“Downtown” culture magazine Paper cautiously tip-toed into Bushwick this month and hosed the place down with their embarrassingly self-unaware trademark “edginess.” The article is by some dried-up Manhattan early-80s scenester pining for the days when Manhattan was a fucking shithole and you could get stabbed on every corner. When will it finally be considered hackneyed to whine about how cleanliness and safety and wealth — the things most sane people seek out — are eating our very souls?
She couldn’t even get the boundaries right — one of the photos is of Walton Street, several blocks inside South Side Williamsburg — hello, the huge ugly pink Hasid projects are dominating the photo! Lorimer? That’s quite Williamsburg. Throop? Very much Bed-Stuy. True to their dickhead white-people fauxhemian idea of what’s cool, every photo is of some rundown, industrial, graffiti-ass, concertina nightmare dystopian dump corner full of weeds and roaches. Grand honey-colored brick turn-of-the-century apartment houses? That’s sooo bourgeois. Show me piles of dogshit (heps of poop?)!
First MTV exposes our DIY music scene to the lamest of lame audiences, then some magazine run by old people who swear they’re not square makes like they discovered Hispaniola. Please.
Here’s the photo shoot in pdf form straight from the cutting room — no snapping photos of the open magazine on a table when you gots connections.
marisleysis July 23rd, 2008 at 1:51 pm
i am relieved to know that punky artists in Bushwick adjacent are wearing fragrance. you gotta admit they scooped you on that important information, Jeremy!
Brian July 23rd, 2008 at 2:57 pm
and how bout ‘dem haircuts! where oh where in Bushwick can I get my sides shaved and my bangs curled?
Alex July 23rd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
HAH! I see you took my advice and hunted that article down!
How lame right? Most of the shots are outside of Bushwick… “The New East Village…..” yah ok…
ricmac01 July 23rd, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Another old queen talking about the good old days. And the photo shoot featuring “cute kids of Bushwick” – they ain’t cute, they ain’t from Bushwick (well, one is from the Bronx, don’t know about the rest), and they ain’t kids (is 30 years old still a kid to a 60 something? Maybe).
But the article does give me the opportunity to ask about something that is foreign to me. Who buys those live chickens/rabbits and why? I’m guessing not as pets. Do they kill them and remove the feathers for you or do you take them to your apartment and do it there?
And those places stink – depending on which way the wind is blowing.
ML July 23rd, 2008 at 5:44 pm
YOU SOUND VERY ANGRY…GET OVER YOURSELVES….PAPER IS AMAZING AND ALTHOUGH THEY DIDN’T DO YOUR BUSHWICK JUSTICE LIKE YOU SAY THEY GAVE BUSHWICK SOME NATION WIDE LOVE….. -ML
Jessica Elsas July 23rd, 2008 at 7:06 pm
you sound angry too. all caps is the new black.
Dresden July 24th, 2008 at 12:01 am
ricmac01 – they will butcher and process the pollo y conejo vivo. you can then take it home and cook it and eat it right away. if you’re a meat eater, it’s sort of like picking an apple! the guy who kills it is usually a muslim, so they “halal” it – which is to kill it with the whole ritual, so it’s good meat for muslims and even religious jews usually consider it okay. I’m a white atheist and I find myself doing it from time to time.
Dresden July 24th, 2008 at 12:06 am
ML – Paper has they heads jammed all the way up their cavernous, old asses.
Madonna moved out of the East Village.
Slaves of New York was a horrible book.
The 80′s are like a really bad joke to most of us who came of age during grunge. We don’t get it, and we usually abhor the selfishness of that era. The next generation after X is more like the 80′s people – focus on image, not internal landscape. So, Paper is sort of perfect – the selfish scenesters of the 80s have partnered with the selfish scenesters of the present day.
