# Williamsburg hipsters feel the pinch



## editor (Aug 2, 2009)

Right warms the cockles of yer heart, it does.....



> For the past five years, Ernie DiGiacomo has been able to count on parents to guarantee the $1,500 to $2,500 rents he charges for the 15 apartments he owns in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When he called renters who had missed payments, he often heard, “My parents will send you a check.”
> 
> But in the past six months, the parents are pulling back financial help, he said, and as a result, he has watched more renters move out.
> 
> ...


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## JWH (Aug 2, 2009)

Ach, to be fair, schadenfreude aside, it exposes one of the problems about the fashion/creative/media/NGO/whatever industries that constitute a fair chunk of the NYC economy: the wages are often zero or very low for the first few years that it's often very difficult to live in NYC on them. And this means that the only people who can do them are people who can do them are people who have outside means of support; and this in turn just sends the message to companies that there's free labour available if they don't pay, so...

My friend works for WME (talent management) and she's just had her wages cut again: http://gawker.com/5324265/wme-assistants-now-being-paid-like-teenage-babysitters But this story is irrelevant to her because she can't afford to live in Williamsburg anyway already. Obviously there are plenty of other people in NYC making less (and less than minimum wage) and their positions are just as bad/worse.

Edit: I am always astonished how people are happy to tell journalists about their personal finances and families so that they can be published for the curiosity of the whole world!


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## bouncer_the_dog (Aug 3, 2009)

editor said:


> Right warms the cockles of yer heart, it does.....





Why? Williamsburg needs hipsters. Otherwise it would be full of frat boy merchant bankers which would be even worse! And duller..


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## editor (Aug 3, 2009)

bouncer_the_dog said:


> Why? Williamsburg needs hipsters. Otherwise it would be full of frat boy merchant bankers which would be even worse! And duller..


Have you ever been to Willliamsburg? Did you go ten years ago? Since the rich-kid hipsters rocked into town, property prices went through the roof and popular independent cafés and shops got squeezed out as realtors and hoity toity shops took over the prime sites on Bedford Avenue.

Most of the artists, activists and musicians got pushed out to Greenpoint and beyond some time ago.


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## pinkmonkey (Aug 3, 2009)

Rich kids or not, I see JWH's point of view.  When I graduated I went straight into paid full time work.  It was minimum wage but at least I could rent a room and afford to eat.
Now, whenever I go to a trade show I hear employers whine that theres no new talent coming through, yet the graduates I mentor, the only 'work' they can find after studying a blimmin degree is an unpaid placement.  So if your parents aren't rich, even if you did get a loan so you could afford to study for a degree, when you graduate you are even more screwed as you have a big loan to pay back but no one wants to pay you.  

It's very sad, I can't help thinking that this internship culture came from the USA and is very damaging. It never existed when I graduated, apart from perhaps a two or three week placement in your summer break.
I worked with a license owned by an American Company (based in NYC) last year and _every_ graphic in their style guide was designed by interns, not one salary did they have to pay. All they do is employ a design manager and just get loads of free interns to do everything for nothing.


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## FridgeMagnet (Aug 3, 2009)

There have been some squawks in the media about the practice in this country too - if an "intern" here does anything except simply observe, they're workers and subject to minimum wage regulations etc, but that's frequently ignored, in widening number of industries apparently. In the States, with far worse labour laws....

Landlords not being able to get income via trust funds any more isn't the most sympathetic example of the consequences of this, of course.


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## editor (Aug 3, 2009)

pinkmonkey said:


> Now, whenever I go to a trade show I hear employers whine that theres no new talent coming through, yet the graduates I mentor, the only 'work' they can find after studying a blimmin degree is an unpaid placement.  So if your parents aren't rich, even if you did get a loan so you could afford to study for a degree, when you graduate you are even more screwed as you have a big loan to pay back but no one wants to pay you.


I'm having immense trouble raising much sympathy for rich kids whose wealthy families have let them indulge their artistic aspirations. They're not struggling - they've never had to do a paid job in the lives and that's been their  choice -  because their families have been around to fund their arty-farty lifestyle.

