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Continuing to enjoy every second of their stay in the Big Apple, David and Victoria Beckham were back at it again with the family on Friday afternoon (November 28).
The former Spice Girl and her soccer star hubby treated their three sons, Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz, to some shopping at New York’s Dylan’s Candy Store.
The Cruises and the Beckhams are really taking their paparazzi-friendly relationship up a few notches. The Beckhams arrived in New York on Tuesday and joined Tom Cruise for a matinee of Katie Holmes’ play “All My Sons” on Wednesday afternoon before heading out for dinner. Though that’d be enough of the photographers for most couples, the group spent much of Thursday out and about having what sounds like a pretty fun Thanksgiving.
Suri Cruise had something special to be thankful for this Thanksgiving: a few famous playmates.
Suri, 2, and the family – including parents Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and siblings Connor, 13, and Isabella, 15 – were joined by David and Victoria Beckham and their three sons, Brooklyn, 9, Romeo, 6, and Cruz, 3, to spend Thanksgiving in New York City.
The Beckhams left their three sons with a babysitter Wednesday afternoon to attend a matinee performance of Holme’s Broadway play, All My Sons, with Cruise, and then picked Holmes up for a double date at Il Cantinori.
The next morning, the entire clan woke up early to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan before taking a walk through Central Park to see the Big Apple Circus and ride in a horse-drawn carriage.
[From People]
A horse drawn carriage? And a circus? Are you trying to get Alec Baldwin to scream at you in public? Actually Tom Cruise vs. Alec Baldwin could be amazing – it’s quite the even match. Still it sounds like a pretty fun and busy Thanksgiving. Here are pictures of the Cruises and Beckhams yesterday. Images thanks to Fame.
We were so close to making it through a whole day believing that the pure joy of Obama's win had redeemed hipsters. That spontaneous post-election street celebration amongst Williamsburg's creative-class was both bad-ass and beautiful. Until the cops inevitably showed up. After all, the streets were completely blocked with people. In places like Harlem, Union Square and the East Village, clearing intersections seems to have gone pretty peacefully. But we've been getting shocked reports all day — police brutality against white kids! — and Brooklyn Vegan posted a comprehensive photo gallery of the festivities, including the copster-on-hipster clashes.
One breathless account: "A few minutes after the riot cops rolled in, I saw one cop break a beer bottle on the ground with his baton for no reason at all amidst all the positive energy and celebrating crowd. I assumed for intimidation purposes." (Uh, how about for open-container-law purposes?)
This is a perfect example of hipster overreach—you see, they deserve to block traffic in one of the densest cities on earth! We're all for reclaiming the streets—punk rock!—but the shock and indignation over some arrests only adds to the stereotype of the massive self-entitlement these relatively privileged young transplants possess.
Brooklyn Vegan's commenters pretty much agreed:
We had 3x as many people partying on 125th St in Harlem and not a single person got arrested. There are some things you just don't do during a joyus celebration.
i hope i'm not the only person sick of what's happened to bedford ave.
go back to the midwest. seriously. your votes mean more there anyway
It seemed the crowd was enjoying a slice of anarchy...
You know anarchy.. Like drinking a 22oz of Olde English in front of a cop out on the Quad. At one point, a woman on top of a vehicle was enjoying the attention she was getting after she took off her top and exposed herself. Go Obama!! From afar the celebration congregation looked like a good thing, but when I looked closer it was sad.
Earlier today we brought you a little digest of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper's rumored romances which included a man by the name of J.D. Ordonez, a Floridian dolphin trainer (srsly). Now we get word from a tipster that this same J.D. may be a current cast member on the now-filming new season of MTV's ugly reality show. You know, if the tipster's gay bar drinks-clouded mind can be trusted. Decide for yourself after the jump.
So, I almost wrote this email to you guys a few weeks ago but stopped because as I wrote it I felt like a huge tool.
