[via Razor Apple]

In Arlington for his girlfriend's dance rehearsal, Simmermon wandered into the inauspiciously named Murky Coffee. Sensibly ignoring a ridiculous sign (left), the Time Warner Cable executive ordered an iced triple espresso, it being July and all. Told this couldn't be done, because it was against policy, Simmermon then switched his order to a triple espresso and a cup of ice. This request was accepted very, very grudgingly.

A short time later, the most awesome exchange in the history of coffeeshops took place:

The barista called me over to the bar. I reached for [the espresso], and he leaned over and locked his eyes with mine, saying “Hey man. What you’re about to do … that’s really, really Not Okay.”

I could hear the capital letters in his voice, could see the gravity of the situation in his eyes.

He continued: “This is our store policy, to preserve the integrity of the coffee. It’s about the quality of the drink, and diluting the espresso is really not cool with us. So I mean, you’re going to do what you’re going to do, and I can’t stop you, but”

I interrupted. “You’re goddamned right you can’t stop me,” I said. “I happen to have a personal policy that prohibits me from indulging stupid bullshit like this — and another personal policy of doing what I want with the products I pay for.” Then I looked him right in his big wide eyes and poured the espresso onto the ice.

On his blog, Simmermon illustrates this exchange with a clip of Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. Go check it out, if you like, he tells the pre-publicity part of this story wonderfully.

Anyway, Simmermon later has to place another order because, well, it's been an hour and needs some more goddamned caffeine! The fact that he's jonesing for more coffee only 60 minutes after a triple espresso maybe should have clued in the coffee shop to what sort of customer it had on its hands. But of course, at this point it was too late.

Simmermon orders "the strongest iced beverage your policy will allow," and is served an iced, four-shot Americano. He liked it! And he left a tip!

Simmermon also said (later, on his blog post) "the only way I’m ever coming back to Murky Coffee in Arlington is if I’m carrying matches and a can of kerosene." Well.

The post found its way to MetaFilter and BoingBoing. Simmermon posted an update, saying "it’s a little embarrassing. I mean, I can freely admit that I acted like a total dick here." He posted a clip of Lily Tomlin acting like a total dick somewhere else.

Then the cafe owner responded on his blog! He was not pleased!

To Mr. Simmermon, you overplayed your hand with your vulgar tip-schtick. While I certainly won't bemoan you your right to free-speech, I have to respond to you in your own dialect: F*@k you, Jeff Simmermon. Considering your public threat of arson, you'll understand when I say that if you ever show your face at my shop, I'll punch you in your dick.

The owner, Nick Cho, also said his coffee shop is basically known for its anal policies, including some serious sadistic BS like "no modifications to the Classic Cappuccino," whatever that's about, and, bizarrely, "no questions will be answered about the $5 Hot Chocolate" (emphasis added).

Cho also tried to claim that the iced espresso ban is "mostly for quality reasons... when [espresso] hits ice, it seems to go through a chemical change that we can't fully explain." But then he admitted his shop used to serve iced espressos, but most people who bought them added milk to create a cheap "ghetto latte." So really the whole ban is about money, not quality.

The Post thinks "both sides look like drips" in this feud. But do they? A cable guy accidentally earned a national reputation for standing up for good customer service, which will probably never happen again anywhere, ever. And a cafe showed espresso snobs worldwide that it will defend the delicate acids in its shots come hell or high water.

Isn't that, in the end, really, really OK?

[Post, And I Am Not Lying]

(Photos via Simmermon's Facebook, tbridge on Flickr and And I Am Not Lying.)

Stephen Witt, a reporter from the New York Post-owned Courier-Life chain, seized the microphone to try his hand at stand-up comedy during the delay.

“What do you know about Brooklyn 99-cent stores?” asked Witt, who last made headlines for hugging Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner at a 2006 rally. “Have you ever been so broke that you had to put something on lay-away at a 99-cent store?”

Witt’s quip was met with boos...

“It was just awkward, and I feel kind of embarrassed for him,” said one woman, who said she saw Witt consuming alcohol before his artistic contribution to the evening.

And look, there's a clip!

[Brooklyn Paper]

Surprisingly, not everyone camping on line is African American - two white Park Slope residents, Rob Tanzer, 24 and Jake Feingold, 23, have also joined the group.

"We read about this on Curbed, and we just thought that being on this side of the fence seems like a far more authentic Brooklyn experience," explained Mr. Feingold, "We basically want the black community to know that not all white people are here to displace them; That really, we're part of the solution. And of course we're also down to get paid."

[Blognigger]

"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]

"I absolutely can't believe that they're going to put these United Colors of Benetton kids into a high-rise in the middle of downtown brooklyn. Talk about some post-apocalyptic shit. I grew up BLACK in New York, and even I didn't set foot in Downtown Brooklyn until I was 30..."