There is a discussion to be had about the ethics of unpaid interns, but I'd rather frame it around ordinary people who work in cafés or shitty part time jobs to fund their aspirations rather than worry about the fate of over privileged dabblers funded by Mom and Pops.


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## Boycey (Aug 3, 2009)

> For 18 months after graduating from Colby College, Jack Drury, 24, lived the way many Williamsburg residents do: He followed his passions, working in satellite radio and playing guitar. He earned money as a bicycle messenger and, on occasion, turned to his parents for money.
> 
> But as the recession deepened last fall, his parents had to cut the staff at their event planning company to 30 workers from 50. Asked for his help, Mr. Drury cast aside his other pursuits and started work as a project manager for his parents. But he still plays the guitar in two bands, Haunted Castle and Rats in the Walls.
> 
> “My future is in the family business,” he said. “Music is just for fun.”



this guy is actually mate of mine and fucking awesome guy he is too.


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## JWH (Aug 3, 2009)

editor said:


> Most of the artists, activists and musicians got pushed out to Greenpoint...


...who have displaced many of the previously resident Poles out to Maspeth (edit: and Pennsylvania) and the Puerto Ricans out to, well, who knows. The artists, activists and musicians displaced others (as they did in Greenwich Village and Williamsburg) and will themselves be displaced.

(Seems like the "sixth borough" movement for Philly burned itself out, though, so maybe that was one movement too far).


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## pinkmonkey (Aug 3, 2009)

editor said:


> I'm having immense trouble raising much sympathy for rich kids whose wealthy families have let them indulge their artistic aspirations.



Well quite, but it's those kids who are getting the jobs, not the ordinary kids who can't afford to live on nothing in order to get that all-important experience that you have to have in order to get paid work.


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## editor (Aug 3, 2009)

JWH said:


> ...who have displaced many of the previously resident Poles out to Maspeth (edit: and Pennsylvania) and the Puerto Ricans out to, well, who knows. The artists, activists and musicians displaced others (as they did in Greenwich Village and Williamsburg) and will themselves be displaced.


That's not what happened in Williamsburg.

The original wave of squatter/artists moved there because there were lots of abandoned _warehouses_ as a result of the local industries collapsing. They were living in run down, ex-industrial buildings, not housing stock.

Although the artists/squatters can take some secondary blame for making the place attractive to rich kid hipsters (quickly followed by developers)  it's unfair and inaccurate to blame them for 'displacing' locals. Many Polish shops survive, but the rising rents are making it harder for them to survive, and it certainly wasn't the local artists who were responsible for my favourite café closing on Bedford.

The last nail for the local community was the  Williamsburg 'rezoning' battle which opened the floodgates to developers.


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## editor (Aug 3, 2009)

pinkmonkey said:


> Well quite, but it's those kids who are getting the jobs, not the ordinary kids who can't afford to live on nothing in order to get that all-important experience that you have to have in order to get paid work.


I met quite a few people out there who were holding down bar jobs and other part time job to fund their internships, but it's obviously a lot harder for them.


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## phildwyer (Aug 4, 2009)

editor said:


> Most of the artists, activists and musicians got pushed out to Greenpoint and beyond some time ago.



To the Hamptons and beyond more like.


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## editor (Aug 4, 2009)

phildwyer said:


> To the Hamptons and beyond more like.


A few went to Red Hook which remains run down and far enough away from Manhattan to not catch the eye of groovy hipsters keen to gatecrash the next "happening scene".


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## phildwyer (Aug 4, 2009)

editor said:


> A few went to Red Hook which remains run down and far enough away from Manhattan to not catch the eye of groovy hipsters keen to gatecrash the next "happening scene".



Everyone thinks wherever they spent their early 20s was the best place ever, but I can't see anywhere in the outer boroughs ever being anything like the LES and East Village in the 80s.  

Because it was the _concentration_ of strange and interesting people in a small area of territory that made it what it was.  The physical infrastructure of the outer boroughs just won't support that many people.