Anyway, a few weeks ago I was at the lovely gay bar Therapy in Midtown when a dude ran in and was chased immediately by a camera crew. Yes, I was having an encounter with the gay cast member of the Real World Brooklyn—whose name happened to be JD, is 23 and hails from Miami Florida. Now, I had a hour conversation with the kid and determined he was a no one with no personality. Thats until I read your story about Anderson Cooper today and his rumored loves. I am pretty sure they are the same person, I mean how JD dolphin trainers from Miami are there? I have a really blurry photo of him on my iPhone of him in the bar with the camera.
One interesting thing about my encounter with him, he is apparently dating the bartender at Therapy and is there often—sometimes alone to score some B roll footage (as he was the night I was there). He also told me how he has taken his Mormon roommate out to XES, yet he wanted to read all the gay rags (HX, Next) at the bar that he could as his Mormon roommate would freak if he brought it home. Oh he also said that they never hang out in Brooklyn and always go to super NY places like Angels and Kings and Mansion—they apparently also get shuttled around in cars from Brooklyn and back
Thats it, but the fact that AC was getting down with a Real World media whore is beyond me. I thought he was better then that.
Fascinating! The blurry photo didn't help us at all, though. We demand confirmation on this weird, probably not-at-all-true coincidence! Plus, Sheila and I want more info about the Mormon boi.
From MySpace:
Update: In an email with a subject line reading "Can confirm that there is a "jd ordonez" in the real world brooklyn cast" a tipster tells us:
nothing to present as evidence but can say producers sent around personal data (height, weight, shirt size etc.) to publicists a while back almost as a solicitation for freebies to cast members.
And another tipster says the rumors that Ordonez dated Cooper are true:
Just read your article on the dolphin trainer said to be Anderson's ex boy toy and I wanted to confirm that it's true. I'm from Miami and was actually at the club Buck 15 when I met J.D. He drunkenly informed me who his boyfriend was and when I didn't believe him he showed me pictures from his camera phone with Anderson and some dolphins...this was around the beginning of June...just wanted to give you a head's up!
Looking like a picture perfect mother-daughter moment, Michelle Williams was spotted taking a stroll around her Brooklyn, New York neighborhood with her almost-3-year-old daughter Matilda earlier today (September 16).
And the “Dawson’s Creek” darling was dressed for the chill in the air, sporting a black and beige striped sweater with black trousers and beige flats while Matilda rocked a pink dress with a white cardigan sweater.
Many a trend piece has begun in and around Williamsburg's hip, multi-culti McCarren Park: the Times has been loving to point out what it means for the Way We Live Now, as well as fetishized its summer of rock shows in an empty pool. (Kids with dreads and tattoos!) But nothing has expressed the leisure activities and lifestyle choices of the creative slacker underclass as well as the rag-tag group of young creatives, hipsters, and drunks that make up the Brooklyn Kickball League. We've entertained you with their exploits all summer. And now, as fall approaches, the season is almost over. Yet what would the end of yet another kickball season be without one last fight?
From a secret kickballer:
"Soooo I almost started a riot on Sunday with members of the Pirates. [You might remember the Pirates—one of their members was arrested earlier this summer for ">brandishing a sword inside Macy's.]Long story short: they always put their Pirate flags up in all over the dug out fence, so when my team got over to our dugout (note: their dugout), i went to take a Pirate flag down cause it was annoying and right in the middle of everything and being that we were actually playing, I felt like claiming the dug out.
Naturally, this upset the rabblerousing Pirates quite greatly, and they all jumped up like, "Woooah woah woah woah", who the fuck do you think you are!, etc. etc. etc. all in their dumb pirate hats. Then the one dude said something about how he's an "equal opportunity hater". Which feels like something Sarah Palin would say.
Then he started saying how that flags been their longer than i have, and its hiiiiiiiiistory and all this bullshit. Ugh, lame Pirates (aka Los Piratas Mechanicos)."
Would any of the Pirates like to defend themselves, you rogues? Arrrr.
