Bushwick Culture Clicks: 6/20/08
Anything is a venue. Blogger proclaims Market Hotel is “the flag of an imperialist hipster culture,” demands that it be shut down.
“Here I bump into some smart, sensitive, remarkable and promising characters.” A visitor’s impression of Bushwick during BOS, which also includes a comparison I often think about: “something very Berlin about this place.”
Kittens fighting on Bushwick art. What I love about this video is the title: “Fighting Kittens of Bushwick.” Often, as I do my research for these clicks, I find that people attach “of Bushwick” to things that are otherwise unrelated to Bushwick. Do people in Cobble Hill do that?
Team Genius. If you do nothing else cool or worthwhile today, watch this music video for the song “I’m Just an Idiot” by Team Genius. More recording to come from their studio in Bushwick.
You will always be fat to me. A collection of photos from C-Monster’s exploration of Bushwick Open Studios.
Dude lives in Bed-Stuy and doesn’t even know that the Sumner Houses are in his hood, not Bushwick? And that the “first white people” he saw since walking past them, once he crossed Broadway, live all over Bushwick, and weren’t just “slumming it” at Market Hotel?
He actually says he and his friend deserved to get beat up by someone from the projects simply for showing their white faces. Oh, what, non-white people at the projects go around beating people up? What a fuckin racist.
Nobody has “claimed land that is not [theirs].” Some people own a building and rent it to some other people who do things with it that is completely within their contractual rights. Bushwick is not owned in its entirety by a non-white residents cooperative who uniformly don’t like the Vivian Girls. Time to find some other hysterical, reality-free accusation to vomit at sweaty college students. And stop speaking for Bushwick residents, especially since he doesn’t even know what one looks like, or even where Bushwick begins.
PS: The British were not simply working within the private property system the way Market Hotel is when they stole all of India for the Queen and slaughtered all who resisted. So the “imperialism” argument, too, should be abandoned. It’s false and quite embarrassing.
Amen!
i’m getting less and less patient when people claim that newcomers to the neighborhood have some necessary responsibility to ‘compliment’ (sic) the neighborhood, or ‘give back to community’. sure, it’s a fine idea, but this notion that we HAVE to, or we’re necessarily an invading, colonizing force. is it liberal guilt come full-circle?
I built plenty of parks around the storage facilities for the undesirables precisely so we wouldn’t have to worry about them as we took over the surroundings. Indeed, it is best to thrust oneself into neighborhood as one would a blade through the belly of an assaulter. Don’t ask “should I?” ask “I can!”
this kid is a total moron. his college style essay holds no ground. the main problem is its all lies.
the show he was at wasnt even thrown by todd p. it was thrown by the house so the working kids there could pay rent.
it sucks that this kid is such a racist and nervous hipster who feels like “he would deserve getting his ass kicked.” so lame.
its those people who have that negative attitude who perpetuate the ways of gentrification and cultural imperialism.
what a joke.
*so lame
it sucks that he gets to voice his opinion on the internet. is what i tried to say…
to the skillman…
listen up, you’re not a muckraker.. This isn’t a groundbreaking new realization you’ve come to.. Your insanely idiotic rant connecting the kids of the market hotel and imperialists is as racist as it is trivial. It’s you who is the outsider , it’s you who is unwelcome at the market hotel, cynical, bitter bloggertypes full of hate,with an us/them mentality, not those of the neighborhood surrounding the market hotel. You’re the elitist, throwing up labels, and glorifying poverty and putting down a spot that only exists for everyone. I’m sorry if your feeling guilty for being white, for the crimes against humanity that your ancestors selfishly committed, but this is Brooklyn, and from reading your blog, it’s obvious that your not from here. This is the place where whites, blacks German, Irish, Italians, Latinos, Jews, and all cultures have lived side-by-side forever. This neighborhood was originally inhabited by German Irish and Jewish immigrants. Would you prefer if all the white people stayed in one safe neighborhood, and all the black people stayed in a “rough” one? Is that what you’re getting at? It is you who puts up labels and causes tension, it’s you who brings hate, the only thing the kids of the market hotel have done is create a welcoming environment where anyone who wants to can walk through the doors; anyone but you. It’s nice that you’ve paid attention to your liberal professors who philosophize about gentrification; its good to see that you took a lot of notes, but you should spend a bit more time away from your college textbooks, more submerged in the real world, where people relate to each other, off the internet. I’ve wasted enough of my time responding to this bullshit.
check new comments on self-loathing dude’s post:
http://theskillman.blogspot.com/2008/06/anything-is-venue-market-hotel.html