any thoughts on bushwick?

your advice is much appreciated. i've been out to the place quite a bit though i haven't moved in yet and the neighborhood seems fine. not a place i'd walk around drunk alone at 3am, but still, fine. i figured i'd ask to see if anyone had horror stories though.

i lived off the montrose stop right next to the projects and never really felt sketched out--and this was back when i was partying a lot more and would come home at all hours (and i'm also a small asian girl).

however, other people living in the same neighborhood said they had a different experience....one of my roommates at the time was riding his bike on our street and apparently these two teenage hoodrats started chasing him hoping to mug him and get the bike--luckily he peddled away before they could.

my theory is that as long as you don't appear to have anything on you worth stealing you run less of risk of being bothered....of course, i'm only basing all this off MY old neighborhood. i lived in an industrial loft area that was full of young people who were up at various hours. no matter how late at night it was there was always some other 20-something year old on my street either walking to or from the subway.

it depends if you're living in a residential neighborhood, a young and gentrified neighborhood, or in the ghetto.

My take: used to be a wasteland of abandoned factory buildings, starting not to be; get a bike. I have some good friends who live on Varet Street and they paid like $300 a month for the entire floor of a warehouse. They had parties w/like 200-300 people in there easily. Landlord raised their rent to $3000 one day. It's still a deal!

there's an element of that, no doubt, but if someone's out to mug people then there's not any way of carrying yourself that's going to put them off. i was strolling confidently down devoe street in williamsburg on my way to a friend's party, turned the corner onto olive street, and shazam. a guy with gun pedalled up on his bike and demanded my bag. no amount of self-possession or savvy is going to prevent something like that.

best quote ever

people will think you're talking on your cellphone.

Pretty sure it wasn't a mugging... evidently someone was after him about, uh, something between them.

We found a place on McKibben yesterday. How is the consensus two years later? It's about three blocks from the L at either Montrose or Morgan. I've been out there a few times and never had any problems.

anyway, i was mugged twice while i lived there, tho both involved walking home alone drunk in the middle of the night.

also: if it's the building i'm thinking of, have fun in winter. the windows are all busted and the heat's a joke. also one or all of your neighbors will be in a band that practices in their apartment.

the salsa music all day is grating, yes.

Currently on the hunt for a 2BR off Bedford or Lorimer. Keep your ears to ground, people!

Three years later, any thoughts on the Montrose and Morgan L stops?

Morgan is mckibben lofts aka 20 year old hipster dorms neighborhood but tbh I think I went to bushwick like 5 times total after I moved because I hated it so much so who knows what it's like now?

"east williamsburg"

they should just call it "east manhattan"

West Hamptons

east new york is the new bushwick

I know of a few students (NYU, New School, FIT) who have tentatively started to move into the area but all the accounts are so far conflicting. any thoughts?

I live near the Graham and Grand L stops now and I walk over to the Morgan area occasionally for galleries or to get breakfast at Tina's, and sometimes venture more towards Jefferson and DeKalb stops. I can't say I'd want to raise a family there, but I'd probably have moved there at 23. Still pretty heavy crime, lots of muggings, etc. Obviously the post-college/art school folk have been moving there for years and as long as the rents keep rising all over the city that trend will continue, but I don't know if the kind of expanding gentrification we've seen in the last decade can go on forever. Depends I guess whether there continues to be an influx of rich europeans buying condos, the job market, crime, various other economic factors.

The other thing is that a lot of Bushwick is just ugly, but so is Williamsburg and that's not stopping people.

why do you think it can't go on forever? lots of people want to live in a nice walkable city and there are like, 2-3 in america.

also recall that williamsburg used to be UGLIER and now it's sort of pleasantly undergrown, I guess...

those are fair points I guess, but the question is whether there's an endless supply of people with MONEY who want to live in a nice, walkable city.

I guess there are parts of Williamsburg that are "pleasantly undergrown" but I find my part just plain ugly. In the areas that are more condo-ized (Bedford, McCarren Park, etc.) there's at least a kind of fascinating decadence to the contrast between the new luxury buildings and their surroundings. But most days on my way home I just think "why are we paying so much rent to live here again?"

because you are 5 minutes away from manhattan

willmbrg/bushwick both p ugly

geenpoint too

greenpoint has some quaint areas

but really all of them are just evidence that the nyc market responds more to context and convenience than the beauty of the housing stock. that's why infill development can be ugly as fuk and still make money.

dont u have like 20 threads on this topic already

ya I didn't start this one iirc

just trying to help hurting understand why he is willing to pay so much money to live on the l train

a: 'the l train'

i dont think you have any idea what hes talking abt tbh

okay dude what is he talking about

hes just going *sigh* this place is ugly is there really even a point *kicks rock* then youre all well according to housing density stats blah blah

I'm trying to get him to understand the beauty of housing density

im sure he can access all of yr threads abt that if he wants to but damn man people have other concerns

he asked whether bushwick etc. can gentrify forever

u should try drugs

haha are you really resentful @ me for not doing enough drugs, youve been trolling me since the drugs threads

bushwick is good for that

im resentful of you talking abt housing density in every thread on ilx and i think drugs might help you cool out a bit

you know we agree on a lot of stuff on ilx and whatever beef you have w/ me atm is one-sided

just stop yglesiasing up every thread! this is said by someone who has a high tolerance for yglesiasing

feel like you think my yglesiasing is getting in the way of your yglesiasing

its just a matter of conversational etiquete, ilx is not a blog

this is good

ilx is a lot of things to a lot of people, I def start lots of threads bout things that interest me but I'm not particularly self-conscious about it cause they generally get people posting. maybe it's ilx etiquette to respond to hurting's question about the limits of brooklyn gentrification w/ an animated gif but I do think it's an interesting question, sorry if that steps on your toes a lil

the fact that you precaved those post as constituting a question abt brooklyn gentrification that needed facts 4U is just like did you copy and paste that shit from some other post

its fucking compulsive

is this beef for real :(

idk other people might think 40 y/os doing hipster runoff impressions for years on end is 'unhealthy behavior', it's a perspective thing

and truthfully its not just you, the graduate school chatter is basically ruining ilx atm, quality people all of you no doubt but dont pull us into yr intellectual fever dream

and im totally not 40

and hipster runnoff copied me everyone knows that duh, anyway i guess just stfu nerd is what im trying to say

is this beef for real :(

― horseshoe, Thursday, March 8, 2012 11:08 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sry dudes nu era posi ilx m/l blows

the graduate school chatter is basically ruining ilx atm, quality people all of you no doubt but dont pull us into yr intellectual fever dream

where is the emoticon for the face that im making rn i wonder

anyway i am subletting a place in greenpoint better luck next time bushwick

ha are you really?