Yesterday we told you about the current Real World: Crooklyn cast that is filming all over our trendiest borough, and its maybe-gay (?) Mormon virgin fellow who the producers are trying to get laid. Because, ha ha ha, it's fun to watch people violate all they stand for and cheat on their fiances. Totes hilars. Some of you, based on his scarf and Elvis Costello glasses getup (and just the general sexiness of fucking some wholesome Mormon kid, I guess) said you'd deflower him if the situation was right. Well now, from our friend at Driven By Boredom, we have photos of said Mormon lad for you to assess. Now, will you be his very first bone? Take a look at the above photo, and the couple after the jump.
We think he's cute, sure, but there's something so cultivated about his look. It just seems a bit forced. Maybe too forced...
And, hah! These kids are really making the rounds. A funny tipster saw them at East Village shit hut Angels & Kings last night:
So I'm chillin, tryin to enjoy my Ciroc open bar for Gym Class Heroes record release party at Angels & Kings, and this camera crew add 3 total douchey douchingtons roll up with their fucking fluorescent horizontal beam of hellish light to film. It was confirmed to me that it was the Real World. So, they DO leave Brooklyn. Apparently they've been coming to Angels and Kings, probably cause it's one of the only bars that'll actually let them, like...film there. All my life I've wanted to cause a ruckus, but in the midst of the camera crew and others who would judge, I simply threw some lime wedges and, on their walk out, an elbow jab. How pathetic. But it would've been more pathetic had I caused a ruckus. "Look at this loser trying to get attention" the people would cry.
Anyway it's not much of a story but blonde faux hawk boy was there, and this dude that looked like Blake Sennett from Rilo Kiley except he was wearing a tilted, fully curved frat boy hat. Now THAT's a story!
As we're all too aware, the new season of MTV's once pioneering, now blotto and lonely reality series The Real World is currently filming in Brooklyn. The cast members live in Red Hook, but party in Williamsburg and shop downtown and all that hip, hip Brooklyn stuff. And, conceivably, the dudes meet chicks. Except one of them! His name is Chet and he is Mormon and, though he's engaged to a young lady back home in Salt Lake City (a city name that celebrates a barren nothingness of a lake whose only inhabitants are brine shrimp and brine flies), the producers want him to get laid. Because he's a virgin! Could you be the lucky girl (or guy)??? Read a bit about him after the jump.
Again, his name is Chet. He's a Mormon with "spiky blonde hair." On the evening that the NY Press caught up with him, he was wearing an H&M scarf and "Elvis Costello glasses," and was drinking a Shirley Temple. He apparently loves glam rock and was "gushing" when some slinky male rocker put something around his neck and whispered in his ear. And, yes, he is engaged (as all Mormons are, from birth. That's just science). But, um, doesn't that above description sound a little well, um, un-fishy, if you catch my brine shrimp drift? So who's going to fuck this kid? Will youuuuu? The above photo, from NewYorkology, seems to offer the best known glimpse of the mysterious Mormon.
The much-vaunted Miss Williamsburg pageant we http://gawker.com/5036206/we-will-be-at-the-williamsburg-pageant-with-bells-on">warned you about has come and gone. What to say—the hip neighborhood manages to simultaneously be everything that's wrong and right with Brooklyn's creative slacker class. Since we didn't have the energy to attend (it sounded exhausting), we are happy that the New York Press covered the blessed event. "The girl crowned Miss Williamsburg, C.J. Johnson, boasted the talent of shot-gunning a PBR and taking her panties off through an American Apparel 'onesie'..." Click through to see the crowned King and Queen of Williamsburg, along with pageant drama (includes Xanax and New Jersey!)
"But first I had to ask [pageant coordinator] Misha one last thing: 'What’s with the MC? No one can understand a word he says.' Misha started sweating missiles. 'This fucking DJ is huge in Berlin!' she sputtered, 'the crowd should be lucky to hear him mumble. So he did a little too much Xanax before the show and maybe a bunch of other stuff.'"
Also, scandal: we hear the newly-crowned Ms. Williamsburg is actually from Jersey...! And that the dude winner is actually coordinator Mischa's sister's boyfriend!
