[via Razor Apple]

Gentrification tends to slow down during a recession (or the current crappy economic blip; whatever you'd like to call it). These incidents may or may not be freak isolated occurrences, but it's almost like the media's waiting for the natural step during a recession: crime wave!

Perhaps the developers behind the fancy new buildings will install walls and armed guards to keep the huddled masses out—now, how to avoid reality on their walks to the J train?

First, Bol airs his objections to "the fact that mofos are walking around wearing purses and tight-ass pants showing off their nuts." Well let's be honest, who wants to see the nuts of others, unsolicited? Then he critiques this story in the Voice about a Brooklyn rap crew and its anti-tight clothes anthem:

Of course, with it being the gay-ass Village Voice, these guys are painted as virulent homophobes and failed no-talents trying to capitalize off a gimmick.

Well sure. His proposed savior of hip hop? This guy below, whose video is an ode to smashing tight-be-pantsed rap kids with bats. I find hipster hop as annoying as anyone, but this is really not the solution. Where's the love here, Bol? NO HOMO:

If I don't get into this thing I'm going to fucking die! I already told like 17 chicks to meet me there.

The tone of that email is like a dude who gave a girl herpes but still wants to be friends for her drug connections.

VICE has issued a statement saying anyone turned away from the party tonight will get an Ikea couch.
Thanks VICE!

it was weird. i was on the list and waited for a good hour before finally getting let in but they didn't even look at the list. the guy at the door was just like "you're hot, you can come in" which I thought was fucked up and explained why it took so long.
the weirdest part was i went to the bathroom downstairs and then they wouldn't let me back upstairs (where the bands were) for about 40 minutes, so i ended up missing Vivian Girls.

Satan himself could not have orchestrated a more terrible party!
Where did Santos find these security fuckers?! They were so fucking pushy it killed my buzz.
Hong Kong Blood Gang sucked so many kinds of balls.
This place needs to be shut down, it's no fucking fun at all!!!!!!!
Fuck Santos Play Ground
Fuck Vice and their mothers and their forefathers
Fuck Colt 45
Fuck Nokia N Series
Fuck Santos security, bartender, bar backs, janitors, DJ, lighting/sound techs etc
I guess that covers it

Wasn't not worth not standing in line for.

[Brooklyn Vegan]

"Calling the police seemed extreme, so instead he dialed up friends on his cellphone. But no one picked up — it was 6 a.m. Finally, a friend who was staying at his apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant answered and tried to shake Mr. Hausmann's roommate awake. "Kyle's stuck somewhere; he needs your help," the friend mumbled. But the roommate slept on and the friend fell back asleep.

Next, Mr. Hausmann picked up the bar's phone and hit redial, inadvertently calling the mother of one of the owners in Las Vegas.

"How did you get this number?" the woman asked. "You can't be calling because you're locked in a bar."

Like all of the Observer's Williamsburg coverage, this piece causes the reader an even greater level of apoplexy by using a breezy, ironic tone, rather than just putting its head down and pounding out a list of bars, parks, and restaurants where the postgrads who populate the terrifying neighborhood can go to meet one another and, 47 minutes later, have coke-fuelled sex in an Enid's (there's one!) bathroom.

That said, if you want to go read the entire tortured Williamsburg-as-college metaphor (your apartment search is like "room draw!"), be our guest. Call us enablers, if you will. But remember this, twenty-something Observer staff writers: at least 25% of the Gawker editorial staff lives right next door in Greenpoint. We go to some of these places that your story proposes to morph even further into postcollegiate hellholes. It's only a matter of time before we catch you walking down the street one night.

So say hello, why don't you?

[Observer]

[Gothamist]

"our building had its first pool party this weekend and i thought you would enjoy. the disastrous combo of hedge fund guys, gay guys, and hipsters caused massive combustion resulting in the cops coming, fdny as well, the roof trashed, drugs, booze everywhere and some random people shitting in our gym. i stopped by for a couple hours and saw the disaster in the making! i'm sure you'll read about it in curbed soon. it was one of those 'only in ny' moments."

This would never happen in Topeka.

[Pic via Curbed]

29-year-old Lawrence Jackson, a player on the kickball team Los Piratas Mechanicos (the Robot Pirates), was acting the fool up in Macy's Herald Square department store. Specifically:

A rabble-rousing kickball player for a recreational team called the Pirates was busted yesterday for brandishing a swashbuckler's sword in the middle of Macy's Herald Square, cops said.

Jackson and his [eight months pregnant] girlfriend said he was carrying the sword for fun on the way to a game and that it was nothing more than a prop befitting his team's zany image - but cops said his explanation didn't cut it.

