March 29, 2008
Are Brooklynites Living a Double Life in SF?
As the creative class has grown in Brooklyn, it has been equally growing in the East Bay area of San Francisco. The NY Times is reporting on a bi-coastal trend that has Brooklynites flocking to the Bay Area, and vice versa, as both of the locales appeal to the DIY generation of freelancers.
But what's this, SFers are calling their East Coast doppelgänger ugly? One Facebook employee residing on the sunny side of the nation stated that her friend, after checking out some digs in Williamsburg, was shocked upon seeing the neighborhood was “not cute.” Apparently the Bay Area gets “a nicer climate, laid-back vibe, better produce, California’s nature close by, and a job scene where you feel more in demand as a NYer.”
Still, many are choosing both places, something that Home Buying for Hipsters creator, Eve Levine, hopes to help them do.
She explains the idea of Tenancy in Common, a form of ownership that enables people to combine their resources to buy a house jointly instead of just renting together. It is popular in the San Francisco Bay Area, she said, and she hopes to bring it to Brooklyn, where there is a similar pool of young people who have a history of sharing apartments through their 20’s.In the end, both locations are inundated with "resident tourists," as one man labels them, not wanting to choose one coast over the other, so settling on them both, for now.
|
so we get hipsters trying to promote a healthier lifestyle by jetting back and forth and polluting the environment with huge carbon jet emissions? You know these hipsters are all "BUY GREEN SAVE THE EARTH" when they are the real culprits of the earths decimation.
Is this why the new Brooklynites are a bunch of pussies?
Yet another completely anecdotal story by the new york times. Last week they tried to convince us that young people were moving to farms and becoming farmers in a completely non-ironic way. This week that they own two houses on both coasts in the most expensive real estate markets in the country. NEXT week they will tell us that the new cool thing for young people to do is get a really good meth habit going on and becoming truckers to get their farm raised produce from SF to Brooklyn in time for market.
And who's going to cover that story? Jen Carlson.
This is total BS.
concerned if your neighborhood is "not cute" ??
blegh. i am not a fan of that word. "cute"
One Facebook employee residing on the sunny side of the nation stated that her friend, after checking out some digs in Williamsburg, was shocked upon seeing the neighborhood was “not cute.”
Good. Stay the hell out.
The bi-coastal trend, as well as the back-to-the-farm movement, may well be true but still pretty meaningless. There are lots of people in their 20s and 30s in Brooklyn. Limiting that to creative people in that age range still probably results in 10s of thousands of people. If only 100 of them started farms upstate that would be a huge influx of new farms. Similarly, if several hundred went bicoastal that would be a big increase in bicoastalness.
Now, think of "Six degrees of separation". Chances are if you belong to that particular demographic someone in your social network, or once removed from your immediate social network has taken up the bicoastal livin' or upstate farmin' life.
That a large population will contain small subsets that follow one or more particular trends is not surprising. In fact it should be expected.
new york times tried to convince me that i'm missing something because i'm not living in buenos aires, which apparently has a vibe comparable to 'prague in the 90s'. oh well.
i can't wait 'till recession crashes the ridiculous nyc rental market!
By that logic if I know someone in New York who has a meth habit and drives a truck all in the name of fashion then there's at least 100 others who are doing it as well and then I can make an article about it for the new york times.
I'll get on that.
Fuck Frisco. B.K. all day every day...
bagelman - you mean you're NOT posting from Buenos Aires? I totally am. I'm at a cafe right now. Next week I'll be in Berlin (though yes I know Berlin is soooo 2007) and then I'll be back on the farm to milk my heard of organic cows but not before checking on my bi-coastal properties that I have a tenancy-in-common agreement with my roomate.
Okay first of all, no one calls it "Frisco"...
I'm originally from the Bay Area (in New York for college) and I agree that it has "a nicer climate, laid-back vibe, better produce, California’s nature close by". I can't say much about the job market yet, though.
Who are these people? I've never met them.
Everyone I know of from SF has moved straight to Brooklyn and not for financial reasons, either. I've reached the conclusion that hipsters simply can't handle an actual city like Manhattan where instead of being gawked at for their style and bony appendages, they're pushed out of the way for walking too fuckin' slow or for simply being annoying. I'm fine with this but I would be a lot happier if these little shits would stop telling others that they live "in New York" like it means something. Brooklyn is merely Oakland and San Francisco smished together.
I just moved to the Bay Area after living in Brooklyn for ten years. There's no comparing New York to anywhere else, but the Bay Area is still awesome in its own regard.
Anyway, my point is that I meet people in SF who moved here from Brooklyn all the time. However, don't be fooled for a second - Oakland is nothing like Brooklyn. It's more like Yonkers, and it sucks. SF is kind of like Brooklyn, without a Manhattan.
yeah so is chicago. to compare nyc to anywhere else is just stupid. NYC is the best city every made.
I just called it Frisco to aggravate West Coasters. Actually, San Fransisco is a great city; just not NYC (before Giuliani and Bloomberg destroyed it).
I've been in Manhattan for four months after living in SF for many, many years. It's probably just homesickness, but I just don't see the attraction here (and I am planning to get out, so, thanks for that suggestion.)
Manhattan is frankly, pretty grody. The buildings are dilapidated, the subways are filthy -- and by filthy I mean inch-thick layers of black grime covering every surface. The streets and sidewalks are crumbling, all of which is surprising given the number of construction crews jack-hammering away at every corner. You would think they would get caught up after a while.
The tiny little cracker-boxes you people call apartments are insanely expensive. The exorbitant fee charged by "apartment brokers" borders on larceny: why you people don't legislate that practice right out of existence is beyond me. And what's the attraction with all these creepy doormen? Aren't these the very people you want to keep out of a building? And yet you pay a premium to have them leering their greasy leers at you every time you enter the lobby.
The produce is laughable. I suppose something might be said for the restaurants, if you can afford the real thing and not just some third-rate, pretentious imitation, of which there seems to be something of a boom. The nightclubs are nice -- if you like hanging around with smelly, chainsmoking eurodouchebags who yammer on about how cheap the Grey Goose is.
The people are nice enough once they warm up, but in general everyone seems driven to the utmost edge of restraint by the struggle of daily life.
I am forced by contract to stay here for another year. Maybe I'll change my tune, but frankly, I just don't see the appeal.
Toughen up, sissy.
Hey kiddies go back to the Waste Coast if you can't hack it here with the filthy city folk. How fucking naive are you? Anyone who utters "grody" needs to get a fucking beatdown. Seriously sweetums, get back on the next plane to 'Frisco-suck down some fresh air while munching on glorious produce. Life is tough enough in this city without the whiners who migrate here looking to find themselves. Take your quality of life moaning attitude and shove it up your ass...