Before I watched this New York Times video, I thought I was in for one of those moments when you want to throw your computer out the window. However, I was a bit surprised at the amount of times they poked fun at the typical Brooklyn hipster – even though it was done politely and that all in all, they glorified it. As we all know by now, the NY Times just recently – about two years ago – discovered Brooklyn, well, Nieuw Breukelen. Now every week you can find lots of articles about artisanal cupcakes, pseudo-butcher lessons, Romper Room art galleries, beard competitions, annoying fusion restaurants with sleeve-tattooed chefs, the magic of planting a seed and watering it to make it grow, and so on.
I got sick when they started saying that “Brooklyn” is now a world-wide phenomenon; that in France people are saying “Tre Brooklyn”. Newsflash: people around the world knew about Brooklyn loooooooong before the hipster and yupster beardos invaded; that’s why Brooklyn is and always has been the world’s biggest melting pot. It’s been a place known for welcoming hard-working people that just wanted to come to America to work, live affordably, start families, and raise kids in a non-pretentious, zero-cool-factor way. That seems to be changing though thanks to the organic pussy invasion who will stomp on each other’s bearded faces and climb over each other’s backs while draining their suburban parents’ bank accounts just to say they live in a cool Brooklyn zip code.
The part I loved in the video was when they stumped themselves when trying to count the number of famous bands or musicians (that are actually all recent transplants) to come out of Brooklyn. I think they named maybe two – two of which I never heard of and are not even remotely famous compared to [enter your favorite mainstream artist]. What a joke! Just think of the thousands and thousands of horrible hipster self-proclaimed musicians that must have passed through Brooklyn over the last decade as opposed to the number who have achieved any fame. It’s hysterical. That also goes for anything related to being creative. The scale overwhelmingly tips in my favor.
I guess the best part of all of this is that The New Yup Times, the hipsters and yupsters still avoid southern Brooklyn like its kryptonite. I really hope it stays that way. Nothing to see here folks. We have non-organic vegetables, $1.00 coffee and all sorts of accents; even the Brooklyn kind – stay the fuck away.
I am standing guard for Marine Park and Sheepshead.
Hey 90sBrooklyn stand your guard for Marine Park and Sheepshead I am standing guard in Midwood. Glad to know there are sentries everywhere below the red line ready to open a can of whoop ass on these little shits
I find it just so zany and cute how NYT can create such a wacky hip video while the company loses a gazillion plus dollars a year and seeps into irrelevance. So glad they are here to tell us about how the “Brooklyn cultural brand” has gone global. Maybe the terrorists did actually win after all.
Just to fill in the blanks for the NYT, here’s an incomplete list of Famous Brooklynites (born and raised). Notice that Matt “The Whimsical Chimpanzee” Silver is not among them.
We did good!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Brooklyn,_New_York
Amen. Broklyn is “now” famous around the world? WTF? Did they ever see a WWII movie that didn’t have a character named “Brooklyn” or “Flatbush” usually played by William Bendix or another real New Yorker.
I get the Sunday NY Times and get a kick out of the real estate section of the prices in Nieuw Breucklen – Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Billyburg, and the like – inevitably bought by people from out of town with too much money and too little sense.
Remember, people – you live in Brooklyn, you from Iowa.
Just stay out of Bay Ridge and we’ll be happy.
STAY OUT OF BENSONHURST TOO.
And Dyker Heights and Dyker Park! Then again there’s no kewl industrial spaces in these areas and the majority of the apartments are co-op and even if they had the money they would never pass the board. Dyker will be safe because its a 2 fare zone ,lack of subway service and comprised of 1 and 2 family homes. There is a real hipster hatred in Bay Ridge/Dyker and I think they feel the animosity when they stumble upon us. I do however notice that some of the younger teens are starting to co-opt the hipster “look” lately. At least with them its just a passing phase like being Goth.
Careful. The attention whores may start to vandalize and highjack wiki articles in another bid of “Look at meeeeeee!!!”
