The Counterculture is Dead. Bring it Back to Life!

By Roger Paradiso

The announcement that the Village and worldwide counterculture has died should not come as a surprise to those who lived through it and watched its decline.

Walk into any record store and you can see the remnants of that culture. There are plenty of LP collectors interested in the music of the 60s, 70s and 80s. These are long-playing albums pressed on vinyl and having great artwork and liner notes. But the music of classic rock and jazz/blues is now fading into the fog of history. You can say the same for films and every art form.

There will be occasional flashes of nostalgia but the boom is over, baby. The arts in all its forms have been attacked and are starving for lack of revenue and ambitious creative young people. We are losing our culture by denying the young people the ability to afford their culture.

The 21st Century scam streaming economy is ruining our culture. I say ban the stream. Bring back LPs CDs, DVDs and independent films. Don’t talk to me about 5,000 clicks being worth 25 bucks. That’s an insult. Let’s go back to when you paid with cash and not clicks. And everybody got a share of those dollars, especially the artists. I say no more clicks. Clicks are not currency. They have unwired the genetic framework of paying for music, film and other arts with money and artists collecting their share.

Let’s create an economic war to save our artists. Let’s subsidize the art theaters which are now being forced to show second run studio films like Barbie. Barbie should not be allowed in the Village. The Village was the home of the best foreign and domestic independent art films. We had films by Fellini, Bergman, Rossellini, Truffaut, Godard and Kubrick. We also had music by Dylan, Stones, Beatles, Cream, Hendrix and Joplin.

We want our independent arts and artists back in the Village. The younger generation must demand their culture be rewired and respected. Artists must get paid a fair wage for their work. They must demand that local representatives fight for copyrights and artists’ rights.

I have a plan to restart our artist centers around the world, but let’s start in the Village where the counterculture began. How about subsidized housing for seniors and young artists? It could be modeled after Manhattan Plaza which revitalized both the Broadway theater area and the entire art center of Broadway.

I actually think we can pull off the Manhattan Plaza 2. What the Village needs more than ever is an infusion of young artists. They can work at all the clubs, theaters and restaurants. The Village should once again be a fertile field where artists and their ideas can grow. Let’s make the Village from Bleecker Street to the Meatpacking area the new Arts Center of Manhattan. The infrastructure is there. Our politicians and developers must be pushed and pulled together by our remaining young people and activists. Let’s do it!

The Village, once known as the epicenter of the counterculture has been swallowed by developers who gobble up history and create gentrified high rises of mediocrity. This has been going on since the Mayor Koch days. Let’s unite for housing controls and rent regulations for both residential and commercial real estate.

Let’s get all the community groups together and do this before the developers swallows up the remaining clubs, theaters, and restaurants.

Where do we want the new Arts Center of the World? Here in the Village! Let’s do it!