Sometimes I feel like I never left Colonial Williamsburg. What is this strange magic window and why are those tiny musicians trapped in it? Some unholy trick caused by female menstruation, no doubt.

If it didn't cost at least double what I make in a month for a tiny studio or if I was a trustie, I'd move to Williamsburg in a minute. All sorts of cool bands and shit happening in lofts, churches, etc. They've made attempts at this in Portland, but at this point a converted high school-turned-music-venue or something is already kinda corporate, and not the DIY/BYOB vibe I get from the Brooklyn shows. In Portland everything's a basement show now, which just gets weird because people keep moving in an out, and even if you know about it you probably don't know anyone who lives there, making you feel like a sweatshirt at a sweater party or something.

this is nyc not boston (no t stop at union [fuck the green line])

Yes I know this is NYC thank you. The having lived near Williamsburg line was a tip having lived there.

A tiny studio was 00 in the shittiest of Bushwick neighborhoods over 5 years ago. God fucking knows what a place near Bedford Ave would run for now.

Yeah, my brother had to move out of his place in Manhattan some 12 or 13 years ago. Him and his girlfriend were sharing a studio with a six story walk-up with no elevator for that price, so Brooklyn was the place to go still. I guess I can't complain with what I'm paying for my little spot off-campus, but my best friend just moved back to Providence and now I'm kinda lonely, the rest of my friends complaining about the same thing.. it's like seriously though, Portland is the smallest place I've ever lived, concentration-wise. Madison Wisconsin was larger. And people complain but nobody thinks about doing anything with the outlying parts of town to make them "hipper" and unlike NYC it's like a 45 minute bus ride even from the most bordering parts of Portland vs. 3 hours in traffic like it is in every other "cultural hub". I'll quit bitching now but people have to get their priorities straight, or else I'm moving back to Milwaukee or Detroit.

Nothing quite says how out of touch spoiled Boomers are to today's economic realities than the uproariously outdated "rent shouldn't be more than a third of your take home pay" adage.

I can't imagine what kind of rental housing crunch/crash is going to happen within the next 15 years. Major rent control reform? Riots? Or the more likely people continuing to take it up the ass as we all start living in illegal immigrant flophouse conditions with FOX News pointing out how the fact said flophouse has running water proves that we're not really living in poverty and don't EVEN pay income tax?

Yeah.. knocking on wood here but for the most part I've been lucky with finding a cheap place that's usually legal. LIke in Madison I had an entire house close to the football stadium and we'd pay the rent by using our front lawn as parking space, that was how cheap it was. Really I didn't need to work. But I remember when I first moved back and was still married we found a nice place in sort of the Williamsburg neighborhood of Portland; a nice two bedroom with modern amenities and such but it turned out that we made a little too much money as a couple to be considered for it. So we moved into a 0/mo 2BR shithole not too far away owned by a slumlord, but we liked the location. This was in 2008, and when I moved out in 2014 it was 95/mo with absolutely nothing changed and the closest thing to slave labor for maintenance that you can imagine. This included black mold, rats, brown water, and so much more!

Having grown up in Portland I sometimes wish I had thought ahead and bought property when it was cheap, but I guess I'm kind of glad I didn't because I probably would've walked by and seen young transplants on the street and put a bullet in my brain for what I did.

I just discovered them about a week ago (yeah, I submitted that dog) and I'm hooked now. This is the one got me hooked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JHigEpDpyI

Yeah, I saw that clip on facebook and looked them up. I wanted to share a video that included the trumpet player as well, though.

It's also how Violent Femmes got their start, in front of the movie theatre I used to work at, busking in front and the Pretenders' opening band's van broke down so that was their first actual show, opening for The Pretenders. They later wrote a song about it too! I wish these guys success but at this point they've got a pretty good thing going, which is probably more lucrative than touring and pressing and whatnot.

Yeah really. I wonder if everybody in the video was giving money just because there was a camera there and figured it would go viral (which it has in the past couple of weeks) and just didn't want to be the asshole called out on the internet who walked by. I see much more exciting and entertaining buskers almost every day I'm walking around to be honest.

Oops I hadn't watched the video yet. The other one is a lot shorter and pretty much everybody's giving money, but here you still get a bunch of people walking by. But still, having a camera there filming is a good way to ensure more people give you money.

Didn't this video or at least this band go viral a little while ago? I feel like I've seen it before, maybe even years ago.

It probably did to a certain extent; this video says April 2014, but it really picked up in the last week or so on social media for whatever reason.

The bari sax player is an incredibly energetic performer. Some of the other clips on social media focus on him and his dancing. Like I said earlier, I wanted to share something that included the trumpet player. He tends to get ignored because he's not as animated, but I think he's an important part of the overall sound.

Watching their performances, I sometimes find myself asking "Man... why do they keep the trumpet player around? The sax player is kicking ass, while even the drummer is kinda grooving despite his cumbersome set-up."

Then he resumes playing, and I'm reminded why he's still in the band. I'm not a big fan of trumpets in general (their sound is too bright & annoying for my taste), but that trumpet player is *awesome*. (Also, kinda essential to their sound.)