Williamsburg.

I didn't move here to hang a line of wash with a fat 80 year-old Italian woman who's never been east of Union Avenue in her life. I don't give a shit how rough the southside was in the 1980s, I didn't come here to take auto shop with Vinnie Barbarino. I came here to find ex-patriots like myself looking for the goddam sun. I didn't give a shit about the "real" Brooklyn; I wanted to make my own Brooklyn with people like myself who had come not knowing really why they had come HERE, but knowing they had come to the right place. And I know they're out there somewhere. -  XMASTIME

The latest in the "Flipster" nonsense about Williamsburg, ie the "bridge and tunnel hipsters."

 "They're poser hipsters. They come from the city or from New Jersey to come play hipster for the weekend," said Chandler, 26, of the term. "There's some weird touristy draw... All the cool bars that used to be not crowded are now crowded by weekenders."

Ugh.

Bitching about being a part of "real" Williamsburg seems to have become an American rite of passage; anyone who's lived in Williamsburg over the last twenty years, even if only for weeks, feels outraged at the "gentrification" they're having to suffer though. Nobody can accept they're just part of the liquidity of the place...yes, we were all part of the Golden Age...but guess what? Your Golden Age isn't necessarily anyone else's. There's another Golden age going on at any time, without you at all. And no matter what, there's always someone who came before you. I got there in January of 1998. But guess what? Someone else got there in December of 1997.

We all came to Brooklyn. Relax.

Like anybody I guess, I assumed New York City began the second I walked in, and would disappear the moment I left. Just now I walked by my freight elevator, where a kid in his early 20's wearing a Yeah Yeah Yeahs t-shirt was excitedly loading in boxes from what looked like his parents' minivan. - XMASTIME