Dimes Square Is Dead

An autopsy report of the New York "art" scene that promised a lot, but never delivered.

Many of you may be wondering: what the fuck is Dimes Square?

Let me set the scene (no pun intended.)

As the pandemic was just getting started, many young people across the country were given free time to pursue their hobbies like never before. In downtown New York, this manifested as a network of characters: DJs, podcasters, musicians, “intellectuals,” and writers who all hung out in the same area on the Lower East Side, at the intersection of Division and Canal Street, to be exact.

This included an unofficial media arm consisting of The Drunken Canal, Perfectly Imperfect, and The Ion Pack; directors like Peter Vack; musicians like The Dare; and pseudointellectuals like Dasha Nekrasova of the Red Scare podcast. The lack of a unified central thesis among them is what made the parties so fun, perfectly pairing with the rise of “indie sleaze” around 2022.

But that same lack of cohesion is also what led to its eventual downfall and death.
Well, that, and the fact that no worthwhile music, literature, or art came out of it. That didn’t stop outlets desperate to cover new trends—like Nylon and Paper—from commenting on it extensively. But none of it ever really captured what was going on. Because nothing was really going on.

Dimes Square, in one phrase, is: “you had to be there.” The partying and struggle sessions were the creative output. There’s nothing physical I could ever hold up and say, “this is what all of those nights were really for.” It’s strange, because New York has always been a powerhouse in terms of cultural exports.

In the ’60s and ’70s, there was the Warhol factory and Interview Magazine. The Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, and Robert Mapplethorpe were running around making masterpieces and doing heroin. The ’80s saw the rise of ball culture. The 2000s had The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a.k.a. the Meet Me in the Bathroom era. Fluxblog. The 2010s had the Brooklyn hipster culture with Azealia Banks and Neon Indian playing to overlapping crowds. There was a surplus of talented individuals and audiences interested in seeing them perform.

The 2020s had absolutely none of that, and it’s because many of us, including myself, were so laser-focused on this mediocrity going on downtown.

The trap was the “potential” of the art. Nothing was happening, yet people in the area really thought specific figures would be “next up.” Musically, the closest we got was The Dare, but barely any of that had to do with his output as a solo artist. Sure, “Girls” is a great track, but what else did he really give us that will be remembered by 2030 His debut, What’s Wrong With New York? was lazy, a cheap clone of LCD Soundsystem and the bloghouse era of yesteryear. It wasn’t smart, it didn’t pin down a sound essential to our era, and most importantly, it was devoid of heart.

I’m happy to see groups like Frost Children and Fckers have relative success, but I’m still waiting on a definitive, universally beloved full-length from either of them. Even then, neither of them are really around New York much anymore anyway. Everything else? I’ll keep it super real: it’s bad. Or just kind of catchy, but with no future.

This Reddit comment really sums it up quite well:

“Seems like the Dimes Square goofballs did things exactly backwards. You’re supposed to make art, realize like-minded people are doing similar stuff, and then declare it a ‘scene.’ Going the opposite way (declaring your intention to create a scene first) is a recipe for second-rate stuff and posing. This is why Dimes Square always felt inauthentic and doomed to fail for me at least. It felt like they were making art so that they could be a subculture, not making a subculture in service to the art.”

The commentary and the hanging out came first. Then the art was made as an excuse to justify its existence. This lack of purpose also led to weird Thiel-adjacent right-wing influencing forces rearing their ugly heads in the form of venues like Sovereign House. Clout became the most valuable currency, so misaligned morals and principles took a sideline to ladder-climbing.

People were more enthused by congregating and possibly rubbing shoulders with celebrities and influencers. Matty Healy of The 1975 was partying with The Ion Pack. Perfectly Imperfect interviewed big names like Lena Dunham and Michael Imperioli. Charli XCX tapped The Dare to produce “Guess” and DJed with him at that Boiler Room set. Matthew Weinberger got a Rolling Stone Instagram feature that was all about “the downtown scene,” but every picture was just Doja Cat and Julia Fox.

It was clear that a select few were leveraging their cultural capital to connect with celebrities and further their careers. Clout became more important than trying to make a statement or elevate local creative people. Like a pump-and-dump crypto scheme, all the head figures grabbed as much as they could before the floor fell out from under it all. Some were successful, and good on them. Some didn’t react fast enough, and that sucks for them.

The majority of people around are just going to have to live with the fact that our time was wasted. There are no more lifeboats for us on the Titanic. I’m mixing my metaphors a bit here, but speaking of massive disasters that signaled the end of an era, let’s talk about RachelOrmont.com.

Dimes Square Produced The Worst Film of the 2020s…And Maybe Ever?

RachelOrmont.com is a film by Peter Vack, starring his sister Betsey Brown. If those names sound familiar to readers not from New York, it’s likely because you read either my piece or Mike Crumplar’s. I’d argue that the stories both of us told—of seeing the film or being on set—are far more entertaining than the movie itself. At least in our pieces, we had characters, stakes, and a perspective. All his film had was a bunch of annoying trap music, gross out scenes and horrible dialogue.

Here is my review of the film, which I gave ½ star on Letterboxd:

“This is without a single shred of doubt the worst film that I have ever seen in my entire life. Terrible script, terrible set design, uninspired acting and directing, obnoxious subtitling, pointless gross-out humor, and full penetrative nudity. Peter Vack thinks he is some genius auteur while just making 1.5-hour-long IRL South Park episodes minus anything funny or interesting. No distribution company will ever pick this up. A film like this will live and die on the hard drive of his cum-stained MacBook Pro and a few spare theaters across the country that will show this. I would venture to guess any random person going to see this film would walk out and request a refund in the first 25 minutes.”

RachelOrmont.com is the quintessential piece of art from the Dimes Square era, because it’s all show and no substance. It assembles a bunch of like-minded people and microcelebrity scenesters for a purpose that’s uncertain.

It’s no coincidence that it was directed by Vack, produced by The Ion Pack, and co-starred Dasha Nekrasova from Red Scare. It’s really the moment where the Ponzi scheme crashes. All that talk for years by The Ion Pack about what great filmmaking is and how subversive their tastes were. All the “controversy” surrounding the dull and predictable Red Scare podcast. All the struggle sessions between Vack and critics in the scene, including myself. It was all for nothing. The end product was a whole bunch of hot air. A load of nothing at all.

We gave the world no music, no books, no poetry, no films, no paintings. So what did they give us in return? What we fucking deserve.

An H&M Shirt

That’s right: a Dimes Square shirt from H&M. The last stop on the train of culture. Grunge had its time, but now the faded logos of Soundgarden and Nirvana adorn $30 T-shirts. Any microtrend there ever was eventually dies and finds an afterlife at the dreaded store. It’s like a headstone for cool.

Except, H&M is giving the scene too much credit. Because it was never, ever cool.

I’ll give one final toast to the Dimes Square era, which took place sometime between 2020 and 2024. I once wrote a post back in 2022 entitled It’s Time to Stop Hating and Start Embracing the Downtown Scene. A smarter man than myself would’ve seen the failure coming from a mile away. I tried to give it an honest chance instead. I wanted my time in New York to be like when The Strokes played at dive bars.

But unfortunately, it’s just not what I received. Instead, I got The Hellp, which has about as much leather, but not as much artistry. I was hopeful, but truly it died around the time I got into it, around 2022/2023.

I hope the next generation of New York artists has a better go at it, although I have a sneaking suspicion people will hang onto this “Dimes Square” shit a while longer and continue to fail because of it.

We need a cultural reset, to be honest. Something that is art first, scene second. Maybe it’ll come one day. But I won’t be holding my breath until then.