Now they got some camera-ready glossy-ass Real Dolls™ living in a rotating health club above where the old Church's fried chicken used to be.

...it's times like this I wish I was a real black guy, a thick darkskinned brotha from east flatbush with a big-ass 'fro pick, instead of my little software engineering over-educated ass, so that I could summon a crew of like-minded ignorant black gentlemen with nothing to live for such that we could go and beat the FUCK out of these little survivor wanabees and take a dump in their hottub."

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."

Adrian Foster, 32, an employee at Petland Discounts, also dreamed of stardom. “It’ll be good, once I’m on it,” he said. But he questioned the choice of neighborhood.

“Compared to other places they were living, I think this would be a downgrade,” he said. “A few bars, a few stores, that’s about it. Clubs, they have to go to Manhattan. It’s kind of rough out here. They’ve just got to keep their eyes open and ears open.”

Danny Perez, 37, works at Gallery Religious Supplies, which sells, besides the anti-jinx soap, candles and bath salts that claim to attract money or love and dispel evil. He knows the neighborhood as well as anyone, acting as a confidant to his customers, who whisper to him of some ill or want that he addresses with a special candle.

“They’d be jeopardizing their safety,” he said of the cast members. “Too many side streets.” But he promised to do his best for any of them. “I’ll help them out,” he said. “I’ll help them out.”

Gosh, it sounds like throwing a bunch of young, privileged, mostly white youths into downtown Brooklyn might produce some unexpected complications. If you think about it, it's almost as though that's what MTV wants.

[Times]

He is prone to writing sentences like, “Look at M1, M2 and M3 FED money supply. They have gone parabolic for the last 6 years,” as well as sentences like, “Y’all are fucking finished and the asshole Brokers who pumped this shit up will get ass-raped!” He went through a period in March 2008 during which he promised to “reframe from using profanity.” (Short-lived.) He’s posted comments such as “First order of Business: Citigroup is planing to sell 400 Billion dollars of their assets. I find this very scary. I think they need to raise their capital base.... The upcoming Depression will prove we overstepped out boundaries. And out children will pay for our folly.”

And he’s posted comments such as, “Real Estate is fucking over!!!!! Real Estate is fucking over!!!!! Real Estate is fucking over!!!!! Real Estate is fucking over!!!!!” His posting style is so schizophrenic that one might suspect he is either (a) several very different people posting under the same name or (b) schizophrenic. He sometimes sounds like he’s locked in a basement somewhere, surrounded by newspaper clippings on all four walls.

He touches down in comment threads like a rhetorical Tasmanian devil, huffing and puffing in such a hysterical manner as to become, well, kind of hysterical—as when he wrote this (and I’ve made every effort to retain the integrity of the punctuation), in response to an item about Clinton Hill titled “Price Cuts at 936 Fulton Street”:

WHAT?!!!!! Already?!!!! NO!!!!!!! Everyone wants to live on Fulton St. This can’t be happening…… Please help me.… please.….

****Sobs into sleep*********

Chuckie getting ass-raped.

(Chuckie, for the record, appears to be The What’s generic name for the average white Brooklynite. Either that, or it’s a reference to Chuck Schumer. Or possibly Chuck E. Cheese, though it’s not clear why anyone would want to ass-rape Chuck E. Cheese.)

The writer of the article tries, and fails, to figure out who The What is, and uses him a springboard from which to raise issues of anonymity, class anxiety, sublimated anger, fame in the modern era, etc. etc., much as Emily Gould did in her piece in the Times magazine on being a blogger. Which is all well and good, but all that hand-waving is just an excuse to reprint bitchy comments from the What and other Brooklynites, not that anyone should have a problem with that.

The only truly significant issue raised by the story is who will be first to write a big article about blog lurkers. Who are they, and WHY DON'T THEY SAY ANYTHING?

[New York]

Though, they won't say this is definite, and do confirm that they're considering a lot of other safe, white borough neighborhoods like Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights, and DUMBO. Proximity to Manhattan is apparently a concern for the producers (and yet they also say they've been looking at Coney Island?), but they are totes committed to Brooklyn and its "cachet" and "vibrancy." Isn't "vibrancy" TV-code for "ethnic"? Ain't that much ethnic about Brooklyn Heights or Carroll Gardens or most of Park Slope at this point. Sigh. This sure-to-be disaster stumbles on. [Via Gothamist]

The two buildings of (mostly illegal) lofts, full of idiot kids in stupid pants and two olds, are renowned for their loud parities, ridiculous band rehearsals, and chewy chewy bed bugs. Wouldn't it be super to watch Amilynn from Ole Miss trying to nail some plywood together to create a bedroom? Or to gawk at troubled, angry water polo player Nickariah (from Duke) try to sex some girl who only eats tempe, cigarette butts, and old cans, like a common goat? That would be the real fake Real World. Plus then us quiet (read: scared) folk in the slightly sleepier neighbs wouldn't have to deal with camera crews crowding our most horrible bars. Are you listening MTV? Sell that tricked-out thing on North 8th! Pack your bindles and head on over to McKibbin.

