Slum clearance and bohemian influx together triggered violent backlash against beatniks

Evidence

During the summer of 1959, the Village Voice reported an outbreak of vandalism in the South Village, as well as violence: “Attacks by neighboring youths on beatniks, particularly Negroes, have occurred with disturbing frequency.” Art D’Lugoff, proprietor of the neighborhood’s largest music venue, the Village Gate—opened the previous year in a former flophouse on the corner of Thompson and Bleecker—saw local resentment in the epidemic of smashed windows. The South Village was increasingly “cosmopolitan” even as aggressive slum clearance facilitated the incursion of upper middle-class housing. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 111

Categorization

• XREF: Early evidence for the gentrification-origin thesis: artists as unwitting advance guard against a backdrop of class displacement.