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Holy Crap! The Virtual LES launched! Words cannot describe, friends (speaking of which, let's be BFFs!). Clearly this is not meant for people who actually frequent the actual Lower East Side, but rather the people who read their blogs. Seeing all the places in creepy second life 3-D is pure Twilight Zone stuff. Highlights so far, while briefly browsing around the site are that you can shop at the Virtual American Apparel, attend virtual gigs like Leo Fitzpatrick DJing at the Virtual Darkroom and Against Me! playing the Virtual Cake Shop (so there, btw.) Best might be the descriptions of the clubs on this page. In particular, "Max Fish is to Lower East Side bars what the Smithsonian Institute is to American museums." Classic.
Anyway, this is gonna be really fun to play around with for at least the next few days, and maybe a whole lot longer. Depends on how you feel about videogames and instant nostalgia, we suppose. We haven't had too much time to poke about yet, but we're extra excited to make every joke we made between 1999 and 2005, add the word 'virtual' in front, and get one last laugh. Now, excuse us while we go blow virtual lines off the virtual Darkroom toilet seat.
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can you virtually get raped by virtual puerto ricans who break into your 3000 a dollar a month virtual shithole that you virtually paid too much for?
can i virtually sit at a computer and log into the virtual lower east side? this is gay, who cares.
New York, I love you, but you're bringing me down.
wow thats gay
doesn't support apple, must suck...
any virtual peeping toms? with the constant turnover of new tenants and narrow streets, there's always time to peep.
rapes & prostitutes?
I guess you guys are who this thing is designed for - people who haven't left their houses in 5 years.
Lame
The website VLES website has a typoe... It says:
"New York City’s Lower East Side, a.k.a. the place where every angst-ridden, music-loving teenager (that means you, or maybe you a few years ago) dreams of running away to."
It should read:
"New York City's Lower East Side, a.k.a., The once shitty looking and cheap neighborhood that is still shitty looking but now is overpriced thanks to obnoxious hipsters whose parents can afford to front $3000/month for a closet sized studio they can pass out in after a hard Tuesday night of puking in public."
So at this VLES can you get virtual VD in the bathroom at 2x4 or wait virtually forever to get ripped off at Kenka? I wonder if there is an half hour line to piss at the Starbucks on Virtual St. Marks...
come on, this isn't New York news, this should be in Nebraskaist. That's who this is designed for.
Is there a virtual Bathtub in the kitchen?
"download for mac"... guess it doesn't support apple
@the3rdbridge:
Learn your neighborhoods. Both places you mentioned (2x4 and St. Mark's) are in the E.Vill, not the LES.
14 - Don't be a snob. If it's below 14th and east of Broadway it is the lower east side. Saying the East Village isn't the lower east side is like saying Murray Hill isn't midtown.
I don't think I have much "learning" to do in identifying the LES, seeing as I grew up there.
Thanks though!
This is a sign of the apocalypse.
"#14 guest" needs to learn *his* neighborhoods. Like The3rdBridge said, the East Village *is* a part of the LES. The name "East Village" was coined by real estate agents than by cartographers. Proof of concept: Avenue C is also called "Loisaida," which is Spanglish for "Lower East Side."
By the way, this negativism about the LES is ironic; most of the people making fun of the LES are the same types who a number of years ago left Manhattan and became easy-living-Brooklyn advocates. You know, the kind who leisurely stroll down Bedford Avenue, constantly sipping a latte while walking a small dog, window shopping at the newest vintage store. At that time, the Brooklynites were the targets of the anti-hipster sentiment.
But also at that time, a LOT of the artists who originally moved to Brooklyn noticed how much cheaper places were on the Lower East Side than WIlliamsburg! In the early 2000s is when the tide reversed; most artists I knew moved back into the city.
Are Williamsburgers relieved, knowing that their neighborhood is no longer a target? Now I just see sour grapes: slightly aging, settled-down, early-30s Brooklyn bohemians throwing stones at the starry-eyed, energetic, early-20s Lower East Side bohemians. You're not as different as you think.
The people living in the Lower East Side are bohemians? Are we talking about the same decade?
"early-20s Lower East Side bohemians"
is that what you call a backward hat wearing murray hill transplant?
Max Fish sucks... I lived across the street on Ludlow when it first opened then on Orchard, so I went there for years, until I realized one night that I had never received one buy-back! After that, I never set foot in there again.
That neighborhood is painful to walk through... it used to be so lovely and diverse and quiet. I really loved it once.
The East Village sucks. The West Village is the place. No posers.
I grew up on the L.E.S and in Brooklyn.
Yeah, its different now and not necessarily in a good way.
Neighborhoods in NYC always change, old timers move and newcomers arrive, it's always been this way.
I'm a second generation NYer, my grandparents moved to NYC back in the 40s from elsewhere in the country.
the problem with the recent changes in NYC is NYC feels flattened, the juice is being sucked out of it but it is still as violent as ever.
Did you realize there is a new classification system used to report crime?
It is said this newer system might have something to do with the lauded lower crime rate in NYC.
Woah - is against me really on this shitty thing? I mean, I knew they had kinda sold out, but this is like, really selling out.
I havent heard about the new classification. But I was walking around the LES yesterday and it seems like it gets increasingly silly. The majority of the resturants and clothing stores I passed were well out of my price range and yet the place on a whole still had some charm to it. Honestly I didnt feel unsafe at all. Way more safer than walking around Crown Heights at dusk. Where are all the bohemians and why arnt they moving there, its cheap as shit.
wow. it's so sad. this is really so so terrible. this is EXACTLY the reason why all the real new yorkers left new york (by the way- in ALL history of new york- no one relevant was REALLY from Manhattan. They were from ALL THE OTHER BOROS. Manhattan was always just the meeting point- or "tourist" boro)
You wanna see REAL New York? Go walk around Southern Boulevard in the South Bronx, or Jamaica Queens, or the HOOD Bushwick- NOT the hipster Bushwick. THAT'S real New York. Real Graffiti writers out at 3am bombin while you're out at Max Fish, and ACTING out a real life on the internet. REAL struggle. REAL poverty. Fuck you posers. You ruined our city. The Ramones are turning over in their graves. So is Johnny Thunders. So is Biggie Smalls. You people made our city so pussy. It's so sad. You would have never survived when Dinkins was mayor. PLEASE respect what's left of New York, cause it ain't much soul left to it.
new york is dead.