledge, and we encourage that knowledge to be brought in, and brought back to the client, to say Look, this is what our understanding is of the audience that you are trying to talk to. In that context its a great asset, because it really does help to sell our image, what we are trying to do. 363
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Local artists are attracted to work in these firms for several reasons. As with local entertainment, formal dress codes are nonexistent, and the informal expectation in fact favors experimental self-presentation. Similar to Rosss (2001) findings in New Yorks Silicon Alley, work in these local lofts, while often rigorous, unfolds against a backdrop of playfulness. Offices are typically decorated with kitschy pop cultural detritus like plastic action figures, and electronic music, hip-hop, or alternative rock comprises the typical soundtrack for office activities. Moreover, local artists strive to experience this work as continuous with their overall creative personae. Andr` , an employee at Boom Cubed in e 2001 and also a musician in a local punk rock band, indicates: I used to think of myself as a musician or a designer, but now I just like to think of myself as an artist, I dont know, I never did like the idea of pigeon-holing myself into one category . . . Ive always been into things that are outside of what I know, like glass blowing, video art, and especially working here Im exposed to that. We have other people who come from those backgrounds, and seeing that stuff is really, really cool, and I definitely think it has a positive effect on my design and my music. Andr` additionally valued the flexibility that Boom Cubed provides, similar to the flexe ible schedules available in the entertainment sector. Thats the cool thing about Boom. Whenever I had to go on tour to Europe for three weeks or a month, theyd let me go, as long as I told them in advance. I think that Im not making as much money as I want to, because I have the freedom to do what I have to with my music, and its sort of a compromise that I have to make. I could have gone to look for a job somewhere else, but one of the reasons [that] I didnt is because I know it would probably be a much tighter and more corporate culture and I wouldnt have as much freedom to do things I want to do. This quote also indicates the drawbacks to such employment, including compensation levels below industry standards (see Ross, 2003), belying the fantasy of media millions created by the dot.com bubble. Further, along with the freedom of flexibility comes the pressures of instability; many local tech artists were employed on a project-to-project basis, without benefits, and even full-time employees were highly vulnerable to being laid off. In fact, Boom Cubed no longer exists. Buzzbait has trimmed its workforce by two-thirds since 2001, maintaining a currently precarious existence. Buzzbait founder Michael Weinberg maintains that most of his former employees have succeeded as subcontractors, but he also acknowledges that opportunities in the tech sector are considerably more circumscribed in 2003 than they were in 2000, especially for those whose talents were somewhat nebulous to begin with.
SYMBOLIC SUPPORT
IDENTIFICATION
Being an artist often involves adopting a distinct persona. There is a recognizable lifestyle, including modes of dress and self-presentation. Neo-bohemia, like its modernist forerunners, is a setting in which living like an artist is facilitated, and a habitus amenable to creative pursuits is fostered (see Bourdieu, 1992). Indeed, many participants evince the 364
habitus without making any art at all, unless one counts their aesthetic self-work as such. As one local painter said, describing Wicker Parks vital artist community: I say artist in a very general sense. I mean a lot of people are making art, or theyre involved in some sort of creative life. And a lot of people are here for the lifestyle if nothing else. Mizruchi explains the longstanding attraction of pretenders to bohemian affectations: Because it is understood that some people in society can get away with more than others, there is a tendency for pretenders to seek the cloak of protection associated with those committed to the tolerated lifestyle and thus derive sensual or material gains from this association ([1983] 1990, p. 14). But those individuals do indeed contribute to the production of a vital arts community; they provide as well as receive local benefits. They do so in part by contributing to the excess of definitions (Sutherland and Cressey, [1939] 2003) favorable to the life of self-sacrifice and creative commitment that even future stars must typically endure. Above we noted that material constraints attract artists to comparatively low-rent districts. Writing about the East Village, Christopher Mele states: Because of their limited economic resources and/or preferences for residing in alternative neighborhoods, these groups endure above average levels of crime, noise and drug related problems (1994, p. 186). In fact, many local artists did not only tolerate these drawbacks. As Allen (1984) argues, neighborhood choices involve ideological preference as well as material expediency; for artists, this involves a special attraction to the symbols of grit and decay that transitional neighborhoods offer. Living in a district like Wicker Park thus also meets important identity needs. Contemporary arts aspirants are familiar with bohemian traditions in which artists occupy gritty urban neighborhoods. They have distinct ideas about