THE LOFT DIARIES: CONFESSIONS OF THE GRUMPY WRITER DOWNSTAIRS

You’d think that living in a loft down by the Port of Tampa would be gritty and authentic. Instead, it’s yuppyville and I've since run from it.

Yes, my place came without rooms - not unlike a warehouse, where only the bathroom is walled-in. And yes, it looked like a warehouse, and yes, it had an inner city location. But this loft was not as skeletal as a warehouse. Fashionably sleek and shiny, it sported stainless steel Euro kitchens, granite counter tops and concrete floors polished to a dazzling gleam. Which is poles apart from the loft’s earliest days when it wasn’t buffed, when automation took industry over, and bluntly-bare, often rat-infested warehouses and light industry factories became the starving artist’s live/work space. It was so raw that when John Cage visited Robert Rauschenberg’s loft, the only place to sit was on his mattress and Cage complained of itching, believing that the mattress had bedbugs.

Today, a struggling artist can’t afford the price of a loft. What was I thinking?
I’m not saying I disliked the shine. I think I did. But do the inhabitants, mostly twenty-something, have to be also about surface? Could a one of them be about more than making money and whoopee? It’s not their age that irritates, it’s their interests – plasma tv’s, sports cars… It’s as if art history and histories of any description are irrelevant. It bothers me that this group has taken up the architectural space that artists have used, without a nod in their direction. It’s like walking on their graves.