Officially tolerated bohemian quarters become inauthentic by their very toleration.
Evidence
One need only compare the synthetic artists’ quarter of New York, Greenwich Village, with the Parisian Rive Gauche of pre-Hitler days. In the New York district licence continues to exist as an officially tolerated institution; for this reason it has become what the Americans call ‘phoney’. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 178
Categorization
- SEED: Angle: ‘The commodification of subculture’ essay — how cities marketing their counterculture quarters (Greenwich Village, Montmartre, Williamsburg) destroy the very authenticity they sell, comparing Adorno’s 1950s observation with contemporary urban branding.