what do you giuys think of Ital

i think a lot of things i post them on msg board how it goes oh how it goes

just for a week but it should be fun hopefully ill be the #KONY

also its funnie i was looking for a place in bushwick but there wasnt anything really also people who live in greenpoint really want a lot of money for their ugly lofts for a week

i have to get lunch with Lamp

lag∞n ∞tm

hey just wanted to say that i totally to not h8 iatee but i basically wish it was still cool to start ban X threads when people were irritating you, not that i ever did that

i just like theories and arguing about them in a seminar format ok jeez

also being defensive

also making references to lord of the rings

also sry if i made any graduate students or graduate graduates feel worse abt their life coices than they already do lol burn

haha xp

yeah i feel like i could be characterized as both posi and grad school. sry for ruining ilx, jho!

i think positive people are great just not to the extent where negativity is uncool to express, as for graduate school maybe you all could just get a board or something

we did its called ilm

o rite, anyway u guys are totally my homies even if you r ruining ilx, i should prob move just on w/my life since i will be 40 in a short FIVE YEARS

i should post 75 % less tbf, but that's not going to happen until the paul simes poll is over so dealwithit.gif

any thoughts on strikethrough the word bushwick type "being a shitty message board poster"

ha

a man in an expensive sweater shakes his head he says 'they gave on being quality msg board posters now they live in bushwick, talk carefully and often about their feelings'

another man wearing a heavy expensive watch twists his mouth as if he tastes something sour 'spending time in graduate school, eating leftovers, whats the point in living, can you call it living idk'

tbh if anyone was going to get chewed out for his post ITT, I thought it would be me with my sad yuppie schtick

its one thing to take the l train another to ruin ilx

whos not a sad yuppie these days

I hate the fucking L train it's always overstuffed with people who go to their jobs dressed like they don't have jobs

haha man i just cant catch a break 2nite apparently

what do you giuys think of Ital

― kony indie fuxx (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, March 9, 2012 4:41 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

been desperate to here this but i ain't got no money tbh

http://gothamist.com/2012/09/22/photos_bill_hillary_clinton_went_to.php#photo-1

The Clintons visit Roberta's. I want to find greater meaning in this, but I have a feeling it's mostly "Bill Clinton really likes pizza"

why is Kid from Oneida there? Some link about Lia Ices performing. I don't know who that is but she/they're on Jagjaguar. Maybe Kid plays with her?

"Son, I'd like you to play drums on my forthcoming noise rock double album"

Lia Ices apparently released a single where the A-side is a cover of Wish You Were Here. Ballsy.

So Lia Ices is from Westport, Conn, the 10th richest town in the US. I smell a connect.

The Floyd cover was apparently recorded for a Mojo Floyd tribute CD, and the B-side is a version of Syd's Late Night.

http://jagjaguwar.com/blog/2012/02/lia-ices-delivers-a-beautiful-new-video-and-covers-pink-floyd/

Her dad is some kind of high-powered ad exec, and she had a song featured on girls, so she's good quiddity-bait. The music isn't bad.

I like the Pink Floyd cover.

The 2010 album has a very laptop-at-starbucks/antidepressants kind of vibe, but it's well done.

yeah actually knowing that that was made for a pink floyd tribute, it's probably as good as one could possibly hope for wrt a wish you were here cover.

laptop-at-starbucks/antidepressants kind of vibe

lol

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/bill-hillary-clinton-dine-trendy-brooklyn-pizzeria-roberta-party-democratic-donor-article-1.1165718

more detail emerges

^^ xpost double lols!

Anybody know anybody who's taught at 3rd Ward?

http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2013/09/24/i-went-on-an-nyu-sponsored-tour-of-bushwick-and-it-stripped-me-of-my-dignity/

can we all take this opportunity to tell me about cool things to do and eat in bushwick bc i live here now? should i just take this tour?? i live on myrtle basically which is a little less silly afaict but still pretty silly

bushwick update: roberta's is kinda dumb. had good tacos in a non tour setting. fantastic puerto rican rotisserie chicken @ la isla cuchifritos. no good pizza yet, suggestions welcome. real pizza not stupid yupster roberta's pizza please.

every bar i have been to has opened within the past year and is pervaded by a sense of intentional, louche, studied insouciance that feels at least two degrees removed from a real bar. suggestions also welcome here.

Food Bazaar is one of the best supermarkets I've ever been in

yes awesome. the one by the myrtle-wyckoff train? i have been shopping at this bodega-turned-organic-mart that i find disorienting and suspect. all this big city cultural collision stuff is new to me as i have spent 15 years in the segregated dichotomous culture of new orleans so i don't know what is good vs what is just straight up thermonuclear gentrification.

http://gawker.com/5973953/does-the-fact-that-no-one-is-talking-about-the-naked-waitress-at-robertas-mean-that-bushwick-is-over

I've never had a bad meal at Robertas. I only go saturdays and sundays right when they open. The food is very good. It is not dumb. Maybe if you wait 3 hours for pizza you think it's dumb?

we didn't wait at all, we eat early bc old ppl. the food was perfectly good but the vibe felt pretty contrived. why serve me beer in a jar? maybe i am a slave to outmoded notions of glassware normativity.

adam you shld prob read this

http://www.theonion.com/articles/were-going-to-enjoy-this-cocainefueled-mason-jar-r,36779/

I've spent relatively little time in Bushwick except when j0n w1ll1ams invites me somewhere, but there is a thriving drag scene and an upcoming weekend fest:

http://www.bushwig.com/

Anybody know anybody who's taught at 3rd Ward?