I mean, have you read this self-absorption? NYC is so much better and so much stronger and so much more creative today than it ever was back then:
“Kinda. But not really.” The “not really” was because to me, nothing can ever replace what used to be My Manhattan. Sure, Bushwick and Williamsburg are super-cool-kid ghettos, but they will never have the other half of the equation. My hometown was always an island occupied by the cutting edge of not just hipsterdom and art production, but it was also the powder keg of international culture, commerce, wealth, power, ambition, grit and danger.”
Dresden July 24th, 2008 at 12:09 am
Or….
(TOILET) Paper
PJ July 24th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Hey, looks like another 80s horror is back–camel toes!
ricmac01 July 24th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Dresden thanks for the live poultry info. No religious issues here but the freshly picked apple sounds more appealing to me.
-Rich
Alberto July 24th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
here’s a little education lesson from someone born and raised in bushwick: the chicken/rabbits places are mostly called “carnicerias”. they reek… true. when you walk in you usually get a number or get the attention of someone with a white jacket and gloves. he/she usually looks like surgeon. don’t gag on the hosed-down floors or the blood stained clothes. you tell them “hey, i would like a ten-pound chicken” or “a three pound rabbit” or “four pigeons” or on special occassions “a turkey”. you can even pick one out if you have likened to a special creature. they ask if you want it plucked or if you want to see the beheading. (pause) its weighed, taken to the back room and within minutes you have the freshest meat in a plastic bag, in a paper bag in a green or red plastic bag tied up that you have ever had. its delicious and cheap and probably a lot fresher and cleaner than the shit you get in supermarkets. the locals have it right.
Alberto July 24th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
get back to me if you want to go to one!
Becky July 24th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Awesome. I haven’t seen a good chicken beheading in years. I know that I’ve seen one poultry place over by Montrose. Are there others, closer to me at the Jefferson stop? Can you really get pigeons? Do you have to call them squab?
Dresden July 24th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
It’s actually really cool how they butcher and process the meat. I try to get them to let me watch the process everytime I go.
Yaay carnicerias.
jessica July 24th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
When I lived on the LES (about 10 years ago), there was this live chicken place on my corner. On my way to a job interview once (I was already running late), I was briskly walking to the F at Delancey, and it was a little icy, so I slipped and fel–right in front of the chicken place into a bloody puddle of guts and feathers that the guys had just hosed out onto the streets. Face first. WTF.
ricmac01 July 24th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Wow, Jessica. You must have made quite a first impression!
Jeremy Sapienza July 24th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
The supermarket is fresh enough for me. I don’t care to “see where my food comes from,” to paraphrase the popular anti-consumer-culture adage. That’s what I pay other people for. Division of labor, people.
Anyway, aren’t these places called viveros, while traditional butcher shops/meat counters are called carnicerias? Always sort of creeped me out, since it means nursery…
Kevin July 28th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Er, um, I liked the Papermag article.
And I can even relate to the sentiment that Bushwick, if you squint your eyes (really hard), is sort of like the East Village or L.E.S. back in the day. Perhaps the fashion photo shoot was off. Oh well. That’s fashion for ya. I even liked the author’s “those were the days” nostalgia. I love hearing stories by old timers about the way things were. And it’s easy to be nostalgic about the Downtown scene. It was an amazing time. I recently read and rather enjoyed Robert Nickas’ reminiscences about the 80s (in his new book Theft Is Vision). I moved to New York in part because of my romance with that particular time and culture. If something’s killing it for me it’s the retro 80s trend. Thankfully it seems to have nearly run its course. Retro 70s is the new retro 80s. And then, after that, it’s retro 90s.
Jeremy Sapienza July 29th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Speaking of retro-80s, I saw this last night. And I actually liked it. The commenters must be so, so bitter and old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R94woFElb5o
Dresden July 29th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I just saw a print copy of this.
She took a dump on our hood by setting up a straw man and blowing him down.
That’s what our fucking president does in his speeches!!!
I don’t think this is like the East Village. Maybe because, er, by the time the train gets here I realize I’m not in the 80s anymore and I’m not listening to Poison!
lmg August 28th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
i live on walton street and this ain’t Bushwick!