Williamsburg to Subway: F-U!

Interesting. I heard that Park Slope refuses to allow fast food chains in the neighborhood, but I'm not sure if its an urban legend or not. Subway is there, however. Anyone know of the official word?

i'm boycotting the ad

Subway has awful food.
Chain fast food places are bad and I do not frequent them. Then again it may have something to do with being a vegetarian.

Actually, they don't which is why they don't chastize mom and pops who overcharge and keep 100% of the profits thusly having a similar effect that they perceive Subway to be having.

I love anti-corporate propaganda.

I'm sure the diner down on the corner pays their bus boys amazingly high wages and offer health benefits.

If the diner owner makes a lot of money, he buys a nice house (in New York, built by New Yorkers), furnishes it with nice furniture (builit in, or at least sold in, New York), buys some local artwork to decorate his house with, buys some nice clothes from Aarons for his wife, some nice suits from his local tailor, goes out to eat at local restaurants, buys groceries at the local grocery store, reads the local newspapers, goes to see movies and concerts at local venues, buys a car in Bay Ridge, sends his kids to local private schools and pays local property taxes.

If subway makes a lot of money, some werido in Georgia gets rich and buys a mercedes.

They both help the economy, but the diner helps the NYC economy, whereas subway doesn't, really.

This is the ultimate in "hipster irony." Do the "hipsters" who put this goddamn thing up realize that:

- Making such a "stand" to get rid of Subway contributes to the gentrification of their own neighborhood, something which they supposedly gripe about but has already happened anyway?
- People still need jobs. You're not making much more working at the fancy coffee shops/eateries that are "independent" anyway.
- The food isn't any worse than anything found at any corner deli (and sometimes even better). Again, it's still low-cost, which is important for people who can't afford 8-dollar or more sandwiches that are often found elsewhere in the area.
- If you think you're so smart, try running a cost-effective business without a trust fund.

I am a diner owner...not in the unique and artist embracing Williamsburg, but over in Greenpoint. I hate to break it to you but the tuth is: my house was built by Mexicans, my furniture is from Ethan Allen, the only art i have was made by my 6 year old daughter, i buy suits shipped from Greece and my groceries are from the A&P. And yes...i do occasionally eat at Subway. So, sorry to break it to you Boots, but you don't know what the hell you are talking about.

It's not like I eat at Subway or anything, and one reason I love NYC is that it has neighborhoods with interesting local businesses. But Motherless Brooklyn has the gall to claim they represent Williamsburg, and I their letter actually hurts their cause. Who could take this seriously? MB should hire an MBA for this task! Thanks for the laugh, Gothamist!

The only good point this poster makes is that Subway has bad food. Their sandwiches are pretty expensive and don't taste very good. In New York, of all places, I don't understand why people eat at fast food restaurants. There are almost always so many better, cheaper options. It shouldn't be an ideological thing. It should be a (pricy and yucky) VS (cheap and tasty) thing. That is all.

I know very little about how the economy works, and I don't doubt that the people who created that sign don't know all the facts, and may ultimately be doing (or may have done) more harm to the neighborhood than good. That being said, I grew up in an area overrun with chain stores, and when you live within five or ten minutes of several strip malls, each which contains a Subway, Starbucks, and McDonald's, it's disheartening. My hometown now has another coffee chain moving in to compete with Starbucks. I eat at Subway and Starbucks, but it's getting out of hand. People have said this for years, but it's a shame that every town in the country has the same stores and restaurants.

This is free of cant, so forgive me if it's boring; but I was in a Subway (5th Ave. and 9th St. in Park Slope) this July when somehow we all got locked in--employees and customers. It was one of the most bizarre things I've ever experienced. The teenagers seemed to be getting a kick out of things, but after a half hour of the workers trying to pry the door open I called the cops since the manager didn't seem too concerned with getting there in a hurry. ESU was on the verge of knocking the door off the hinges when one of the employees managed to slip a key under a pried-up sidewalk grate. No harm no foul, but did I get a free crappy sandwich out of it? No. Was I corporate prisoner of Subway for an hour? Yes.

Maybe if more people had actually patronized the restaurant instead of admiring it for its aesthetic qualities, it would still be opened and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

To sum up the prevailing opinion here -- ideas are dangerous and deserve all the vitriol you can muster.

The only thing chain stores are good for are their bathrooms.

kevin - man, i didn't know that about Niederstein's, i used to go there occasionally when i lived in queens. an arby's? bleh.

my in-laws, who are otherwise useless, had some great stories about that place, back when it was a destination for german families in east new york for major occasions and a tiny taste of home.

Actually, this is not true: "Williamsburg was first not a community of bourgeois art kids on daddy's credit card, but a lower middle class area made up of Poles, Puerto Ricans, and Chassidic Jews".

Williamsburg was originally part of Boswijk (Bushwick) and was started by the Dutch, who bought the land from the Native Americans. The English took over from the Dutch in 1664, and Williamsburgh was created as a part of Bushwick in 1802.

The "Poles, Puerto Ricans, and Chassidic Jews" didn't really move in great numbers to Williamsburg until after World War II, and their migration there certainly didn't begin until the Williamsburg Bridge was built in 1903. Prior to that time it was mostly people of Western European descent. The hipsters began moving to Williamsburg in the 1980's, so really only starting coming 40 years after the majority of the "Poles, Puerto Ricans, and Chassidic Jews" who you claim were there first.

Basically, my point is that neighborhoods change a great deal in terms of ethnicity and socio-economic backgrounds. No one really has any more claim to a a neighborhood than anyone else. No one was "there first", really, if you think about it, besides the Native Americans, or the Dutch if you want to consider the actual neighborhood itself.

Excellent points Smitty, and you're right. That being said, there is a consistent problem with "hipster gentrification"(for lack of a better term), which is that it tends to consist of highly mobile and privileged populations pushing out much less mobile and underprivileged populations(note to starving artists: living in a slum because you just want to paint doesnt make you proletarian). In other words, hipsters can come and go, and in the end it doesnt much matter to them if they're in Wburg or Red Hook, whereas the families they push out with the high rents that they bring in are generally less able to easily pick up and move when their landlord decides he wants to loft up the joint.

Theo–I agree, except I'd like to point out one thing. I moved to Williamsburg in 1979 so I think I qualify as part of the first group of artists to arrive. I don't take any particular pride in this...it was purely accidental. Hell, I was looking at places in Staten Island at the same time. That said, since I was there at the time I can tell you the artists who moved in early on didn't displace anyone. The building I moved into (which is very distinctive and now is considered one of the more desirable buildings in Williamsburg) was mostly vacant–and in very funky shape. The landlord was desperate to get tenants. It may be hard for people to realize this, but back then Williamsburg was NOTHING like it is now. If I took the L back from Manhattan on a weekend after 10pm there might be one or two other people getting off the train at the Bedford station. There were no restaurants and not even any bodegas to speak of. If I wanted to really shop for groceriesin a store with some selection I had to walk to Greenpoint. As far as being a member of the proletariat. By definition a member of the proletariat is "a worker". I don't want to romanticize things, but I drove a 12 hour taxi shift and tried to paint as much as I could. My building had "commercial heat" which meant NO heat after 6 pm and on weekends, year round. Some weekends I would go to the movie theater and watch several shows just to be someplace warm. I'm not sure how that made me "priveleged". But I get your point and for the most part agree...I moved out of Williamsburg several years ago.