"He didn't think there was anything wrong with it," said Police Officer Richard Perrone, who responded after frightened shoppers called security. "He thought it was a toy. But it's not a toy. It's sharp."

The Post added that the Robot Pirates team "occasionally wear drawn-on mustaches."

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"They didn't know where Havemeyer was. I hung up and jogged to another cop car parked at the Williamsburg Bridge Bus Depot. 'There's a street sign that a dump truck just crashed into. It's in the middle of Broadway and Bedford,' I said. 'Oh yeah?' asked the cop. The cops just sat there. Then another cop car pulled up and they chatted for a while." [My Memoirs via Curbed]

The day my Brooklyn column ran, it was picked up by the notoriously nasty Gawker.com, where it was TORN apart in its commenting section, a New York hipster hub. (You have to be pre-approved just for the right to comment, making it a bizarre online club.)

A brief, rather neutral note about my piece was followed by an explosion of scathing retorts, such as: "Gag. Please DON'T move to BK. We don't want you either." It hurt. I took every mean comment to heart. In two years of writing easygoing columns about local demolition derbies and ratty old hotels, I had received a steady stream of sweet e-mails but never really made any waves. This tsunami of attention was utterly insane.

I recently reviewed the comments, and as far as I can tell, what pissed these readers off was: 1) "West Bushwick," as I had called my friends' neighborhood, is apparently just some real-estate/hipster-neighborhood-renaming conspiracy that Insiders otherwise know as "East Williamsburg," which, according to said Insiders, sucks. 2) I had, without a smidgen of irony, announced I was moving to Brooklyn because it was cool. Which is, obviously, a very uncool thing to do.

"I eschewed the Ithaca-to-Williamsburg trend and went west to San Francisco. It is, surprisingly, almost more packed with bandanna babies than Brooklyn. They lounge in Dolores Park with organic sandwiches and two-buck Chuck as if it were stale bagels and PBR on Bedford Avenue.

They are similar: name-dropping obscure bands, writing novels "secretly" and being endearingly vain. But in the Mission's sweet-smelling cloud of tolerance, hipsters are relaxed and just a bit more lovable. Being from somewhere else is a good thing. It's expected, interesting. There's no convenient Internet venue through which to pick on people, as they lick their own outsider wounds. Instead, people comment on restaurants and farmers' markets. They're usually nice. Helpful. Memories of 1967 still linger in the Bay Area, and people are a little goofy for my East Coast taste. But, thank God, they don't take themselves very seriously—they're way cool with being cool.

Actually, the middle couple looks fairly normal. The white guy on the right, however, is in a rap group and "love[s] the ghetto."

#1: Ariel, 21
Work: At a library
Shops: Got t-shirt at a pharmacy, jacket for $3 in Ventura, CA "b/c they don't use jackets in CA." He isn't wearing socks.
Shot him: Corner of Knickerbocker and Stockholm
Misc: Sarah: "How did you get dressed?" — Ariel: "I just picked something up off the floor."


#2: Amy, 17 and Ace, 18
Work: Both are students
Shop: On Knickerbocker and Myrtle
Shot them: Corner of Himrod and Wyckoff
Misc: Amy says, "This is how I dress everyday. I like sneakers, not real shoes", Ace says he chose to mix those prints to match his new sneakers


#3: Royal, 22
Work: Freelance writer, in a rap group
Shops: Levis, buys "odds and ends"
Shot him: Corner of Greene and Wyckoff
Misc: Headed to watch The Ruins with a friend; "I love the ghetto"

Maybe we've all gotten so jaded and disconnected from each other via e-mail and iPhones that we can no longer feel. In that case, a Williamsburg blogger-butcher is teaching a class on "how to cut up a whole animal," reports Grub Street. (Damn! The class was last night.)

Yet, dead animals are still being appreciated for their kitsch value. The Chinatown Garbage tour features people parading through the streets at night, picking dead things out of the trash in order to make a monstrous taxidermy-thing. "You will learn how to dig in the garbage for dead animals. You can make art out of these animals... I've found everything from sharks to frogs." This often results in entries for Brooklyn bar Union Hall's taxidermy contest.

For the more traditional taxidermy experience, the following taxidermy-themed bars are still standing: Home Sweet Home on the Lower East Side, the very hip Freemans (designed by Taavo Somer, profiled in New York mag this week), Red Hook's Bait and Tackle, and the absolute hellhole of bad 3 a.m. decisions that is Duff's in Williamsburg.

Between the DIY taxidermy enthusiasts, the amateur butchers, and the dumpster-diving freegans, will the city's trash ever be safe from college grads ever again? This may be novel for New Yorkers, but some of us are still recovering from coming home from school to a draining deer carcass hanging upside-down in the garage.