I’ll bet $10 that the Times paid little to nothing for this. I’m seeing a lot more “content” like this at big newspaper sites, where freelancers hand over the video in the desperate hope for further exposure. You know, like how Special Edd does free ads and videos so he can pretend to be a filmmaker. (If this was made internally, it was probably by some staffer with a desperate need to prove that position’s relevance in the face of upcoming layoffs. The staffer cranks out video after video, putting in 80-hour weeks to make deadlines, and the paper gets twice the content for the same pay. And if the output slows because of illness, exhaustion, or personal commitments, well, the paper can always find eight more fools willing to do anything to keep their jobs.)
AO Scott and David Carr are among the most senior people at the Times.
Yup, job justification to prove to Management that (a) they’re not irrelevant and (b) they’re not overpriced for their positions. IMO, FAIL on both counts; here come the interns…
I’m not really a fan of either, but I can promise that they’re not going anywhere and that they didn’t make the video for any reason other than they felt like it. The dynamics inside the industry are not hard to understand.
“Most senior people at the Times”… really?
Proof positive that print media is DEAD DEAD DEAD!!!
What I see is two undead ghoulish vampires, kept alive long after their natural expiry dates by heart medication, salivating over the fresh blood of (not so) young hayseed zombies who come to Brueklyn, pay over millions of $$$ in rent for previously cheap accommodation and work for free as interns to produce the Satanic Bible of “Neiew Brueklyn”. This bible will then attract more hayseeds, who will bring still more hayseeds, who will pay more $$$ to work for free ad infinitum (or at least until their worthless hides finally expire 100 years from now).
As for print media, what with all the divergent viewpoints on the Internet from extreme left to extreme right and everything in between and all for free, when’s the last time YOU bought a newspaper to actually READ?
Sorry, but Upper East Side New Yorker reading intellectual farts are a dying breed. They mostly brought it on themselves by believing Warhol was a great artist and producing excrement like “Girls”.
Comment of the day, right there.
Cool…
I read the NYT because, aside from its execrable sections on New York society, it’s still the most sober news I can get – I mean, when your competition is aggregator sites and glorified blogs like the Huffington Post, you don’t have competition.
The BBC is pretty good too for straight-ahead just the fact news.
Again…there are just no serious competitors to traditional media in terms of gathering news. Commentary and criticism, sure. News reporting, none. Maybe at the local level, but the rise of hyper-local citizen journalism that people used to predict in the early days of the internet has proven to be kind of a bust so far.
HERRO STEVIE!!!
Trying a new concept in sock-muppetry now are you?
I say the sooner some of those Upper East Side New Yorker reading pseudointellectual farts die off the better. And I hope they take that stale stuffy New Yorker with them.
Those New Yorker reading people helped breed the culture of learned helplessness of today’s spoiled Precious Snowflakes. They’ve been telling the Snowflake parents that they should’nt make Precious work for anything, that it’s OK to start dosing your kid with adderall at age 5, that their horrible art should be encouraged, to be paranoid about EVERYTHING, etc., etc., for years.
David Carr was a pretty serious cocaine addict. He lived to tell the tale and then wrote a book about it, excerpted here in the NY Times Magazine:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/magazine/20Carr-t.html
The New York Times is comfortably profitable, actually.
The newspaper industry is dying. The NYT is going under and the pensions are going with it.
OK, this has nothing to do with hipsters–I didn’t watch the Brooklyn video and I’m not going to–but it’s just a pet peeve of mine.
I agree that newspapers are going to have to shrink quite a bit. The problem with saying it’s “dying” is that, after 20 years, the digital revolution has produced exactly zero competitors to the major newspapers. I’m talking about their core news-gathering functions, not the peripheral stuff like the silly Brooklyn video. Saying that newspapers are dying is the default “smart” thing to say but it actually makes no sense if you think about it for half a second.
Yeah, ten blogs outta ten get their news from… newspapers.
