Downtown

One of the elements of the downtown movement was the interaction with characters, true individuals, people you may even disgust you but you had to give them their due cause they were their own person. And after a while, what downtown teaches is for you to work hard to make yourself interesting and unique. In some people this seems contrived and after a while you get a homogeneity among non-conformists (ie, they look, talk and read the same books) but its still a worthy effort and a necessary one in America, where corporate culture takes on hegemonic dimensions and the greatest form of resistance is with your ideas and mind.