Thank god for hipsters

evan wrote: my downstairs neighbor is a black woman who has been living in the neighborhood for 40 years. i want to sit down with her at some point and talk more about the history of the neighborhood. we talked briefly about it and she said she was the first black person in the building and one of the first in the neighborhood. "it was such a nice neighborhood back then. they had street cars going down washington avenue and it was so pretty and clean." i bet she has a lot of interesting things to say about the changes she's seen in her 40 years here.

is this the same woman who said that 40 years ago PH was an all white neighborhood? that back then she was the only black person in PH?

I don' t think chicken bones are particularly unique to this neighborhood. The streets of Fort Tryon (a.k.a. Washington Heights), where we lived previously, were also littered. Same for Morningside Heights when I lived there. Heck, our dogs grew up on chicken bones.

it's voodoo

BigGuy wrote: YS...
...You're becoming a caricature.

eenie


meenie


miney


moe

TheColonel wrote: Does anyone here want to buy some mightly good chickens? Mmmmmm good.

they had fried chicken at work a few weeks ago, and it was like a f-in Benetton ad--everyone was freaking out trying to get a piece. Who doesn't love chicken, thee great racial uniter.

As for these "nice, quiet hipsters", I have yet to live next to one. I've only encountered the 'I have band practice in my living room, leave beer bottles in the hallway and clean so rarely I will probably give you bedbugs" variety. I'd take twenty minutes of Reggae Gold over three hours of hipster neighbor and his stoned friends trying to parse out Wolf Parade songs in a heartbeat.

erikka wrote: [quote=TheColonel]Does anyone here want to buy some mightly good chickens? Mmmmmm good.

they had fried chicken at work a few weeks ago, and it was like a f-in Benetton ad--everyone was freaking out trying to get a piece. Who doesn't love chicken, thee great racial uniter.

As for these "nice, quiet hipsters", I have yet to live next to one. I've only encountered the 'I have band practice in my living room, leave beer bottles in the hallway and clean so rarely I will probably give you bedbugs" variety. I'd take twenty minutes of Reggae Gold over three hours of hipster neighbor and his stoned friends trying to parse out Wolf Parade songs in a heartbeat.

haha in my last apartment in carroll gardens i lived above a "electronic music producer" and below "noise musician". it was like the 4th layer of hell. the downstairs guy had just moved to NYC from texas and i don't think he really understood apartment living. he'd blare his crappy "unst unst unst" music at 4am. i'd pound on the floor and my neighbor would pound on the radiator with a hammer and he'd keep going. my neighbor talked to him the next day and he was like "oh, yeah, i heard that. well, i'm a musician so..." as if that excused everything. "oh, but sometimes i make songs for people who have to come over late to check them out." he eventually was made to understand that "unst unst" after 10pm or midnight was a no go. he also played saxophone and i felt like i lived above a softcore porn set, but he only played that during the day.

one day for about 45 minutes there was this low, rattling hum. then someone knocked on my door and it was this little shirtless guy with nipple rings. "hey, i live upstairs and i locked myself out of my apartment. hear that noise? i stepped outside of my apartment to see if you could hear it and the door locked."

"what is that? it's been driving me crazy for 45 minutes"

"oh, i'm a noise musician. anyway, my window is open. can i climb out your window and go up the fire escape?"

in our current apartment the bottom of our doors had to be raised to make room for new floors, so there's a gap beneath the doors and when we play music in our front room it is almost just as loud in the hallway and i feel kinda bad about that considering some of the stuff i listen to, but i only play that in the middle of the day and even then not all that loud. plus, our walls are solid and little to no noise passes through them.

alafairnadia wrote: this entire thread makes me love my neighbors.

Deep-fried? With BQ sauce? Mmmmmmmmm. good.

Turn down your Daddy Yankee CD for a moment and lock up your track bike (whichever is applicable). Put down your forty and hide your iPod. It's time for hipsters and old timers to hug it out.

doctorj wrote: I'll put up with just about anything, even chicken bones and indie rock. But spare me from 'contemporary R&B'.

You should have seen the looks on the locals of a variety of colors walk by this past Sunday whilst I was painting the front door of our building...I had a good 'ole mix of Classic Rock (read: Journey, CCR, Hendrix, Prince, INXS, Styx, Asia, etc., etc.) blaring on a tiny portable radio. I seriously thought the super at the building next door who perpetually sweeps and curses at garbage was going to spontaneously combust -- not only did he hate the music, but he was bitchin' about me actually taking the time to improve the look of our building.

Classic Rock + Sweat = Home Improvement

erikka wrote:
Turn down your Daddy Yankee CD for a moment and lock up your track bike (whichever is applicable). Put down your forty and hide your iPod. It's time for hipsters and old timers to hug it out.

ummmmm, i'd need some faux-meat please. k, thanks.

haha veggie castle is my jam. there's another ital place in crown heights called imhotep that's good too. recently though i've been doin a lot of seafood grillin up on the rooftop. i make sure to leave trash and bones layin around though so it's cool. the raccoons appreciate it.

I THOUGHT I TOLE YOU BITCHES TO HUG IT OUT!

Where is that guy with the chicken? The smiling fellow? He was nice.

BigGuy wrote:

You might as well say 'thank god for white people'

As with a number of the posters above, projecting your own racial issues into a post about neighborly respect and non-asshole hipsters is your own problem.

Levelling a charge of racism against someone is pretty serious stuff. If you or anyone else know of any evidence for the accusation, bring it on out. Otherwise STFU.

I was out of line... my fault

LimestoneKid wrote:
That kind of reminds of the time I spent in Japan. As a 6' tall, blond haired, white guy it was pretty obvious that I wasn't from the prefecture. It always made me laugh when the other white folks in the area or on the subway would go out of their way to snub you by not acknowledging you or not making eye contact.

I guess it made them feel more "real". Maybe that's what you're dealing with daver.

That's interesting. Having lived various places, I understand the sentiment. You detect in public from overhearing an accent or language or someone's appearance that they too have lived in X and are now in Y. When I'm living in Y, my first instinct is not to strike up an instant conversation with people from X, particularly if they look like tourists, unless there's a good reason. The likely alternative is discourse along the lines of "wow, you've also lived in X... and it seems like we have absolutely nothing else in common". If I wanted more random people from X in my day, I'd go back there.