[ ">New York Press; photos Lola Wakefield]
"I was an asshole last night. Did I get laid? Yes." Thanks dude. Shut up.
It's about time that the paper of record started covering the happenings in McCarren park, the ragged dirt patch that is home to the Brooklyn Hipster Kickball League, that den of sociological intrigue so ably chronicled by our own Sheila McClear. What with the legal drama and fundamental instances of human love associated with the hipster kickballers, it's no stretch to say that they are the demographic group most worthy of media coverage in NYC or anywhere else. But in an article today that is lightly reported to a comical degree, the Times attempts to deny the BHKL-ers their rightful place at the top of our minds!:
As you would expect, the reporter starts off the article by telling you that she has been in Williamsburg for a decade—way before all these gentrifiers got here. But in her discussion of McCarren Park and the accompanying photo slide show, the kickballers receive only a passing mention in a photo caption! Instead, the reporter's single source for the story of the park's rich variety is a 64-year-old Ecuadorean hot dog vendor. What does she know about Bloc Party? Sheesh.
[NYT. Note to hipsters: the last McCarren Pool Party is today and I walked by earlier, and there is no way you're getting into that motherfucker. Seriously, take up basketball instead.]
I was wandering the streets of Carroll Gardens (Brooklyn Heights' free-spirited sister) during a Bastille Day celebration last month, and there were people, tons of people!, wearing straw hats and frothy summer dresses and being languid and too cool for anything other than drinking in the summertime. And there I was, hungover as hell, tromping over from my—fine, I'll admit it—South Slope apartment, looking like a hobo wearing a pickle barrel. So it's heartening to hear, via our tips line, that some of those Smith Street whipsters (wealthy hipsters) are old and upset about... Gossip Girl!
lots of no-parking signs/film permits on the side streets of smith street; fucking up our parking situation. we are old and don't watch the show. please make them leave.
Hahhh, old person alert! Your joints hurt and you don't understand the giddy thrills of shitty television shows starring hard-bodied muppets who make you want to laugh and clap and cry all at the same time! No we won't make them leave! We'll make them stay. You hear me, Josh Schwartz? Film in Carroll Gardens all the fucking time.
Um, that is until I can afford to live there. Then stop. Terrific.
Another Real World: Brooklyn sighting: "Ran into two douchebag looking guys (with popped collars) in Fairway in Red Hook on Saturday. Their identities were confirmed by the circling cameras and an annoyed employee alerting coworkers on her walkie talkie." I'm sure the crazed shopping cart wielding old Fairway ladies just lurved that.
Confirmed Real World: Brooklyn sighting! The gurgling reality show cast was seen on Saturday night at Williamsburg hipster dance party bar the Royal Oak, and were acting a hot mess. One of them was named Chet [shudder] and was a Mormon. Dudes hit on our tipster's friend, and the whole cast "ruined the dance floor." Oh, it's on now. Please send us your Real World cast sightings. That way we can triangulate their main stomping grounds and, as something of a public service, warn you away from them. Full sighting after the jump.
Ugh. They were all out at Royal Oak on saturday (8/16) night. Hit on my friend. Ruined the dance floor. Tried to take her home to 'corrupt' the mormon guy, who's name is.... chet.
Talked to the two blond dudes. they made me sick to my stomach.
remember when MTV cast people who already lived in NYC? except for julie of course.
On the upside we now have the number for the real world house. Just have to figure out how to use it to make them all self-destruct.
It begins. The Real World: Brooklyn kids, whose imminent presence has long been looming over the funkiest borough, have finally arrived. NewYorkology posted a few pictures of some polo shirt clad mooks surrounded by a camera crew in Red Hook, their rumored neighborhood of choice. Based on the above photo, I've assigned names and descriptions to the cast members, after the jump.
Yellow Shirt: Michael, 19, Houston. Talks with a lisp and seems a bit light in the loafers, but is totes straight. Just ask his long-suffering girlfriend back home who spends her days woodenly hating the game, not the playa. Michael has snap-happy arguments with one female roommate who needles him about his latent homosexuality. Think Irene and Steven from Seattle.
