OPENER

Hello, dear readers. It’s me, Mandy, your devoted managing editor. It’s finally my turn to pen this missive, and by golly, I’m gonna give it my all. Here goes!

In the fall of 2022, I wrote a story about one of my favorite bands of that year, a trio of freshfaced youths who called themselves Horsegirl. They had just left their hometown of Chicago to start anew in New York City. While they expressed enthusiasm about their new home, they seemed wistful and a little homesick.

Guitarist-vocalist Penelope Lowenstein said she was “craving Chicago.” Drummer Gigi Reese said the whole thing was very bittersweet, that “it is a little bit hard to think that we’re going to write our second record here. I don’t want to abandon the idea of us being from Chicago, and Chicago being such a big point of inspiration for us.”

It got me thinking: Why do we leave? Why do we go to these overstuffed places that don’t need us? In the mind of a young creative, New York City and Los Angeles are the metaphorical shining cities on the hill, the places where, if you work hard enough, wait enough tables, live in a shitty, overpriced apartment long enough, that eventually, all your dreams will become reality.

I think this is both true and not true. Or perhaps more accurately, it’s true for some very lucky people, and it isn’t true for most of us. More than anything, I’ve come to believe that these cities just have good PR.

As I’ve mentioned to you a few times now, I moved to Baltimore, Maryland, last year after nearly a decade of being broke in New York City. I decided to be broke, albeit slightly less broke (cost of living, baby!), somewhere else! These days, I may hear the occasional gunshot whiz past my apartment window and my car has been hit and run twice (as you may or may not know, Baltimore has high rates of both violent crime and reckless drivers). But at least I have a car! I too have a washing machine, and a dishwasher! For several hundred dollars less than I ever spent to live amongst the German cockroaches in my “rentstabilized” ($1,740, lol) one-bedroom in Queens.

Sure, it lacks the glamour of New York City, but it’s fundamentally unpretentious, and rent is low enough that bohemia survives. Baltimoreans have a lot of pride, despite (or perhaps even because of) the city’s unfortunate reputation. It serves to unite different tribes of people who may otherwise stay in their own lanes, which makes for a feeling of community, something I always felt I lacked in NYC. People remember your name.

And when you go to shows, people MOVE. Sometimes violently. At my first hometown Turnstile show at the Ottobar last May, I moved to the back of the room so someone wouldn’t punch me in the face when local openers Jivebomb took the stage. [Ed. note: See Farrah Skeiky’s pictorial feature in this issue for a photo from that gig/] The whole room seemed to exhale simultaneously, 200 bodies roiling as a single organism. It’s as though I had forgotten how alive a show could be, such a far cry from the cool-kid showgoers of Brooklyn, swaying idly and sipping watery tequila sodas they copped with the drink tickets they got on the guest list. I think there’s something to be said for not needing to be seen. This context is all very necessary as to why Boy Howdy! tapped me on the shoulder and picked me to write the Opener for the No New York, No L.A. issue. I’m here to write about breaking up with New York City— without engaging in any overly cringe Joan Didion cosplay—and to tell you why you don’t need to move there to start your band.

Since I said I wasn’t gonna get all sentimental and Didion-y, let’s look at the numbers. Data is hard and unemotional! That said, my data is a little soft. I never said I was Nate Silver.

Basically, I spent an afternoon going through each of the six issues we’ve published, and wrote down every single artist, band, photographer, and otherwise creative person featured in our pages, and where they were based. If you were from the suburbs of either New York City (this means you, New Jersey!) or Los Angeles, I counted that as New York/L.A. (e.g., Slayer, Korn, Screaming Females). And if you were international, I only counted your country and not your city. I may be a coastal elite, but I’m still an ugly American. If you think this is a broke-ass way to gather data, you’re probably right, but like I said, I never claimed to be Nate Silver. Or Frank Luntz. Whatever!

Give or take, this rag has covered about 184 artists and bands. Of those, only 27 were based in New York City; 14 were from Los Angeles. That means 143 of them DIDN’T LIVE IN EITHER OF THESE PLACES! 77% percent not NYC, not L.A.!

Some cities were better represented than others: Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, anywhere in Tennessee. While there were several instances of New York/L.A.-based artists who had moved there from other places, there were a few curious cases of folks who left their homes to go make music in seemingly random other places. Hooray for the Riff Raff left the Bronx for New Orleans. Boy Harsher formed in Savannah, Georgia, and moved to Northampton, Massachusetts. Sweeping Promises left Boston for... Lawrence, Kansas? What? Cool!

All of this is to say, maybe it’s more rock ’n’ roll to stay where you are and make magic there. Or if you must move, move somewhere where you don’t have to pay $2,000+ to live in a shoebox. You could make that place a better place. You could maybe have enough square footage to dedicate a room to making your music! Perhaps an ounce of disposable income to press your own record! Maybe, just maybe, you could work only ONE job, instead of several! Live a little! Dare to dream!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the time I spent in NYC. I probably wouldn’t be writing this letter to you now had I not lived that life. I still love it. But it doesn’t love me back, and Baltimore does, despite the multiple hit-and-run accidents.

Less “goodbye to all that” and more “take it easy.”

MANDY BROWNHOLTZ