The Visa Diaries

This article caught my eye in the NYTimes the other day. It is about how New York City’s Village is becoming a theme park to its former self. In the Old Days (whenever that was – any time from the 1800s to about 1980 it seems, depending on the revivalist), the Village was a really a bohemian village. Inhabited by all sorts of artistic and/ or gay people who did not fit into mainstream society, they found a community together in downtown New York, and later went on to become famous. Accounts claim it really was a village – things were smaller, cheaper, and less hectic, people knew their neighbors. Actors and writers without trust finds could afford to live there.

The world has obviously changed significantly since then, and one of the ways is that businesses and individuals have become more and more savvy about creating images that can be marketed. Simultaneously, consumers have become more skeptical of those images, and ravenous for something “authentic”. Like other neighborhoods that were the sites of iconic cultural happenings (Haight Ashbury, for example, or a much closer neighbor, Soho) the Village finds itself sought out by people looking for the magic for which it became famous – outsiders finding a home together and having a grand old time, unconscious of how cool they would later be seen to be.

The inevitable truth of course is that the genie is long gone from the bottle – magic exists only as long as it doesn’t quite realize it is magic. As soon as it has self-consciousness of its it-ness, well then, hello tourists and fashion boutiques, hello high rent. Good-bye to that faint, ineffable, je ne sais quoi. Good-bye to the innocence that, by definition, cannot be tried for.

Perhaps the magic of the Village really existed as storied, or perhaps it is only a post-fabricated nostalgic revision – most of us will never know. At the very least, it has been amplified post-facto, like all myths, and the restaurants described in the article are are reinforcing that myth so as to cash in on it. They are more sophisticated and upscale than the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disney Land, or even a place like New Orleans Latin Quarter, but the function is the same: create an exotic experience that people will pay to feel a part of.

The Wonder Wheel at Coney Island

All of this came back to me when I went to Coney Island last weekend for the first time. My brother and his family, including Mr. Ben (age 7) and Miss Rowan (age 5) were visiting, and I thought Coney Island would be fun. It did end up being fun, but only after I got over how run-down it is, how trashy are the clientele and the food, how I was afraid to walk barefoot on the beach for fear of what might be in the sand. After I got over all of that, we had a good old time, and I was struck that Coney Island, which is actually supposed to be a theme park, is not. It is authentically, non-self-consciously what it is, and what it always has been.

This may not always be the case – there are various development plans underway for Coney Island. I say run over there as fast as you can, and live the magic… before it is revived as Magic!(TM).

Well hello again, wonderful wide web!
So, I know a few things in life, and one of them is that when somebody says they’ll do something, and then they don’t, its not a good thing. Like, for example, when I say I’m going to be back online with Visa Diaries (as I said almost a year ago) and then I don’t… well, you all go, “yeah, we’ll see.” And then my credibility is shot, and I have to really prove my intention in order to win you back. So yes, I know all that, and I also know that probably nobody is coming by here much anymore. But nevertheless, I am going to open the windows, dust off the cobwebs, put on a new lick of paint, and start having people over again. If not parties, because Visa Diaries never was a raging party type of place, well then salons, brunches, dinner parties, afternoon tea… Time and place to connect and think about the joy, sorrow, and perversity of a modern life in our modern world. All through shopping of course, because that’s how we do it.

Before we get down to business, I want to say a word about why I stopped VD, and why I am back, and to that end, the purchase of this post is: godaddy domain registry and economy web hosting! Between GoDaddy and WordPress, anybody can have a soapbox with almost universal reach virtually overnight. And each website owner gets to set up their little home on the network in whatever way feels like home. It is truly amazing.

GoDaddy and Wordpress

When I first bought this domain and set up my Wordpress blog on my very own Visadiaries.com URL, it was July of 2006, almost 4 years ago. I was living in London between the first and second years of doing my MFA at Yale. Visa Diaries was the online extension of my undergraduate thesis, in which I had logged and decoded 5 years worth of my credit card purchases, to understand the ‘fantasies’ that I was buying into whenever I plopped down the plastic for a new purchase. At that time, blogging was still kind of new, but gaining steam, and definitely a cool thing to be doing – maybe like Tweeting was a year ago. I was psyched to “have a blog,” and I think also psyched to have a platform in a way. Even though it was before Julie&Julia or this (even closer to home, though conceived completely independently) happened, I think I had an idea about being discovered through my blog… ok that’s an embarrassing thing to admit! However, I believe the lesson in that regard is that “being discovered” actually takes a lot of hard work, discipline, and putting yourself out there again and again, and I didn’t have the drive and focus for that. Poor Julie, as we saw in the movie, sacrificed her health and her marriage for her blog. Anyway, I had a lot going on personally and emotionally as I tried to keep it together in grad school, was confused about ending my relationship and life in London, and then moved to New York and trying to start a new life there. The Visa Diaries fell by the wayside.

Now the dust has settled a bit and the air in my head feels much clearer. I’ve been calling Brooklyn, which I love, home for almost 3 years; I have a good job doing graphic design for the City of New York; and, most excitingly, am engaged to be married this coming September to a truly wonderful man. And I’ve found myself missing the Visa Diaries quite a lot. As unlikely as it seemed, examining my purchases was a very profound road to self-discovery. Every time I wrote a post, a new insight would reveal itself to me, and it was incredibly satisfying. Plus, some people read it and seemd to like it, and that was really cool too. Even my dad read it, and that was super-cool . So those are the reasons I’m back – I believe both in living an examined life, and also in starting where you are, and somehow the things I buy turned out to be a very real entry point into making some meaning out of this crazy life. So, if anybody is out there, hello and thank you for reading, and I promise I will be back regularly.

here’s to peace, love, and a new day-
Kate