Black Shirt: Jeremy, 21, Fresno. Has a hip, fresh, depressing white boy funk style. Seems actually capable of talking to women for three and a half seconds without trying to hump them, but revels in his horndog dirtbaggy ways when out with the boys. Meets a girl named Mashley from Staten Island at a clurrb one night, sorta has an on-again-off-again fling with her, but eventually decides he needs to be a free agent.
Pink Shirt: Danica, 24, Nashua, NH. From a New England town, the hoarse-voiced Danica went to big ol' party school ASU and drank and slopped her way through four years, managing to graduate with degrees in Spanish and finance. She rasps loudly about how drunk she was allll the time and falls in love with every boy who gives her three and a half seconds worth of attention (with or without trying to hump her.)
Blue Shirt: Broderick, 22, Apopka, FL. Just finished FSU, where he studied history. Seems like one of those cool laid back guys who'd make a swoony young high school teacher, but is actually a drunken debacle. After threatening to punch out some weasely hipster in the premiere episode, Broderick's narrow meatheadedness spirals out of control until he sobbingly admits to having stubbed his toe once when he was six. He'll decide to go home after this shocking revelation.
Magenta Shirt: Ninjizza, 23, Miami. Went to Emory, has a degree in French and Political Science. Is overbearing, bossy, demanding, and secretly very sad. Has one drunken night where she keeps saying she's going to "throw my damn self off the New York Bridge." Deftly recovers when the job challenge emerges—creating a Brooklyn bus tour—and she can take control of that. No one is sad when Ninjizza leaves at the end of the season.
Striped Shirt: Misty, 20, St. Louis. Shy and nerdy, Misty will be very much the shrinking wallflower of the season. She'll harbor a quiet, sad crush on Broderick, who will lead her on mercilessly. She will, of course, get very drunk one night and stab Ninjizza. She'll have to go home.
(OK, I know there's one cast member missing, and that if you look at the other photos on NewYorkology there are other people who could be cast members and Jeremy could totally be gay, but whatever, I'm on a fucking bus.)
Real estate folks made up terms like SoHo and TriBeCa in order to hype up undeveloped neighborhoods. But if you're not in real estate, you just sound like a jerk! In Time Out this week, two Bushwick roommates call their area of Brooklyn "Billywick or Bushburg. "You sound like an asshole when you say you’re from Williamsburg," says one. (Uh-oh. A casual Google search shows a couple MySpacers listing Billywick as their 'hood.) [Time Out]
Ruh roh. The dreaded Real World: Brooklyn is on the move again. The Brooklyn Paper reports today that due to slow renovations at the BellTel lofts, the downtown BK building that MTV had originally eyed as housing for the seven vodka-infused strangers, the producers have settled on a new spot. Now the cast will likely be housed at Pier 41 in Red Hook, already the home of the legendary Fairway grocery store and the new, megalopolis IKEA. (IKEA has furnished the RW houses for many a season. Easy moving for the pre-production crew, at least!) “I’d rather have another Ikea,” said a resident when asked about the impending storm of camera crews and drunken braying.
Reportedly the exact address of the building is 204 Van Dyke St., so if you live nearby, shutter your windows and blood your doors, because the Lord's wrath is on its way. Luckily, though, you ought to get a pretty clear idea fairly quickly of where the gaggle of idiots will be hanging out, because MTV usually signs preemptive filming waivers from one or two bars/restaurants before shooting so they don't have to worry about getting clearance at a bajillion different places. So find out which two bars those are, and avoid them like the plague for the next six months or so. Come on up to Park Slope in the meantime. We have strollers! And a park! And, uh, a slope!
