It's true, according to the vice president of Colombia!

"Santos said many middle-class Britons who used cocaine were unaware of its environmental impact. 'For somebody who drives a hybrid, who recycles, who is worried about global warming - to tell him that that night of partying will destroy 4m square of rainforest might lead him to make another decision.'"

So stop it, all of Hollywood! [Guardian]

[The key: Purplish-pink for traditional strongholds of the rich that will remain unscathed. Red for core neighborhoods that are probably too gentrified now to roll back significantly. Pink for marginal hoods, where a recession could send gentrifiers fleeing. And grey for wilderness neighborhoods, where yuppies would fear to tread after The Poors and other non-glamorous types take them back for good.]

[Map by Steven Dressler]

"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]

Slope-bashing hit the big time last February, when The New York Times’ David Brooks pegged the ’hood as ground zero of the “hipster parent moment.” He wrote: “Can we please see the end of those Park Slope alternative Stepford Moms in their black-on-black maternity tunics who turn their babies into fashion-forward, anticorporate indie-infants in order to stay one step ahead of the cool police?”

Some of this sentiment, to be sure, springs from the area’s transformation in recent years: Trendy boutiques and bars have replaced bodegas on Fifth Avenue; and the neighborhood’s nickname has gone from nice, crunchy “Dyke Slope” to crowded, congested “No Park Slope.” According to a recent study, nearly half the drivers cruising at any given time are searching for a parking spot.

At least to non-locals (such as Brooks, who doesn’t realize that Williamsburg is actually where the “hipsters” are), the Slope seems to represent all that is reprehensible about gentrified New York and modern urban parenting. “Non–New Yorkers think of it disparagingly as a hipster alterna-playground, and Manhattanites think of it as a sanctimonious PC stroller derby, like one big suburban PTA meeting stuck in a food co-op,” says novelist Steven Johnson, a longtime Sloper who jokes on his blog that “all writers with young children in NYC are legally required to live” there. “To the outside world, it’s too cool for its own good, and inside New York, it’s not cool enough.”

Even many residents maintain a love-hate relationship with their nabe. Graphic designer and community organizer Aaron Brashear says that his family shops everywhere but jam-packed Seventh Avenue. “We will not walk there because of the stroller brigades,” he says. Slope psychotherapist Peter Loffredo has sworn off the kid-crammed Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and both Tea Lounges, and not because he doesn’t like the coffee. “They’re overrun pseudo Romper Rooms,” he says. [TONY] [photo: Ben Goldstein]

[via WSJ]

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!)

Where once they were young and upwardly mobile, now they're middle aged and standing still.

And I know this, because I was a Yuppy once - but now, like so many of my kind, I'm an Arrpy.

Nearly 20 years on, we are married or divorced, or both, have children or stepchildren, own nice homes and can look back over two decades in which we've had a fabulous lifestyle.

So how has your thinking evolved into your golden years?

And part of the problem is we've got so used to our spending habits we no longer understand the difference between a luxury item and an essential.

Gas, I've come to understand, is an essential, Giorgio Armani is not.

Food is fundamental, skiing is not.

Goodness! I hope it's not hitting you too hard.

Yes, the sad fact is that up and down the land the Arppies are obsessed with the cost of the bare necessities of life. And it doesn't stop with the food shop.

As retail analysts Mintel pointed out yesterday in their annual analysis of household spending, Arppies are cancelling family holidays.

Two of my friends have already scaled down their summer holidays, one cancelling the annual jaunt to Tuscany and even losing her £2,000 deposit on the three-week break.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!

But at least we Arppies are optimists and know things can only get better. Well, they couldn't get much worse.

[Daily Mail via Agenda Inc.]