― dan selzer, Sunday, October 14, 2012 3:05 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dan, my boyfriend used to! Did you guys get to talk about that at my birthday party? He never uses email and can barely find the cursor when he needs it, but I can send you his address.

Food Bazaar is one of the best supermarkets I've ever been in

― 龜, Thursday, August 28, 2014 1:26 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

SO MANY TIMES THIS.

why serve me beer in a jar?

― adam, Thursday, August 28, 2014 11:07 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Haha this is Brooklyn in a mason jar

haha we had been planning this move for a long time so i read the internet and shit so i thought i had a handle on the situation but then i found myself sitting at a picnic table in a 90 degree warehouse drinking a $9 beer out of a jar, when i began to grasp the severity of the situation. but is making fun of the jars the new drinking jar?

mason jar or no, I've had some really tasty things at Robertas. Pork-jowel grits and whatnot.

I did not discuss 3rd Ward at your birthday party, and finding out about teaching at 3rd Ward is no longer useful to anybody!

wow food bazaar. good call d. also i stopped for excellent tacos both on the way and on the way back so i am a-ok w bushwick at the moment

Had lunch at Roberta's yesterday. Fantastic.

I live near you Adam. Also we live near j0rdan sarge

To answer your question this neighborhood is pretty ridiculous, I find mr kiwis has dece produce

We had really good sushi at Momo a couple weeks ago, but the waitstaff both male and female seemed to be wearing very skimpy terry clothing and no underwear and it felt just slightly weird being served food by them. Other than that, the only thing I have to say is that the Morgan Ave area somehow manages to look just as grimey as it did 5 years ago while being 3x as expensive.

i went to a bar the other night and a man in suspenders served me a small bowl of free macaroni. on the other hand i went to bunna cafe, the vegan ethiopian place, and it was fucking delicious. verdict: five robertas out of five.

momo sushi shack? more like momo sushi sucks. 1 1/2 robertas out of 5.

otoh spicy goat cemita from taqueria cocoyoc on wyckoff is a solid 4 3/4 robertas out of 5.

gotta try bunna cafe

had a visitor in town so ate out too much, too fancy this weekend:

dear bushwick is standard brooklyn farm to table bullshit, 2 robertas out of 5. waiter wearing jorts.

cafe ghia: fuck brunch. 2 robertas/5.

northeast kingdom only has 4 things on their lunch menu. 2/5

fritzls lunch box has a good burger but twice now i have felt like hot garbage after eating there so 2.5/5

there are three 5 robertas out of 5 places on a 2 block stretch of myrtle around menahan: taqueria izucar, la mesita and taqueria el paisa. (and of course la isla cuchifritos down the street.) the lesson i am learning is that edison bulb shit sucks in this neighborhood but p much everything else is good.

also moving to nyc somehow sapped all my desire and ability to cook for myself at home like a grownup.

Did your kitchen size take a hit

Yeah also it's been summer and it's still super nice out. Wait til it's cold for the cooking urge to kick back in, I like how it's cyclical (for me at least).

I liked dear Bushwick.

Fancy Vietnamese falansai or something place is only 2 Bunkers out of 5.

my kitchen is way smaller (3 bedroom house to 1br apt) and also maybe my wife and i each thought the other was packing certain important kitchen items (baking sheets, for example) so they are still in new orleans. we did however bring the mini bundt cake pan if yall want some mini bundt cakes

i am interested in bunker

Bunkers great but always jammed and a pain to get to. Not for us though as we drive.

Also loved king noodle the first time I went and thought it was gross the second time. And I ordered the same thing.

this thread!

i have had the same consistency issues at king noodle

want to bunna cafe. excellent recommendation.

as far as bars so far i really like pearls but it may qualify as a 'studied insouciance' bar. i went there after spending a day at the beach earlier this summer, and the vibe was very complementary. if you're looking for a real bar it's not that, it's pretty busy and full of young attractives, but i like it

Moving here next weeeeek, thinking of changing me dn to Treeshwick

*my

brb hiding my daughters

kind of a weird joke

it's that bushwick humor, you'll get it shortly

http://image1.masterfile.com/em_w/05/64/64/846-05646404em.jpg

congrats & good luck treesh

where in bushwick

also seamless delivery has elevated robertas to a solid 3.5 robertas out of 5

Moving to a house with a backyard (!) a block from the DeKalb stop. Definitely hoping to order Robertas delivery on the reg.

roberta's is so 2009

I really like their bread and butter

treesh, i pass thru DeKalb on my commute every day now, let's get a drink

That sounds great. I'll let you know when I'm moved in

ok, so i was walking up and down my street in socks just now talking on the phone and a rat ran across my feet

hey dekalb is my stop too

bushwick rats fear nothing

in socks?

Yeah, pretty foolish. I just stepped out because i wasn't getting cell reception.

Does anyone see any evidence that the endless march toward total gentrification in Bushwick is slowing down a little? I hadn't really hung out in bushwick for like 3-4 years and was around the morgan and jefferson stops this weekend and felt like things hadn't changed as much as I expected they would have. But OTOH maybe I'm just expecting things to happen faster than they really ever do.

the one thing i picked up on this spring/summer is a noticeable uptick in europeans in the area. i think "bushwick is cool" finally traveled across the atlantic sometime early this year.

one of the best things i saw this summer was a group of pale euros standing on the manhattan bound platform at myrtle bway when a queens bound J train pulled up on the manhattan bound track, as often happens on weekday afternoons. the group of euros looked at the train, looked back down towards manhattan, looked at the train again, stepped halfway in the train, craned their neck down towards manhattan again, then decided to get off.

