Village Life

Does anybody know of a newsagent that offers the paid service of tearing out every part of the New York Times apart Paul Krugman’s columns prior to delivery?

Also: altogether too much discussion of rule-following.

Every building is constructed entirely of slabs.

I think he’s saying that the hipsters are looking for a maze of little bike paths and farmers markets, of old and new yoga studios, of thrift shops with additions from various periods.

Mysterious Spate Of Ladder Thefts Leaves Brooklyn Roofers And Sign-Painters Stranded

“The difference is between the first three days of Burning Man, when everyone is ‘Hey, what’s up?’ to the final three days of Burning Man, when the tent flaps are down. Brooklyn is turning out to be the last three days of Burning Man.”

There’s no way this is an accurate quote

Hastings-on-Hudson: Where Construction is a Language Game

A “real” hipster is also unable to use HTML tags properly before noon.

The local bar has a one-armed pianist

Style section trolling.

I don’t know why this only occurred to me with this article, but it’s literally trolling, isn’t it? I mean, it can’t be a coincidence that they consistently find the most insufferable people imaginable for these pieces.

I’m not going along with “what is a hipster anyway,’ though. It’s totally definable — a hipster is someone who uses fashion and lifestyle choices to impersonate an artist or intellectual while being substantively neither. You could, of course, keep picking at that definition the same way ad infinitum — What is an artist, anyway? What is an intellectual? But outside of contexts that make people feel defensive, we don’t tend to have a hard time defining those terms either.

It’s certainly true that ‘hipster’ is used as generic-to-the-point-of-uselessness slur by a lot of right-leaning people, but — listen to the David Cross WTF for an example — it’s also a meaningful, rage-inducing phenomenon who can’t be classified that way. Oh no, it’s not “self-loathing” either… even if you think it’s a meaningless term, it’s unquestionably — perhaps this is the best criticism — something that only applies to other people.

das dorf ist alles was da falsch ist.

Anything there about yellow suede shoes and bottle green bowler hats?

consistently find the most insufferable people imaginable for these pieces

Good, thanks . . . I’m looking for metaphors for my post with the cult-stud analysis of Dinner for \[Putzes\]. I mean, maybe these people are, simply, “remarkable.” In a Wittgensteinian sense.

I’m over forty and probably don’t really get the implications of “hipster.” I didn’t assume they were trying to pretend to be creative or copying styles from artists qua artists. There have been club kids for a long time, and they’ve been a mix of rich and working class kids for a long time, and also a mix of artists and non-.

Odd. The one time I was in H-on-H (that’d be late December 1967/early January 1968), I thought it was a relatively normal suburban town (that had actually had a prior existence as a real community before becoming primarily a bedroom community for NYC middle-class professional commuters).

I decided “they always get things wrong when they venture out more than a couple of blocks from the newsroom” is probably true of every paper.

Right, but most papers don’t have enough resources to produce a constant stream of faux-anthropology pieces about people who live more than a couple of blocks from the newsroom, so it’s not as obvious.

How expensive is Brooklyn btw if they’re being priced out to 800 grand houses in the suburbs? There must be something cheaper somewhere..what about Queens and the Bronx?

The depressing part is that the style and real estate sections of the NYT explain the rest of the paper. It can’t be understood without them – they are the most honest part of the product.

Bianca Steele @27:
Ha, I’ve been saying that about the papers here in Toronto for years and years.

What do you call someone who comes from a well-to-do background and started life with a trust fund but cultivates an unkempt appearance and eschews a traditional career path in favour of a series of low-status occupations – teaching, gardening, dabbling at being an architect – none of which he sticks at long enough to turn into a career? Thinks philosophy is rubbish and finds traditional academic study stuffy but holds forth in a cryptic vein on the ‘big questions’? Courts a cult following who mimic his style and mannerisms? Is invited to othe town’s hippest club but shocks everyone by refusing to go? Goes off for long periods on expensive holidays but always off-season, to avoid the mainstream?

re: rf (#28) and Eric’s reply (#29).

An $800K house would be mortgage payments of about $4,000 a month for 30-years fixed at 4.5%. (800K is still, I believe, a non-conforming mortgage, so higher-than-listed rates even with a perfect credit rating.)

Even if you assume 20% down–read: $160,000 in savings while living in “hispter” Brooklyn–and a 4% rate, that’s still $3,000 a month.

