Saturday Commentary and Review #185

Ukraine is Running Out of People, DeepSeek and the AI Industry's "Sputnik Moment", Trump Regime Suspending NGO Funding, The #MAGA Class, Death of NYC Bohemia

Every weekend (almost) I share five articles/essays/reports with you. I select these over the course of the week because they are either insightful, informative, interesting, important, or a combination of the above.

One subject that I have not covered over the years on this Substack has been demography and the crisis of collapsing birth rates across Europe and elsewhere. It’s not that I think that shrinking numbers are a good thing, it’s just that I, like pretty much everyone else, don’t have a feasible plan to reverse the trend. “History belongs to those who show up”, is my statement on the issue.

It was only a few decades ago that alarmist books about the world’s population explosion were detailing how there soon wouldn’t be enough resources to maintain such numbers, and that conflict would break out to ensure access to them, paired with mass famine and pandemic diseases. These days, positive birth rates are almost entirely confined to the African continent, meaning that the alarmism of the 1970s can be quietly shelved for now.

There are some people who have defended the notion that the world already has too many people, and that shrinking populations at home is a “good thing” anyway. They usually point to things such as environmental considerations, the “quality of most people today”, or the soaring costs of urban living when making these arguments. Every single one of these people who have tried to make this argument to me come from countries with very large populations at present. I am certain that this permits them to make such arguments, as they lack the psychological conditions present in those whose existence is more precarious.

“I think Ukraine wishes it had more bodies to send to the front against Russia”, is one of my immediate go-to retorts to those who claim that population decline is a good thing. To trot out a very old cliche, there is safety in numbers. During the Interwar era, the subject of France’s decline in births was never too far away from being front and centre in political debate. France was Europe’s first country to suffer from a drop in birth rates, leading it to fall behind Germany. The horrid losses of the First World War meant that France viewed itself as under the threat of national extinction if it couldn’t match their neighbours to the east. Birth rates are not just a matter of culture and society, or even economics. They are just as important for self-preservation, something that Ukraine is learning the hard way:

Even before the Russian invasion, Ukraine was facing a demographic crisis. The population began aging way back in the 1960s. Then, in the 1990s, the disintegration of the Soviet Union led to economic collapse, leaving millions of men and women without a future. They had fewer children, or they left the country.

The Russian invasion has now turned the demographic crisis into a catastrophe. Almost 7 million people, mostly women and children, have fled abroad since February 24, 2022, the day of the invasion. At least 5 million Ukrainians are now living under Russian occupation, cut off from the rest of the country by trenches and minefields. On top of that are the tens of thousands of civilians who have been killed and the up to 100,000 fallen soldiers.

In the early 1990s, early in the country’s independence, Ukraine had a population of 51.5 million. Today, only an estimated 29 million people live in Ukrainian areas under Kyiv’s control. The populations of industrialized countries begin shrinking when the birthrate falls below 2.1 children per woman, and in the EU, the rate is 1.5. In Ukraine, though, the birthrate has fallen below one, according to estimates by leading demographer Ella Libanova, head of the Institute for Demography and Social Studies in Kyiv.

Ukraine’s population has almost halved itself in less than two generations. Nor has this halving been uniform, as Ukrainians, like almost everyone else these days, are much older on average than they were back in 1991. This can be argued as an auto-genocide. It’s also the main reason why Ukraine has stubbornly refused to lower its conscription age to 18, keeping it at 25 after lowering it from 27.

Here is a very typical story:

Andriy Bohdan is in good spirits despite it all, gushing about the region he calls home. The 57-year-old has been mayor of Horodnya for the last 22 years and is also head of the "hromada” of the same name, a kind of federation of municipalities that includes the town and all of the surrounding villages, right up to the borders with Russia and Belarus. Bohdan receives his visitors in a sparsely furnished building that serves as his office, his mobile phone ringing without pause. Files are piled up on the tables and assistants are rushing back and forth through the offices. The 2025 budget is currently being compiled.

A man with sharp eyes and a broad smile, Bohdan says that much has changed for the better since Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, particularly in people’s minds. "The work ethic is better than it used to be, as is the way we treat nature and the environment,” he says.

Horodnya is a town with clean, broad streets flanked by well-tended gardens in front of small wooden houses and tidy playgrounds. Empty houses and even completely abandoned hamlets can be found in the forests surrounding the town. The countryside is deserted but not neglected.

