#5) Gentrification
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Over the past 10 years, the town of Williamsburg has become the latest magnet for high-income business people, driving property value and the cost of living way up for all, including local Puertorriqueño, black and hipster populations. As a result, crime is at an all-time high (note: I really can’t verify that statistically, but two people definitely got stabbed with machetes by a gang in the nabe recently.)
When asked if the victims were also gang members, a police officer stationed nearby the scene replied, “Nah, they were probably some kids from Oklahoma who started shit with the people who have lived here their whole lives.”
While hipsters have multiple tattoos and like to dress “hard,” they are not actually skilled with martial arts or weaponry. It is likely that in this case, and many other gentrification-driven acts of violence, hipsters have been wrongfully targeted and blamed by those in financial duress, who confused them with the corporate tools who work so much they don’t even have the opportunity to walk around the streets after 10 pm to get attacked.
If there is one thing hipsters hate more than being victims of violent crime, it is being confused with young professionals. I mean, they wear nothing but navy pantsuits and topsiders.
Thus, hipsters view gentrification as a serious issue.
Aside from being offended by mistaken associations, hipsters naturally clash with the corporate-attire wielding market researchers and investment bankers slowly filling the luxury condos and artist lofts. This is not necessarily because hipsters are morally opposed to the corrupt processes that these people willingly feed with their employment, but because their oblivion is soo ironic it hurts a hipster’s mind to think about. The whole point of living in an artsy slum is to be able to work 3 shifts a week at a shitty coffee shop and have money for rent, drugs and concert tickets. But the gentrifiers in Williamsburg work 40-hour weeks and listen to bands like Bon Jovi, missing out on the finer points of the location they are co-opting.
Kristen Reynolds, 24 who recently moved to Williamsburg from Portland and works at a local restaurant, put the situation nicely:
“I mean, why should I have to take out more money from my trust fund in order to be able to live near some professional stock loser? I would rather be mugged than hear Elton John through my wall.”
Torn between living in immediate danger and immediate wet-towelness, gentrification has forced the hipsters to retreat to the north, unofficially designating “red zones” where hipsters are ill-advised to live. These zones can be seen by this carefully rendered map:
As you can see, the only areas not vetoed by the hipster population are within a 3-block radius from the north side of Bedford Avenue, and maybe Soho.
Hipsters also do not like gentrification because some righteous hippies on city council are using it as an excuse to close McCarren Pool (and by close I mean spend millions of dollars to make it an actual pool again). See the third thing Hipsters Don’t Like for more on this.
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Map editing by Lola Wakefield for Stuff Hipsters Don’t Like ©2008
wah wah wah, hipsters dry your glitter filled tears on your man scarves
The property values went up WHEN the HIPSTERS started moving in, not the when the high-income “bankers” started moving in.
I’ve lived in williamsburg my whole life, on bedford avenue, when one side of grand street was all dominican/puerto rican and the other was all polish/ukrainian, with factories filling the space in between.
Yes, maybe for the first couple of years the artists from the city, looking for a place close to the city to live/create their art found cheaper living in williamsburg. But very soon thereafter, it became a trendy place, and people from the midwest backed by mommy’s and daddy’s trust-fund money moved into the factories/converted lofts for THEM for $$$.
Bars/Vegan Restaurants/Japanese restaurants all filled up the 1st floor apartments to feed the hipsters at 4am because they didnt work and yet still had money to buy silly clothes, yet the rents of all the apartments became ridiculous.
Now, when the dorky “bankers” living in the city found out about how “cool” wburg is, they started hanging out there, and eventually moving into lofts to wet their own willies which had no action before, while they started wearing white studded belts and growing porn-stashes to fit in.
Finally, within the last 2-3 years the sky rise apartments started getting built with reckless abandon, around mccarren, the river and anywhere within walkin distance of bedford ave. The demand was there because the neighborhood was extemely crowded already, and even MORE “bankers” wanted to move in.
The neighborhood is just not that cool anymore. It was fun for a while because so many new restaurants and bars would open, where there was nothing before. But now its over-crowded. I sometimes let 4 L trains pass me by in the morning because I don’t want to squeeze in and have some dirty hipsters armpit in my face, blaring some new “hip” band with an ironic name through their ipod. And everyone looks exactly the same, listening to exactly the same music, complaining about exactly the same unimportant issues, it’s like a neighborhood of skinny tattooed zombies with tight white pants and enormous sunglasses on, all looking for brains because they don’t have any.
tooooooooooootallty agree with the dude above
completely agree with the first comment.
Where do I get one a these Trust Fund thingies?
hipsters don’t like gentrification? they’re responsible for gentrification. poor, self-loathing hipsters.