The Real World Brooklyn. For Real. [Observer]

"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]

Do you have what it takes to be an adult star??? Niki Wilder production studio, has moved to bushwick. We are now casting for the film *Niki gets lost in Bushdick* A gang bang scene in the climax of the film, when Niki is lost in Busdick "and stumbles upon a band playing with instruments, wanting them used on her by the band, and audience. If you can perform in front of camera, and people, and have a large penis, than we are looking for you!!! Sign up, and send us video to show us what you can do.

"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.

For your benefit, I took all of Doree's hard research and remapped it, including only the attractive writers. The addresses of these writers are estimates, but it so happens that Fort Greene is starting to have the literary cachet of Paris's Left Bank.

[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]

The Times' Touré ultimately decided he had no choice but to rat out the crack house:

I was tacitly aiding and abetting their immoral, illegal and dangerous behavior. What if one of the crackheads attacked my wife as she walked home? What if a kid from the day care center near the crack house found a vial on the sidewalk?

Ha ha, no such moral qualms for our tipster!

I used to live in that brownstone on the left. 129
South Oxford! We called it Oxford Manor, we had a
myspace for it and everything. This was September
06-March 07.

The crack house was right across the
street and I used to love to sit on my stoop with a
martini and watch shit go down. I would never call
the cops on those folks....they never bothered me.

The only thing that kind of bugged was the "WHOOOOP!"
sound that was constantly coming from that direction.
It became part of our vocabulary (my roommate's and
I). "Who wants to go to dinner?" "WHOOOP!"

One day,
we thought it was all over because we came out of the
house to go to dinner, and the whole street was filled
with undercover cop cars and cops all in front of the
crack house. That must have been after that black guy
snitched. But, soon after, the whooping and the shady
window transactions continued.

t is so crazy to go
on Gawker and see your old apartment. I wonder if the
guy who wrote that article is the same guy who lived
two doors down and had dread locks that were really
long that he wrapped around his neck like a choker.
There weren't really that many other black guys on
that part of the street.

Apparently you can only have pups off the leash after 9PM! My question is where should I start getting signatures and to whom should I submit it. Any other advice is greatly appreciated... I used to live in Portland and no parks had these type of restrictions. In my opinion, if people can be running around freely, my pets should be able to as well... I don't want to sound insensitive, but usually the only people who are annoyed and angried by my pups off the leash are Mexicans and black people."

Hipster Mortgage Night Wednesday March 26th, 6-8pm *HUGS* 108 North 6th, Wythe/Kent, Williamsburg L to Bedford Avenue

Call or email to schedule a private 20 minute appointment to talk money
specifics with Rob Slifer, residential mortgage broker, Professional
Advantage. Following money, meet with Eve Levine, residential real
estate broker, The Corcoran Group, to look at current listings available
on the market right now!

Sara Gran, author of Dope and Brooklynite by birth, wrote a similar essay also for the New York Times two and a half years ago. As she put it: "There's a rumor going around that Brooklyn is some kind of heaven on earth for writers. ... I think they've been a little too optimistic."

Her essay pondered the reading material choices on the F train. Whitehouse makes an analogy between writing in Brooklyn and The Warriors.

But thank god the Times still needs to explain that whole "people live in other boroughs" thing to its target demo, 'cause outer borough hipsters gotta eat.

"I Write in Brooklyn. Get Over It." [NYT]
"Call It Booklyn" [NYT]

Nicole Brydson from the Observer used to live in Greenpoint, and now when she goes back, she's not even the only one! Or as she wryly puts it, "I've recently found myself traveling north to Williamsburg and Greenpoint for a night out more often and apparently, I'm not alone!"

Trendwatch! SEA Thai restaurant is so bridge-and-tunnel! Greenpoint has clubs and a bowling alley! And Nicole tells us that, at long last, "with its mix of hipster residue and tragically suburban folk, Bedford Avenue finally completed its transformation into the new Avenue A." Tragic. Let's hope word of this doesn't get out to the hip young hipster crowd attending their musical shows around the neighborhood. It would make them so mad!

Having gotten fed up with all the stumblebums and glitterati roaming the streets of Greenpoint, she says she's now "totally content to return to my quiet, peaceful neighborhood" of Prospect Heights. That's cool but, is your old apartment available? I really want to get in on this Greenpoint thing before it gets spoiled!