Benjamin Shih is the owner of Royal Oak (more commonly known by the locals as Royal REDACTED). Benjamin's number is in my cellphone. Except instead of Shih, I have him listed as Benjamin Fucking Asshole. Immature, yes, but since Benjamin Shih opened the REDACTED bar across the street from my building, he has unapologetically made my neighbors and I completely miserable.
In the beginning, we had high hopes for the place—they opened the same day as the blackout and they gave the people coming up out of the subway grate free glasses of water. It's a pretty place and my neighbors and I thought it might be nice to have a bar so close. Ha. We were so naive back then. Within weeks the place had turned into a douche-magnet—attracting morons from near and far. Almost every night the sidewalk out front is clogged with REDACTED-up jackasses braying at the moon. Sleep is out of the question unless you've got earplugs and air conditioning.
It used to be that the people who moved to Williamsburg—and the East Village before that—were the types who were shunned in high school. They were picked last in gym class, probably suffered an astigmatism and would much rather read a good book than attend a sporting event. They didn't fit in in their home towns, so they gravitated here. Sure, they got on my nerves with their art projects and insistence on calling their apartments their "space" (eg, "you have to come see what I did with my space."). Pretentious, no doubt, but these days, when I sit next to an earnest couple discussing their shared passion for Derrida and Galouis ciggies, I feel not derision, but nostalgia.
The latter-day hipster may look like the old-school hipster, but scratch the surface of their kicks and you'll discover the difference. These new kids were popular in high school—witness their fondness for Dodgeball. I mean, dodgeball!?!? Dodgeball day was the stuff nightmares were made of when I was a kid. My heart still quickens when I hear the phrase because I recall my days as a target all too vividly.
These new kids don't read books so much as collect them as conversation pieces. The women tend to work in PR and the dudes work in tech. They all have perfect teeth to go with their skinny jeans and have the arrogance and sense of entitlement that comes from knowing that no matter how badly they fuck up, they will never go hungry because mommy and daddy have them covered. They don't live in "spaces," they live in over-priced, parentally subsidized, condos with a park vu.
For some reason these people also like to "woo" once they have a drink or ten. I've never had an urge to throw my fists to the heavens and scream "woo" when I'm drunk, but maybe that's because I'm of hearty Irish stock and we can (mostly) handle our booze. Nor do I hang out with people who "woo." Never have. Perhaps that's something you only pick up at a Seven Sisters school. These are the Royal Oak crowd.
I've tried talking to Benjamin about maybe replacing the mop-topped manorexic doorman with a bouncer with some actual muscle tone to quiet the howling clump of Woo-ers out front. He patiently explained to me that we—he and I—need to work together to repeal the smoking ban. I less patiently explained to him that I didn't give a fuck about the smoking ban, I just wanted him to shut his clientele up. . . that in the interest of being a good neighbor he should attempt to control his crowd. Other bars put up signs or hire people to keep their crowds in line. He absolutely refused to do anything, declaring it out of his jurisdiction.
Anyway, this is a long-winded way of talking about New York Magazine's inexplicable rim-job of Benjamin Shih this week. Mr. Frat-tastic is opening a new restaurant with a Patriot Express business loan he obtained through his stint as a National Guardsman. One of my fave bits is about how his girlfriend broke up with him after he enlisted. Sure, maybe. Then again, maybe she just got sick of dating the guy who owns the local REDACTED bar.
UPDATE: I came home to a shrill letter from a criminal attorney last night (weird choice for a civil matter), threatening to sue me on Shih's behalf if I didn't take this post down. Why he's complaining 2.5 years after I wrote this piece, I have no idea. I have edited this post to address their concerns, though I don't know why they're bothering at this late date. Maybe they need the attention because it's pretty quiet over there lately (thank christ).
The "woo!" people are just sports jerks who can't just have fun, but have to BROADCAST their fun having to everyone. They doth protest too much, and all that. As for Mr. Shih, he's just another white frat boy making money off other white frat boys and their females, despite his Asian heritage. Good truthful barbs, Miss Judy, keep 'em coming.
Posted by: miss carly | August 19, 2008 at 12:04 PM
what's wrong with guys in tech?
Posted by: andy | August 19, 2008 at 03:10 PM
"Pretentious, no doubt, but these days, when I sit next to an earnest couple discussing their shared passion for Derrida and Galouis ciggies, I feel not derision, but nostalgia. "
Are you kidding me?
The hipster's version of Williamsburg has been filling with the likes found in the parking lot of a 7-11 in suburban ohio for the last ten years. A painfully cliched bunch. It'll be nice to move on to something new.
Posted by: Tim | August 19, 2008 at 04:06 PM
Fucking brilliant - + I can't wait till Benjamin and the National Guard go to fight the "Hajjis" out in Iraq - when I read that stupid New York Magazine article I couldn't stop laughing - let it be known that Benjamin has allegedly told people he had been part of the special forces and shit to impress them - The National Guard? Not exactly the Green Berets. Nobody likes this asshole. He's a fucking poser with some money trying to impress. He'll go don like every asshole like him before him has in a blaze of coke and burned bridges.
