New York, D.C., San Francisco, maybe even Orlando, we can accept as having a more robust arts community than Lancaster.

But Boise? Peoria? Buffalo? And —with apologies to our White Rose City neighbors across the Susquehanna — York?

York?

No way.

The metropolitan Lancaster area got a slightly below-average rating on a "bohemian indicator" scale that measures the concentration of arts in a metropolitan area.

Lancaster bohos are mildly outraged by the rating.

"Having our city under average is insulting," says Angelo Madrigale, who with his wife owns the North Prince Street Metropolis gallery and art store and also is a drummer in Sadaharu, a locally based band.

The arts are flowering here, says Madrigale, ticking off Lancaster's arts amenities solely on Prince Street: gallery row, the Chameleon Club, the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, the Fulton Opera House.

"I see it going toward what New Hope was in the late '80s," he says. "It's a small community that just gets flooded with people for different events. People are willing to travel three or four hours to get here."

The bohemian indicator score is a measure of the number of people who say they make a living in the arts in a metropolitan area. It was used in this month's "Best Cities" edition of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine.

An average score is 100. Lancaster got a 95. In the region, it placed above Harrisburg/Carlisle, which got a lowly 67, and Reading, with a measly 88.

Lancaster was tied with Pittsburgh, 4 points below York and 5 points below Philadelphia.

Kevin Stolarick is the Carnegie Mellon University assistant professor and information systems guru who helped to develop the bohemian indicator, crunching data from the 2000 U.S. Census.

"A higher bohemian indicator says it's a region that has interesting things going on," he says. "Better arts and music helps attract people, and is a signal of openness."

Local artists say Lancaster has grown and changed since the 2000 rating, and Stolarick notes he plans to update the ranking within the next year, as more current data becomes available.

Cindi Morrison, executive director of the Lancaster Museum of Art, says, "We've come a long way baby."

Mary Colleen Heil, president of PCA&D, agrees.

"When you take a look at all the arts, we really do have a diverse, strong, growing arts community here."

Looking at her own college, Heil notes that back in 2000 it probably drew students from only two or three states. Today, it draws from a dozen states and has instructors who travel from Manhattan.

After graduation, about 60 percent of the art college's students stay in the region, mostly in Lancaster, helping to boost the arts scene here.

Looking at the wider community, 30 years ago Lancaster had just a handful of strong arts organizations, including the Fulton, Lancaster Symphony and the Lancaster County Art Association, Heil notes.

Now the city is home to the Pennsylvania Academy of Music, the Quilt and Textile Museum, dance groups and a puppet theater. It has an active First Friday program, attracting gallery hoppers every month.

"It's on a clear trajectory," she says.

Jeff Breil makes a living in the arts, through his day job in art direction and label management at Corrupted Image Records and as a singer and guitarist with Sadaharu, which has a new CD coming out this summer.

"By my estimation, Lancaster has one of the best music/arts communities that I've seen of any town this size," he says. "We've been touring nationally for five or six years, and have been pretty much everywhere in the country. With the exception of Austin, Texas, (scoring 135 on the boho index) which is a much bigger place, I've never seen as much going on in a community."

A blending of music and arts, and even a free comic book, comes together in the Rumschpringe Festival, which started in Lancaster in May, was held in New Holland on Saturday, and will move to Lititz in July and Columbia and Ephrata in August.

Organizer Michael Hoober has played in bands here, worked for Corrupted Image and also worked at the defunct Zoetropolis theater, an independent art and film venue. A family therapist by day, he also teaches psychology at PCA&D.

The arts are growing in Lancaster but supporters need to be open to different things, Hoober says.

"I'm not confident things happen in Lancaster unless you make them happen," he says.

Local audiences sometimes don't like to take risks, he says.

"The post-modern world is about putting the ucky parts, the terrible parts, of the world in front of us, to try to make some change," he says. "Lancaster doesn't like to see the dirty parts of the world."

Audiences need to more actively support the arts, he adds.

"When I ran Zoetropolis, I got the impression that even if we got Jesus Christ on stage, people wouldn't get off their couches to come and see that," he says.

Gary Smith, co-artistic director of the Theater of the Seventh Sister, says it's hard to make a living at the arts here, or anywhere. You need a quality product, a business structure and funding.

"A lot of people think of artists as flaky," he says, "but you wouldn't be around if you didn't know how to run a business."

A central arts fund for nonprofit groups would help, he says.

Younger folks also need to step up and support the arts, says Ed Fernandez, artistic director of the Ephrata Performing Arts Center.

EPAC has developed a core audience that will come and see a modern work such as "Frozen," opening this week. He wishes it was a bigger group, though.

"I wish the populace was more adventuresome," he says. "I wish it was more progressive sometimes."

Morrison predicts the arts will continue to grow here, as bohos are attracted by the affordable lifestyle, close-to-other-metropolitan-areas location and already thriving scene Lancaster offers.

Lancaster, Smith says, "is right at the edge to move forward."

CONTACT US: cstauffer@LNPnews.com or 481-6024