Similar to yesterday’s USA Brooklyn masturbation article – someone from Australia sent me this article; giving Brooklyn a blowjob from 10,000 miles away. It urges people to fly 20 hours to take a dip in a salt water swimming pool; eat pork sliders with salsa verde; drink artisanal beer while you go bowling with artists and finally have breakfast – served by a “woodsy moustached waiter” – with the enabling parents of the hipsters in the morning who came from out of town and are visiting their 30 year old children in their new Brooklyn playground and staying at near by hotels. —– FUCKING SICKENING!
Link: Daily Life Australia – Reasons to Visit Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Well they’re sure as shit going to be disappointed if they’re foolish enough to believe that crap. At the very least they’re going to want their money back. What pisses me off is that other people who actually do encounter these pieces of shit are going to think all New Yorkers are whiny, wimpy, beekeeping urban farmers who aren’t worth anything.
Bowling with artists? That’s a laugh. What artists? There aren’t any artists around here. Just a bunch of spoiled, over educated, pack-traveling, nasally, electronics addicts wearing silly clothes.
I wonder if they’ll offer nightly guided tours of Bensonhurst in secured buses like they used to do in Jungle Habitat?
“..ladies and gentlemen if you look to your left you’ll see the rare sight and here we see the uncivilized natives in their courting ritual”
C’mon maree-uh…
F**ck you….
C’mon…get in the car…
No…
I SAID GET IN THE F**CKIN’ CAR, MAREE-UH!
..a**hole…
F**CK YOU YOU WHOO-UH!
(burns rubber and leaves)
(two minutes later, comes around the corner…follows Maria slowly)
“c’mon Maree-uh…get in…
no you treat me like sh*t and expect me to just fuh-get about it?
C’mon…I’m sorry…
Buy me sumtin…
I SAID I WAS F**CKIN’ SORRY!!!
Bye…
OK OK….How abouta necklace?
Gold…
(pause) uh yea…
OK…
I suggest nighttime walking tours of Livonia Avenue.
And that, dear artisinal, cultured people, is the species known as “Homophobicus Meatheadicus”, also known by such names as “Italians”, “Guidos” or “Mafia”. They are known to not appreciate Art and Culture, such as you will be bringing to uncultured Brooklyn.
And over there, see those brown people. They’re called “Porto Ricans”, see. They live by stealing cars. And look at those black people over there. Those are real live “Niggers”, just like the president. You must be careful around them as they steal iPhones. They are very dangerous people. Your grandfathers used to put on nice ghost costumes and hunt them with pitchforks. (Your fathers couldn’t carry on this Great American Tradition because your mothers castrated them).
Oh Look! There’s a policeman beating a black person. Now he’s stuffing him in his big police car. You know where he’s going? He’s going to prison. So your future neighborhood can be safe and you can open your artisinal vegan bacon lemonade stands.
And now we arrive in Billyburg. Here you will be introduced to your future landlords who’ve cleaned those “Homophobic Meatheads” out of the houses so you can live happily ever after for $3,000 a month.
Please have your parents bank account details ready.
Who cares what they believe. I am a tried and true New Yorker (from Manhattan, first UES, now UWS) and I have never been to Williamasburg or East Williamsburgh, (No Not even for Peter Luger’s), but I will say this. let them write their articles, it brings much needed money and commerce to the city. Encase no one noticed we have a real unemployment level in this city of just under 18%, and although we have not ben hit as hard as every othe rplace in America, the economy suchs here. Walk down a shop in Little Italy, prices are half the 2007 price meals, walk down 5th or Maddison Avenue, half the stores are shuttered. We need money, let these Ozzys, Newzys, or Germans, or even people from flyoverlandia, or Wisadakohio come and give money to this city and help our struggling economy for whatever the reason, however insane it seems to us who have been born here and remember when the Bronx burned, who remember when Yankee Stadium got redone not to look like a stadium but like a Fort (the old one where Ruth played), who remember 15 year old hookers in Times Square, and know the head line “Ford to New York: Drop Dead.” Let these deluded people come and “bowl” with “artists”, we need them too, we need their money, we need their publicity, these over privileged, never worked a day in my life, kids constantly use this great city and all it has to offer, isn’t it time we started using them?
Please explain why with the billions of NY State and NYC tax dollars we pay every day, every week, every year [the highest in the nation?] why are we always crying broke? Retail rent on Bedford Ave and N. 7th Street is up to $30,000.00 a month. Apartments across the street from me have rents at $9,000.00 a month. Every other day another new cafe, bar or restaurant opens here. It doesn’t add up.
You are asking two seporate questions. One has to do with a fundamental premise of economics, while the other has to do with an expanded and needed social system designed to aid the poor and less fortunate.
