Check The Math Here, Check In Ten Years

Los Super Elegantes “Where Is The Whiskey?” – I like Los Super Elegantes quite a bit – I’ve written about them twice here, and have included them in my ASAP column and in some DJ sets that I’ve done in the past year. They are a clever, interesting pop group and so it didn’t take much to convince me to see them play a free show yesterday, especially when it was early enough that I could make it home in time for the season premiere of The Wire. Unfortunately, the band happened to be playing at one of the most subtly icky and strangely uncomfortable venues that I have ever visited. There was something rather unsettling about the scene at the Starbucks Salon, and it’s difficult to express why that is without coming across as a total misanthrope. Everything about the place – a “nomadic interactive coffeehouse, gallery, and performance venue” – felt unreal and fake, as though the project was to create in real life an environment that mimicked the sort of venues you would see on tv crossed with the most ambitious fantasies of an earnest youth marketer. Imagine the coffeehouse from Friends mixed with The Bronze from Buffy, but designed with the “urban lifestyle” aesthetic of The Fader. Everyone in the place seemed as though they were cast, leaving me to feel as though I’d stumbled onto a set.

Not to put down any of the (I’m sure quite lovely) people in attendance, but to give you an idea of the general vibe in the room, you should imagine one of those McDonalds ads featuring generic affluent multi-cultural “hipsters.” All of the archetypes were present, including the skinny white guy with perfect cheekbones and blonde dreadlocks. There’s nothing very objectionable about these people, and the intention of presenting art and music is fine and admirable at face value, but it’s hard to shake off the creeping feeling that this was in fact the prototype of a future in which Starbucks and other like-minded companies could successfully colonize the live music market with thousands of bland approximations of small clubs in every desirable marketplace in the country. A lot of my discomfort in this venue is tied to feeling insecure in the presence of attractive, obviously wealthy Soho people, but there certainly is something to fear in this sort of aggressive corporate expansion into the arts. If this event yields a packed house in the middle of a city overflowing with galleries and live music, just how enthusiastically would it be embraced in a place with far fewer options? (Click here for Los Super Elegantes’ official site.)