Actually we did notice a lot of people walking around snapping pictures, taking selfies in front of wall pieces, etc. That was different. Also one of the galleries we stopped in had this older, wealthy looking couple talking to an employee in a private room, like they were actual collectors discussing buying something. I guess I was just expecting to see more new condo buildings or something? But when I think about Williamsburg it took a pretty long time to reach a fever pitch of new construction, plus there are probably zoning issues.

i feel like at certain points on weekends, the area around the morgan stop (especially the immediate block off the stop by robertas & momo) can feel almost as crowded as getting off the bedford stop. nothing really is quite that bad but i've had a few days this year where i got off the stop and was just like, what the fuck is going on here

anyway i'm not sure i have a great feel for whether the gentrifying has slowed down. 2 new buildings have gone up on my block in the last year (one of which has a 1 bedroom w/ private patio that goes for 2,700), an apt building two plots down should be up w/in a few months and a new building just got unwrapped on top of my fav bodega. also a few weeks ago i noticed that a tapas bar is opening across the street from me.

it does sometimes feel like we're in the final sprint of bushwick gentrification but there's still soooo many old buildings/houses that are gonna get razed in the coming years

I guess i hadn't spent much time by the Wyckoff stop ever because I felt very old and confused when we headed over there after picking up my wife at an art opening because yelp told me about Lucy's Vietnamese, which I really enjoyed and we saw Boobie Trap and Pizza Party for the first time.

Definitely one thing that prompted the thinking was feeling a little bit
old there, like it doesn't seem to have turned over much toward the stroller crowd. Maybe just never will.

the kids who've moved there haven't had their own kids yet, and the people who have the kids won't move their until they're ok with the schools probably? I don't know anything about that stuff, just speculating.

I was surprised at the extent that wyckoff has changed. my gf and I used to eat at cocoyac, which is apparently now sort of a known destination? I think the morgan stop is probably kind of saturated until new buildings go in, but lots of change is happening further to the east.

I like that the first post in this thread gives a basic description of what bushwick is, which trains go there, where it's located etc. "it's a neighborhood in north brooklyn"

Morgan is a headache

I'm working by Jefferson stop, hearing a lot of French and German. I am a foreigner also

the coffee shop charge £3 for a bagel and 2.75 for a medium coffee, double the price of the health store next door

One thing that occurred to me walking around (mostly in the Jefferson and Morgan stop areas) was that it still retains a very industrial feel, and also does not have much green space afaict. Those are hard things to change and may mean it's just not destined to become park-slopey, at least not for a very long time. Williamsburg and Greenpoint seem to have more park space compared to their area,

Bogart Street felt like a college campus, although I kind of remember it feeling that way last time I was there. It's basically the same businesses around there except the Momenta building has more galleries in it now.

i live down J-wards, between the myrtle and kosz stops. for a while it really did feel insulated from the much more visibly gentrifying bushwick along the L. little skips, the coffee shop, was kinda the only thing that seemed like an obvious tip-off, and even that had a much more low-rent vibe to it - just like an "every coffee shop ever" kinda place that maybe could have been there for years and years on the cheap, serving granola to radicals decades ago and just muddling through. obviously not the case but it had that 'feel.' the clientele has really shifted even over the last couple years - people having like, business lunches about who to hit up for their kickstarter to make their film happen or whatever. and yeah way more european tourists. but meanwhile lots more things catering to college-educated white artist types have opened up. i live in fear that my landlord will finally get the memo and jack up our rent or sell out, but so far things remain stable. he claims he wants to give the building to his daughter when she finishes high school. that's a few years from now so fingers crossed.

but condo construction has by NO MEANS slowed down. it's intensifying. on my five-minute walk to the train i pass 4-5 substantial construction sites. if i go the slightly more scenic way i pass two construction sites and three recently completed horrible buildings. i'm a short walk away from the garishly awful "castle braid" (worst building ever built possibly, and just FLAUNTING the cubic footage it's wasting on like a triple-height super-lobby with piano and suspended bubble chairs etc. - - - no space for affordable units, huh?), and the more banal but more offensive "colony 1209" building. this shit is getting slapped up, fast, cheap and ugly. "castle braid" maybe sums things up best: a building for people with MONEY, who have heard this is an "artsy" neighborhood and expect to see some "art" slapped up on the surface of their building. note that the wretched "art" is obviously easily removable should the day come that the owner realizes the "art" trend is over and they can just be plain old "luxury."

best things in my walking radius: the tacos on myrtle between bushwick and st. charles. in general all the locally owned businesses are great and the ones that have the whiff of some outside operator trying to cash in on the hip new neighborhood are horrid from the moment you cross the threshold. i am however mostly charmed by the hipster alleyway 'flea market' at broadway and lewis, mainly for books and VHS tapes but i've gotten good shit at the record shop too. (northern lights records on lawton is very very good also, esp. for jazz, soul & r&b). maria hernandez park is lovely and well-used but i'm a sap for seeing families doing banal pleasant things with their kids. see also little league at green central knoll. every so often we'll splurge on a yuppie brunch at 983, but you have to get there early to beat the crowds. little skips is still all right (again if you beat the crowds) but i also dig cafe central at central and troutman, which is super quiet and has just the loveliest backyard. all the new expensive shit on/near wyckoff can fuck right off. the even more expensive shit on morgan is just laughable.

lately though my favorite spots are more of a bike ride away. grover cleveland playground is a wonderful place to do some reading and the view of the manhattan skyline is preposterous. the other day i said fuck it and biked all the way to forest park. that doesn't have much to do with bushwick but boy is it nice.

my father in law has a grandiose unified theory of gentrification in nyc based on whether the nypd is in an "imperial" or a "defensive" stance. his current thinking is that they're shifting back to a pre-bloomberg containment strategy, leaving, say, east new york and brownsville ungentrified for now and parts of bushwick in the awkward inbetween stage under discussion here.

i live under the m tracks and there are literally three condo buildings under construction at my intersection, two of them right next to each other and the third directly across the street.

