Over the last week or so, there has been a vigorous online debate about the contents of an interview with the Tampa band Merchandise published by the Pitchfork writer Jenn Pelly on the website dazeddigital.com. The interview is a virtual treasure trove of priceless quotes for those interested in the follies of youthful philosophizing and hipster literary pretentions. Merchandise was recently signed to the British independent record label 4AD (home to indie superstars like The National, Bon Iver, and Iron and Wine – among others). By all accounts, and based on my own limited exposure to their music, these guys are talented musicians and they are probably going to be very big. So what’s all the fuss?
Well, in the course of his interview, vocalist Carson Cox spoke about his work and his hometown of Tampa in terms like this: "I'm proud of the fact that we did this in a cultural wasteland, that we made something we think is intelligent in a place where they just don't want anything intelligent”. Cue the internet outrage.
This is where I get a little squirmy with the vitriol being directed at these guys. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re just as naive and misguided as everyone else does, but perhaps it’s for different reasons. Whenever somebody says something negative about Tampa (or anywhere else for that matter), there emerges almost instantaneously a group of defenders of the area that all sound like they work for the state tourism board. When somebody accuses you of being unintelligent and culturally bereft, to point out to them that we are home to the Dali Museum and the Chihuly collection just makes you seem ridiculous. It’s as if people think that, with enough persuasion, we can convince anyone that Tampa is a great town. We can’t. And we shouldn’t try to. Tampa is a great town for a certain type of person (self motivated, immune to insults and humidity, capable of handling failure and rejection, etc.) and it’s not a great town for other types (lazy, entitled, hipper-than-thou douchebags). This is exactly as it should be. Part of what we all love about Tampa is that it actively encourages those types of people to leave. It’s a self filtering machine. And this is where I take umbrage with Cox and others of his ilk; he seems to be exactly the type of person that usually gets propelled out of Tampa like a magnet with the wrong polarity, and yet he’s still here, and he’s still bitching about being here. In public.
We’re from Tampa. We don’t need self esteem. We are not strivers. We are not ambitious. This doesn’t mean that we won’t work tirelessly to express ourselves or improve our communities, it just means that we know that the recognition we receive will be virtually non-existent, but we will know what we have done and those that know us will know and appreciate it too. One of the things that I always say I love about Tampa is that when something cool happens, there’s a good chance that you either did it yourself or you know the person responsible. I don’t have any real gripe with New York or Portland or San Francisco - there’s much to love in all of those places - but I do take offense when someone I know moves to New York and three months later they are telling me that “their city” is the greatest city on Earth. You didn’t build that. You paid the price of admission, and that’s fine. Some people like to do things themselves and some people like to hire someone else. To each his own, but if we are going to apply a “cool factor” to each individual, I will always argue that those who do it themselves are cooler. And poor people are always cooler than rich people. And the Yankees suck. Sorry, but that’s just the way it works.
So I’m not surprised when somebody like Lena Dunham says that we can’t afford to have the Patti Smith of our generation moving to Tampa. The article’s writer, Jenn Pelly, is living in Lena Dunham’s New York and deriding the horrors of Nebraska Avenue and Alpine Liquors. These “kids” were just recently introduced to Patti Smith by reading her National Book Award winner “Just Kids”. Smith wasn’t even on their radar until she made it to the top of the New York Times bestsellers. And now they imagine themselves inhabiting that same New York. That New York doesn’t exist anymore. That New York was a collection of Nebraska Avenues and Alpine Liquors – and cool people. Whether or not you think that Tampa has what it takes to nurture those same sorts of cool people doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the people that live here – and choose to stay - do. And that’s what’s so annoying about Cox’s attitude. He doesn’t get it, and yet he’s still here. He’s supposed to be an artist with an ability to see what lies beneath the surface, and everything that’s cool about Tampa is beneath the surface. Cox is seeing Tampa through the eyes of a New Yorker, and still he stays. We’ve always viewed ourselves as a sort of anti-New York that doesn’t open itself immediately to the casual observer. It takes patience, and perseverance, and creativity. I’ve said for years that I’m going to make some bumper stickers with a new twist on a clichéd old saying: “Tampa: nice place to live, wouldn’t want to visit.”