And most of their shit can hard even be called “commentary,” as they’re just reposting the articles they read.
DH, I can’t agree more with this assessment. It’s like watching the situation in Portland, where every last hipster dipshit talks about the place being a great incubator for musical talent. Quick: name a band getting any kind of national attention that came from Portland. If you named either “Quarterflash” or “Everclear”, you still win, because they’re living the hipster nightmare. Namely, still touring decades after their inexplicable rise to the top of terrestrial radio, thanks to lots and lots of record label payola, in the desperate hope that maybe that next gig might be the one that turns their luck around and greases their big comebacks. (They’re also hipster nightmares because even as pathetic a collection of corporate rock cliches both bands were, they’re STILL more famous than any of the lame-ass whiner rock accumulations currently parasitizing Portland today.)
They called Brooklyn a “brand” … I’m a Queens resident but damn, that hurt to hear. If I ever heard my borough being described as a brand, I wouldn’t be able to control my rage. Stay strong, (real) Brooklyn!!!!
Older yupsters analyzing the Nieuw Hipsters. If they had a few beatniks discussing hippies then the cultural zeitgeist of the last 60 years would’ve been complete.
Every few months, for the last twenty years the NYT ‘discovers’ Brooklyn. I live in Williamsburg so I’m not sure I can stomach the video. Thankfully it’s not loading. It’s all too real for me everyday. I don’t feel like I live in NYC anymore. I can still see Manhattan and the gorgeous Empire State Building from my doorstep but it’s almost like a cheap trick.
On a positive note, I went to dinner in Bay Ridge over the weekend and wow! It was like night and day. Such a normal neighborhood. It still exists! Thank Heaven. It was very reassuring.
Jump on the N to 20Ave and walk a block or so to Europa on the corner of 20th & 65th St. Great Italian restaurant with a casual side where you can eat, drink a beer, and watch TV, and fancy formal restaurant side with a great wine list. And not a single trace of hipster to be found – it’s a spot where a hipster would definitely feel most unwelcome.
Me too kid. I live in Wburg. I was born/raised in Qnz and then Manhattan. Moved to Wburg and now regret it. It is not NYC anymore, but neither is most of Manhattan. I walk to the Southside to walk my pit, and get happy to see some native NYers. But even the Southside is half hipster/yuppie when you are on Bedford to the water front. I am glad I am pushing 40 cuz if I were younger, I would be on suicide watch.
Ugh…May these 3 be mugged @ gunpoint.
Lame and boring…couldn’t watch it. Fuck the NY Times and their twee bullshit…
“This magical kingdom that is Brooklyn…” ??!!
The very definition of ” a roaring bunch of fuck.”
“… brand …”
(deep breath … 1 …. 2 …. 3 …. )
Did anyone catch NY1 this am? They’re doing some kind of “Focus on Brooklyn” series (looks like they’re borrowing a page from NYT) & today they were talking about a B&B in Bed Stuy. I watched the spot with mixed feelings. Look, let’s be real — nobody wants a rough hood to stay rough, we all want better, safer, brighter, cleaner surroundings for ourselves & our kids… and the B&B owner was someone FROM the neighborhood & “paid her dues” — but something really bothered me when I saw these yuppie types walking & talking on camera about how “hip” & “popular” Bed Stuy’s become… & I don’t wanna go there but be honest, these yups don’t look like the type of person you would’ve seen walking down Ralph Ave. three years ago…
Then this guy’s on camera saying, “Like, yah, I’m from a small town in North Dakota, and coming here, it feels just like home… a small town like the one I come from…” With a completely straight face.
Really? You travelled over a thousand miles to live somewhere because it’s just like the place you came from? Well… OK, suit yourself, but I just wanna know:
WHY IS EVERYBODY SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON THESE STUPID TRANSPLANTED FUCKS AS IF BED STUY AND OTHER PARTS OF BROOKLYN DIDN’T EXIST UNTIL THESE SPOILED SELF RIGHTEOUS ASSHOLES GOT HERE!?!?!?!