not having heard the complete theory propounded, i couldn't say for sure but it seems a little too "the nation that controls magnesium controls the universe" to me. i mean clearly gentrification is following transit lines and then spreading from those points as rents go up. so people who moved to williamsburg, or would have moved there, 10-15 years ago, at some point couldn't afford it anymore and moved to the jefferson stop, say. now they can't afford that either and they're roaming south towards the J or following the M into ridgewood (which has way, way better housing stock anyway). the key of course has been the rerouting of the M - http://citylimits.org/2013/05/24/how-the-m-train-is-gentrifying-bushwick/ if the depression or the 70s fiscal crisis had hit at different moments, we might have more subway lines, more even coverage, period, and the pressure on specific neighborhoods would be different. (or: the people whose biggest priority is a short trip to wall street might be gentrifying different neighborhoods than the people whose biggest priority is making art and drinking in a warehouse.)

i saw our city councilperson speak a while ago and he had some really interesting slides where basically they can identify the blocks that are likely in the highest danger of being picked apart by a developer looking to consolidate several lots into one big one that makes for an easy big luxury building. sorta common sense but still impressive to see in mathematical map form. are there already vacant lots on the block? is it near a train? etc... it's a complicated mess obviously as many gentrification threads have discussed to death. don't mind me.

oh also the "colony" building is so. stunningly. terrible. like i guess i get what they were going for with the name like it's yaddo or something but for real

you could not MAKE UP a more perfect demonstration of what people hate about gentrification. and then to top it off it's just architecturally bankrupt. i mean 99% of these new buildings are but yowza is that bad. awful in every way.

i've just barely started collecting A/B photos of buildings under construction and the little CAD elevations they're required to put up on the construction fence which supposedly tell you what the building's going to look like. have found at least one smoking-gun 'does not match in the fucking slightest' case but don't really know what to do with it. i guess if i found enough of them that are that dramatic it could be a cool blog post or something. the construction site on my block claims to be for two four-story row-house type buildings side by side (or maybe narrow elevator apartment buildings like those commonly seen around, e.g. on troutman there are several bad ones) but... the site is big enough for three easily, and i can't see why they would build two party-wall buildings when they've gone to the trouble of assembling a big enough site to put a real whopper of an ugly slab like everybody else is doing, so you're devoting as little as possible of the footprint to the vertical circulation. maybe i'm missing something.

Yeah those buildings look terrible and very much in that same awful style as a lot of the Williamsburg and LIC condos/rentals that have been built in the last decade -- multi-colored, junky, and lacking in sense of place. Gentrification has enough problems as it is, but it seems even worse that what's being built looks so shabby and temporary and disconnected from its location.

There are parts of Williamsburg and LIC now that feel like they could be Arlington VA.

If you're going to build a rich neighborhood on top of a poor one, at least make it look worthy of being a rich neighborhood!

Oh huh, stumbled onto this:

http://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/a-new-soho/

But Bushwick’s longtime identity as an industrial area presents obstacles to development, especially when it comes to zoning. Unlike Williamsburg, the city seems committed to maintaining Bushwick’s industrial zoning, experts say, which could prevent the building of large-scale housing developments in the prime northwest corner of the neighborhood.

Not sure what "seems" comes from, but it definitely felt like there were tons of active small factories, warehouses, metal shops etc.

have you guys seen these new buildings that have a front door and then two separate entrances after that essentially halve the building? there's one on my street i believe that says like APT 1-4 on one door and APT 4-8 on the other

yeah the still-active industrial stuff was also an issue in the city councilman's talk. those places are major job centers, not only for bushwick but for the substantial patches of williamsburg that have not seen their longstanding residents forced out. easy for people not from the community, or in different lines of work, to just pass by it as background, a bunch of gray stuff, but it's just a ton of livelihoods up there. also kind of bizarre to imagine it as this prime development opportunity as they have to be some of the nastiest sites in the city pollution-wise. the moment you stick a shovel in the ground up there it would probably dissolve so god help you trying to make it viable for residential. but then, over in gowanus there's a goddamned whole foods overlooking the scenic canal so what do i know.

the double-door thing is presumably that it's a couple of walkups, right? rather than an elevator-plus-corridor affair. frankly that seems more sensible, if people are willing to hoof it up to the fourth floor by all means don't waste your money and space on the elevator - put it into having the floors and walls actually meet at 90 degrees and not being instantly full of mold. it's astonishing how cheap and shitty the new buildings are, especially when so much of these neighborhoods was built out as developer-driven housing for brewery workers and clerks a hundred years ago. obviously the cost of construction has skyrocketed since then but still - all the really excellent housing stock in ridgewood was really just block after block of a handful of building firms cranking out a standardized product.

I'm guessing the double door thing is where a single development was built over two tax lots maybe?

Any bushwick/north brooklyn ilxors free to grab a drink saturday night? I have yet to meet any ny ilxors.

Still want to get a drink w/ north brooklyn ilxors.

i drink in the north sometimes, treesh

word

very big pretzels at gottscheer hall in ridgewood just a couple stops down the M

Would meet up with n bkxors. I'm by the lorimer L stop.

Was at Petes candy store yesterday afternoon, lots of dudes and girls with guitars for open mic

anyone want to have a beer and hang at union pool on Sunday night? TEEN record release party there: http://www.union-pool.com/event/1032461-hypnocraft-teen-record-brooklyn/

yeah, that sounds like a good time

Any good places to eat within reasonable walk of the Morgan L that won't be insane on a Friday night? Is Roberta's wait still insane? Momo Sushi Shack?

if you go up to jefferson there are a lot of places. hi hello is good, as is northeast kingdom

roberta's will be crazy but they do have the adjacent takeout spot now

shinobi ramen is small but very good, el cortez is good and usually chill early in the night, okiway has p good non-sushi japanese, king noodle is good chinese, 973 for more american stuff

Yeah I have been to Northeast Kingdom for brunch and it was very good. I also figured waits would be long there on a Friday night, although we might go on the early side and I'm guessing bushwick runs late.

all those places are like 0-5 mins from the morgan L... as treeship says there's a bunch of places if you walk further east

faro is at the jefferson stop (so a quick walk from morgan) and is excellent. it looks like any stupid boring brooklyn restaurant but the food is really really good. sort of pasta oriented but more interesting than that sounds. i've been there 5 or 6 times and haven't been disappointed once.

also they take reservations which is rare and good.

