make-believe.org

Wburg.

The key thing to appreciate about Williamsburg, Brooklyn is the irony. The moustaches are ironic. The ubiquitous Pabst Blue Ribbon is ironic. (Cheap and ironic: the best kind.) The street art is relentlessly ironic.

The cool kids colonised Wburg ten or fifteen years ago when rent in lower Manhattan soared beyond their budgets, and they chose this strange Hasidic/Hispanic slum out under the Williamsburg Bridge chiefly because it was ironic. Cheap, and ironic.

Now those kids (or their spiritual successors) are being pushed out by the juggernaut of gentrification, because it's cool to live in Williamsburg. The life of a hipster is rich with irony.

Joseph | 27 Oct 2008