Well.
The Last Bohemia
Anasi lived in Williamsburg from the early ’90s to the late 2000s and
witnessed first-hand the rapid changes in the neighborhood. Come talk
local history with him as he presents his memoir The Last Bohemia.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is now so synonymous with hipster culture and
the very idea of urban revitalization—so well-known from Chicago to
Cambodia as the playground for the game of ironized status-seeking and
lifestyle one-upmanship—that it’s easy to forget how just a few years
ago it was a very different neighborhood: a spread of factories, mean
streets, and ratty apartments that the rest of New York City feared.
Robert Anasi hasn’t forgotten. He moved to a $300-a-month apartment
in Williamsburg in 1994 and watched as the area went through a series of
surreal transformations: gritty industrial district, low-rent artists’
enclave, dot-com denizens’ crash pad, backdrop for neo-bohemian cool,
playpen for stroller-pushing trendy parents, and now a high-rise
real-estate developers’ colony of brushed aluminum and plate glass.
1 comment:
I remember first moving to New York in 2000 and going to get my first $90 haircut in Tribeca. My uncle and aunt, with whom I was living on 10th and A, both said, "That's actually not that bad for a decent haircut here." My neighbor said dryly, "If the stylist charges less than $200 I don't trust him with my pubes."
At any rate, the stylist was a really cool 50 year old guy who owned the place. He had lived in Brooklyn ever since he returned from Vietnam in the 70's. I mentioned to him that I was planning on renting a place in Williamsburg or Greenpoint. He replied, "Yeah, it's amazing the transformation in Williamsburg. I've be in the same building since 1976 and back when I first moved in, if you asked me which was a scarier place, my neighborhood or Saigon, it wasn't even close. My neighborhood was the most frightening place I'd ever been. Now? Not too shabby."
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