"The natural scenery is beautiful,” Bohdan says, and the people are tough and hard-working. "There is a lot of potential here, for tourism, for example,” he says. "But the demographic situation is a big problem.”

And then:

Bohdan has been around for every step of the downfall. In the 1980s, as the Soviet Union was nearing its end, 16,000 people still lived in town, a third more than today. An engineer by training, Bohdan’s first job was with Rubin, a Moscow-based television manufacturer that had a subsidiary in town. "In the Soviet Union, our city was the only district capital where color televisions were produced,” he says proudly.

But then, the Soviet Union collapsed. The factory went broke in 1997, the mayor says, costing 2,400 people their jobs. One year later, the military air base also closed down, the second largest employer in the region at the time. "Seven-hundred people were without work and all the soldiers were gone,” Bohdan says. Suddenly, Horodnya had one of the highest unemployment rates in all of Ukraine.

"The market economy was only slowly gaining a foothold here,” says Bohdan. Many have left, he says, finding jobs in places like Poland, Italy or elsewhere in Europe, the men as seasonal laborers, the women in nursing.

This accurately captures the situation all across post-communist Europe. When state industries collapsed, unemployment soared. Those that were able to leave did so. For those countries “lucky” enough to have joined the EU, they experienced a continuous wave of people (especially the young) moving west to countries like Germany and the UK to find work, leaving behind a lot of empty villages and shrinking towns.

In the villages surrounding Horodnya, the elderly are frequently the only ones left. When she got started here in the late 1990s, says village head Lyudmila Kutsa, there was more of everything: more people, more houses, more life.

……..

Since 1998, she has been responsible for nine tiny hamlets in the forest. There used to be 10, but one of them was abandoned completely. Another is home to just a single person, with others having populations of three or five. Some 800 people used to live in the area, but now the total is below 300 and only two of nine village shops remain open. "People used to come to me,” she says, "but now I have to visit them.”

My village had around 300 residents in the late 1960s. Today it has maybe 40. My mother’s village counted 600 heads back then. Today it has at most 60. There are many reasons to account for this, but it is the norm in post-communist Europe.

This is where Der Spiegel goes off of the rails:

In the mid-term, she hopes that Ukraine becomes a member of the European Union. "It would be best for our family if we could easily travel home without all the paperwork – even if only for a visit.”

Ukraine’s demographic fate does, in large measure, depend on its partners in the West. A certain degree of depopulation is unavoidable, demographer Libanova believes. The population is simply too old. This trend is far from unique to Ukraine. Russia is also facing similar problems, though the country’s population is four times larger.

There are, however, tools available to Ukraine to fight against extreme depopulation, Libanova believes. "Not only must Ukrainians be encouraged to return, but people from other countries must be attracted as well,” the expert says. An improvement in life quality could also contribute to a rising birthrate.

Before that happens, however, the war must come to an end. The security guarantees that Ukraine receives will then be decisive. People would hardly return to a country facing an indefinite threat from Russia. Indeed, more would likely leave. EU membership would be crucial for the country’s economic future, says Libanova. "It would stimulate growth and modernize the economy.”

EU membership for Ukraine would see another catastrophic outflow of its people, as the continent’s larger economies act as magnets. Industries in Germany, Holland, Belgium, Spain, etc. would love to have access to Ukrainian labour.

The only thing that this last segment of the report gets right is that Ukraine needs peace in order to try and halt its population collapse.

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Despite my friend Scott Locklin’s protests, I think that we have reached a point where LLMs can no longer be ignored if we want to maintain a good understanding of where the action is today. So much money is being poured into AI that downplaying it seems like a bad bet. Maybe Scott is right and maybe I am wrong? He knows his shit, and I admit that I certainly don’t.

There are many of you that know your shit too when it comes to matters AI. I have read the comments when this subject has been brought up in the past. I think that we can agree that AI is now an industry that is seen as critical to the economic and security futures of countries. Why else would so much money be poured into it? The new Trump regime recently announced that it was setting up a $500 billion(!) AI program to be led by Sam Altman and OpenAI.

Three years ago, LLMs were dismissed as “glorified chatbots”, but I am beginning to see some naysayers change their minds. At the same time, I am forced to ask: what are the real-world applications that are facilitated by LLMs today that matter? Once again, I ask that those of you in the know address this question in the comments section below.

