Post-Williamsburgism

Recently, my roommate got back from a night out in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and the first thing she said to me was, I understand why you didn’t want us to live there. It’s weird to think that I, of all people, would not want to live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I’m young, I’m in my twenties, I’m directionless, I’m liberal, I have used the word “post-modern” in conversation, I like coffee and books by Jonathan Safran Foer. Even my good friend Joe - who has spent the last several years travelling the world - said to me before I moved to New York, You’re going to be such a Brooklyn Hipster Snob.

I’ve had a longstanding anomosity with Williamsburg, Brooklyn which is kind of odd seeing as how I’ve only been to Williamsburg twice - once while walking from Greenpoint to catch the L, and another time at a loft party held by some friend of a friend of mine. (You know the kind... twenty-somethings dressed in loose, tattered clothing, wearing extremely long beaded necklaces, no make-up, dredded hair, bare feet, sitting around a table smoking Parliament Lights and drinking PBR - all while their pot luck dinners of hummus, organic grilled eggplant and Gardenburgers cool and turn greyish-yellow on the countertop... all while their parents paid the rent.)

My problem with Williamsburg, Brooklyn - in short - is that it needs to shut up. Williamsburg needs to stop proclaiming itself to be such a poor, starving-artist, hipster, off-beat, eccentric part of town because last time I checked the rent in Williamsburg was nearly comprable to the rent on the Upper West Side and - most importantly - everyone in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is the same.

If I could make one statement for the day I would like to tell the people of Williamburg, Brooklyn that they are not unique even though their entire objective is to be unique. If you live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn you are just like your neighbor, and your neighbor’s neighbor, and the five other people that share your two “bedroom” “loft” apartment. If you live in Williamsburg and you focus your attention on off-beat bands and artists, then, really, they’re not off-beat because you and your other three friends who work with you in the coffee shop down the street - where you make lattes by day (but not Starbucks lattes... but yet somehow equally expensive...) and sell drugs by night - are also into the same off-beat bands who, somehow (even though they are “off-beat") perform regularly at the club down the street that’s advertised in Time Out, where you have to buy tickets in advance because it’s impossible to see your “off-beat” band play live at the club down the street because your “off-beat” band is actually *gasp* popular.

If you live in Williamsburg you are popular. I’m sorry. It’s true. You are no longer a nerdy high school student who lashes out to get attention. You’re just a neighbor of every other nerdy student who attended high school between the years of 1991 and 2000, who comes from an upper-class family, who somehow ‘”held you down,” and so you "lashed-out" and moved in order that you - and every other “different” kid - could live together in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and be the same... but wildly different.

I have a problem with people who label themselves as something specific. I also have a problem with tortured artists. If you’re so tortured why don’t you, um, do something about it and actually, um, create art? Embrace your popularity, maybe even famous, generate a profit, move to Greenpoint, who cares?

It’s odd to me that so many people in Williamsburg see themselves as a minority when in fact, they are the majority. Call me crazy, but I’d like to see a wall street exec move to Williamsburg and walk down the street in his Italian Silk suit while typing away on his Blackberry. That guy probably has a better chance of getting shot than I do walking down my street in Harlem with my blonde hair down and my JCrew jacket buttoned all the way up.