[Photo: Montykins]

One of the residents... says it is like “living in a public bathroom.”

...Sometimes they literally become bathrooms. They are known for their giant, raucous parties; revelers occasionally urinate in the halls.

But it's totally worth it because this is The Place To Be! "This could have been Greenwich Village 60 years ago, or SoHo 30 years ago, or the East Village in the 1990s," wrote the Times' Cara Buckley.

Cara is very familiar with the dorm, and injected a bit of a hipster tone into the Times metro section:

The McKibbin is a revolving door, with each weekend bringing wide-eyed newcomers, usually in skinny jeans and chunky eyewear. Vacancies, announced on Craigslist or spread by word of mouth, are quickly filled. The typical tenure at the McKibbin is one year, and residents often go through distinct phases.

After the honeymoon stage comes denial when, say, one gets woken up by someone’s band at 3 a.m. or mugged on one of the tough surrounding streets. Next comes anger, usually after someone hurls a 40-ounce beer bottle from the roof and then urinates outside your door. Then comes acceptance and, finally, departure.

She also found this tragic old couple:

The oldest residents are believed to be Mel Smothers and his wife, Lizzie Hansen, who are both 61 and live at 248. Mr. Smothers moved from California three years ago to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming an artist in New York, and Ms. Hansen later followed, reluctantly. The McKibbin had the only loft space that Mr. Smothers could afford. The previous tenants were skateboarders, so he had to disassemble the ramp they had built and the four doghouse-like structures they had slept in. He has since lined his and Ms. Hansen’s tiny bedroom with insulating foam.

“Here’s why I stay. It’s still the cheapest lofts around because it’s so badly managed,” Mr. Smothers said. “Once I make enough money, I’m moving out of here.”

Oh that's horrible. I'm not sure I can sleep. Isn't there a social service agency to help these poor souls? An old "surrounded by hippies" rescue agency from the 1960s that could be re-activated? Where is the Times editorial page on this? I smell Pulitzer.

[Times]

(Image via Wikipedia)

"here is the thing. just like myspace, bkkb allows people to reinvent themselves... [Commisioner] Kevin Dailey is now the coolest guy on earth every sunday night to 32 teams with 10 or more people on it. and every person on every team is the coolest person who ever moved to brooklyn. they all drink and get drunk and have a blast and compare how drunk and how much fun they are having.

well i am straight edge. and as soon as everyone found out, i was labeled an asshole. i never cared about who did what or why. i just choose not to do drugs. i work out alot and have a typical "jock" build. so everyone skinny hipster is afraid of me. i have a quick wit and if a drunk idiot is trying to heckle me im going to tell them to shut up. so add all that up for 3 seasons of prison being the best team who doesnt want to hangout and get fall down drunk (which half of prison does on friday nights) and you have 120 pound boys who look like girls being scared and complaining about our team. i dont think they will let me back in the park on sunday nights let alone next year!! haha kevin daily hates me and my whole team!"

"Despite all the bullshit swarming around me for the last couple of years, I'm still here. Not anonymous calls to the Parks Department, selective cutting and pasting, or Gawker.com will keep me away. Still standing. I have no reason to go. I've done a fucking excellent job, and presided over continuous annual growth... I have been behind every last good decision towards making the league better and bigger. If I were a CEO, my only flaw would be not raising prices, as supply and demand dictates."

"I only saw folks swarming on the main field, but I don't know any details about what happened." Oh noes! Apparently, the team that calls themselves Prison has been kicked out of the league: "[They've been] stigmatized since the beginning, for better or for worse. The only time we ever played them, they had pretty poor spirit. They seem to exude a Snape-ish anti-hero quality, but maybe that's just the black garb and comparably mopey haircuts talking."

According to the Brooklyn Kickball's website:

While the Umping Crew has to officially vote on this, it's likely [Prison] is no longer a team...

I was distressed at your collective lack of progression, gratitude, and contrition. Why couldn't you just come and enjoy yourselves? Why do your players think it's cool to swarm around an ump like a pack of wolves when you don't like a call? You yell the entire time, and fine, it's mostly a free country for white people. However, you get enraged and play victim when people yell back. Then you have the unmitigated gall to lecture people on decorum and propriety.

The world is not against you: you are your own worst enemies. You're always gonna think there's bias when a close call goes the other way, and this perceived injustice will always enable you to rationalize violence. Violence? AT A KICKBALL GAME? What's next, you're gonna start a tetherball brawl? You believe that [famed letter-writer] Kevin Dailey was against you, yet for all of last year's regular season, I let you guys get away with everything...

