Video: They Might Be Giants performs "Canajoharie," a song off their new album Join Us, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, October 2, 2010.
In an interview with Gothamist yesterday about They Might Be Giants' new album release, legendary alt-rocker John Flansburgh let it slip that both of TMBG's Johns have Catskills hideaways:
We both have little weekend retreat laboratories in the Catskills. The Catskills is the new Williamsburg. There, I said it! There is more artisanal pork being butchered there than anywhere else.
Oh no! Not another "_____ is the new _____"! Somebody call Ivan Lajara!
Alia Hanna Habib at Upstater, a new-ish blog about real estate and the good life in -- you guessed it -- upstate New York, noticed the Gothamist interview, and thought a bit about why all the upstate/downstate comparisons make her squirm. Habib writes:
...what I really love about Greene County (aside from the natural beauty and the fainting goats at Catskill Mountain Country Store) is feeling there’s a place for me there. I could afford to buy a home, which had long been a dream of mine and was simply not a possibility in my Brooklyn neighborhood.
And perhaps that’s why the NYC neighborhood/Upstate town comps can feel a little icky. I don’t want East Jewett (or Cornwallsville or even Saugerties) to become the next Williamsburg. The lack of pretension and the low density and the low pricing are the things that make being Upstate feel so good, especially when you live and work in a big city. And trust me: if I really believed the Catskills were going to become Williamsburg, I wouldn’t be broadcasting my love for them here. I’m guessing John Flansburgh feels the same.
We're not sure where in the hills the two Johns might be squirreled away, but we did notice that TMBG gave Roscoe a shoutout on their Twitter feed recently:
Thanks, Johns -- hope to run into you at Buffalo Zach's sometime.
(Full disclosure: This band indoctrinated me in middle school, and I've been a hopeless case ever since. Reader, I dare you to listen to "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" without suffering paroxysms of wild glee.)
