I Eat Hipsters For Breakfast

I wish.

Living on the Upper West, I'm spared my hipster frustration. After Vassar, it is so bizarre to pass whole days, even weeks, without even setting eyes on a single pair of out-sized sun glasses, or one chunky necklace. In San Francisco, I lived in hipster-central (although secretly I believe that Mission hipsters really are much cooler than I am, and that their irony is much sharper but not as cruel as North Eastern hipsters - they are still hipsters none the less); so to find myself, after so many years, hipster-less is quite a shock and an odd relief.

(Of course, now my days are filled with obnoxious, entitled yuppies. I kind of miss the irony.)

Yesterday, however, I ventured into Williamsburg, aka hipsterdom's ground zero. It would have been one thing if all I had done was go to see the show which was the ultimate intention - if I'd gotten off the L at Bedford and speeded my way to the space, watched the show, and then scurried back to Manhattan. But my friend Jacob and I brought food and wine and had a picnic in McCarren Park.

I'm not going to lie - Williamsburg really is interesting. It reminds me of a grittier New York version of the Mission. There are little restaurants and diners, interesting bars, and a multitude of thrift stores. The buildings are all short, with long staircases, and the Williamsburg natives sit in lawn chairs out on the sidewalk, chatting to their neighbors and watching the youth stroll by. It feels like a neighborhood, it feels like a place where everyone knows each other. And you don't have to dodge baby strollers everywhere you go.

I was kind of awed by it all, as I strolled down Bedford Avenue. I kept wishing my neighborhood was more of a neighborhood - that I could afford to go to my local bars (that my local bars were even appealing). I kept wishing that my neighborhood had more people like me in it, and therefore had more stuff that I might like, more of a reason to hang out up there.

I finally arrived at the park, and spread my blanket out near a baseball game to read in the shade. It was absolutely beautiful (it has been remarkably cool for August, and therefore the city hasn't been rotting the way it usually does - one positive of global climate change), and there were people all over the park, eating and drinking and hanging out. The grass was not manicured like in Central Park, and there were Corona bottle caps everywhere, but I didn't really mind. When Jacob arrived, we ate picnic fare (cheese, bread, olives), and drank red wine out of little yogurt containers that I'd brought (which I thought was simultaneously cool and resourceful of me). It was so chill. Everyone was just there, there were no police patrolling with huge dogs (that will be a later post, believe you me), just people hanging out. we watched a group of little boys have a pow wow in Spanish and then execute their plan for the next twenty minutes. We watched a man doing something potentially sexual to the bench near us. We watched the game. We ate and chatted. It was lovely.

And as we left to go to the show, pot smoke wafted towards us from somewhere across the field.