Whats the point? If you cant pay the rent go find a cheaper space.

cant expect landlords to lose money in the name of experimental music and what is the mayor supposed to do about it anyway?

Get a job.

dont any of these people have jobs?

who really spells it "indy"?

To the trash responding in the first two slots, please go back to the suburban hell you crawled out of.

What they are arguing for is absolutely importnat. Have you ever thought that these people do have jobs, but don't necessarily work the bland 9-to-5 shit you do? Or maybe they are even taking time off from work to do this? Either you don't live in NYC or you don't give a shit about culture and arts.

"cant expect landlords to lose money in the name of experimental music." Seriously, fuck off.

Good coverage, BV!

just a point i'm curious about-
i'm really sad about the closing of tonic, i've had some amazing experiences and seen some amazing shows from people that wouldn't normally get to play in corporate venues. that said...

historically, tonic and places like it were able to even start in areas like the LES because no one wanted to be there years ago. experimental music happens where experimental music will happen, and maybe i'd argue that interesting things shouldn't happen around uninteresting people that occupy these condo's that are going up?

maybe its simply a matter of a new community that needs to be found, so that the condos can follow later on, the rich masses always follow the poor artists communities?

my favorite part about your porous arguments:

-all people that live in condos are bland and boring

-people who have or make money should be willing to lose it to investing in something that is historically a money sieve.

You sound like a bunch of naive, xenophobic hipsters. start something yourselves, sponsor something yourselves. stop complaining start doing.

I fully sympathize with the musicians, venue owners and fans hurt by all this (I should, I am one) and certainly appreciate the arts, but I can't imagine the city making this a priority. There are so many other things that need taxpayer money at the moment that the idea of allocating part of it to monitoring/subsidizing venue rents seems almost silly.

It'd be great if we lived in a city where things like crime, homelessness and unemployment were under control and our biggest problem was where we could see experimental music. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.

Cooper-Moore's comments at today's press conference put this stuff in a very interesting context. He said something like "Thank you Paris, thank you Rome, thank you London and Berlin. You support us. Thank you Japan and Australia."

Thank you India.

I agree that supporting the arts is something that any and every city should do. It's a relatively inexpensive commitment on their part to do. I mean in the scope of things, having some venues that are rent-controlled is a miniscual loss of tax dollars compared to the overall picture, there are some very good benefits in terms of tourism, longetivity of a neighborhood, etc. I mean the city of Brooklyn is actually giving away tens of millions of dollars to build a stadium, why is this any different?