There. I said it — sorry for the rant. But suddenly new businesses, the NYPD and the media are all over this place like flies on shit just because some smug douchebags decided it was the cool place to be. Communities who’ve been rallying for years for safer streets and economic empowerment get all but ignored, until these cumstains start drifting in & deciding to co-opt the “culture” as their own, & suddenly things “mysteriously” start to improve.
Blame this bitch right here. UES monster who’s been diligently, gleefully working to gentrify (read: destroy) neighborhoods since she was appointed by Bloomberg in ’02.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/nyregion/amanda-burden-planning-commissioner-is-remaking-new-york-city.html?pagewanted=all
She has zero concern for the people living in these places; only the land values that attract yuppies and drones like her. I hate her with every fiber of my being.
Amanda Burden is a city destroyer, and pure evil
Just look at the smug expression on her face.
I will personally slap that smug expression off her fucking mug.
I’d knight her with my bishop: cock slap across the face.
Profitable segregation and yuppie colonization.
The scum of the earth.
Here’s a couple of pics I took of Kent Avenue on N. 6 and N. 7 back in the summer of ’06. When the fences started going up, I knew the days were numbered.
Look at all that SKY!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/46896052@N00/7592007258/in/set-72157630623569936/
Before Northside Piers and The Edge were built, the sun drenched Kent Avenue
http://www.flickr.com/photos/46896052@N00/7592002108/in/set-72157630623569936/
More here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46896052@N00/sets/72157630623569936/
For everyone in New York, I am so sorry. This woman is ideological kin to the ratfuckers who did the same thing to most of Dallas. Homogenous, safe, bland…and perfectly suited for yuppies to go through life without ever seeing an “undesirable”.
I think you know the answer to this. It has absolutely nothing to do with Bed Stuy being like a small town (I’ve only passed through Brooklyn once and was no where near Bed Stuy but I can’t say I saw ANYTHING there like ANY town I’ve been to in North Dakota. The reason that the yups and trendies are coming to that area is because it’s been glorified in movies (like Dave Chappelle’s Block Party) and hip-hop (like Mos Def) and all these fucks wish they were from some really gritty place and new how to deal with poor people. And sadly — but we all know this is true — when it was just brown people and poor people in that area, the newspapers, businesses, and even the police wanted nothing to do with it. But now that there are lots of white faces (read: like most of their own) there, they are all swarming to it to try and grab a piece of “authentic” Bed Stuy before they have completely destroyed it and made it into something not unlike North Dakota.
“Like, yah, I’m from a small town in North Dakota, and coming here, it feels just like home… a small town like the one I come from…” I’d just love five minutes with that asshole to slap some sense into his retarded head. Having been stationed there for four winters, I can safely say there is no place like a small town in North Dakota this side of Antarctica. About the only thing to do there is drink Hamm’s beer, drive around dirt roads, slap Indians around (Hot) or drink more Hamm’s (Cold). There are only two seasons: Hot and Cold. Spring and Fall are each ten minutes long, when the wind isn’t blowing (sucking, actually) and is changing direction. The next town is fifty miles away; the next porch light at night is 10 miles away. And then there’s the “snirt” in the Winter – I’ll leave that to your imagination. Just like Aulde Brueklein, no? Fucking delusional hick dufus…
Where were you stationed? I did 6 years at the Forks (Grand FUCKED). It was my last duty assignment. Hated it. I volunteered for Iraq, Afghanistan and any deployment to the middle East just to get away from there (especially during the winter). People I knew who were stationed in Alaska talked about how the weather was better. I still want to stab the fucker at Randolph who sent me there.
Jeez. This is why I never gave Air Force guys grief when I was in the Army. You guys put in your time in Hell just during peacetime.
Hahaha!
Why not Minot. On the way to the geographical anus of North America. Our detailer at Randolph couldn’t travel without two OSI bodyguards. People were lined up to frag his ass.