Plus Westchester property taxes, which even for Hastings will run them about $900/month. Add in additional commuting expenses–$229/month per person–and water, sanitation, heating/electric services and basic maintenance on the house and you’re around, optimistically, another $1,000/month over and above a flat in Brooklyn. Probably closer to $1,500.

So Hastings-on-Hudson–which was a nice place when I was visiting there in the early 1980s–is going to cost have a basic cost of about $5,500/month. Before you get to any “you need to drive” expenses, you’re spending ca. $65,000 a year–about 1.5 times the median U.S. household income. (Also before food, clothing, communication, entertainment, and any other expenses.)

Reason #1 still wins the thread.

the style and real estate sections are the frame for the rest of the paper.

Definitely, this piece (having now read it) is just a story about where the cool towns are, if you’re thinking of leaving Brooklyn and you’re a Style section reader (and why, if you’ve been househunting in those towns, stuff in the 700k-800k range is moving so quickly). There’s some dubious sociology mixed in, like the dancer talking about “realizing you’re not cut out for this kind of life,” which it’s not stated whether she means she realized she won’t have a career as a dancer, or won’t have a career as a star and doesn’t care unless she can, or can’t get a dancing job at all, or wants kids, or can’t live in Brooklyn on a non-star’s pay, or can’t live in Brooklyn on a yoga instructor’s pay–annoyingly, it comes out as some, some dubious life lesson to make the story “meaningful,” about how most people reading the paper will someday realize they’re not good enough for the nice things it describes, or something.

Also, only about half of the people in that article are presenting themselves as artists, or apparently pretending to be “poor.” It’s not clear who it is who believes yoga studios, Democrats, and non-crappy restaurants in the suburbs are some crazy innovation. Westchester County is generally a pretty good place, though, if you’re looking for a town with a still-vibrant center, not a postwar suburb. And the hills are pretty.

Oh I agree. Hipsters are the glue that holds the modern city together. They should be cherised and encouraged. Our tech futurist ruling classes like Ari Wallach are the real fly in the ointment

From the perspective of the how the company makes money, isn’t it largely the case that the New York Times is basically a money-losing vanity publication put out by a Manhattan real-estate concern?

I like this, as a pendant to “Harvard is a hedge fund with a university as its tax dodge.”

Thinks philosophy is rubbish and finds traditional academic study stuffy but holds forth in a cryptic vein on the ‘big questions’?

I’m not sure what most people think count as “the big questions”, but if it’s things like the meaning of life, why we should be moral, whether there is a god, why there is something rather than nothing, and the like, then Wittgenstein basically never discussed such things, particularly in the reports of his lectures. Even questions like personal identity, the nature of knowledge, and solipsism are looked at in ways that are better thought of as indirect than “cryptic”, I’d think.

I’d also think it’s inaccurate to say that he “courted” a cult following, if that means anything other than “inspired” one.

More importantly, rather than discussing hipsters or the NY Times, I wish people would get back to making village jokes. Kieran set the bar high and it’s hard to compete with that (I know) but it would be more interesting.

I wish there were a New York Times for people who not only don’t give a rat’s ass about Brooklyn, but could care less about New York in general. Like a USA Today but not for idiots.

funny . . .
.

Re: #35,

$800K probably gets you 4-5 bedrooms and 2000-2500 sq ft in Hastings. A better comp to what’s available for families in prime Brooklyn is the $600Ka range – there are plenty of houses in that range with 2-3 beds and 1500-2000 sq ft. Generally the add-on costs in Westchester (RE taxes, maintenance) end up being about the same as in prime Brooklyn (RE taxes, city income tax, maintenance). I’ve found it to be legitmately cheaper to raise a family here than it was in Brooklyn.

Of course, unlike the delusional people in the article – I’m well aware that I’m living in a suburb.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=piano+pieces+for+three+hands

I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked ‘two black pairs of skinny jeans’. He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked ‘pairs of skinny jeans’, then he looks up the word ‘black’ in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers—I assume that he knows them by heart—up to the word ‘two’ and for each number he takes a pair of skinny jeans of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer.—It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words…

Actually I live in hoh, and have for 20 years… This whole piece is a nyt fairy tale. I promise you we aren’t hip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY8bsQQLm9Y

THIS is Brooklyn. Well, there’s MUCH more to Brooklyn than this. Spike Lee is a beginning to the more. But everyone knows about Spike Lee. I promote this film every chance I get. Saw it first a few summers ago in a Brooklyn park on a lovely summer evening with my daughter, who was from one point of view a NYT hipster invader, from another, a law student working on behalf of the Spike Lee constituency. (I worried a lot about her in the brief period she was living in a dangerous area in a building with no working locks on the the building’s front door.) Just sayin’, it’s all a lovely mess.

