Gawker: west bushwick

Cornell's Famous "West Bushwick" Writer Moves to San Francisco; Your Fault

Sheila — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:01:28 EDT

Remember the famous "West Bushwick" item from last year? It started as a post by Doree Shafrir in response to a story Cornell student Erin Geld wrote for the Daily Sun, the littlest Ivy college's student paper. Geld stayed with friends in a nonexistant neighborhood she referred to as "West Bushwick" for the weekend and was overwhelmed and intimidated by her perceived coolness of it all. She marveled at the big lofts, the "spooky lots and the occasional shady passerby," and the fashion parade of Bedford Avenue. She came to the conclusion that she wasn't sure if she would be able to handle living in such a crazy place after graduation! Well, guess what: now you've gone and done it. In Newsweek, the same writer blogs that because of the response to the "rather neutral" item on this website, her column was "TORN apart" in our commenting section, a "New York hipster club." This "hipster attack" from commenters "managed to chase me to California."

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.

Anyway, she moved to San Francisco, and it's so much better! Screw you, Williamsburg, Gawker commenters, and hipsters:

"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.

Hipster Attack Revisited: Why I'm Scared of Brooklyn [Newsweek Online]

New York's Women Are Enslaved To Kim France

Doree Shafrir — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:10:21 EDT

Boutiques! They're in, New York mag tells us this week. Generally found in such areas as the West Village, Cobble Hill, and Williamsburg, these usually woman-owned mini-stores cater to a particular population of twenty and thirtysomething women. Not quite hipsters, not quite preps, not quite socialites (or wannabes), these women—who toil in such industries as publishing (book and magazine, of course), advertising, and PR, with the odd teacher or non-profit employee thrown in (and maybe a lawyer looking for some weekend outfits)—will spend hundreds on the perfect pair of boots, or on a handbag. They own premium denim, but not anything immediately recognizable from the back pockets. They wear skirts and dresses, but avoid looking overly "girly." It's because the prevailing aesthetic among this demographic has become dictated almost entirely by Lucky magazine.

The six boutiques highlighted by New York are all lovely, to be sure. They're also all favorites of Lucky—at least, they're mentioned in this month's list of the top 100 boutiques in New York (and name-checked more than often by editor Kim France, this look's poster woman, who may or may not have a big butt). You've probably been to all of them!

We certainly have. We've glanced through the racks, at the shirts by Corey Lynn Calter and the pants by Vanessa Bruno, the stylishly unstylish APC dresses, the Twinkle by Wenlan skirts. We've caressed the soft leather totes and tried on the Devotte peep-toe sandals. And sometimes, yes, we buy, knowing that doing so will just help perpetuate the pseudo-indie, Lucky-enabled fashion hegemony in this city. So if you see us wandering the streets in a Santa-appliquéd gem sweater and acid-washed jeans, it's not some sort of ironic West Bushwickian statement. It's that we're tired, and we've finally decided that Kim France is just evil Anna Wintour dressed down in clothes from Dear Fieldbinder.

The New Style Merchants [NYM]

Eric Hielscher, Google Intern, Makes It In New York

Doree Shafrir — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 11:55:49 EDT

Former Minnesotan, total vegetarian, and current Google intern Eric Hielscher has been at his job for a couple weeks now, and he's been blogging about his experiences moving to New York and starting a new job. He met "a nice ex-Puerto Rican (lots of them in NY)" who helped him move! It's a familiar tale, to be sure, but one that is getting played out in the way that only an intern for one of the richest companies in the world, who grew up in an 800-person town in the Midwest, can play it.

The other day, for example, he blogged:

Yesterday at work I got in at around 9:15 or so and after a couple hours received an email telling everyone in the New York office that they could leave at 2 to enjoy the 4th of July holiday. Cool. It didn't seem like my officemates were going to take advantage, but I felt as an intern I shouldn't feel pressure to work overtime and left around then.

Good idea! What else has Eric learned in his short time so far in New York?

I was told about the apartment which was on E 109th (apparently Spanish Harlem is a part of the Upper East Side, or I wouldn't have come there in the first place) and this new guy took me via the subway up to the place. It was my first glimpse of Harlem, and it looked pretty ok. Definitely nicer than the areas of central Brooklyn I'd seen last week. The guy did go on about how I'd need to buy window guards to prevent break-ins (yay) and told me both about this sketchy tunnel separating the 4,5,6 trains from the apartment and the housing project right near there.

Yeah. "Apparently Spanish Harlem is a part of the Upper East Side." Here, come with us to West Bushwick!

Erik's [sic] Blog

Sex Parties In West Bushwick!

Choire — Tue, 22 May 2007 16:38:43 EDT

An appealing "roommate wanted" post that's been up and down on Craiglist—$1200 a month, large room with terrace, near the Grand St. L train—this last week has an unusual "catch." Yeah, just a sex party once or twice a week. Don't be so uptight! Fortunately, your future roommate is both a registered E.M.T. and has a great bio online! It's endlessly fascinating.
[Warning! Audio + Crazy!] Bio [Danny NYC]
$1200 Male Roommate Wanted: Duplex Loft, 2 terraces, utilities included [Craigslist]

We Are All West Bushwickians

Doree Shafrir — Thu, 03 May 2007 19:01:14 EDT

Hey, who tagged our office? And what the heck does it say?
Community bedbug prevention efforts at the McKibbin Street Lofts in East Williamsburg (AKA West Bushwick.) [Curbed]
Gilmore Girls comes to an end. So long, hussies! [TMZ]
What will happen to CNBC's contract with Dow Jones (CNBC gets a lot of its business reporting from the WSJ, Barron's, etc.) if the Murdoch deal goes through? Fox News on CNBC, that's what! [MSNBC]
The New York Times sports magazine, Play, now has an e-mail newsletter. It pays its writers "significantly less" than a print article would. [NYO]

Glaring Omissions: Maybe We Should Care About 'Trace' Magazine, But Then Again, Maybe Not

Doree Shafrir — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:01:43 EDT

Glaring Omissions reproduces tips received from readers in the last week that weren't covered on Gawker, either by accident (it happens!) or by design (it happens more often).

