WHAT IS THE NEW BOHEMIA?

Prior to the dawning of the internet age writers usually found other writers in those culturally rich urban locales known then as the Bohemian underground. This subterranean literary landscape also included small theatres for new plays, cafes that hosted readings, and independent bookstores such as Gotham’s in New York, City Lights in San Francisco, and Shakespeare & Company in Paris.  Every major metropolis the world over had a bohemian underground. Many smaller cities followed their lead. Urban Bohemia was a hotbed of creative fertility. Poets, playwrights, painters, musicians, philosophers, and hipsters would rub elbows as well as opinions. All the friction of conflicting ideas and ideologies stirred up the fires of creativity. The shift to electronic culture over the last 10 years has nearly wiped out the old Urban Bohemia. But the human spirit hungers for contact and community, and artists more so than others, perhaps, and so we now have the emergence of a New Bohemia via the internet.