assuming the menu hasn't changed significantly in the past couple weeks get the agniolotti it was real

yeah that place is pretty tight

i like momo

my only prob w/ momo is that it's cash only

the skewer place next to it was disappointing tho

there's a new huge movie theatre/sports bar kinda thing right across the street from roberta's with a menu that seems pretty good for what it is

not only is momo cash only ... http://ny.eater.com/2016/1/25/10827764/momo-sushi-shack-atm-skimmer

manziel?

just don't get caught in the Jackie Gleason centennial parade

wound up needing to not wait and thus had kind of bad pub food at Forest Place, although it was a nice hangout spot and I'd still go back for drinks

yeah that place is :-/

that place sucks, cute (if overdone) re-do of the building/site but the food is super meh, the music is autopilot top hits blah and the decor looks like someone went into a spastic episode while trying to imagine what 'arty' people like. honestly the only place over there where i spend money in the evening is tina's 24 hour diner. do keep meaning to see how the moviegoing experience is at syndicated though. fuck all the other new shit though and most of the people that go with it.

yeah the food was really bad, like I complained about it bad (they were nice enough to comp the food as a result though). I still thought it was a fine place to hang, maybe nothing special but a comfortable not too lit place where it felt lively but I could still have a normal level conversation.

love bushwick a few bad joints don't spoil the pleasure

i went to the three diamond door once when drunk a few months ago, drifting with a cloud of strangers and one close friend. it's taken on a sort of mystical quality in my mind since then, think i'll revisit tomorrow

i mostly just remember the door

i still think there's 2-3 years before an eastern conference team is knocking lebron out

is that the password to get into the three diamond door?

whooooooops

nothing embarrasses me more on this board than when i accidentally post about sports in a normal thread

not even a pointing finger and "Y-you're the guy that eats stuff"?

three diamond door is a nice spot when it's quiet, i can't do it on a saturday night. old stanley's on wyckoff is pleasant. in general i find bushwick bars to be too loud and full of young people, suggestions for chill old dude bars welcome.

anyone fuck with "le garage" off central ave yet? reviews are good but it's tainted by association with maite next door which is super corny (menu-on-the-wall-but-it's-too-dark-read-and-blocked-by-a-chandelier, mason-jar-drink corny).

chill old dude bars died around the time the area's real estate prices shot up. the old dudes now hang in the parks with coffee cups full of beer.

i went to syndicated last night they had a movie on that was fun to watch

did you like it

three diamond door is a nice spot when it's quiet, i can't do it on a saturday night.

this is like everywhere. new place birdy's for example is just hell on earth when it's busy, but when it's not it's like, hey, this is totally acceptable and not (wildly) expensive and not decorated by a monster.

le garage is not bad, kinda $$$ but i had some confit potatoes with snails and tons of garlic that were very delicious.

i went to the alligator lounge in williamsburg last night and it kinda sucked but you get a FREE PIZZA with EVERY DRINK

ppl were even chanting it as they walked to redeem their free pizza tickets. "free pizza with every drink! free pizza with every drink!"

i played pool there too and went 1-3. the one win was a fluke bc the ppl i was playing were good af

ive gone there to watch baseball

They used to own Capones where I dj'd friday nights (and for a while saturday nights too) alldisco and beat club parties and the free pizza was a special treat, even if it smelled terrible. It certainly wasn't Roberta's, but the price was right and at 3am it was fucking delicious.

The Charleston has also been doing the free shitty pizza with drinks things for I think at least ten years, but I remember hearing somewhere that Alligator started it. I would read an oral history of free shitty pizza with drinks in Williamsburg.

Prospectiv title for that book: "a noble tradition."

The charleston is a shit hole

Charleston was doing it before Alligator or Capones opened iirc

Oh so maybe I have it backwards. Yeah the Charleston sucks but I have some good memories of playing there.

It's been 15 years since I was a regular there, but I do remember seeing a really enjoyable Ramones cover band, just guitar and drums, called the Marones

late notice but i am thinking of hitting up a bar or two tonight, probably just bringing a book. would love to meet an ilxor or two, chat about stuff, whatever

thinking old stanley's

Did I see an ilxor (or multiple ilxors) in Momo Sushi Shack today? I saw a couple faces that looked real familiar but couldn't place them.

btw Momo no longer cash only, and also has an adjoining ramen restaurant now

oh nice. i noticed the other day that the sign outside the place next door was advertising ramen and wondered if they had changed it cuz it used to be an izakaya thing but i went there once and thought it was not very good. funny tho cuz shinoni ramen up the street is good. and the new chuko is supposed to open still too! (i think.) ramen runneth over in bushwick...

shinobi**

Momo was so good today. I could eat like ten of those scallop rolls.

http://bushwickdaily.com/2016/05/i-took-my-first-naked-yoga-class-in-bushwick-one-mans-story/

I arrived with just a minute to spare. Right off the bat, one thing was evident: while still clothed, everyone, except of one of the two instructors, was definitely presenting as male.

http://brokelyn.com/event/spooky-action-at-a-distance/

going to this gallery opening tonight because it looks awesome.

Going to Shea tomorrow for the labyrinth tribute

saw new parts of the 'Shwick Saturday night

did you?

new ta me, incredibly

where at?

like the Our Wicked Lady bar

some suspicious charactahs

bushwick is a hell hole

totally agree

well if by that you mean that Roberta's has a pizza with a blasphemous name...

Its totally not a hellhole

roberta's delivery is the best thing about bushwick true

i got a hug from max, and really what better definition of heaven is there?

reposting this from the 'punks are living on the rooftop' thread:

some urban farming craft bozos were keeping one or more beehives on the rooftop down the street. today a beehive sits abandoned on the sidewalk outside, bees buzzing about in encouragingly languid and nonthreatening circles. "punks," i thought.

― bucyrus ohio, vus cun nus en l’aria (Doctor Casino), Monday, May 23, 2016 1:14 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh btw the building that was home to the beehive is a loft that's been converted into 'luxury' places. the building the beehive was left in front of is a residential facility providing "long term transitional housing and on-site support services to 40 adults with psychiatric disabilities and a history of homelessness." privilege, ladies and gentlemen.