what living like an artist should look like, and this in turn impacts what it does look like. This theme can be read through traditions of Modern Art extending back to the French Impressionists, particularly Manet, who staked a claim to the avant-garde by representing elements of the city such as bars and prostitution that had formerly been off limits to high art practitioners (Clark, 1999). Authors such as Nelson Algren, William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller, or Tama Janowitz celebrate an authentic urban landscape characterized by grit, vice, and addiction in novels that also serve as instructional manuals for development of a recognizable, deeply mythologized version of the artists lifestyle. Even those neighborhood scenemakers who have not directly encountered these works (or the many analogous ones) are still exposed to their influence through the performances of their peers. More is at work than just mimesis, however; neo-bohemia is not, as some might suspect, simply a shallow caricature of bohemias past, just another urban theme park. Individuals living real lives with genuine commitments do actual creative work in Wicker Park. Rather than mere homage, the freighted embeddedness of Wicker Parks neo-bohemian scene in the traditions of past bohemias is crucial to its advantage as a site for the active, ongoing production of culture. Participation in the scene can be a key part of developing a creative persona for participants well acquainted with these traditions, identifying with city streets of the sort that nourished the imaginations of so many creative predecessors. By selecting into the local scene of artists and hipsters, individuals signal their artistic commitment, to themselves and others. They enact a series of identifications with the neighborhood spaces and the local community through residence and participation, and as Glaeser points out, identifications are the building blocks of the hermeneutic process called identity formation (2000, p. 9). Such identifications can be challenged, however, by advances in 365
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neighborhood gentrification, as well as by the dilution of the scenes subcultural integrity as fame undermines its former exclusivity. Remembers Alan Gugel: From the point of moving into Wicker Park, I became a Chicago artist. This statement is not trivial; adoption of this persona is a precursor to a range of actions that would otherwise be unlikely. Culture work is filled with uncertainty and disappointment; aspirants face both financial and identity risks in the pursuit of their vocations. Unlike, say, graduate students, who also make large sacrifices for uncertain rewards, artists most often lack even institutional affiliation upon which to peg their identities. Identification with bohemias traditions of the edge helps sustain necessary levels of commitment in the face of this reality. It provides a model that incorporates the possibility of failure, at least in the short term. Thus the neighborhood does not just magnetize creative talent; it also nurtures crucial dispositions. These identifications are likely to be especially important for young artists in the early stages of their careers. Since they are unlikely to have their talent ratified by the market at this stage, other indicators must be called on to reassure them they are actually artists at all. Living like an artist, among like-minded souls, poor, unrecognized outside the local community, but presumably also imminent, gives shape to the fantasies of the nascent cultural producer. The local scene evolves its own status system, so those aspirants can reap local status rewards in advance of, and often in lieu of, wider recognition. Insecure aspirants trade reassurances with one another in an implicit bohemian bargain. The neighborhoods increasing recognition through art fairs and media notices helps support the notion that neo-bohemian self-sacrifice is not all in vain. The high rates of failure in Wicker Park (defined in this case not by aesthetic criteria but rather by failure to find a market) resemble those found in a milieu of technological innovation, where a large amount of creative work is a condition for the relatively infrequent occasions when some innovative products make their way to market (Castells, 1989). The system of compensation differs however, with technology firms bearing the cost of their workers material reproduction. Most participants in the artistic milieu are not subsidized by the industries that will eventually reap a large share of the profits of cultural production, and are not destined to achieve either material wealth or widespread notoriety. Artists, like entrepreneurs, enter into risky activities with uncertain (though potentially extravagant) rewards. The artistic milieu offers a social structure providing nonmaterial rewards to compensate the would-be artist for his or her relative poverty and life spent waiting tables, quality of life compensations revolving around values of aesthetic self-determination and creativity, and involving an internal status system partially unhinged from issues of material compensation.
CONFLICTS AND CONTRADICTIONS
The coalescence of both material and symbolic attributes discussed above contributes to the possibility of innovative work in Wicker Park. Their identification helps us to better understand the attractions of particular places for a community of artists. One might be tempted to view this as an example of community ecology, using the classic metaphor of the Chicago School of urban sociology (Park, 1952; Park and Burgess, 1921). However, despite apparent similarities, analysis of Wicker Park as a neo-bohemia in the postindustrial city differs from conventional human ecology in important ways. Park and Burgess 366