Posted by: Spyro | August 19, 2008 at 04:13 PM
wahh! i live in NYC and it's loud! waaahhhh!!!!!
Posted by: F Off | August 19, 2008 at 04:16 PM
I just got a shudder at the thought of living across the street from Royal Oak.
Posted by: Ray | August 19, 2008 at 05:39 PM
this is just another chapter in one of NYC's oldest quality-of-life conflicts. as usual, this writer is sharp and witty in her take on it. sorry to hear you're across the street from that place. and the NY Mag article made me puke in my mouth.
Posted by: F you too | August 19, 2008 at 06:16 PM
It's always fun when you actually have to take a piss and there are three guys in the bathroom trying to sell you coke. Royal Oak, how you have fallen.
Posted by: The Driggs | August 20, 2008 at 11:20 AM
Kind of a dumpy area (in transition?), so the crazies must think it is OK. What about adding some bright lights to chase the vampires away?
Posted by: thetulsan.com | August 20, 2008 at 11:50 AM
You should read the stories about Haight/Ashbury...went from hippie enclave to tourist mecca in just months. Went from taking drugs for enlightenment to just being a cesspool for junkies. Went from pot and acid to meth and heroin. Sounds like your neighborhood has gone from hip to trendy, from cool to kewl, from someplace to be to someplace to see in the rearview. Trizzle trazzle trizzle trome, time for you to find another home.
As I've discovered, time passes, hip bars close, good restaurants lose their edge, old movie houses turn into laser-tag morgues, and cool neighborhoods turn into enclaves for volvo-driving trustafarians who listen to Coldplay and wear Sketchers. Just kill me.
Posted by: paul | August 20, 2008 at 12:38 PM
I'm going to build a restaurant that looks like a chinese guy who lived in Paris for a while, but liked to go to Amsterdam would build if he lived in Berlin, say in 1970, but I'm going to reverse age it and come in and re-model, actually UNMODEL it and over-restore it so that it looks like a 1950's ranch house. You know, like you'd find in Cleveland, only this one would have a Japanese flair with roses in the formica countertops and a green dorm fridge at every table full of Asahi and Heineken Dark. You know. Sorta a Sino-Hollandish flair with other Beaver-Cleaver touches. To top it all off all of the waitrons will have garish tattoos like me. Whooo Hooo!
Posted by: paul | August 20, 2008 at 12:46 PM
As someone who can remember 1970s nights in Williamsburg when I was terrified to walk a few blocks to the subway for fear of being killed, I guess I take the long view.
As Paul says, all neighborhood scenes change. This isn't going to last much longer. Just be patient and wait a while.
Soon the children yelling "Woo!" will be replaced by smaller, better-behaved ones in strollers who will be asleep in their cribs before before you are.
Posted by: Richard | August 20, 2008 at 01:11 PM
...has made...I completely miserable?
Posted by: Lupus | August 20, 2008 at 02:51 PM
This is a really immature post. I'm sorry, but you simply cannot move to a city like New York without expecting it to change, and then when it DOES change, blame it on the newcomers.
This is why I hate back-in-the-day types, particularly the younger ones who live in New York. Most of us grew up in the suburbs, we came to New York because of whatever (jobs, lifestyle, etc.) and we're just trying to live. Whenever someone argues that they somehow have "cred" because they moved to the Burg in 2003 I get that vomit feeling in the mouth it's so fucking dumb.
If you want peace and quiet, a backyard, and a bunch of other people who want the same thing, move to most of Queens and most of Brooklyn. But if you want to live in Williamsburg because it's cool - and let's be honest, that's clearly why you live here and not somewhere else - than shut the fuck up and deal. Live out your NIMBY fantasies somewhere else. Thanks.
Posted by: Paul | August 20, 2008 at 04:09 PM
Holy shit, that New York Magazine article is some incredible stuff. Hajji? Tell me he's joking...
As for the post: isn't the point less about noise/the bar, and more about the change in the composition of the so-called "hipster" scene. The change from maladroit oddballs seeking community to overprivileged yunnies seeking escape?
I agree completely on that point.
It's silly to judge someone by their appearance, but once upon a time there was a semantic code that existed which allowed introverted, overly aesthetic nerds to find one another. This code has been completely taken up by a different sort of douchebag, who if they don't outright reject the older generations' principles and values, never even heard of them. Art is packaging; literature is distraction; music is point scoring; etc.
Again, I know this is silly, but it has made socializing difficult in urban Bohemia these days because you meet people who look like the kids who you banded together with in high school to avoid going crazy and losing it, but instead these people are clueless, rich, useless fucks who haven't heard of shit, can't do shit, and generally don't care about anything except the next hipster scene/trend.
Thank god I went back to grad school - we are completely nuts but at least we care about something larger than ourselves.
And I heartily recommend the BBC program "Nathan Barley" to anyone who might commiserate.
A totally embittered and cranky comment, and I don't care.
Posted by: dadanarchist | August 20, 2008 at 06:00 PM
Hey Paul, whether you live in Tucson or New York, peace and quiet are basic human rights. Particularly when you are trying to sleep. And if you will shut the F...up maybe I can get some sleep. And I have been here since 1990, pally.