Brooklyn Decker
American model Brooklyn Decker
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"'At the end of the day, it was about putting aside anonymity, putting aside the HTML and physically showing up,' said Jason Miller, 37, the pet shop owner, better known to many as PetShopBoy, his login name on BayRidgeTalk.com." [Times]
She lost her $125k/year Star gig, now the protocelebrity is eyeing a low-rent borough: "I think I want to live in Brooklyn. I never thought I'd say that." [Julia Allison]
Remember our Brooklyn blogger boy who made a cut-out of his Connecticut-living, Brooklyn-missing girlfriend and asked strangers to pose with it for her birthday? It was cute/strange. Well, now someone has cruelly defaced the cut-out (which is located in her beloved Greenpoint) whiting the whole thing out and printing one ominous sentence: "Stay in Connecticut." Cruel. Hopefully there were enough photos taken before the dreadful, hateful incident that the birthday present can be considered complete. In lieu of flowers, please send PBR.
We just head the news that our friend and mentor, Richard Creamer will have one of his photographs included in the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s History Of Rock And Roll Photograph exhibition set for the fall of 2009! A book will coincide with the exhibition.
This is wonderful news. We owe so much to Richard and he is greatly missed. Richard was adored by all the rock stars from Alice Cooper to Robert Plant. He was funny, incredibly brilliant and wonderfully eccentric!
We will never forget when we would arrive and one of the hundreds of in crowd record company parties that we attended together and Richard would sing out, “there is a feedbag involved”!
Congratulations Ricard. You deserve it and we miss you.
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Filed under: Music, Department of Debunk
TMZ.com: You might be hearing that Lil' Kim got into a smash-up yesterday in Brooklyn and got popped for driving without a license -- not true. We've heard a different story, and wait 'til you hear who spread the tale.A source tells TMZ that not only was Lil'... Read more
Our friend-in-blogging Ryan, who, with his girlfriend, created and maintained the wonderful, now-defunct LOLSecretz, needs our help. You see, said girlfriend has moved from her beloved Greenpoint, Brooklyn to the wilds of Connecticut and misses the gray city and its Morlock inhabitants dearly. So, for her birthday, Ryan has placed a life-sized cut out of her on a street corner in Greenpoint and asks that friends and strangers pose for a photo with "her," and send it in. That way she can feel like she had a big ol' party with friends (...and complete strangers...) in fair Greenpoint. Sounds crazy and sort of cute, right? Full details after the jump.
Here's the story: My girlfriend moved to Connecticut from Greenpoint last year. She misses it terribly, and constantly pines for the days spent with friends in the neighborhood. So, for her birthday this weekend, on Sunday night I installed a life-sized cutout of her at the southeast corner of Franklin and Noble Streets in Greenpoint. I am asking anyone who can to go to Greenpoint and photograph themselves with the Birthday Girl, and then, email or pix message the photo to birthdaygirl08@gmail.com . Soon she will have an entire album of images of herself and many, many friends partyting in Greenpoint! I will also be uploading all images to my flickr account, so all can watch as the piece progresses.
Last week we posited that the new Real World: Brooklyn would be filmed in Williamsburg, but suggested that the infamous hipster paradise that is the McKibbin "dorms" in Bushwick would be a better environment. Well, it looks like MTV is, in fact, not listening to us. The Brooklyn Paper is reporting that the show is going to be filmed in downtown Brooklyn. Well, allegedly. The producers admitted to looking at a large apartment building called the BellTell Lofts (ooo, lofts! hip!) in the decidedly ho hum Brooklyn business and fancy courtroom district.
