The editors of n+1 recently published an essay asking why everything in today’s urban environment is so ugly, via a fictional ramble around a thinly-disguised version of gentrified Brooklyn. Although they don’t quite arrive at a Grand Unified Theory of contemporary ugliness, they nail the description of it, as well as the underlying conditions it expresses. As the authors’ attention drifts from housing to consumer goods to cars to subway advertising, they encounter a “drab sublime,” a world that isn’t exactly