Posted by: Ken Mac | August 20, 2008 at 06:06 PM
Great post. And for the record, I have never "woo-ed" either.
Posted by: Justine | August 20, 2008 at 09:27 PM
Woooo!
Posted by: david | August 21, 2008 at 03:37 PM
the national guard may not be the green berets, but they've taken a disproportionate amount of the hits in this stupid war.
Guess we can hope that 15 months in combat will wipe the smirk of this guy's shiny face rather than metamorphosing him from a plain old blithering moron into a dangerous blithering moron with weapons training.
My five-year old self wants to kick the ass of his five-year old self.
Posted by: Morgen | August 21, 2008 at 09:34 PM
The wooers, thank god I live on the back side of my apartment, every Friday and Saturday here on first ave in the east village its WOOOOO WOOOOOO - I too was a dodgeball target and I have no doubt that these wooers were the ones throwing the balls. Great post.
Posted by: bw | August 23, 2008 at 11:51 AM
Hey Paul
Listen here jerky - some of us aren't "back in the day" types - some of us are FROM Brooklyn. And yes I can blame newcomers all I want you want to know why - me, my brothers and sisters, my parents, our neighjors - we all paid our dues in this city for years to hopefully see our tax dollars make a better standard of life for New Yorkers! Not a group of arty transplants trying to be hip in New York - "back in the day" in my neighborhood in South Brooklyn if your bar was a nuisance the cps didn't get involved - the neighbors just came down to your place and said get your shit together or else - no wait - it's still like that - oh but I'm sorry you were talking about "cool" neighborhods on the fringe of change. I grew up under the BQE over the R and N line, down the block from the 68th Pct. and a few blocks a way from both Lutheran Medical and a firehouse - you don't know shit about noise. That said I don't mind noise at all - I mind ASSHOLES making noise. So go enjoy change - just do it fucking quietly.
Posted by: Spyro | August 24, 2008 at 11:37 AM
yikes. go back to new jersey with your noise complaints. tough break, you happened to have decided to live in williamsburg which is overrun by all the other people you hate that followed you from the over-privileged suburbs. ironic, no?
Posted by: yikes | August 24, 2008 at 03:02 PM
how funny- I read your blog yesterday, and then later that night I found myself driving through Seattle's university district. I passed by some of these ubiquitous "hipster" wannabes. true to form, they woo-hooed!
Posted by: bf | August 26, 2008 at 03:30 PM
I think the coke comments are overstated. Maybe if you were talking about the Hole in 2003 or Happy Endings or Tribecca Grand, but Royal Oak doesn't have a coke reputation more than any other bar in Williamsburg. Kids who are in their early to mid twenties, when drunk, are rowdy and loud. period. it doesn't matter what scene they come from. punks or jocks. drunk is drunk. It's not park slope. it's a fun area and a fun bar. I think you should buy a good set of ear plugs and realize, any bar is going to have its share of noise. The east village and the LES has is certainly not immune. it adds to the atmosphere. I much prefer loud and rowdy to boring suburbia any day.
Posted by: hmph | August 27, 2008 at 07:35 PM
these comment strings really crack me up.
on one hand you have the "old school hipsters" who are now just veteran douches & on the other hand you have the "yipsters" or whatever they're being called that are just a mockery encased in satire wrapped in tight jeans.
and then you have people like Spyro, who if anyone has a say on what BK is like it seems it would be him (absolutely no sarcasm there. i know, it's unheard of in these kind of discussions). But even though his opinion on the state of the 'hood should mean the most (historically-wise) he decides to go after someone like Paul who wasn't even targeting him in the first place.
what's that saying about trying to win a fight on the internet like being a medalist in the Special Olympics . . .
and for the record, I've lived here just long enough and am not of the hipster genus. I'm more of just a drunken geek.
Posted by: jonnielaw | January 18, 2009 at 04:21 PM
yah, this bar is a joke!!! i bartended in NYC (not brooklyn) for 12 years.... i went there to "train" since they told me i was hired! NOT, the asshole had 2 other people show up and it was a competition... i mean its a fuckin bar dude, not training for Iraq! the overweight, nasty head bartender got drunk when he left, talked about smoking pot as her lazy ass sat on a barstool when she was supposed to be training us... and then said , yah your not what we're looking for, you can go home! oh did I mention is lame ass girlfriend staring at me at the end of the bar! REALLY - thank god, cuz I really didn't wanna be listening to hip hop, while stupid hipsters! fuck that dude, NYC is where I will bartend and Royal Oak can go fuck off, PS - wasn't even busy on a Friday Nite LAAAAAAAAAAME!
Posted by: e | September 04, 2010 at 02:03 AM
Came here from http://www.chillingeffects.org/protest/notice.cgi?NoticeID=60170
Totally on your side. It's dumb that they're going after you.
Posted by: Someone | February 25, 2011 at 03:02 AM
Also linked here from chillingeffects.org and am also 100% on your side. This guy sounds like a complete D-Bag. Who sends a cease and desist letter two years later?
Posted by: PissedOff | April 14, 2011 at 03:59 AM