Down on the Boredwalk: The Hipsters of Bedford Avenue

“I’m sitting in a Williamsburg cafe, wearing a scarf, leggings and flat boots, writing a column on an expensive laptop, judging others for being try-hards.”

So writes Lisa Pryor in a Sydney Morning Herald article wherein she takes a stab at deconstructing “hipsters” (whoever they are) and “the hipster mind” (whatever that is).

“I am writing to you from the world headquarters of hipsterdom, the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Williamsburg,” she writes. “This slice of New York is the Haight-Ashbury of ironic self-loathing.”

Now, since Williamsburg is also the world headquarters of nuttiness — it’s where Nuts in NY Plaza is located — more of Ms. Pryor’s observations and pronouncements follow, illustrated by a legion at Flickr photographers.

by risi_kondor

“In Verb Cafe on Bedford Avenue, a sign reads ‘Missing: brown felt fedora’. Only four guys in the cafe are not wearing fedoras.”

by geistbear

“Young men with messy hair…”

by Compton & Wright

“…tattoos and full beards abound.”

by Mareen Fischinger

“Around the corner at egg, an uncapitalised cafe, the beardage rate tops 50 per cent.”

by cassetteject

Gentrification: “a topic on which hipsters have passionate, confused views.”

by 416style

Hipsters “hate watching property prices rise in cool neighbourhoods…”

by swilkes

“They do not want to see the earthy, quaint, ethnic working class displaced by white professionals with modular sofas…”

by lensjockey

Hipsters hate fashion. “What they love is design. It is just a coincidence that the kind of design they love happens to be fashionable right now.”

by pheezy

“They always loved Rockabilly… Just like they always had a thing for sleeveless blazers, fringed scarves and fingerless gloves.”

Photo by tizzie

“Almost as soon as the label [hipster] became common parlance, the backlash began…”

by Vidiot

“One of the seminal backlash tracts…‘Kill the hipster: Why the hipster must die. A modest proposal to save New York cool’ [by] Christian Lorentzen…”

by cloudcity

“Lorentzen wrote… ‘These hipster zombies [are] more likely to be brokers or lawyers than art-school drop-outs… And they must be buried for cool to be reborn.’”

Finally, the journalist’s appropriately self-loathing closing sentence: “I’ll shut up. I need to go away and despise myself.”

Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Photo credits: risi_kondor, geistbear, Compton & Wright, Mareen Fischinger, cassetteject, 416style, swilkes, lensjockey, pheezy, tizzie, Vidiot, cloudcity.

© 2008 NutsInNY.com

Read more about Williamsburg nuts. Or maybe you know a nut you’d like to share with the rest of the class??

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Fake Exotica & Williamsburg’s Young Hip Transplants

This is a rant about those who are nutty and shallow: the house of worship below, located in Williamsburg, is not a mosque, it is a church. More on that below, but first…

I knew a couple of professional hipsters, friends of my ex who were art dealers. Once, during a summer weekend with them at a borrowed Long Island vacation house, I set up my iPod so we’d have music in the house: first, some favorite Arab music — no problem — then some favorite country music — gasp, that just wouldn’t do!

My amused ex later informed me of the horror the couple expressed in the kitchen, all sotto voce like, so I wouldn’t hear…

Oh dear!

Arab music = cool… C&W = not cool… Can ya dig it, daddy-o?

So I wonder if that relates to the story here: some Williamsburg hipsterpreneur created a souvenir tote bag on which the Russian Orthodox Church is labeled a “mosque” — squint your eyes:

Tote bag depicting Williamsburg’s Russian Orthodox “mosque”

Question for hipsters: would a mosque be cooler than a church?

Some background on the Russian Orthodox Church, provided on the web page of the photographer who shot the photo up above:

Russian Orthodox Church, Transfiguration of Our Lord at 228 North 12th Street, Brooklyn, NYC. The Byzantine-style church, whose rector is the Very Rev. Wiaczeslaw Krawczuk, was built between 1916 and 1921. It was designed by Louis Allmendiger, who modeled it after the Cathedral of the Dormition in Moscow. The church became a city landmark in 1969 and was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

But maybe that isn’t exotic enough for some. Maybe the tote bag maker in question fled his/her hometown of Meatloaf, Kansas on a skateboard, a refugee from his/her own self-loathing or whatever who, without being conscious of it, equates ‘exotic’ with ‘cool’. And for whom thinking of that church as a mosque helps him/her feel a tiny bit hipper.

Anyway and ins’allah, read the fine source post and comments.

Photo credit: ifotog
Tote bag image: Etsy via newyorkshitty, I think.

© 2008 NutsInNY.com

Plenty more to read about groovy Williamsburg. Or maybe one of youse guys knows a nut you’d like to turn everyone on to?

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Now You Hasidim, Now You Don’t

Nothing funny to see here — except some amusing photos of hipsters in their underwear. I was the nut in this case, and now this is a retraction. After some cajoling from others here at Nuts in NY Plaza, I decided to delete something I wrote about Williamsburg’s Hasidic Jewish community, because of the kind of attention it was attracting.

This drastic action will confound Google, of course; anyone searching for the post will now get this dreaded message: NOT FOUND, ERROR 404.

The deleted post, titled “Hasidic Jews v. Brooklyn Babes on Bikes”, was based on reports that Hasids in Brooklyn objected to bike lanes being added to avenues thru their neighborhood. It was suggested by some that the lanes might encourage hipsters from north Williamsburg to cycle thru their area in less-than-modest clothing!

Now, I confess, having seen a few Williamsburg hipsters, I’m trying to imagine what kind of attire that might be…

But I’m still not sure.

Anyway, the problem was that a certain undesirable element on the Internets seems a little too interested in that article: anti-Semites. One lengthy screed submitted to the comments section rambled on illiterately about ‘what the damn Jew have done to our country’. (Oh dear, just wait til they hear what George W. Bush has did!)

After that I received word from a Jewish media organization that they would henceforth be monitoring what gets posted on Nuts in NY.

All of this, of course, was taking things in a wrong direction. Certainly for this website. But I recognize my original error in judgment. My bad. I’ll try to me more careful.

And sorry, haters, you’ll have to look elsewhere for validation of your sociopathy.

Now, if you please, let’s get back to the hipsters in their underwear…

Photo credits: thirteenofclubs via flickr

© 2008 NutsInNY.com

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