One of the main themes of AI in media today is that of an “AI arms race”, with the USA pitted against China (and with the rest far, far behind these two leaders). As I’m sure that all of you are already aware, Trump’s AI announcement was quickly followed by an earthquake out of China: the proclamation that DeepSeek, a Chinese AI system was able to better its American competition in performance, and at a much, much lower cost. Friend to this Substack Marc Andreessen described the announcement as the “Sputnik moment for AI”, meaning that it has produced such a shock for the US AI industry that it now has to scramble to adjust, recognizing that there is a new reality in their world.

I don’t know how factual the DeepSeek announcement really is, and I am already seeing people argue that the ridiculously low cost of the product is due to certain other costs being excluded. Time will tell. In the meantime, here’s an article on DeepSeek and Chinese economic dynamism from a source who is very bullish on China:

It has become fashionable among Western commentators to predict the decline of China’s economic “miracle.”

Slowing growth, a troubled real estate sector and demographic shifts are regularly cited as evidence of the malaise. Tensions with the United States – especially under the past two administrations – have further fueled this narrative.

Yet the picture is far more nuanced. Under President Donald Trump, Washington has so far avoided the most sweeping tariffs and measures that his campaign rhetoric suggested were a done deal.

However, three days before his inauguration, Trump remarked: “I anticipate that we will address numerous issues together, starting right away. We talked about trade balance, Fentanyl, TikTok, and various other topics. President Xi and I will do everything we can to make the world more peaceful and secure.”

These comments suggest an implicit recognition that China’s economy is evolving, not collapsing – and that the United States, despite its rhetoric, understands Beijing’s structural shifts.

Let’s jump ahead to the DeepSeek stuff:

An exemplar of this private-sector dynamism is DeepSeek, founded by hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng. The company recently unveiled its R1 large language model (LLM), a groundbreaking AI system developed on a relatively modest budget.

DeepSeek’s trajectory challenges the notion that Chinese firms rely solely on state-driven innovation. Its story instead highlights the private sector’s capacity to overcome domestic hurdles and external restrictions alike.

Lessons from early US-led AI breakthroughs steered DeepSeek toward an innovative path that diverges sharply from Western norms: the company developed novel training methods and “pure reasoning capabilities” without any supervised data, all while rejecting the typical model of massive resource investment seen in America.

Some specifics:

Operating under hardware constraints imposed by sanctions, DeepSeek created unique optimization techniques to fully utilize less powerful GPUs, a feat that has surprised US researchers.

Using just 2,048 Nvidia H800 GPUs and US$5.6 million, it trained a model with 671 billion parameters – comparable to efforts by American giants such as OpenAI and Google, which often spend multiples of that amount.

Again, I don’t know how true the attached cost really is….but what is more interesting to me is that they were able to do this under the sanctions regime that restricts Beijing’s access to certain chips.

China’s tech successes:

The country continues to leverage its vast manufacturing prowess, built over decades, to dominate high-tech industries such as renewable energy, electric vehicles and AI. DeepSeek’s rise mirrors the broader trajectory of firms like Huawei and ByteDance, which have transformed from imitators into global innovators.

At the same time, China leads the world in AI-related patents and boasts one of the largest pools of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Its digital economy accounts for over 40% of GDP, driven by e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com.

Newcomers like DeepSeek are pushing boundaries further by demonstrating that even global-scale AI can emerge from smaller budgets if paired with the right mix of technical expertise and business acumen.

The author credits China’s massive industrial base for its growing success in the tech sector, breaking it down as follows:

It is a vast, integrated network of suppliers, logistics hubs, specialized clusters and infrastructure that supports a range of high-value industries.

1. Scale and Integration
   China’s manufacturing network is unmatched in its breadth and depth. From basic components to sophisticated semiconductor machinery, the country’s supply chain spans virtually every sector. Clusters of specialized suppliers allow companies to iterate quickly, reduce costs, and rapidly scale up production. This structural advantage has proven invaluable in high-growth areas like electric vehicles, batteries, and consumer electronics.

2. Robust Infrastructure
   Massive public investments in roads, rails, and ports have created a highly efficient transportation network that streamlines the flow of goods. The ability to move large volumes of materials across vast distances at competitive costs is a key reason China has managed to maintain its status as the “world’s factory.” In turn, this infrastructure underpins the development of cutting-edge sectors—from biotech to AI hardware.

