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Comments

miss carly

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.

andy

what's wrong with guys in tech?

Tim

"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.

Spyro

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.

F Off

wahh! i live in NYC and it's loud! waaahhhh!!!!!

Ray

I just got a shudder at the thought of living across the street from Royal Oak.

F you too

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.

The Driggs

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.

thetulsan.com

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?

paul

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.

paul

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!

Richard

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.

Lupus

...has made...I completely miserable?

Paul

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.

dadanarchist

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.

Ken Mac

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.

Justine

Great post. And for the record, I have never "woo-ed" either.

david

Woooo!

Morgen

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.

bw

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.

Spyro

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.

yikes

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?

bf

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!

hmph

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.

jonnielaw

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.

e

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!

Someone

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.

PissedOff

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?

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