Though, they won't say this is definite, and do confirm that they're considering a lot of other safe, white borough neighborhoods like Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights, and DUMBO. Proximity to Manhattan is apparently a concern for the producers (and yet they also say they've been looking at Coney Island?), but they are totes committed to Brooklyn and its "cachet" and "vibrancy." Isn't "vibrancy" TV-code for "ethnic"? Ain't that much ethnic about Brooklyn Heights or Carroll Gardens or most of Park Slope at this point. Sigh. This sure-to-be disaster stumbles on. [Via Gothamist]
Gersh Kuntzman, the cast-auctioning, editorially cute editor of the Brooklyn Paper, is a bit of a publicity hound, to be sure. We shouldn't encourage this type of behavior—videotaping yourself going to a Montessori School to be a kid's mentor-ish "special friend"—but Gersh seems so worried about his performance that we can't look away. He asks each kid whether or not he's a good special friend, adding, "What do you like about me?" Well, we've always had a weakness for older Jewish men. Nothing personal. But seriously—this video is a cry for help. [Brooklyn Paper]
So yesterday the Times weighed in on everyone's most detested yuppie mecca, Park Slope. Today, the new issue of Time Out New York piles on! "Websites like Gawker and Curbed crackle with anti-Slope invective, hurled at the twin bugaboos of the 'Stroller Mafia' (pushy, indulgent yuppie parents) and the bleeding-heart 'People’s Republic of Park Slope' (headquartered at the Food Co-op)." Update: Via email from Maureen Shelly: "Hi Ian. I'm the EIC of Time Out Kids. Just wanted to point out that the Park Slope piece you turned up is from last year — not the upcoming June issue. Our piece was also by Lynne Harris, who penned the Times story. I guess she felt she had more to say on the subject."
Slope-bashing hit the big time last February, when The New York Times’ David Brooks pegged the ’hood as ground zero of the “hipster parent moment.” He wrote: “Can we please see the end of those Park Slope alternative Stepford Moms in their black-on-black maternity tunics who turn their babies into fashion-forward, anticorporate indie-infants in order to stay one step ahead of the cool police?”
Some of this sentiment, to be sure, springs from the area’s transformation in recent years: Trendy boutiques and bars have replaced bodegas on Fifth Avenue; and the neighborhood’s nickname has gone from nice, crunchy “Dyke Slope” to crowded, congested “No Park Slope.” According to a recent study, nearly half the drivers cruising at any given time are searching for a parking spot.
At least to non-locals (such as Brooks, who doesn’t realize that Williamsburg is actually where the “hipsters” are), the Slope seems to represent all that is reprehensible about gentrified New York and modern urban parenting. “Non–New Yorkers think of it disparagingly as a hipster alterna-playground, and Manhattanites think of it as a sanctimonious PC stroller derby, like one big suburban PTA meeting stuck in a food co-op,” says novelist Steven Johnson, a longtime Sloper who jokes on his blog that “all writers with young children in NYC are legally required to live” there. “To the outside world, it’s too cool for its own good, and inside New York, it’s not cool enough.”
Even many residents maintain a love-hate relationship with their nabe. Graphic designer and community organizer Aaron Brashear says that his family shops everywhere but jam-packed Seventh Avenue. “We will not walk there because of the stroller brigades,” he says. Slope psychotherapist Peter Loffredo has sworn off the kid-crammed Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and both Tea Lounges, and not because he doesn’t like the coffee. “They’re overrun pseudo Romper Rooms,” he says. [TONY] [photo: Ben Goldstein]
"To its detractors, Park Slope is both haunt and hatchery of New York’s smuggest limousine-liberal yuppies. It is, if I may further summarize the bad publicity, overrated and hypocritical. Its glorious brownstone blocks and jaunty cafes are awash in carpetbagger entitlement, ruled by snarling 'Stroller Nazis.' The neighborhood is a ground zero of all that is twee and lame. It is, God forbid, the suburbs." Well done. But what do the anonymous blog commenters have to say, New York Times?
“Park Slope isn’t even part of Brooklyn anymore,' wrote one commenter on Gothamist. "It’s seriously a lower rung of hell, filled with hateful English teachers." And on Eater.com, one posted comment said: "Park Slope and its ilk are why NYC is becoming more and more pathetic by the day."
And the locals?
"Park Slope is a perfect storm of stereotypes that provoke derision,” said Steven Johnson, a local writer and a father of three. “Since Park Slope is the neighborhood most explicitly associated with urban parenting, it attracts the wrath of people who think parents have gone way overboard. I imagine there’s some horror fantasy fusion: the well-off Park Sloper and co-op member who is obsessed with his kids. Oh, wait, I just described myself.”