To answer the easier part of the question, rents get higher because as the area becomes more desirable to live in, there is only a limited amount of space (predetermined by god, cosmic shifts in the landscapes going back 100,000 years caused by receding ice sheets and water tables, or by modern day real estate brokers) where such neighborhood exists. This then causes the prices in that neighborhood to increase based on the number of units available to be rented. If there are more units available then people, rents are low, if there are more people then units, rents are high. This is called the “Golden Rule of Economics”, or as John Smith (The father of Modern Economics) calls it “The hidden hand of the market”; however, most people know it as supply and demand. The greater the demand the more costly the supply, and thus the opposite holds true.
Regarding the first part of your question, as to the large amount of taxes that the State, City, County, and Local Government charges, these too are tied into the hidden hand of the market. Since Federal Tax goes to the Federal Government, and NOT the State Government we will not talk about the 29-33% that the average person pays on his taxes. Rather we shall focus on the 3-7% that is taken out of ones taxes in addition to the 29-33%. The average resident of New York City pays 4.67% State, City, and Local Tax. Now that we have a proper break down of numbers, we can start to look at the issue of high taxes in a proper setting. Is sending an average of 4.67% a large amount of your paycheck to ensure that you have clean streets, that your garbage is picked up, that you can walk home from the subway at 2AM and not fear being gunned down because of a 45,000 man strong police force, and lets not forget our public schools. Then there is a large amount of services that we do not see, or at least many of us do not see, unless we are unfortunate enough to need these services, or we work in the system. This average of 4.67% taxation goes to paying Medicaid and Medicare which are both Federal AND State Funded programs. This provides health care to our elderly and poor residents. In Addition the entire public housing system from the Mitchulama buildings to the Edenwald Projects are funded by this 4.67%.
Lastly, to answer why we are always crying broke, its because we usually are. I listed a very small amount of the services that New York State and New York City provides, having nothing to do with rent, just simply taxes. If you feel your taxes are too high, look at your next paycheck and actually investigate where the money goes, you will be surprised how little of it stays in NYS and NYC.
I think you might be referring to Adam Smith and what he called the Invisible Hand. Captain John Smith married Pocahontis. Unless, of course, you were referring to John Maynard Keynes, but he did not coin the term “hidden hand of economics”. Just trying to get things straight.
I posit to your first long-winded (and somewhat pompous) answer that it’s landlord greed, not necessarily demand, that drives rents and prices up. Otherwise how come demand drops off once prices become what is perceived as exorbitant?
TL;DR: This idiot can’t even spell and doesn’t know the difference between John Smith and Captain Fucking Kirk, so I’m not interested in reading his epic text walls.
TL;DR: This idiot can’t even spell and doesn’t know the difference between John Smith and Captain Fucking Kirk, so I’m not interested in reading his epic text walls.
Landlord greed is certainly a component of high rents, but I think not as much as the
fact that property taxes are insane and are always rising at an exponential rate.
1) Economics 101 gave a long-winded answer, but he addressed exactly what Urban Infidel asked, and I commend him for that.
2) To counter Economics 101′s claim that it’s always good for the city- it’s not necessarily good if the city only attracts “staycationers” and people who work in very specific industries. It’s good for the economic system as a whole, theoretically, but it’s not good for the non-independently-wealthy and it’s not good for those in so-called middle-class industries.
3) I’m surprised nobody has addressed rent regulation yet. It’s the reason that NYC is exponentially more expensive than Chicago or Philadelphia. Rent regulation ultimately increases the demand for affordable housing while decreasing the supply of it.
There’s only a few hundred rentals in the whole city that are truly regulated and thus, cheap Theres no way that’s going to effect the entire town.
There use to be a rule that you could only increase the rent a few % every year, or a few more % for every new lease. However, this changed back in 1995 or so (don’t recall which year now) so that once an apartment hit 2k, it could then go straight to market value. I remember landlords trying to get old tenants out and cycle new ones fast enough to hit that mark (I use to do real estate, rentals in late 90′s NYC).
Is that what you meant?
Inviting out of staters to VISIT is fine. You don’t want them to live ere cuz they do not pay taxes. Their parents pay, to the suburb where they live!
I have absolutely no problem with tourists – mainly because they help keep our tax base relatively low and, perhaps more important, THEY GO BACK HOME!!!
