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Getting Hip to New York
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Getting Hip to New York
In the 1970s and 1980s if you wanted to know what was hip, avant-garde, outrageous in New York, you read The Village Voice. It was that simple. The Voice, as natives call it, had the pulse on downtown. It was hip to the latest in music, theatre, books, art and film. And then The Voice lost its edge.
Editors moved in and out faster than New York Yankee second-string catchers were traded. A chain of weekly papers acquired the Voice, fired many of its homegrown editors, and replaced it with a national voice. It turned the hippest rag of New York into a pasteurized shadow of itself with the exceptions of reviewers J. Hoberman on film, Michael Feingold on theatre, Robert Sietsma on dining, and Wayne Barrett’s exposes. A dark shot of espresso turned into instant coffee.
Skeptics said when an English company introduced Time Out New York in the mid 1990s as a stateside version of Time Out London there was no place for it in New York. The Voice was already hip and outrageous. But timing is everything.
Just as the Voice started to fade, Time Out New York (TONY) stole its thunder. Aimed squarely at single, adventurous Generation X and Yers, TONY has by far the best listings of what to do in New York. Is Malcolm Gladwell reading from Blink? Is saxophone honcho Josh Redman performing at the Village Vanguard? What revivals are showing at the Film Forum? What galleries are displaying the must-see shows? What stand-up comics are ready to turn into the next Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld? Try TONY, not the Voice.
Even TONY’s restaurant columns do the best job on which eateries are new. Its best bar issue is a must-read as is its issues devoted to cheapest places to dine. A new column “Drink Up” tells you which hip bars to visit such as Spitzer’s Corner on Rivington Street and The Bourgeois Pig on East Seventh Street. Its major limitations are its theatre and film reviews, which are about 150 words and lack the finesse of the Voice. But for what’s hip in NY, it’s TONY.
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