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<em>6 Sick Hipsters</em> in Williamsburg
By
Jen Carlson
Published Dec 3, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Dec 3, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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Love 'em or hate 'em, hipsters have made their way into a real-life bounded book that will be available for purchase next spring. What does Generation Hipster look like in black & white? It ain't pretty. 6 Sick Hipsters, by Rayo Casablanca, follows "Williamsburg's reigning elite" and brings some noir to the neighborhood...as well as a feral baboon.
The press release tells us a bit of what we can expect: "Lately someone has been laying waste to Brooklyn's uber-hipsters, dispatching them in gruesome fashion. Before the week is over, they'll be up to their skinny-jean waists in mayhem, manipulation, contract killers, raw sewage, and murderous monkeys. Something is rotten in the state of Billyburg, and the last hipsters standing will discover just how rotten it really is." Sewage and skinny jeans...all sounds pretty realistic until you get to the murderous monkeys. We asked Mr. Casablanca a little bit about his homage to the H-word:
What Williamsburg bars and restaurants are in the book?
While I didn't name check any bars, restaurants outright, I did base all of the locales in my book on real places. There is a very Barcade-like bar in the novel called Arcadia. Another bar I called Bossy's is modeled on Enid's, among others. "Royal Delhi" (in Park Slope in the book) is based on Williamsburg's Taj Mahal (North 5th). The Getty gas station on Union makes an appearance (though I spruced it up a bit). Some places I just made up.
Are the characters based on anyone you know?
Yeah. They all are. Though most of the characters in the book are amalgamations of people I've met. I took some of the wilder aspects of people I know and added fictional layers - saddled the lab rat with a career as a pornographer, the feminist knitter with macular degeneration. Interestingly enough, a character in the book that some readers have found the least believable is the one most closely based on a real person. Funny.
How did you research for the book?
Honestly, I didn't do much. Most of the research I did do was for terminology - primarily the paleontology stuff. I read a lot. Devour books and magazines. Much
of what ends up on the page is born of random experience. When I lived in New York ('93-'97, '98-01) I really dug the East Village scene, read Vice religiously, went to DJ Franc O's Vampyros Lesbos parties -- it all sank in. I don't think anyone who knows me considers me a hipster. But then again I think that's one of the real questions in the book - What is a hipster?
Check out the video for the book here, and read the blog here. Personally we'd like to see this as a Law & Order episode.
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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