3. Economies of Scale and Rapid Prototyping
   Nowhere else can companies scale from concept to mass production as swiftly or cost-effectively as in China. Thanks to a dense network of component suppliers, R&D centers, and testing facilities, Chinese firms can compress development cycles, a vital advantage in fast-moving fields such as renewables and advanced electronics. This synergy fuels innovation by allowing ideas to be tested, refined, and brought to market quickly.

4. Policy Support for Upgrading
   Beijing actively promotes the modernization of traditional manufacturing. Initiatives like “Made in China 2025” channel resources into high-tech industries, including robotics, aerospace, and new energy vehicles. These policies also encourage collaboration between SOEs and private firms, catalyzing innovation while safeguarding strategic sectors. The result is a manufacturing ecosystem that is continually moving up the value chain – evident in the success of companies like DeepSeek, which benefit from local suppliers of AI hardware and services.

A final word from the author:

DeepSeek’s achievements exemplify a broader narrative of resilience, where challenges – though significant – are neither insurmountable nor indicative of inevitable decline.

A more nuanced perspective reveals China’s transition from an export-driven, investment-heavy model to one centered on domestic consumption and technological innovation. Far from being abandoned, its vast manufacturing infrastructure is being upgraded and redeployed to support a high-tech future.

This evolution is a testament to China’s resilience, ingenuity and capacity for reinvention – qualities that continue to reshape the possibilities for others in the global economy.

Please share your thoughts to help us better understand just what is really going on here.

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It’s been a heady first two weeks on the Trump47 regime, as the President and his administration have purposely released a continuous stream of executive orders to roll back existing policies and undo much of the perceived harm introduced by previous governments. The sheer number of releases is intended to overwhelm opposition to these changes, with theory being that there are simply too many to fight all at once as resources are finite and attention is divided.

Legal challenges to these orders are inevitable, with some already having been filed. I do not know how many will survive, if any at all….but I must admit that it is very fun to watch. And it’s only getting more fun, as the knife is now being applied to the NGO Industrial Complex. Longtime readers of this Substack have learned just how important the NGO sector is in US foreign policy in that it works as a trojan horse inside of countries targeted for regime change. I have often described them as “end runs around democracy”. For those of you interested in learning about this, I suggest that you read this entry in my series on colour revolutions and regime change:

Today I learned that all NGOs working in foreign countries that are funded by the USGov are having their funding suspended for 90 days. This is already sending shock waves around the world, as not only are State Department officials losing their shit, but local NGO employees are wondering how they can continue operating in the meantime:

People are quickly learning just how much of a footprint the USA has in their countries and how significant an influence they have on politics in their homelands. All of their Trojan horses are being exposed at the same time, meaning that it will take some time for most people to digest the sheer scale and size of US meddling abroad.

Mainstream media is already beginning to push back against this funding suspension, using their typical tricks to try and paint this order as potentially “risking the safety of millions”:

Marocco strode into the offices of USAid this week flanked by members of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”, a special group Trump created, with clipboards in hand. Several hours later, almost 60 senior officials from the office had been put on paid leave. Veteran aid officials with decades of experience at the agency were escorted from the building by security, according to current and former USAid officials, and their email accounts were frozen.

“They wanted to decapitate the organisation,” said a current USAid employee. “And they did it by pushing aside the leadership and decades of experience.”

The purge followed confusion within USAid over the stop-work orders drafted by Marocco and signed by Marco Rubio, the new secretary of state, leading some to believe that limited actions could continue if funds had already been committed.

The Guardian UK has decided to focus its attacks on Mr. Marocco.

“We have identified several actions within USAid that appear to be designed to circumvent the president’s executive orders and the mandate from the American people,” wrote Jason Gray, USAid’s acting administrator, saying the relevant staff would be put on administrative leave.

Some employees have openly rebelled. In an email to all staff seen by the Guardian, Nicholas Gottlieb, USAid’s director of employee and labor relations, said that appointees at USAid and “Doge” had “instructed me to violate the due process of our employees by issuing immediate termination notices”.

Calling the requests “illegal”, Gottlieb said he “will not be a party to a violation of [due process]”. Hours later, he was put on administrative leave.

In a separate email to the sidelined USAid senior staff, Gottlieb wrote that the “materials show no evidence that you engaged in misconduct”.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

The chaotic rollout of the ban has led to whiplash for critical programs around the world, from emergency Aids relief (which has been granted a waiver), to clean-water and sanitation programs, to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, which the Washington Post reported on Friday had gone offline.