I will only speak for myself but from my perspective, the problem is with the ones who set up camp here. Flush with mom and dad’s hard earned cash, they swarm like locusts to working poor/working class/lower middle class neighborhoods and push out the people who live there (some of whom have lived in these neighborhoods for generations) because landlords can reap huge rents from these latent adolescents who have this vision of reliving either “Sex and the City” or “Rent” (often a combination of both). Now, displaced from their homes, these working poor/working class/middle class New Yorkers are forced out into the suburbs while these truly useless people in the throes of a suspended childhood recreate these neighborhoods into their own personal Narnia.
So, what happens when the Ethan, Tyler, Zoey, and Megan grow tired of Brooklyn and the Grand Poobah of Hipturds decrees that Bangor, ME or Glasgow is the new hip place to live? These useless, spoiled brats will have already picked the area clean and then will abandon it without ever looking back. Sadly, the displaced families will not be able to afford to move back into the old neighborhood and the local businesses (also many of which had been in the area for generations) were forced to shut down long ago to make way for artisanal bacon cafes and these areas of Brooklyn will be left more desolate than ever before.
I say bring on the tourists, but make sure they don’t forget to go back home!!
Down here we live or die by the tourist trade. Granted, they clog the roads and Metro, and generally get in the way of the people who have jobs here. But they also pay their way directly in fares, sales taxes, and general consumption that generates jobs. But they also GO BACK HOME.
Exactly! I used to bitch about tourists, especially since I worked in Times Square for four years. But now I wish for tourists, because tourists leave.
The thing is, though, they don’t pack up and go. Hipsters get replaced by yuppies, or whatever you want to call them… basically, they get replaced by people who have been looking for a sterile neighborhood all along.
Tourists are great, they bring and spend money, then go home.
Hipsters that are parentally funded hurt the city be use they do NOT pay taxes, other than sales, tax, which tourists pay too. Only working people pay income tax to the city, so stay-cationers are basically mooches. Their parents pay tax, but not to NYC. It’s paid to whatever flyover state and suburb. more working people = better tax base. More faux artists, less taxes.
NYC ought to institute a occupancy tax, not a income tax. if you occupy an apartment in NYC/ BK, you pay. Period. the higher the rent, the higher the tax. Only then will hipsters pay their share.
We should publish articles in all the hipster newspapers and websites suggesting a visit to the Bermuda Triangle.
Yeah, and the aliens or [insert crypto-demographic here] will be having same problems with hiptards as everyone else. Perhaps I should launch a conspiracy theory stating that hipsters are actually sentient Bed Bugs (spliced with Beard Louse genetics) that were genetically engineered by Reptilian ETs to appear and act human.
Good theory. Subtract the Beard Louse gene and you’d have Mitt Romney.
You dummy, you can’t grow organic gardens in the Bermuda Triangle and If I play my kazoo and cheesegrater no one will be there to see me. You think us hipsters are really stupid, dont you?
Yes! The Bermuda Triangle is the new Nieuw Breukelen!! It’s the latest hipster Heaven, it’s chock full of promises of all the artisinal breastmilk cheeses, pan-fried rats, MacBook DJs, Instagram blogs, shitty indie bands, astronomically-priced secondhand stores, over-hyped food carts and performance art spaces a fixie riding trustafarian fauxhemian could want. It’s rilly obscure and leading edge and sewwww totally nawt mainstream right nowwww.
This article made se so angry I had to stop..my Burning question HOW DO THESE YUPSTERS AFFORD THIS SHIT??? $43 for a fucking pool?? Its a reflection of Bloomberg–this is what you get with daddy warbuckkks for a mayor
ill take ford to ny drop dead ANY DAY >>>I would like the transfer instantly so that these a$$hole$s are caught in the middle of a wolf pack —
So Williamsburg formerly the epicenter of the hipster scourge is now the new Soho with bottle service bars and rooftop pools.
This is bad news for residents of southern Brooklyn who will now have to deal with the outflow of displaced bearded baristas and artisanal busboys.
Don’t worry- they’re expanding north and east, not south.
Terrible. This guy used more cliches than the average Gothamist writer. Hipper women? Instagram moment? Gratuitous dig on New Jersey? The hipster epidemic in Australia must be getting out of control. Stay away hipster crochunter, and stay out of my home state of Jersey too!
“At 9am, the only sign of life is at Reynards, where the tables are filled by couples in their 40s and older. They are out-of-town parents and they, too, have found their slice of Williamsburg, a nice-enough hotel to spend the night at while they visit their children living nearby.”
Children is right…37-year old long-boarding children who eat artisanal cheese. And of course that’s the only sign of life at 9AM. Nobody needs to get up until noon when they’re busing tables 18 hours a week and getting subsidized for the rest…
I live in Melbourne, Australia. Aussies are a pretty clue-y bunch, except for the aussie hipster. But anyone with an iota common sense can see through this bullshit a mile away. Best of luck.