indicated the way that the competition for space generated regular divisions within the city, self-contained natural areas. As numerous critics have noted, the ecological model was typically insensitive to issues of broader economic structure, and as such produced a model of competition among social groups that misses important distinctions relating to the mode of capitalist production (Burawoy, 2000; Castells, 1977; Gottdiener, 1985), as well as to the disproportionate power of property-based elites in setting the terms of the competition for space (Logan and Molotch, 1987). Moreover, in later incarnations, ecological approaches to urbanism increasingly de-emphasized the competitive dynamics so crucial to earlier formulations, generating a more functionalist account that emphasized cooperation and social stability (Hawley, 1950)a move that perhaps reflected the heightened perception of social stability achieved by the mature Fordist economy of mid century. Conversely, the concept of neo-bohemia implies an analysis of the historical specificity of local outcomes in terms of their relationship to both the internal pressures of the local field and to the distinctive structuring influences of the current organization of global capitalist accumulation, with its new geography of social production and its specific valorization strategies (including the elevated attention to the aesthetic dimensions of the commodity). Thus, Wicker Park should not be considered as self-contained in the manner of the Chicago Schools urban mosaic; local processes unfold in a contextual field directly impacted by extra-local forces. The stability of a neo-bohemian neighborhood may be threatened by inherent tensions within the symbolic and material advantages that the local field generates. For example, exposing local artwork to a wider audience has often also meant heightened awareness of the neighborhood as a desirable residential site for more affluent urbanites, with corresponding increases in rents. Table 2 showed the tremendous increases in local affluence and in local rents from 1990 to 2000. Gentrification may displace poor artists in the neighborhood and discourage new ones from entering. In fact, many argue that the vibrant arts scene traditionally located in San Francisco districts like South of Market and the Mission was dramatically undermined by the speculative bubble in real estate that accompanied the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s (Arnold, 2000; Borsook, 1999; Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). Although Wicker Parks rents did not escalate to such a dramatic extent, many local aspirants do report experiencing similar vulnerability in the face of cost-of-living increases. But at the same time, gentrification facilitates the growth of the local entertainment scene that enhances employment opportunities for young artists. Moreover, many display spaces remain fixtures of the neighborhood, although barriers to entry have risen along with rents. Today, Wicker Park remains a central organizing space for Chicagos bohemian culture, even as many artists can no longer afford to live there. Artists have currently been driven to the borders of the neighborhood, hopping on the train or the bus to work, play, and display. Thus many now find themselves excluded from living in a neighborhood whose character they continue to impact disproportionately. The community benefits discussed above are weakened by this dispersal. The symbolic benefits provided by the neo-bohemian scene are therefore compromised by the side effects of neighborhood notoriety. As Irwin (1977) notes, subcultural articulations have limited carrying capacities that can be overwhelmed by an excess of participants clamoring for inclusion. Given their desire to associate with the fringe, while still having access to galleries, good bars, and being able to attend school at the Art Institute, it is not surprising that newcomers to Wicker Park soon resented those that followed 367
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and upset this balance. By 1994, such residents were far less quick to give newcomers the benefit of the doubt. A Chicago Reader article cataloguing growing anti-gentrification sentiment, entitled The Panic in Wicker Park, makes clear that the most noisily panicked were usually residents who had themselves been there for only a handful of years at most (Huebner, 1994). Given that their own presence was heavily implicated in neighborhood change, they may have been enacting a version of what Rosaldo calls imperialist nostalgia, where people mourn the passing of what they themselves have transformed (1989, p. 69). These conflicts also pit competing capital interests against one another. In an influential formulation, John Logan and Harvey Molotch (1987) suggest that the interests of local growth machines, defined as property entrepreneurs, local political elites, and affiliated professionals, conflict with the needs and desires of local residents. Sporadic expressions of anti-gentrification sentiment in the neighborhood throughout the 1990s indicate that many residents do indeed view growth-machine strategies as inimical to their interests. Still, while gentrification may displace residents and undermine the integrity of the subcultural community, it also enhances visibility and employment opportunities. Moreover, the simple dichotomy of capital versus a presumably organic community like bohemia misses the cleavages that emerge between different capital interests, largely because bohemia is so rarely considered as an input source in the complexly networked production of cultural commodities. In Wicker Park we see contradictions in the accumulation process, as the growth-machine impetus toward producing ever-rising property values comes into conflict with the culture industrys interest in the reproduction and deployment of a creative labor force.