― bucyrus ohio, vus cun nus en l’aria (Doctor Casino), Monday, May 23, 2016 1:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one-bedrooms at the loft where the bees were raised: $2,100/month. real classy move, yuppie scum!

I confused as to who wants yuppie scum to leave, and if they might be confusing that group with the hippie scum that also is the object of public ridicule via graffiti.

I like going to Bushwick but a lot of it still does seem like kind of a hellhole as a place to live -- it's just not designed or laid out for living. I used to feel that way about large parts of Williamsburg too and still sort of do, candy-colored luxury buildings notwithstanding.

I mean I did live on Metropolitan near Graham for a year and did not really like living there much. Feelings became much more acute after the baby was born.

it's definitely going to be a hellhole when the M/L close

Eh, the fewer day trippers the better

lol fuck that my commute is just this side of tolerable as it is

I'm on the J/M and actively dread the L closure, still years away, for what it will do to real estate and development in my neighborhood. The M closure will obviously be a major pain in the ass - don't relish the Essex transfer at the best of times - but if there's a chance it momentarily chills those same development forces, then, idk....

https://twitter.com/jengo_ma/status/736211877253001218

silent barn?

Had Pho at Little Mo and coffee and Little Skips today. So good.

little mo is very good. i never remember to go on weeknights when they have chicken soup but the pho & bahn mi are great.

ha, i was hangovering at skips this morning. it's good but it's gotten a lot less pleasant over the years - more crowded, worse crowd. prices have drifted up slightly too. i do hit up mo to splurge on either the kale salad or the chicken soup at least once a month though.

Cafe bunna very good

ha, i was hangovering at skips this morning. it's good but it's gotten a lot less pleasant over the years - more crowded, worse crowd. prices have drifted up slightly too. i do hit up mo to splurge on either the kale salad or the chicken soup at least once a month though.

― bucyrus ohio, vus cun nus en l’aria (Doctor Casino), Sunday, June 5, 2016 9:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What time were you there? We had lunch around noon -- I didn't actually go into skips, my wife just went over to get the coffee after we were done eating and brought it back into Mo.

Oh, it was around that time, but I was over at the original Skips location a couple blocks away, not the one attached to Mo.

bunna is good! i always eat way way way way too much when i go there and regret it intensely

also http://ny.eater.com/2016/5/31/11818574/tisch-robertas-management-change

ALSO there is a tamale vendor on the corner of myrtle and irving (weekends only i think) who makes 4 varieties of high-level tamale. i'm not sold on a ton of the street food in bushwick as a lot of it feels kinda low-effort but these are really good. i want to compare with the tamale lady in front of mr pina at myrtle/bway but she's never there when i have cash and am hungry.

I have still never been to Roberta's.

you should go. i went to union pizza works the other day and all i could think about was how the pizza -- however incredible by global standards -- was inferior to robertas'. (in this case, it was too "wet")

Yeah we've been right there a lot of times, I just never wind up thinking "let's put our name on the list at Roberta's" when we get there, before going to the galleries at 56 or whatever. Also my wife likes sushi much more than pizza so we'll wind up eating at Momo.

roberta's is legit great. i wanna go there and eat non-pizza one time but i never do.

Has anyone done Blanca? I almost wanna spring for it for our 10th anniversary, but part of me feels like why not just do a weekend trip upstate for the same $$$.

the roberta's take-out/delivery spot down the block is the way to go imo, no wait and you can get all the essentials (pizza, garlic knots, sticky buns). i still don't really like going to the actual restaurant.

those roberta's garlic knots are out of control.

i've heard blanca is amazing but the only time i spent ~$200 on a meal was at momofuku ko and i had a gift card to chip away at the price

I think we spent that much including wine for Blue Hill Stone Barns a few years ago.

kinda wish i loved pizza enough to try to get a pizza from roberta's

ive been meaning to go to motorino

motorino is pretty good but the best fancy pizza is at paulie gee's. my wife is a very pizza-snobby native new yorker with v little patience for newfangled pizza stuff but she fuckin loves paulie gee's, as do i.

i think i prefer emily to roberta

my wife p much has dayo's attitude -- even really good pizza is still "just pizza" to her.

I went to little skips yesterday. Not sure what I was expecting but it was exactly like every other coffee shop everywhere

Yep.

Their coffee was incredibly good.

Whenever I'm in Bushwick I never know exactly where I am because I don't know the relative positioning of the many subway stations. So to help myself figure it out I've created a mnemonic system. Here's how it goes:

First I imagine a cranky old man whose wife Lori is in charge of his breakfast. "Lori" stands for the two Lorimer stations, from which these journeys proceed.

For the J Train I think of "Lori, Fix My Korean Ginseng Hot," which corresponds to the stops Lorimer, Flushing, Myrtle, Kosciuszko, Gates, and Halsey.

For the M Train it's "Lori, Fix My ChicKen & Waffles," which corresponds to the stops Lorimer, Flushing, Myrtle, Central, Knickerbocker, and (Myrtle-) Wyckoff. Of course here I have to remember that Chicken is two stops.

For the L Train it's "Lori, Go Get Me More Jelly Donuts & Milk," which corresponds to the stops Lorimer, Graham, Grand, Montrose, Morgan, Jefferson, Dekalb, and Myrtle (-Wyckoff). It helps that More=Morgan, not Montrose.

Keeping in mind that Myrtle and Wyckoff - Milk and Waffles - are the same station, I think of how you need Milk to make Waffle batter.

So now if I'm visiting a friend in Bushwick I place them geographically by thinking like, "oh, she lives between More and Jelly," for example.

Dying

well now that's how i'm doing it for sure.

If you get tripped up by the part about ChicKen covering two stops, try to remember that the C in Chicken stands for Central, but there's also an "ick" in Chicken just as there's an "ick" in Knickerbocker

but there's a really good spot for chicken right by the knickerbocker stop (la isla cuchifritos, also good for pork obv) but nothing by central so i'm still confused

^ Since you associate chicken so closely with the Knickerbocker stop, in your case I would modify the phrase to "Lori, Fix My Country-style Chicken & Waffles."