I also promote: http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/
Unfortunately, Jeremiah’s vanishing new york, which has previously been Manhattan-centered, is starting to move Brooklyn-ward.

Also: Kieran’s #10 is clearly the winner.

Harold, don’t know about variations in nuns’ heel heights (not spike here here, anyway — good solid heels on that younger nun), but I’d take issue with the hand gestures’ being particularly Italian (though Italians would recognize them). Here, at least, they are the gestures of an eager adolescent in the flush of feeling some adult authority in the world — Marcus Pincus made me a suit!

I read the short in terms of self-definition in terms of others, starting from the view of the Manhattan skyline from Brooklyn (perhaps the shot most relevant to the OP here).

Note the Muslim women, who look a lot like Catholic nuns (just as the Catholic priests in the early shots look like the young “Talmudic scholars”) rounding the corner near the end.

Everybody looks alike, but don’t. Black or navy blue? Poor Marcus Pincus! He meant well.

Yes, it was lovely. And very true. Just saw “The Bespoke Overcoat” on Youtube. Not a joke but almost unbearably sad.

About his sister’s house, this (from Wikipedia):

In particular, Wittgenstein focused on the windows, doors, and radiators, demanding that every detail be exactly as he specified. When the house was nearly finished Wittgenstein had an entire ceiling raised 30mm so that the room had the exact proportions he wanted. Monk writes that “This is not so marginal as it may at first appear, for it is precisely these details that lend what is otherwise a rather plain, even ugly house its distinctive beauty.”

almost seems lifted from E.T.A. Hoffman’s story “Der Rat Krespel”, whose protagonist has a house constructed to his precise desires in a ridiculous but efficacious fashion, first having the stone walls built up to a satisfactory height, then marching up to each side to determine where the doors and the windows should be.

I refuse to accept that there is no rhinoceros in Hastings-on-Hudson.

From the perspective of the how the company makes money, isn’t it largely the case that the New York Times is basically a money-losing vanity publication put out by a Manhattan real-estate concern?
I like this, as a pendant to “Harvard is a hedge fund with a university as its tax dodge.”

See also “The US government is basically an insurance company with an army”, Paul Krugman.

“Sounds cheap in comparison to Melbourne, frankly.”

Yeah it’s not so bad, more or less what you’d pay in London, with the same caveats about the centrality of the area etc My friend moved to Melbourne and said it’s a joke cost of living wise, though her sister moved to Perth and claims it’s even worse. Your wages are pretty good over there afaik and the weathers nice, so that’s something.

“For since beginning to occupy myself with the serious life again, sixteen
years ago, I have been forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I
said in that first article.”

–Ari Wallach quoted in a 2038 NY Times article, “Hipsters Return to their Roots”

I assume that, for the people that live there, Hastings-on-Hudson is all that is the case.

wow, the n y times shows itself to be clueless and rich.
I mean, ain’t never happened before

(I am praying that most of the comments here are by people from other countries, or people under the age of 25, cause if you are over 25, the idea that you would be surprised by the upper middle class obtuseness of the Times is a bit scary…)

every now and then, the Times runs a foibles of the rich and famous story:

Mrs van der walloon, a member of the old dutch aristocracy (the ones who wouldn’t let the vanderbilts into the old opera on 14th street, which is why we have the met) went to tiffanys to pick up a 10,000 dollar bauble for her grand daughter, and , as she was walking away, told the clerk, put it on my account.
(painful silence)
um, ms van der walloon, you have to sign for things now…..(the point of the story was how tiffanys was going down market, and ignoring its real customers)

or
guy walks into tiffanys, goes up to the watch counter, and says, I’ll have 12 of those (10,000 dollar watches).
(raised eyebrow by clerk)
response: this year, i don’t want to have to remember who got what for xmas….

or
guy is looking at the Ferrari(s) in his hamptons driveway, and is pissed cause there is no room to do a u turn in the driveway, what with 2 or 3 ferraris taking up all that space.
it is sunday on memorial day weekend – the entire USofA is on vacation
guy calls his contractor, says how much to have the driveway widened *today*
“thats what you call the velocity of money” the times quoted him as saying

New gestures.

