Mo Pitkin’s and the Downfall of Western Civilization

Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction closed this weekend, and tonight marked their farewell show. I barely knew the LES venue-cum-hangout—my first night there was also its last—but the buzz would suggest that although it only existed for a couple years, Mo’s was loved beyond its years.

If I learned nothing else tonight, I was assured of that fact: Mo’s was loved indeed. Scores of regulars turned out to support their doomed venue and the performers who will now have to find another weekly gig. And I don’t mean “support” financially—it was too late for that. I mean actual, lovey-dovey “support,” the kind you’d find in group therapy sessions or in California. Most LES crowds are so fickle and aloof, I was impressed by the fact that Mo’s had regulars at all; and I was shocked to find the regulars so neighborly and effusive.

Pleasantly shocked. Whereas so many New York showcases feel like pissing contests, this one felt like an impromptu talent show in your grandma’s living room. Granted, the crowd’s unconditional love may have allowed for the bigotry of soft expectations. In the first hour of the show I saw six or eight acts, all of which were mediocre. The notable exception was comedian Seth Herzog’s inspired lip synch to the Wonder Woman theme song. He performed it with abandon, in a sparkly leotard, proving once again that comedy is all about commitment, and that everything is funnier when you can see the outline of the performer’s balls. But after a few soft-spoken girls with guitars—and after it became clear that Herzog, the event’s MC, was going to do the whole show in the leotard—I was ready to leave. It all felt too much like a family talent show. I knew I shouldn’t be critiquing it objectively, but as an outsider, with no prior love for the performers or knowledge of their inside jokes, I couldn’t get in on the cuddly vibe.

As I left, I found myself thinking, ineluctably, about gentrification.

One more LES art space sold to developers. One more domino falling quietly in the direction of a colorless, sterile Manhattan. Anyone who knows anything about real estate—hell, anyone who has rented Rent: The Movie—knows that gentrification is threatening to ruin New York City as we know it. Manhattan is an expensive place to do business, and as the yuppies move in, they price out all the edgy, low-budget institutions that made New York an attractive place to live in the first place. Matt McCarthy, one of the comedians on the bill, joked: “Five years from now you’ll be able to walk by this corner with your kid and say, ‘See that Crate & Barrel, honey? I used to eat fried cheese there.’” I don’t get the inside joke about the fried cheese, either. But I get McCarthy’s point.

Lucky for all of us, I don’t have the time or expertise to write a treatise on economics. But I will say that the ongoing yuppification of New York seems qualitatively different from most of the other excesses of the free market. As I left the warm glow of the moribund living room, my first impulse was to understand the death of Mo’s as another instance of the eternal narrative known as The Man Fucks the People. But I think that’s facile. In this case, the Man is fucking the people, but that’s old news; what makes it man-bites-dog is that the Man is also fucking Himself. And that, according to the rules of neoliberalism, is never supposed to happen.

Most of the horrors that unencumbered capitalism hath wrought—slavery, sweatshops, deforestation, the clubbing of baby seals—are moral horrors, and are to be expected for just that reason. They contravene the rules of human decency, but not the rules of neoliberalism. The market never claimed to have a moral conscience. The best we can hope is that it has a P.R. department. Prototypical gentrification—poor communities, usually of color, being priced out of their traditional neighborhoods—also has a moral dimension. Therefore, according to the logic of capitalism, prototypical gentrification is also to be expected. I’m not saying it should be tolerated; I’m just saying that private firms, as we know, are interested in their bottom line, not in social or ecological well-being per se.

But white-on-white gentrification? Performance spaces giving way to condos and indie record stores falling to Piers 1? This is not a straightforward case of the Man making a dime at the expense of the little guy. It is a case of the Man making a dime by shooting Himself in the foot. And while all the aforementioned ravages of late capitalism might not have surprised Adam Smith, I think yuppification would have.

It’s just common sense: when the last seventy-seat theater becomes a Starbuck’s, New York will no longer be able to call itself the Center of the Universe with a straight face, and its real estate market will begin a downturn. It may take decades, and a few tycoons may pocket a few billion dollars in the process, but the end will come. Slash-and-burn yuppification simply is not sustainable. Consider commercial fisheries who have realized that it is in their best interest to harvest not as many fish as they can, but as many as they can without causing any ecological catastrophes (thus diminishing next year’s catch). Or consider this article from the New Yorker. “Detroit has to change. Detroit won’t change. The two statements seem incompatible, and yet here we are.” Yes, by not investing in oil independence, the Big Three are fucking the consumers, the fish, and the ice caps. But, bizarrely, they are also clearly fucking themselves.

I understand that the market runs on self-interest. But from my (perhaps naïve) perspective, it seems that we need to define self-interest more broadly and more deeply than we do. The real estate CEOs of today should not be content to leave their children an unstable market (especially since, given what we know about American nepotism, their companies will be run by their children.) Ultimately, we should strive for a version of capitalism that attaches a market value to abstract notions like sustainability, cohesiveness, and beauty.