Gawker
IN the taxonomy of New York City, the mere mention of a certain neighborhood conjures an image of its local tribe: the Williamsburg hipster. The meatpacking district club-goer. The Park Slope Earth Mama. But whom does Union Square conjure?Well, according to the Times, which posed the question this weekend, health-conscious, yoga-studying, post-hippie freaks with disposable cash and a willingness to spend it on crap like organic dry cleaning and wheatgrass smoothies.
What's worse, most of these people come from all over the city to enjoy the neighborhood's trendy "environmentally friendly" shops and services. While there, they can also enjoy the incoherent and ineffectual protests that take place at the Square's south end, or spend time dodging the idiot skateboarders who crash about without helmets because, hey, there's nothing in those skulls of theirs to protect. It's gotten so bad that even the few remaining junkies in the area are being pressured into using needles made from recycled plastic. Still, there are those who express doubts about the new character of the area:
Rosie Kanellis, 41, a textile designer who comes from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to shop at the Greenmarket, said that the area had become too corporate, and that she was "opposed to the Whole Foods" because "it's quick-fix healthy."If you ever wonder why your editor here is so surly all the time, we'll let you in on a little secret. We live near the square, and we have to deal with all these people on a daily basis. And don't get us started with the schmucks from Critical Mass or the jackasses who line up to buy falafel from the trendy new Dutch chain when some of the best falafel in the city can be found on the other side of the square in a storefront which we will not describe for you because we don't want any of you going there. Honestly, if there's some way we can bring back all the drug addicts and chase out the Earth-loving cash droppers, we promise that we will never buy another grass-fed bison strip steak from the Greenmarket again. Hell, we'd even take the dingy old Bradlee's back. Deal?
Comments
I'm glad they didn't include the Dejected, Disheveled, Broke Drunks Shuffling Into the Trader Joe's Wine Store for $3 Shiraz type that hangs out in Union Square. 'Cause that would have really hurt...my...uh, friend.
And on the 20th day of August, in the year of our lord 2007, one Alex Balk became the spiritual twin of my father.
Next step: call for privatization of everything currently operated by municipalites, as well as the elimination of unions.
Oh, and also you have to like Shania Twain. That's a big one.
e.j. korvette's, bebeh
[en.wikipedia.org]
"Quick fix healthy"?
Sanctimonious self-righteous liberal fucking puritan twat/douche self-flagelatting and self-congratulating over her Stalinesque organic green purity and disdain for the masses that have discovered the thing that she was convinced was finally going to make her a unique snowflake.
For my money, you can't beat the ever-present Free Palestine banner and its satellite posters, which always have one person hovering around nearby with an "I Support Israel" sign.
The Palestine exhibit recently added a snide poster telling the Israelis to quit protesting around them, and I'm very much hoping for some sort of expanding and unwieldy signage war.
The Trader Joes in Union Square is what I imagine hell to be like.
You think Union Square is bad? I work at 43rd and 8th. I'd rather deal with the Whole Foods crowd than this godforsaken tourist hell.
Since I saw a mother with a baby in a stroller buying a crack pipe in front of P.C. Richards just last week, I'm not going to lose sleep quite yet.
Wait, Maoz is DUTCH? WTF? I thought they were Israeli??? Even my Israeli GF thought so. And you're right Balk, the other, unammed & undisclosed falafel place is better.
>It's gotten so bad that even the few remaining >junkies in the area are being pressured into using >needles made from recycled plastic.
Now that's funny!
Ibrahim
www.BehindtheApprovalMatrix.com
@LolCait: I thought it was 2 buck chuck? $3 is a 50% increase, that's some serious drunkflation.
@RufusV2: Meh. I still prefer Garden of Eden. It's cheaper and smaller, so it doesn't accomodate as many twatwaffles.
I live in the East Village and it definitely tries my patience walking through Union Square to get somewhere...but it's not so much the wealthy green folks that get me, it's the ambling tourists and students that piss me off, and not to leave out those damn roasted nut guys that fill the whole south side with nasty-smelling smoke. I used to go to the green market there, but now I settle for the little Tompkins Sq. farmer's market instead.
I always thought Union Square was just a place to get the express 4/5. Also, the vagrant pan- handling skate rat hub second only to the Astor place cube.
The dog park is kinda nice.
Yet another reason to run to Brooklyn.
'Tisserie has nice guava-filled pasteries and quiches, too...