PDF here.

Let us explain the word “village” by pointing to a pencil and saying “this is village.”

Harold: “He came to the anticipated conclusion: as Jews and Italians became American, so did their gestures.”

Ah! Interesting. Compare the way the nuns are listening for Latin or Hebrew as their test, the Talmudic young men are watching for “true” black (Catholic nuns can be trusted to be Talmudic scholars’ true test of black, right? of course!), and the only spoken words we hear in this whole short are English (so we viewers know): Marcus Pincus f-ed us! Latin, to be sure, thinks the young nun (in her ignorance of Latin!) (I like that the older nun — emphasis on old, here — is the only one who gets it, along with Marcus, of course, who is also older. But then, neither of these older folks actually sees the larger picture either. In the end, it will be up to those young folks, including the young Muslim women, all eager with their sexual and other kinds of youthful energy. They’ll figure something out. Gotta have faith, the way the older nun and Marcus do. Forget the NYT on this kind of thing.)

Melbourne’s nice, rf. I have a cousin who lives there.

Adelaide has a better climate, though (although the last few days have been brutal – 39C – I almost turned the airconditioner on), and the houses are cheaper too.

Oh, and not much Wittgenstein.

I’m listening to Billy Joel singing Piano Man, and thanks to you people now I can’t stop hearing the hipster version in my head. Helping them forget about their hipster troubles for a while and all that…now there’s that old Cat Stevens song about the hipster father talking to his son about moving out of Brooklyn! Who is playing this music? Can they please turn it off and stop making me feeling weirdly sorry for hipsters.

David (NR),

Yeah I grew up in Adelaide (Belair – Adelaide Hills). Great little city – love Melbourne but still have a soft spot for Adelaide.

I remember falling in love with ‘ginger beer and milk’ as a kid – could get it from a little deli somewhere in the CBD…

Catholic nuns can be trusted to be Talmudic scholars’ true test of black, right?

I thought it was priests’ socks? Ordinary shops sell what look like black socks, but if you look closely, you’ll see that they’re very, very, very, very, very, very, very dark blue.

Anyone who failed to understand Goedel probably doesn’t have much to offer …

I can’t tell if this is meant in earnest or as a satire on the spirit of hipsterist one-upmanship.

“Gives some idea of the prices!”

“Melbourne’s nice, rf. I have a cousin who lives there.”

I actually did get to go once, a few years ago when I lived in New Zealand, but only for a week, and I happened to catch a cold, miss my plane and forget to book a hostel during Melbourne cup week..so it wasn’t the best trip, but definitely a nice city, and it wasn’t overly expensive back then, as far as I can recall. I think most people I know who have moved there generally like it, but they’re coming to the realisation that they’ll probably be relocating for the long term, rather than just a couple of years, and aren’t particularly happy with that reality. But what can you do

Anyone who failed to understand Banach-Tarski doesn’t have much to offer. And your favourite band sucks.

I suppose the next line has to be about how you were into Banach-Tarski back before the XKCD comic when it hit the mainstream.

…the academic lifestyle doesn’t encourage house purchasing at early levels

Hear you there.

Although there are no hipsters living in Northcote and Brunswick now – they’re the melbourne equivalent of Brooklyn.

Brisbane is best, unless you like winter.

But, as regards hipsters, it’s a place where I could probably pass as hip, if I tried. Then again, no one tries too much here. We were laid back avant la lettre, thanks to the climate.

I blame the fashion sense of too many middle aged suburban women on the loss of the habit. I almost wrote a blog post on this, but realized halfway through that writing “the tweedy women in sensible shoes in the Dunkin Donuts next to the St. Vincent de Pauw Thrift Shop” should have given me a clue a little earlier. But I feel this is related to my (former) hairdresser’s insistence that I’m too old not to have my hair cut quite short.

As for Hastings-on-Hudson, Google Maps informs me that it’s home to the Sisters of Street Francis. I imagine they devote themselves to cupcakes in the manner of the monks of the Grand Chartreuse.

Now it is established that the New York Times gets it wrong about people who live in the state of New York. Who is willing to take the next step, and understand that the Times gets it wrong about the people living in the other 49 states?

James 107, do you remember the famous piece they did on grunge music in Seattle?