by Paddy Johnson on August 23, 2016
For those of us who started and maintained blogs in the mid aughts, yesterday’s closure of Gawker wasn’t easy to watch. A year ago, I published a list of art blogs and magazines with Corinna Kirsch, full of headings modified with words like “active”, “not-active”, “defunct”, and “deleted”. It was already the end of an era then. Now, with the demise of the largest and arguably the most pioneering of blogs, I find myself wondering who amongst us will be left standing.
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by Paddy Johnson on August 26, 2015
What is it going to take to get city politicians to start doing the right thing? It costs a small fortune to live in this city and when bills are introduced that would help give a leg up to artists, there isn’t enough support to get them off the ground.
Case and point: The Small Business Jobs Survival Act. This is a bill that will help commercial tenants facing displacement from rising rents—including artists’ studios and small businesses—and it currently has only 23 of the 26 votes it needs to pass.
The bill would require commercial landlords to offer ten-year leases to all existing tenants who’ve paid their rent on time. If the two sides can’t agree on terms, they go to arbitration. Currently a landlord doesn’t have to renew a tenant’s lease, can kick the tenant out whenever it suits them, raise their rent exorbitantly, and the tenant has no means of contesting the decision.
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