Rosie is concerned about 'corporate' and complaining about Whole Foods?! I'm pretty sure that Forever 21 and Filene's F*ing Basement pretty much ruined that neighborhood.
many a last minute christmas present came from that bradlees. memories!
now we can get last minute xmas prez from the annual vendor's market selling overpriced crap from exploited workers, usually women, toiling in 3rd world countries
oh crap, it's almost labor day -- the xmas decorations will be up everywhere any day now
I keep hoping the disparate protestors will unite with a single, noble purpose - the utter destruction of Luna Park.
Idiot protesters, obnoxious conga-ists, pathetic 30-year-old "skaters", the professionally indigent, and ocasionaly the dirty fuckin' hippie combo of all of the above.
i live in union square and i've become terrified to leave my apartment between 11am and 7pm on weekends. between the off duty wall street d-bags sitting in the park being "trendy", the ever-growing tourist population believing everyone thinks they are "new yorkers" because they're not in midtown gawking at tall buildings, and the jersey girls raiding forever 21 before getting 5000 calorie smooothies in preparation for their big night in murray hill... i dont know where i was going with this but i'm clearly bitter as well.
@Geezus H: Man you live a very charmed life if you think Trader Joe is hell? Man, can't wait to hear what level of hell you're in when you get your ass down to the Emergency Homeless Placement Center in the Bronx.
"Quick fix healthy" is the most infuriating quote I've read today.
And this, mind you, is the day when every newspaper has reprinted "Only the little people pay taxes" one last time.
@Ibrahim: Pressure? Hell, the junkies were the vanguard of recycling in Unions Sq. since the 1980s. They've been using other people's needles right after they OD and getting AIDS. Man, good times. Now that's funny!
@blogissuchanuglyword: I can definitely understand your pain. As someone who was living a few blocks from the World Trade Center on 9/11, the tourists who descended upon us became the most obnoxious, aggressive and demanding of any I've seen anywhere.
A couple of years after 9/11, I became convinced that it's no coincidence that "tourist" and "terrorist" sound so similar.
What about the crazy Renaissancy-jousters/overaged Dungeons & Dragon-sters that (still?) used to assemble at Union Square every Tuesday night (a non-farmers market night). That's both fascinating and sad...
@jadedperson: Personally, I would prefer they do their jousting and knight to knight combat ON farmers market night. Now that would both be fascinating and funny. I would pay to see that.
Like any of y'all are gonna run up and lick the old British guy hawking the revolutionary carrot-peeler.
Damn, damn, damn. Now I'm jonesing for a falaffel from that which shall remain unmaned.
Thanks,Balk!
Actually, if you could go off on Critical Mass that might be a public service. They clog our traffic in DC, too, without having stopped a war or straightening out the IMF. (Disclosure: I don't own a car.)
Naw, the Trader Joe's at Union Square is really more like England -- one long-ass queue. Hell is the Bowery Food Hole.
ah, rainbow felafel. so undiscovered! i walked by it today, and there were only about 20 people lined up outside.
Um, they actually mentioned Rainbow in the accompanying graphic. Sorry Balk.
i don't like whole foods for their communist line policy. If i pick the line where people have fewer items and are paying together i should be rewarded. damn pinkos
DEAL!!! (And add to that the picture mafias hawking stolen artwork in the Square - especially the Russians who charge protection money to any artist wanting to set up on the free public sidewalk during holiday time.)
I've lived a block from Union Square for the last 17 years & I miss the real neighborhood I moved into then. Most all the artists have been chased out and replaced with trashy vendors.
I also work in the Union Square area, and I mostly like it a lot, but I was really annoyed when last summer a policewoman told me that the lawn was closed at 6:00. The place is turning in to San Francisco, with its control-freak ways.
And for my money there is an even better felafel place a couple of blocks in the other direction, but I'm not going to say where that one is either.
Definitely still a distant third on my list of least-likable Squares after Times and Herald. When the good falafel place closes down to make way for a tiny Olive Garden, Union Square may become a real contender for my hatred.
i work a block from union square and eat nothing but chinese, pizza and burgers for lunch. before this article, i did so to bring some joy to my long workday, but now i am doing it out of spite.
regardless, i must thank the fine young minds at Washington Irving High for keeping the neighborhood "real." those little mother fuckers keep yo ass in check and remind you that you are in new york motha fuckin city and not a commune in new mexico. also, they consistently praise my "big titties" and "round ass" on a daily basis. when does school start again?
@RufusV2:
As reluctant as I am to comment on a comment (it seems to pointless, or meta, or metapointless), really, that was lovely. Just lovely.
"So pointless." Fuck it.
"Union Square," the movie, is the reason that I stopped using public bathrooms below 14th Street.
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