Yet there are few details of a vast review program, which is supposed to evaluate thousands of foreign aid grants as well as an expected torrent of waiver requests. And a number of the senior USAid staff put on administrative leave were lawyers who had helped prepare requests for exemptions from the foreign aid freeze, sources said.

Demoralization:

Previous cables indicated that the people involved would include Marocco or the new director of policy planning, Michael Anton, another political appointee. The state department declined to answer questions from the Guardian about who is evaluating the reviews and how many staff had been detailed to the process.

“We’re all trying to figure out, is there a review process? Who’s part of that review?” said the former senior USAid official. “Is it Pete Marocco and his two best friends?”

At USAid, other directives have been enacted that have both defunded and demoralised staff. Photographs of aid programs around the world have been literally stripped off the walls after a “directive has been issued to remove all artwork and photographs from the offices and common spaces across all buildings”.

Musk’s “efficiency department” has crowed about slashing $45m in scholarships for students from authoritarian Burma.

The $40bn a year that the US spends on foreign aid is less than 1% of its budget. But the US spends $4 out of every $10 spent globally on humanitarian aid, according to the state department, and the sudden cutoff has led to thousands of layoffs among US contractors and local partners around the world.

And of course:

A former USAid official said the decisions could put millions of people around the world at risk.

“If there’s a tropical cyclone that hits Cox’s Bazar tomorrow, then how are you going to save all those people, and then how are you going to rebuild if there’s a stop-work order?” said a former senior USAid official, referring to the city in Bangladesh where more than 1 million Rohingya refugees are living. “You could have people sitting there for 90 days and sitting and waiting for what? That’s what worries more.”

Critics who say that this order effectively reduces US influence abroad are absolutely correct….but what if this is part of a widely-assumed fundamental change in how the USA conducts its foreign policy?

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To me, the big difference between 2017 and 2025 in the USA is that Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans seem to have all the energy sapped out of them this time around. Demoralization and recriminations have set in, with a recognition that they indeed did lose the election and that Americans have rejected their vision for governance. The kids are calling this a “vibe shift”. What I see is that the initiative has passed from one group (the activist wing of the Democrats) to another (#MAGA).

It is no longer “uncool” to be #MAGA, judging from what I see on social media. The cultural vanguard of this movement is young, and they have grown in both size and confidence. Naturally, they are a varied bunch, but what is important to recognize is that they have infused the political right with a sense of optimism, and of purpose as well. The excesses of the activist’s social experimentation led many people to defect to Trump this time around, with BigTech being the best example. People naturally follow their elites, and elites are informed by what they learn from people who they respect (whether that’s a good thing or not depends on your perspective).

This shift reminds me of the move away from hippiedom to yuppiedom made by the Boomers by the 1980s. Was that necessarily a good thing? I’ll leave that up to you to decide, but I think that this shift is real. It seems to be that scolding is experiencing returns that are diminishing at an increasingly rapidly rate, and that publicly supporting Trump is no longer confined to people in flyover country, young men at campus fraternities, etc. It is now normalized in the culture, something that it had not achieved during Trump45.

This normalization does not mean the end of opposition, nor even of media attacks. Case in point: this report in New York Magazine that is making the rounds:

It’s Monday, January 20, the first night of Donald Trump’s second presidency, and just a couple blocks from the Capitol Building that his now-pardoned MAGA army swarmed four years and 14 days ago, there is, as there has been for the past several nights in restaurants, hotel ballrooms, and lobbying offices, a party for people who have never been happier about the direction in which this country is heading. They are drinking, smoking, flirting, networking, but mostly congratulating one another on their big win.

This party is at Butterworth’s, a new dimly lit bistro that has become a hot spot for the right in part because one of its investors is Raheem Kassam, once the editor-in-chief of the U.K. edition of Breitbart. On the menu are themed cocktails with names like American Carnage and the Second Term. In the middle of the room, in a hip-hugging emerald ball gown and a hefty string of pearls, is Tanya Posobiec, the wife of Jack Posobiec, a far-right activist and onetime Pizzagate pusher. She has just arrived from one of the president’s three official inaugural balls and is telling me about how splendid her night has been. She even met Mike Tyson and Conor McGregor. She’s surprised, she admits, that despite the horrible traffic, the below-freezing weather, and the general pandemonium, it’s been a no-drama weekend. “I haven’t heard anyone complain,” she says, almost shrieking with glee. “It’s such a positive vibe.”