Bodyguards? Damn! LOL! I can see why.
Hey, it’s no different from the dickholes trying to make “Little Wisconsin” in Brooklyn. Anybody who’s spent a winter in northeast Wisconsin (my folks moved up to the Fox Valley back in the Eighties) understands why anybody with any talent or ambition gets the fuck out of there by the time they turn 18. Unfortunately, their success at doing something other than drinking or fucking their sisters means that the village idiots follow their lead. The successes go everywhere and do their damnedest to hide that they’re from Appleton or Green Bay. The fuckups go straight to Nieu Brooklyn to play kickball and pretend they were the most popular kids in their high schools, even if the high school only had four students in it.
^Yeah, this. Exactly this.
But what I really hate is the ensuing straw man b.s. they try blow out there ass “Ohhh, but thanks to US, your neighborhood’s SAFE now! It’s LIVEABLE ” (And what the fuck do you think we were doing in the neighborhood before you fucktards got here? That’s right! LIVING! Stop the fucking presses!!!)
And how is it any move “liveable” now that they jacked up the prices, opened their overpriced “artisanal” bullshit stores, brought in beehives (fuckin’ BEEHIVES) that they can’t even maintain, and sicc’ed the cops on anyone who doesn’t look like them!?!?!?!
I’m guessing this is because Canadian NY1 anchor Pat Kiernan bought a freakin’ connected row house in Billyburg for over $2 MILLION.
Oh shit Newbian! I saw it and I was thinking the same fucking thing about the N Dakota punk bitch!
OK I did watch the video and the part that made me angry was when she basically tried to claim hip hop as part of their “Brooklyn.” That had nothing to do with them!
Oh my god yes. That really outraged me. Hip Hop is *actually* an authentic NY thing. Break dancing, graffiti etc are also part of that.
That bitch essentially tries to group rich, vacationing, middle class white kids from the midwest and the Notorious B.I.G together. I am not fucking having that.
I’m a Torontonian, but have fond memories of visiting friends in Brighton Beach and Coney. Now, because of these whimsical, oh-so-original, do-nothings, every goddamn city looks the same. New coffee shop just opened in my neighborhood and it’s EXACTLY the kind of place that would be in Williamsburg, Portland, Berlin, Seattle, Chicago…It’s an exposed brick, artisanal $6 coffee shop with cookies that could’ve come from an f-ing catalog it’s so unoriginal.
And you will not see a single ethnic person in there – EVER. It’s a sea of pale-faced, sleeved, ear-lobe extended smug “like ya” cliches. It’s actually more predictable than any Starbucks on any continent…
This “creative class” is absolutely devoid of any creativity whatsoever. They all use the same playbook, but think they’re the pinnacle of originality. Makes me wanna vomit.
I can only hope and pray that these in 30 years pathetic hipster a**holes blow through their parents’ inheritances and leave their Brooklyn born progeny to look at them and say “f8ck this art sh8t. I’m gonna be an electrician”. Hopefully then we’ll see a return to sanity and maybe a Burger King and a couple of Dunkin’ Donuts. With luck maybe the next generation will start real businesses that make useful products and open factories and develop technology businesses that do not depend on Nerf gun Tuesday
or ugly tie Fridays to retain it’s employees.
Maybe then the South will rise and move north. But something tells me the current collection of d*8chebags won’t give up without a fight. I figure they’re gonna stay untilt he very end and turn North Brooklyn into an east coast version of Branson Missouri. Imagine how pathetic it will be to watch pale, aging saggy-t8tted hipsters playing wheel chair kickball, getting the 64 dollar early bird
special at Roberta’s and then going to Arcade Fire Theater and the Matt Silver Performance Subway Car for a matinee.
Watch the video and see what hipsters will be in 30 years. Straight up.
I did. It’s like watching femmed up versions of james Lipton.
“What’s your favorite curse word?”
“Walmart”.
Them holding down a steady job?! Quite an oxymoron.
