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Brooklyn Hipster Virus Spreads To Hudson Valley
By
John Del Signore
Published Aug 5, 2011
Modified Aug 5, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Aug 5, 2011
Modified Aug 5, 2011
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Today the NY Times examines changes occurring in the post-industrial Hudson Valley, and finds enough people who once lived in Brooklyn to frame the situation in a trendy way we can all understand: "Call it the Brooklynization of the Hudson Valley, the steady hipness creep with its locavore cuisine, its Williamsburgian bars, its Gyrotonic exercise, feng shui consultants and deep clay art therapy and, most of all, its recent arrivals from New York City... So many people have moved to Beacon from Brooklyn that people now call it NoBro." Or as finance columnist Daniel Gross put it, the Times, tiring of "Brooklyn is awesome" articles, has turned to "place to which Brooklynites flee is awesome" articles.
It's a fact that Brooklyn does make everything awesome, but the question posed by the Times seems to be: Can it make everything awesome fast enough? In Hudson, a "coalition of interest groups" (translation: hipsters) successfully stopped a coal-fired cement plant from being built and harshing the idyllic vibe. But that plant would also have provided jobs to a community whose population is almost a third black and Latino, and where one fifth of the residents are below the poverty line. "All those old factory jobs, they’ve all dried up," longtime resident Calvin Wilson tells the Times. "So, where those [young] people going to work?" Can't they apply at the artisanal chocolate making factory?
In short, the Hudson Vally population is growing more than twice as fast as the rest of the state, but many longtime residents feel this tenuous new growth is leaving them behind. In Beacon, where the Dia art center has contributed to a modest cultural revival, the Times finds Tim Davis, 48, hanging out "in Chicago Bulls cap and colors" (translation: NOT a hipster). Davis has lived in Beacon almost his whole life, but now he's moving south, because "There’s no work here. Basically they’ve turned this place into Antiqueworld."
Longtime local residents displaced by gentrifying scenester transplants? It really is the Brooklynization of the Hudson Valley! If there's any solace in this for guys like Davis, it's that in five years all the Brooklyn transplants displacing him will be forced out to make way for some yuppie condos.
Tagged
Beacon
brooklyn
hipsters
hudson
hudson vally
on it
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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