Central=Country-style; Knickerbocker=Chicken

i think it was once part of new york city

stfu ben

i just asked j0rdan where the train was

down the stairs

or up depending

last couple of times in Bushwick have really felt my age, like it still doesn't feel much at the "stroller" level of gentrification but still at the 20-somethings-with-*cool*-jobs level of gentrification. Both H and I noticed it felt remarkably similar to Williamsburg circa 2003 or so (without Bedford Ave) -- w/the galleries and music venues and scattered trendy restaurants/coffee places throughout a landscape that was otherwise either desolate industrial or cheaply built rowhouses, w/ roving bands of (mostly) white twenty-somethings and Hispanic families. Except that then we were 24 and now we're 36.

it's great when yr past 50 you're invisible

not in boca!

are these still fireworks?

now there is some weird cooing bird outside my window. (can't see it.)

i'm losing my mind.

They're still setting off the occasional quarterstick where I am (near the lorimer L)

the K2 stuff is scary

yesterday i was at that corner and there was a guy screaming loudly at nothing and stomping the pavement, storming into bodegas and like freaking people out. over the weekend i saw a guy splayed out very unnaturally across the steps going up the subway that everyone had to like tip toe around.

the police seem to be doing a good job actually in terms of deescalation. also the one bodega that they say has been selling it has always been creepy as hell.

is that the big boy deli?

oh wait I see that it is

yeah! i don't like that place

I don't get why people use this drug. It's clearly bad news.

i like good news drugs

tbqh I've been avoiding that deli since they got the bitcoin atm. terrible about what's happening, hope the victims are all ok.

what are you guys talking about

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/nyregion/k2-overdoses-brooklyn-police-raids.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=nygeo-promo-region®ion=nygeo-promo-region&WT.nav=nygeo-promo-region

I don't get why people use this drug. It's clearly bad news.

― Treeship, Thursday, July 14, 2016 9:20 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*pats you on the head*

the photos are crazy http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3687547/33-people-hospitalized-New-York-K2-drug-overdose.html

There was a while when I got all my cheap cigarettes at that deli! Bummed that it's the center of this shit.

anyone want to play pool at the cobra club? shot in the dark but ya know

some time, for sure! not tonight tho, friend's birthday in ridgewood.

ahh ok

treeship email me i'm down to play one night

http://bushwickdaily.com/bushwick/categories/arts-and-culture/4349-stolen-igloo-sound-bath

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1gUQoJXgAIuSd7.jpg

Went to Bossa Nova Civic Club last night and were clearly the oldest people by ten years. Fun though. Good DJs.

I've never been, which shows my relevance and reputation these days.

I’d be surprised if we weren’t the only married people too.

a five-block parameter huh?

I used to feel that way in Bushwick too and I was 26/27 when I lived there man alive

Also Bunker was very good

i used to live above BNCC lol true story

in fact i lived there when Wale shot the video for "Bad" there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TIIu9CERgI

not really sure where else to post this without feeling awkward, but: our house on lawton street caught fire last week. my roommate's room, our kitchen and living room were totally wiped out, ditto the upstairs kitchen and living room, and every bedroom in the house got at least some measure of smoke and water damage. everybody has had to move out and is in the process of extracting and trying to clean/save anything not blatantly soaked and sooted to the bone. this has not really been very fun in a lightless house with face masks and headlamps. the worst thing of all is that our cat passed away of smoke inhalation, which i really don't even want to talk about. we're hoping it was quick and relatively painless.

i say all this as a preamble to, there is a gofundme for all us housemates (save Shuj4 H41d3r who lived downstairs of me - if you follow him on twitter you know he got his act together sooner to set up a fundraiser [plus had separate additional expenses to deal with] and has also shared this one). i hardly would ask any of y'all internet cats here to donate but please consider sharing, and more in the spirit of ILX, coming out to the bar-room fundraisers this friday! happy hour at marcos (broadway & malcolm x) from 2 to 8 followed by band showcase at The Gateway from 8:00 on. come have a drink, bring your friends, spread the word! i will be the frequently unshaven man wearing stupid hipster aviator glasses.

jeezus Doc, what a bummer. hope things go well, fast!

Sorry about your losses. Someone on your page should probably spell Rafael Espinal's name correctly.

ah jeez, sorry doc - that’s awful, especially your poor kitty

fuck

sorry for your cat but really good news that no humans were hurt

thanks, y'all. it's been tough but this has definitely reminded me how many people care and want to help - have not had to worry about places to sleep and stuff like that and that takes a ton of what would be nightmarish stress out of the picture. i was at target to buy a rolling suitcase and some underwear/socks and saw a dumb t-shirt with an "I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends" motif and i was like, right on.

and MV, i'll pass that on to to the guy that set up the gofundme, appreciate it.

aw man i'm sorry dc all the best to you, that is awful. im glad you all are safe and im sorry about your cat

oh no doc i am stunned and appalled to hear this

damn, sorry man

you all are terrific. recognized a few ILXor names in the donation list and was really touched. y'all didn't have to do all that! <3 <3 <3

still getting by okay. couchsurfing while i work through cleaning/reboxing/purging the stuff that i did haul out of the place. hopefully when that's done there's enough space in my friend's spare room for me to crash while i look for an apartment, but i've also had several other offers of places to stay in march so that's one big worry taken out of the picture.

good luck doc - glad you've got people who can help

Best of luck Doctor. Fire and the aftermath is such a devastating thing to have to go through, I know. I'm very glad you've got so many good people around you. Hang in there.

https://bushwickdaily.com/bushwick/categories/community/6047-the-life-of-a-polyamorous-hasidic-swordfighter-in-bushwick

xp to many other threads: shit that could be in the onion, HEY JEWS, poly people, etc

Well that was enjoyable

very disappointed this does not mention the swords at all after first reference, what would carly rae jepsen think

anybody else still parked in this nabe, for whatever reason?

Are you?

Somehow!

Cool

I get my hair cut there now and again.