Post #234133 by donhonyc on Fri, May 26, 2006 11:01 AM

On 2006-05-26 10:07, thejab wrote:
I didn't mean to knock your neighborhood donhonyc, and I know I would much rather live in a neighborhood where you can go for a walk at night without fear of getting mugged. I was a bit extreme in calling the East Village "yuppie central". Perhaps I'm wrong, but isn't Alphabet City the new East Village? Or was that in the late 90s? And I have heard a lot of hipsters are living in Brooklyn these days.

No offense taken at all jab. Sorry if my tone sounded like I was mad, I totally wasn't. You're totally right, on some level this neighborhood is getting a bit yuppified. Yes, Alphabet City (Avenues A thru D) is part of the East Village. As far as I know that term kinda came around in the late 70s when it was still a scary neighborhood and the gangs and (the real-original) punk rock people were here.You also heard right about Brooklyn. About 6 or so years ago Williamsburg became THE cool place to be. However, it suffers and still continues to suffer a sort of 'Haight-Ashbury' syndrome. Like it was really 'underground cool' for a minute and suddenly the word was out and it suddenly became yesterday's mainstream news. A total parody of itself. My impression is that there's alot of hipster 20 something people out there that think they're living on the edge of society, but it's just not that way now. Williamsburg is being redeveloped in the same way the East Village is with condos and the whole deal. If you walked down Bedford Ave., the main drag there, about 6 years ago it was virtually empty. A bodega here, a bar over there. Not now. It's jam packed with boutiques,restaurants, etc. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun place, and like the East Village has a few bonified freaks and so forth here and there, but it's by no means the Boho-paradise that people may want to think it is. If it was, they wouldn't be writing about it in the papers.