DISCUSSION
NEO-BOHEMIANS AS A CULTURAL PROLETARIAT
The irony of the new bohemia is that the resources sustaining local creative activity in fact may ultimately be more beneficial to interests other than those of the artists themselves, particularly in a financial sense. Property entrepreneurs benefit as neighborhood celebrity increases the potential for extracting rent, and local entertainment providers benefit as it draws moreand more affluentpatrons into their orbit. These observations are by now standard in the literature on gentrification and urban entertainment. In this article, I have suggested that capital interests associated with the production and distribution of cultural commodities also benefit, albeit in different and potentially conflicting ways. They do so insofar as the symbolic and material resources of the local field enable artists to engage in creative work for deferred and highly uncertain compensation. Among these aspirants, a relatively small number will eventually find themselves contributing more directly to culture industry output, as was the case during the 1990s in Wicker Park. Given the fickle market and high rates of failure, culture industry profitability may well rest on this willingness and ability of artists themselves to assume research and development costs. In a sense, these communities are like a farm league from which some unknown number of players and products will graduate to the big leagues of valorized cultural production. As we have seen, economically self-sacrificing dispositions find support in the socially structured field of bohemia. The local construction of the cutting edge is a collective 368
project, one maintained not only by local artists, but also by the putative local pretenders, and by local entrepreneurs who provide material spaces in which these sentiments coalesce. A local status system provides symbolic benefits, rewards of prestige that typically precede market recognition. Beyond the symbolic benefits provided by a bohemian community are material advantages. The comparatively low rents associated with a transitional neighborhood allow young aspirants to occupy affordable space adequate to their needs. The presence of display venues for art and performance allow them to develop wider audiences, and perhaps to attract the attention of culture industry gatekeepers. Further, local employment opportunities sustain these artists in the face of market indifference to their creative work. It is these local dynamics that undergird my analysis of neo-bohemia as a quasiinstitutional site in the flexible processes of cultural production. New bohemias serve as sources of input, both of raw cultural products and exportable talent, into a globalized chain of cultural production and consumption. I argue that they do so in a fashion advantageous to culture industries; the ideological predispositions and material strategies nurtured in the local field are exploitable by corporate behemoths in film, television, and music, as well as by the institutionalized fine arts market. Particularly vulnerable are the large number of aspirants whose strategic activities are crucial to making the scene, but who will be excluded from the material rewards that such activities may eventually spawn. The surplus value of cultural commodities, like other sorts of commodities, is the result of a social production process, but it is appropriated by only a privileged few. In Wicker Park, a large number of cultural workers are not only alienated from the profits, but must also scramble to subsidize their own exploitation. Notes
Pierre Bourdieu, in The Field of Cultural Production (1993), and Howard Becker, in Art Worlds (1982), both offer incisive sociological critiques of the modernist myth of the autonomous artist 2 For many, indeed most, of these artists, early stages would be all they would have.
1
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The Neighborhood in Cultural Production: Material and Symbolic Resources in the New Bohemia

Richard Lloyd Vanderbilt University

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

ARTISTS AND THE URBAN ECONOMY

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census (16-Tract Area)

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

Source: Chicago Artists Survey 2000, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

FIG. 1. Map of Wicker Park and Chicago.

FIG. 2. The Urbus Orbis building.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

FIG. 3. The Flat Iron building (exterior).

FIG. 4. Flat Iron building (interior studio space).

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

LOCAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

FIG. 5. Art, entertainment, and design in Wicker Park, 2001.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

CONFLICTS AND CONTRADICTIONS

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN CULTURAL PRODUCTION

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