But now, there's no room in this league for an endless cycle of abuse and forgiveness...Not anymore, not at McCarren Park on Sunday Nights.

"The classy text messager in the column in Matthew Caws from Nada Surf and he's still with the girl he broke up with the first for." HEY OH! You'll remember Nada Surf for their 1996 joke hit about high school, "Popular." (The album totes didn't sell and Nada Surf was dropped from their label; they went indie and made more records. Amazingly, they're still a band.)

Excerpts of dating classiness from the man whose hit song included the lyrics, "Don't put off breaking up when you know you want to... prolonging the situation only makes it worse":

A CUTE guy from a rock band sent me an e-mail message out of the blue. We had a friend in common, and he saw me sing "Christmas Wrapping" by the Waitresses one night in Brooklyn, at karaoke.

He continued, in all lowercase, to introduce himself. I scrolled over his rambling exposition, waiting for the payoff. Was he going to ask me out? He didn't. "i'm at home absolutely spazzing out because we're leaving in a few days to make a record and i have to/really should finish a long list of songs. so, waving hello and/or re-hello! all the bestest."

My enthusiasm waned. A hot guy in an indie band waved me hello and/or re-hello mid-spazz-out?

He took me for a walk around his neighborhood. I'm always suspicious when a guy takes his date on a walk, because it reeks of poverty and an inability to plan. It seemed as if he was taking me on a stroll of his estate, and from the way people on the street greeted him with questions about his tour and album, it was as if he was the king of his neighborhood.

[Photo: Michael Schmelling for NY Mag]

The "hipsters" who go to Home Buying For Hipsters are probably not hipsters at all, even if Fortress of Solitude totally spoke to them. It may be a Tuesday night, but it's New York in spring. The rooftop garden of the Met is open! Jenna Bush is giving a reading! American Idol is on! Who wants to spend their time hearing about mortgage rates?

Most likely, these "hipsters" aren't actually buying a home themselves. Their parents are. And with bankers uninterested in the skyscrapers on the Williamsburg waterfront and now too broke to afford them anyway, you have to credit the Corcoran Group for going after America's home-owners a second time through their kids. It's like renewing your vows, but with property taxes.

Tonight's Home Buying For Hipsters is being held at Union Pool. Though Union Pool is in Williamsburg (cool) and in a former pool supply store (cred), it is still not hip. It's mostly frequented by people already in the home buying stage, 30-somethings. (Also cougars.)

Home Buying For Hipsters: really Home Buying For Adults. Adults who are still trying to be cool.

(Although— buying a home in this economy may be genuinely edgy. So maybe some real hipsters should try it!)

First of all—thanks for the visual! American Apparel has admitted it "suffers a number of 'material weaknesses.'"

Apparently that includes a whole bunch of boring capital-related things that you don't care about, but then Dov livens things up by calling his CFO a "loser":

"In an interview March 20, Mr. Charney said his current chief financial officer, Ken Cieply, "has no credibility" in the retail apparel industry and is a "complete loser." Mr. Cieply says: "The only thing I can say is I'm surprised ... There are times when Dov is frustrated." In a followup telephone interview, Mr. Charney Friday called his own words "juvenile."

Mr. Charney stages provocative photo shoots in the basement of his Los Angeles mansion — a hilltop perch filled with stacks of his vintage porn magazines. On a recent evening [at his Los Angeles mansion], a young female employee served Mr. Charney tomatoes over rice while another, dressed in underwear and a T-shirt, was quizzed by her boss on competing brands.

As the Official McKibbin St. Shit-Talking Forum puts it, "McKibbin St. is home to painters, musicians, actors, filmmakers, dancers, clowns, magicians, comedians, Hasids, crackheads, indeed, all the best of God's children. McKibbin St. is in a constant state of flux; just as the artists ousted the indigenous peoples, so now are the yuppies and rising rents ousting those artists. We may not be able to do anything about it, but the least we can do - is talk some shit."

[Photos: by Bryan Derballa via Brooklyn Kickball]

About that margarita machine: it's ten bucks for a huge Styrofoam cup of it! We love the Turkey's Nest. What other place has old men, hipsters, and Hasidic Jews watching sports?

If you can't stomach reading through the whole letter, we understand and offer highlights of the demands:

1) A four-year cash bonus
2) Keys to the bar
3) "I'm tired of bullshit from those aforementioned employees. Let them know I am one of them."
4) A laminated drink card granting free drinks, forevermore, for him and his "lady of the evening." Hey!
5) The Turkey's Nest should pay for all kickball-related expenses: "the permits, the equipment, the balls, everything." And a shed: "I'm tired of the softball leagues stealing my shit."
6) Finally, a weekly wage.

[Photo: Rachelleb.com]