And the outer boroughs will always have a majority of normal or "straight" people.  There were precious few of those in lower Manhattan 20 years ago, which is what gave the area its distinctive atmosphere.


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## HobgoblinMan (Aug 4, 2009)

It almost worth letting New York become a crime ridden drug hole again so we can enjoy a renaissance for the Lower Manhattan area where us pleebs aren't priced out.


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## phildwyer (Aug 4, 2009)

HobgoblinMan said:


> It almost worth letting New York become a crime ridden drug hole again so we can enjoy a renaissance for the Lower Manhattan area where us pleebs aren't priced out.



And if we put up the Berlin Wall again we'll have Kreuzberg back too.


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## HobgoblinMan (Aug 4, 2009)

Yeah, let's do it Phil.


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## editor (Aug 4, 2009)

Here's a great blog about the gentrification going on in Williamsburg:
http://www.williamsburgisdead.typepad.com/my_weblog/gentrification/


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## AnnO'Neemus (Aug 5, 2009)

editor said:


> That's not what happened in Williamsburg.
> 
> The original wave of squatter/artists moved there because there were lots of abandoned _warehouses_ as a result of the local industries collapsing. They were living in run down, ex-industrial buildings, not housing stock.
> 
> ...


A similar thing happened in Manchester in what's now known as the 'Northern Quarter'.

Years ago, it was really run down, a handful of older businesses, lots of empty textile warehouse space, some wholesale textile businesses, pawn shops, charity shops that kind of thing.

Because it was run down, rent was cheaper than in other parts of the city centre, so it attracted arty types, independent boutiques, small businesses, became a bit of a hub for the arty creative industries.

Someone who used to be a neighbour of mine opened up a deli/sandwich shop/cafe and it did quite well.  But of course, as businesses like hers took off, and the area became more 'happening' a lot of the landlords reassessed their property portfolios and started to put rents up and small independent businesses started to be priced out of the local market.

It does seem a bit 'off' that all those individual people, all those creative types, all those small businesses, they're the people who took the risks, in setting up those small businesses, and as a result, the area prospers, and by way of thanks for regenerating a particular run down area, they get stung for higher rents by landlords who've basically done nothing to improve the area or its infrastructure, who let the area deteriorate in the first place.  

The people who actually make the effort, the individuals, the creatives, they get a slap in the face for their efforts, and the landlords just hike up the rents and sit back and collect the increased profits, which wouldn't have been forthcoming, but for the efforts and entrepreneurial spirit of the arts/creative sector.


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## JWH (Aug 6, 2009)

Apologies in advance for the ramble - it started off quite short and then I kept adding bits right up to the point where it became a full on drone.


editor said:


> it's unfair and inaccurate to blame them for 'displacing' locals...and it certainly wasn't the local artists who were responsible for my favourite café closing on Bedford.


I don't think that blame, fairness or guilt is anything to do with causation: the local artists didn't drag the Polish grannies out of their apartments by the hair any more than the hipsters dragged the artists out.

But they did cause that displacement to happen, they started the process of gentrification or at least took their place as a link in the chain of events that caused it to happen (even if, to some extent, the initial displacement was softened by the use of some industrial space for housing instead of all housing - a fair point and one that doesn't apply to Greenpoint so much). The creatives bring their bookstores and their coffee shops and bars, which improves the area and gives it a vibe in the way that AnnO says and blah blah blah. They have their link in the chain like everyone else, and it's not like there's a specific before/after date which determines whether a newbie is an artist or just a hipster. And you know, the artists/activists/whatever are usually better educated, less attached and have better human/social capital to deal with the change than a lot of other people that get displaced when a neighbourhood changes ethnically, socially or financially (as neighbourhoods often do) - not that I am saying there's kind of a Misery Bragging Rights hierarchy or anything. 