"WHERE THE FUCK IS THE TACO TRUCK—The "Tacos de Idolo" truck, arguably the best tacos in the city, usually parked on the northeast corner of 14th and 8th late night every night, has gone missing for over a week. Have you been alerted to this crisis and do you have any information? I'm so hungry—$2 veggie tacos are all I can stomach on my "commute" home to West Bushwick after work."

"In Hardcore—I founnd this old film of Barbra Streisand and looked on the internet to see what was said about it and it seems like a lot of bull shi.... in both directions, so I found your web sight and hoped you could clear this up for me. Here's a picture of the carton and the film. Any information would be helpful. Thanks in advance for your help."

"Come on now.You must be on bored ass!!! Who give's a flying fuck about some guy's fucken nose!!! Good Lord Man!! Ur ignorant bigtime."

"You are all a bunch of ignorant losers. Sort your lives out. ....reporting live from the center of the universe???.......get fucked"

"Do you guys care about TRACE magazine? It's been around for 10 years, started in the UK with Graham as the art director. (He wen t to the Face and now at Giant) They have a book out now 10 years of TRACE. They have a tv station in Africa and Europe and an ad agency TRUE in LA that does all the NIssan ads. Anyway, TRACE and Claude Grunitzky are notorious for not paying photographers, meanwhile he lives in a 1.8 million dollar place and is always traveling to Rio. So.. at the beginning of January the entire staff walked out after not being paid. They came back for a while after receiving their checks on the 15th of the month. Then in Febuary they lost the office space in Soho so the entire staff has been working from home. In March half the staff quit. The publisher, executive editor, art director and the Ad director quit. Do you guys care about Trace magazine?"

"I noticed today that Gawker is advertising the new Henry Rollins show on IFC which aspires to "shake the foundation of late night." Um...yeah. In the interest of giving you fodder to rank on your advertisers, I met Henry Rollins in 1996. I was a freshman at Barnard college in New York City. A few friends of mine went to NYU and lived on St. Marks. They kept telling me and my boyfriend that Henry Rollins lived in the apartment directly across the hall. Of course, I thought they were bullshitting us. However, late that
night while playing something innocuous on the radio (U2 perhaps? It was 1996, and at the age of 18, U2 seemed terribly cool. What can I say...), we hear a banging on the door. Expecting friends, I ran to open it, but instead of other college kids, there stands an old, lame looking Henry Rollins. He said something like, "Kids, I bought Joshua Tree when it came out, but it's 2 in the morning and some of us have to work tomorrow. I'm tired of having to come over here and tell you to keep it down. Can you please have some
respect for your neighbors?" He then scanned the room, looking at the bottles of beer and the bong, rolled his eyes and went back to bed. Yep. Quite the badass that Henry Rollins. He listens to Joshua Tree and tells the young kids to keep it down. He reminds me a lot of my Republican, corporate executive dad. Who is also very unlikely to "shake the foundation" of anything."

"john lennon in central park eating chocolate cake in a bag . killed by stalker. princess diana seen getting into a car in france. killed by stalker gawkers. saw your interview last night with Kimmel do you honestly believe people dont get hurt? These 2 beautiful people doing wonderful things in this world killed, your website could cause more, really think about it."

"CBS Radio,
It was with outrage that I heard of your decision to cancel Don Imus from your airways this afternoon. My anger then gave way to sadness, not because of the individuals involved, but because you, CBS, are a symptom of the downfall of America. Not in our lifetimes, or maybe that of our children, but certainly in the future the world will wonder what happened to the world power that was the United States of America. And while CBS, the media and corporate America had a hand in our downfall it ultimately was the fault of all of us that let the greatest country on earth become an afterthought because of our collective lack of guts and moral backbone to stand up for what is right."

Earlier: Glaring Omissions

Bad Buzzword Alert: 'Downshifting'

Emily Gould — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 12:57:00 EDT

"Downshifting" is the new term that everyone is using —okay, so far, that two Observer reporters are using—to describe the phenomenon whereby people who actually live in one neigborhood exaggerate their proximity to a rougher area. Apparently, Erin "West Bushwick" Geld isn't the only person who's blurring the Bushwick-Williamsburg divide. Other culprits include Graham L stop-area waitress Xeniz Viray, who thinks her neighbor-friends "downshift" because "Bushwick sounds edgier than Williamsburg," and the Bushwick Country Club, a Williamsburg bar. But do a few map-illiterate dummies constitute a trend? Well, maybe ("Carroll Gardens," "Red Hook," and "Gowanus"-wise, especially), but downshifting isn't working for us me. Ghettofabricatin'? Hoodwinking? Anyone? —Emily

The Great Downshift Schtick [NYO]

Meet The West Bushwickians

Doree Shafrir — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:50:04 EDT

We hear that the "West Bushwick" gang, with whom we are now obsessed, threw a party this weekend. (For latecomers, the tale of madness and gentrification began with an investigation by a Cornell reporter.) Until we hear about that fiesta, we'll have to make do with a Facebook photo album named "West Bushwick," in which there's some great shots from their parties last fall. This picture is helpfully labelled "living room, almost the cover of the latest rapture album." Please be cautious of these extremely hip children!

Stripper pole in background.

And this is Julia. She captioned this photo "i love bushwick!"

Earlier: More On Why You'll Never Move to West Bushwick