Submitted by Robert Sacco, Dec 29, 2007 09:26

This piece does highlight a larger truth about New York: it is being colonized by a sophist boorish bland suburban culture; in a twist of fate suburban America has become the model for urban America, and New York may be its greatest t and most tragic test case.

That the lovely room at the Pierre Hotel where my octogenarian father, brother and I saw Ms. Kathleen Landis play is closing ("Peoria overtakes the Pierre" might be a suitable headline) is further proof of the homogenizing of New York City into the TV, fast-food, automobile pastiche culture that is bloated and sad America.

While Ms. Landis is a terrific performer deserving of regular gigs here in rooms like the Cafe Pierre, your article fails to mention the incomparable work of the pianist, singer, performer, scholar and persona extraordinaire that is Peter Mintun, who also works this fading circuit. We first saw Mr. Mintun perform at Bemelmans, ante Bloomberg, when the fragrant cigar smoke rose above a mostly quiet, enthralled group of cocktail-sipping patrons listening to the rhapsodies of Mr. Mintun's expert replication of the period between the Wars, presented superbly via his show, in song and style. It was in this wonderfully acrid and dark Bemelmans in the late 90s that we encountered Mr. Mintun at the piano. We wandered in not knowing what to expect; what we got was a different world and moment in time that made me certain, "Only in New York." Mr. Mintun cuts a sleek and credible image of the 1920s and 30s era, like a character from a typical Hollywood film of that time, a time he seems to yearn for so passionately you want to take the trip back with him to know more of what he knows of that period, regardless of your knowledge or initial appreciation of the music he plays so well. Mr. Mintun is a fine musician at the piano with an appealing, almost plaintive quality to his voice, as if he is imploring us to revisit and relive his beloved pop culture of the period made famous and lasting by his music-writing idols. And he is as good a scholar of the music as he is a presenter and performer. Seeing Mr. Mintun at the charming and subdued Bemelmans was a great treat that we took somewhat for granted, to our great chagrin a year or so later. Because like Ms. Landis at the Café Pierre and others of this kind and with this talent, the bar stopped featuring him on those memorable weekend winter nights when he warmed our hearts with his sincere virtuosity at a keyboard of another time.

Why are there no venues for this unique and dwindling breed of performer that Ms. Landis, Mr. Mintun and others represent? Maybe for the same reasons the Democratic Party is almost useless, everything we buy now (mostly from China) is junk, and our culture is coarse and mean and dumb: Bloomberg and his ilk steal our money, take our soul, but try to see to it that we don't harm ourselves with cigars and without seatbelts. Subtract from this stratagem a media mostly unwilling to accurately reflect back to us the enormous loss of cultural intelligence, and the erosion of our troubled circumstance clarifies like when the cream separates in unhomogenized milk. In other words, we've become idiots in a pseudo-sophisticate New York town, where we think we're so hip, but really we're so gone. Remember New York, New York. So nice they named it twice? Well no, not now. Now I think we say it twice to convince ourselves that it still is the New York of legend, with an uncertain troubling question mark replacing the once definitive comma of the phrase. New York? New York. We might as well add, "Yea, I guess."

Bu there are those of us here who know the truth and mourn the end of good hotel bars and settings where those with talent or something in their craw other than the usual can have a performance space. And this goes way beyond the art and music scene; it's everywhere, like Starbucks and corporate franchises in a place where once the water and cream remained separate. But the bottle's been shaken, too much for its own good and for the good of those who are nourished from it.

Not only can it happen here; heartbreakingly, it did.

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.