More of their parents start kicking the bucket in the next 10-20 years and North Brooklyn has a good chance of a resurrection.
A waste of time, nothing substantial to say about anything to do with the place. Hip Hop ? WTF clutching desperately. No ammo whatsoever. Puts paid to the debate, waste of f*cking space every last one.
Prior to making it big as the Times’ media columnist, David Carr was a straight up junkie editor of an alt. weekly. This makes him a rockstar in the eyes of wannabe hipster journalists. For the most part, Carr sees right through their bullshit. There’s a great clip of him in the documentary Page One where he lays the smackdown on the editor of Vice Magazine:
“Dad Humiliates Son for Wearing Skinny Jeans”
The kid’s more of a thug wannabe, but more fathers should be doing this.
I remember back in the mid-80s when the NYT wasn’t even sold in Williamsburg anywhere. Not on the North or the South side. Those were the good old days.
Inside Business is banking on Brooklyn being one of the “Hottest Cities of the Future”.
“Today, Brooklyn is one of the fastest growing cities with a population of about 2.5 million, making it the most populous borough in New York and independently one of the largest cities in the US.
This hipster-friendly borough attracts young chefs, artists, entrepreneurs, families, and more, who have opened hip farm-to-table restaurants, cool art galleries and boutiques, and hipster markets like the Brooklyn Flea and Dekalb Market. With amazing cultural venues like the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and the Brooklyn Museum, and the addition of the Barclays Center, NYC’s newest sports and entertainment venue, the area is bound to continue to develop and gentrify.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/up-and-coming-cities-2012-6?op=1#ixzz20uJ9dvvi
I’m, sadly, VERY familiar with these sorts of articles. These are usually grunted out to assist high-end property owners with getting bidding wars going on for their properties. By the time the buyers and investors realize that they’ve bought a pig in a poke, the original owners are long-gone, and the writer has moved on to do PR for the same companies that s/he was covering.
Sure. Because America’s future will be driven by the hipster business model.
Phase 1:
Go to Liberal Arts college. Do some worthless degree like Journalism or Gender Studies. Put self in $100,000+ debt. Move to Niewe Brueklyn or Portland or Austin or similar overpriced city. Get parents to pay overpriced rent while working as intern until well into 40s or 50s.
Phase2: ?
Phase 3: Profit.
Hey, if it worked for the Dot Com revolution and the Housing revolution. It will work for the Young Creative Revolution too.
Check out Special Edd’s lastest work:
https://vimeo.com/45456477
And give him more attention? Thanks, but I’d sooner slam my dick in a door.
As much as I love taking shots at Ed, I’ll admit it’s not bad at all.
Hey Ed, if you’re reading, stick to doing films and looking for ways to improve and expand your skills. That will put you above your contemporaries. It’s a far more productive and healthier way to spend your time. You don’t look like the type who is built to handle extended, unnecessary stress (caused by your incessant worrying about DH).
Compositionally not too bad. Subject matter – well, you work with what you got. I just hope she never chooses to reproduce – that particular bloodline should not continue. Ever.
See FaceTheFacts’ comment for more good advice.
David Carr from Minnetonka, MN:
Carr was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and raised in nearby suburb Minnetonka. He attended the University of Minnesota, where he double-majored in Psychology and Journalism.[3] Carr is a former editor of the Twin Cities Reader and the Washington City Paper. He currently resides in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife, Jill. They have three children
You forgot: ” In his 2008 memoir, The Night of the Gun, he detailed his past experiences with cocaine addiction and includes interviews with people from his past, tackling his memoir as if he were reporting on himself. The story was excerpted in the The New York Times Magazine. The book initially sold well, but interest soon faded. Reviews were mixed.” In other words, he’s a loser who grew up in the asshole of the Universe, wrote a mediocre book about his life, and scored a cushy gig at the NYT. We are *not* impressed…
For those of you who don’t know, Lake Minnetonka is the Minneapolis area playground for the extremely rich.