By the same token, when we talk about “people who hate Park Slope,” we are talking in large part about a certain stratum of the chattering, Twittering class. “This whole thing sounds like white people being annoyed by and jealous of other white people, which I find kind of funny,” said James Bernard, a union organizer and a member of the local Community Board 6. “I live in the Slope. I love it. I talk about it as much as anyone else does. But I founded a charter school near Brownsville and I don’t hear anyone talking about Park Slope over there.” [NYT] [photo: Nicole Bengiveno]
How does one go about "menacing a neighbor with [a] cell phone," as the AP reports of Brooklyn rapper Foxy Brown? The AP does not explain. The fight started with Foxy "blasting her car stereo" outside the building. (This scuffle is not to be confused with last year's fight with a manicurist.)
Oh, the possibilities of technology! They're just too much. Brooklyn Paper editor (formerly of the NY Post, Newsweek, and a book about male-pattern baldness) Gersh Kuntzman and senior reporter Mike McLaughlin made a totally nerdy "breaking" podcast about law-firm lies, filmed in front of file folders in a glamorous flourescent-lit office. Gersh is pretty cute in that editorial sort of way, but this vid (sorry, "podcast") is silly, guys. Just write an article about it or something. Update: Gersh replies, "I object strongly to being called 'pretty cute.' Clearly, you should have referred to me - as other media do - as 'Clooney-esque' (though they may have been referring to Rosemary Clooney)." Don't push it, mate. [Brooklyn Paper]
Like "cool," "hipster" is a multivalent word with no set definition but many different meanings. But from a real estate developers' perspective, if you live in Brooklyn, have read a Jonathan Lethem book or have gone to Studio B, you qualify. Sorry! Even so, no real hipster admits to being one. That's worse than saying you want to be cool. Which makes Home Buying For Hipsters — a monthly real estate advising meet-up with ties to the Corcoran Group — so perplexing. What tool would show up to their event tonight, which is aimed at a demographic no one would acknowledge being a part of?
The "hipsters" who go to Home Buying For Hipsters are probably not hipsters at all, even if Fortress of Solitude totally spoke to them. It may be a Tuesday night, but it's New York in spring. The rooftop garden of the Met is open! Jenna Bush is giving a reading! American Idol is on! Who wants to spend their time hearing about mortgage rates?
Most likely, these "hipsters" aren't actually buying a home themselves. Their parents are. And with bankers uninterested in the skyscrapers on the Williamsburg waterfront and now too broke to afford them anyway, you have to credit the Corcoran Group for going after America's home-owners a second time through their kids. It's like renewing your vows, but with property taxes.
Tonight's Home Buying For Hipsters is being held at Union Pool. Though Union Pool is in Williamsburg (cool) and in a former pool supply store (cred), it is still not hip. It's mostly frequented by people already in the home buying stage, 30-somethings. (Also cougars.)
Home Buying For Hipsters: really Home Buying For Adults. Adults who are still trying to be cool.
(Although— buying a home in this economy may be genuinely edgy. So maybe some real hipsters should try it!)
Is it possible that Brooklyn is really "the naughtiest place in the country"? A porn site called Naughty America says it is, mainly because the majority of its subscribers come from BK (kicking Chicago's ASS). So they're bringing five porn stars to a bar in Williamsburg in order to congratulate the borough on its kinkiness. Obvious question: are total porn site subscriptions a good measure of how "naughty" an area is? You could argue the opposite. [Brooklyn Paper]
The United Way and the Community Service Society have just released a slew of demographic maps of New York City, which handily answer the question: Are The Poors in your hood? Pictured, the household income map (click to enlarge), which is perhaps most surprising for revealing that Williamsburg, despite its yuppie influx, is still broke, along with HOT HOT NEXT BIG THING neighborhoods like Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, et al. After the jump, neighborhood-specific maps of the city showing unemployment rates, immigrant populations, and "disconnected youth" who aren't working, in school, or concerned about you very much.
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