“No resistance in sight”:

For the first time in several administrations — the last inauguration, of course, was marred by the pandemic and an insurrection, though nobody here would call it that, and the one before that was surrounded by unfriendly protests — this long weekend has been an unfettered celebration. No resistance in sight. Everywhere, across the capital, people are comparing invitations and wondering, How did that person get into that party? and, as usually follows that question, Why wasn’t I invited? As one 28-year-old conservative influencer, Xaviaer DuRousseau, tells me, “It’s Republican Coachella, and Donald Trump is our Beyoncé.” (He kept his weekend organized on a color-coded spreadsheet in intervals of 30 minutes.)

“Obnoxious”:

It’s easy to see the festivities as an obnoxious victory lap of the MAGA coalition, and of course they are. Conservatism — as a cultural force, not just a political condition — is back in a real way for the first time since the 1980s. But here in D.C., among the tourists from Tampa, the donors, and the last politicians Trump whipped into submission, one can also witness the emerging influence of a newer type of conservative. They are not disenfranchised or working class or anti-elite or many of the other adjectives used to describe Trump supporters since 2016. Rather, they are young, imposingly well connected, urban, and very online. They are rebels once again storming Capitol Hill, though without the pathetic scariness of the January 6 rioters.

They are crypto nerds and influencer girlies and recent MAHA converts and gays of all stripes, plus your standard-fare Rogan-listening bros. Few of them would call themselves Republican, lest they be tarred RINO. They refer to their political affiliation, almost always, as the “movement.” Some are the black sheep at their own family Thanksgivings, yet they project confidence that they’re the relevant ones now. Many are hot enough to be extras in the upcoming American Psycho remake.

“A massive cultural realignment”:

Even up until the election, many liberals who still thought of themselves as the owners of mainstream culture dismissed this scene as fringe. And it is unclear who is seriously serious about their beliefs and who is a grifter doing it for the bit. But a massive cultural realignment is taking place, and now this set of shitposters is in the same league as an entirely new Establishment, which includes not only the tech overlords (Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos) but also a growing number of celebrities (Carrie Underwood, the VillagePeople, Snoop Dogg, and Jewel). Kim Kardashian is posting photos of the First Lady. Even Spotify hosted an inauguration brunch. (Meanwhile, all the progressive institutions — Hollywood, college campuses, the mainstream media — feel like they’re collapsing simultaneously.) “We were the underdogs for so long. Now every last foe is a friend,” Wexler tells me. “Trump winning is the first step of the real work we have to do. It’ll culturally trickle down.”

Click here to read this long-winded collection of resentments in full.

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We end this weekend’s SCR with a book review that laments the death of bohemian culture in NYC’s Greenwich Village:

Reading David Browne’s Talkin’ Greenwich Village helped me make sense of my own experience as a romantic young artist in New York who was driven not only by nostalgia, but by a deep need for artistic community. The book, essentially a constellation of biographies of key Village musicians (Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Peter, Paul and Mary, Eric Andersen, Phil Ochs, Joni Mitchell, Suze Rotolo, The Roches, National Lampoon, and Suzanne Vega) that also touches on the history of spaces (Kettle of Fish, Café Wha?, The Gaslight, Café Au Go Go, the Blues Project, Blue Note, The Bitter End, and the Village Vanguard), demonstrates that bohemians and bohemia are symbiotic: The place and the people co-create each other when the underlying conditions are right.

The Village had all the ingredients of a perfect urban ecosystem: charming old-world architecture, deep history, and a multiethnic character; affordable rent, a working-class Italian community that resisted rapid gentrification; ample public space (Washington Square Park), and a robust network of platforms for artistic expression. It resisted exploitation, mass demolition, and unchecked gentrification for much of the twentieth century. It had just enough charm and architectural dignity to be appealing, situated in Lower Manhattan, yet it remained a little too violent and working-class to draw the wealthiest mid-century elite.

The Village was rough and beautiful. It was jazz and folk, black and white, gay and straight. A pedestrian walking down MacDougal Street in the early 1960s would hear a cacophony of “strumming, coffee machines, and smatterings of applause” from coffeehouses and clubs. It was a place where a young Ornette Coleman could “dyna[mite] known boundaries,” and young folkies from out of town could enter a “more liberating world” just by knocking on the right door (often that of Village fixture, guitar teacher, and blues singer Dave Van Ronk).

Click here to read this review in its entirety.

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