At that point, in NYC, the old residents that are still clinging on might turn out to be more resilient than the new blowins at resisting the second wave of gentrification than the artists: if they've stuck it out that long, they're probably in rent-controlled or rent-stabilised apts which will keep going for a few years, whereas the blow-ins are more likely to be in market rate apts. And, for that matter, half the buildings are owned by people/families that have always lived there and many of the shopkeepers own their shops and are just waiting to sell (some probably waited too long and should have sold last year).

Alternatively, if you wanted to, you could look for causes that enabled the depredation (or rent differential between Manhattan and Brooklyn) for artists to move into in the first place: the manufacturers that relocated from Brooklyn to Ohio or China or wherever in the 1980s, the politicians that refused to rezone the land for housing earlier, the criminalised union-politician axis that made anything to do with NYC ports, seafronts or construction impenetrable, the MTA for letting transport links suffer, or the landlords that didn't keep their buildings in good repair.

As a sort-of relevant aside, there was a long and mostly tedious article in the New Yorker recently about Greenwich Village and the Village Voice which had a great opening paragraph that's very appropriate to Williamsburg now:



> The first person known to have said, “The Village isn’t what it used to be” was the writer Floyd Dell. That was in 1916. Dell was from Illinois, and he had lived in Greenwich Village for less than three years. The Village is that kind of place: almost everybody who lives there has come from somewhere else, but when a new person arrives they tell him, “Man, you should have been here last year.” The Village is kept alive by immigrants who, immediately after they settle in, start worrying that the Village is disappearing.


http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/05/090105fa_fact_menand


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## bouncer_the_dog (Aug 6, 2009)

I've had the chance to go to Williamsberg and Red Hook. My general thoughts about New York is that places are continuously gentrified and run down. Generally if you want to demolish large tracts of building to build roughly similar buildings in its place then you can*. Getting sentimental about areas and their make ups is a very British thing.

*provided you are a massive corporation or billionaire


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## JWH (Aug 7, 2009)

bouncer_the_dog said:


> Generally if you want to demolish large tracts of building to build roughly similar buildings in its place then you can*.


Actually, the opposite has been true and it's been difficult (possibly for some good reasons) to rezone empty industrial buildings as residential buildings: for years the Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfront was lined with shagged-out derelict or low-rent warehouses and industrial buildings when the owners would very much have liked to develop the land. This was why everyone was so suspicious when Greenpoint Terminal Market "went on fire" like they say in Glasgow only a couple of years after the same developer's other building "mysteriously" burned: http://gothamist.com/2006/05/03/greenpoint_term.php

It's only recently that rezoning took place and Toll Brothers etc were able to build on land that had amazing views of Manhattan over the river. The Navy Yard also has old housing that wasn't...

...oh, wait a minute, I just reread your post properly. You said "build roughly similar buildings" and none of what I said addresses that. Ignore me!


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## Flavour (Sep 13, 2009)

I live in Greenpoint. I'm not a hipster. There are still plenty of Poles and Puertos around. It's all fine. I can't be bothered with all this charting of the ups and downs of areas. I like the East Village too, there's still a fair chunk of old-skool heads kicking around. Not that I could ever afford to live there. I think Bushwick is the 'next Williamsburg' for anyone that's interested. Flave


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## phildwyer (Sep 13, 2009)

Flavour said:


> Not that I could ever afford to live there.



There's the rub though ınnıt.

Sure there are stıll some people from the old days, thanks to rent control.  Lucky for them, unlucky for the rest of us.  But you can't deny that the overall character of the neıghborhood has been completely transformed ın the last 10-15 years.

And I speak as one who voluntarıly gave up a rent-controlled NYC apartment ın 1997.  Sıx hundred bucks a month, 75th and Rıversıde.  Stupıdest thıng I've ever done (that I'll tell anyone about).


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## HobgoblinMan (Sep 13, 2009)

What did you do in NY Phil???


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## phildwyer (Sep 13, 2009)

HobgoblinMan said:


> What did you do in NY Phil???



A Ph.D.


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## HobgoblinMan (Sep 13, 2009)

In???


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## Spion (Sep 15, 2009)

HobgoblinMan said:


> In???


Trolling


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