Maggie's Farm

Same experience here while I was in NYC. Mid to late '90s. The Voice was well into the territory Knish describes, a smear of malignant white noise. But great for finding out what was going on; between that and the New Yorker magazine you could get a handle on most of what was happening you might want to see. I, to my surprise, really liked the New Yorker; it was fairly cheap considering it came weekly, and usually there was at least one long piece in it worth reading.

I got a nosefull of the alternative in NYC. In DC I had dated David Korn's intern/assistant - he covered the DC politics for The Nation & various other lefty outfits. When I moved to NYC the girlfriend of a college buddy of mine worked at the Nation; for a while I dated a girl who worked at the New York Review of Books. Nice folks to have a drink with. Don't hand them the keys to the car.

I also did some did some freelance journalism & I think I got a few items in the Voice, or an associated paper - food, music & art review type pieces. Can't remember. Wrote a ton of that kind of thing for the City's various other free weeklies.

Anyway. My (subset of my) generation was very into the "Alternative", starting with music in the '80s & branching out into "lifestyles". Anybody remember the pre-internet Re-Search books?

Outside the music which I adored I never bought it, especially the grander notions of building a sustained self-supporting truly alternative way of life. I kept thinking about the numbers, even back then when I was an economic illiterate. What were they going to do? Base a thriving economy on irony and vacations?