ASTORIA, N.Y. — The neighborhood board of Astoria, Queens, has voted to enact measures to maintain the neighborhood’s standing as the diverse melting pot that it once was – by keeping twenty-something hipsters out.
Over the past few years, as areas like Brooklyn’s Williamsburg, Bushwick, and DUMBO have become overrun with long-haired, bearded, wire-rim-glasses-wearing, Pitchfork-reading liberal arts graduates. Longtime residents of these areas have had to deal with an inundation of local microbrew beer, flannel shirt boutiques, fixed-gear bike shops, and bars who loudly blast Bon Iver’s most recent album on repeat.
Carolyn Jones, a longtime resident of Williamsburg, moved out of the neighborhood to Astoria in 2003, sensing the tide that had already begun to wash hipsters onto Brooklyn’s shore.
“It was terrible,” she said. “It used to be an ethnically, religiously rich neighborhood. Now it’s just a whole bunch of white kids pretending to be bohemians while living off the trust funds their dads set up when they graduated from Bennington or Vassar.”
As these neighborhoods have grown in popularity, hipsters arriving in New York have begun to seek new areas for unnecessary indie-fication. With its easy access to Manhattan, Astoria has become a prime target, Jones said, shaking up the mix of ethnic, racial, religious, and age demographics.
Jones led the movement within the Astoria Neighborhood Board to enact measures to keep hipsters out. The Board will offer cash incentives to landlords who refuse “scraggly, unshaven, plaid-wearing twenty-somethings who use the word ‘irony’ more than once in casual conversation.” Additionally, no bars in Astoria will serve Brooklyn Lager, and all bodegas are now forbidden from selling American Spirit cigarettes and a handful of Camel varieties.
“It’s the beginning of a very popular effort to protect the dignity of this wonderful neighborhood,” Jones says. “We’ve gotten a lot of support around Astoria.
“If they have to come to Queens, let them keep ruining Long Island City,” she added.
6 comments
Satirical though this article is, hipsters are a problem. It’s not about how they dress or act, its about how they don’t seem interested in participating in what is already in the neighborhoods they invade, and instead set up their own shops and bars with completely jacked up prices.
Eventually, the real estate people come to think that its in their best interest to help turn these neighborhoods into fake bohemian playgrounds for idle people who have the time and money to eat fifty dollar locavore brunch every day. It’s part of a highly unequal society where those at the top view hard working people as useless for their resource gobbling purposes.
Who are you to represent me? I have been in Astoria since 1963 and I don’t appreciate newcomers like you telling me whats good for the neighborhod
yes it must be awful for these ‘ethnic’ landlords to see their property values quadruple. i was talking to my 75 year old polish landlord in wburg and he was DELIGHTED that his building went from $300,000 in 1999 to $3.5 million in 2009.
I don’t see any long haired bearded hipsters anymore. Not in Williamsburg, it’s overrun by preppy hipsters and yuppies. I mean I liked it better when it had artists and musicians living there a few years back and I didn’t care about the gentrification thing coz I think they were cool. Now Queens is standing their ground. I think mostly the creative types such as the musicians and artists moved out of the boroughs and I don’t even know why they were labeled as hipsters just because they moved in time with the gentrification thing. But yea, Queens should stand their ground and I’m proud of that so that they could prevent further ironic douchiness going on in their neighborhoods.
Who cares? Money is money. People are people, no matter what their interests
so – less starbucks and more gyros?