Ugh. They were all out at Royal Oak on saturday (8/16) night. Hit on my friend. Ruined the dance floor. Tried to take her home to 'corrupt' the mormon guy, who's name is.... chet.

Talked to the two blond dudes. they made me sick to my stomach.

remember when MTV cast people who already lived in NYC? except for julie of course.

On the upside we now have the number for the real world house. Just have to figure out how to use it to make them all self-destruct.

Yellow Shirt: Michael, 19, Houston. Talks with a lisp and seems a bit light in the loafers, but is totes straight. Just ask his long-suffering girlfriend back home who spends her days woodenly hating the game, not the playa. Michael has snap-happy arguments with one female roommate who needles him about his latent homosexuality. Think Irene and Steven from Seattle.

Black Shirt: Jeremy, 21, Fresno. Has a hip, fresh, depressing white boy funk style. Seems actually capable of talking to women for three and a half seconds without trying to hump them, but revels in his horndog dirtbaggy ways when out with the boys. Meets a girl named Mashley from Staten Island at a clurrb one night, sorta has an on-again-off-again fling with her, but eventually decides he needs to be a free agent.

Pink Shirt: Danica, 24, Nashua, NH. From a New England town, the hoarse-voiced Danica went to big ol' party school ASU and drank and slopped her way through four years, managing to graduate with degrees in Spanish and finance. She rasps loudly about how drunk she was allll the time and falls in love with every boy who gives her three and a half seconds worth of attention (with or without trying to hump her.)

Blue Shirt: Broderick, 22, Apopka, FL. Just finished FSU, where he studied history. Seems like one of those cool laid back guys who'd make a swoony young high school teacher, but is actually a drunken debacle. After threatening to punch out some weasely hipster in the premiere episode, Broderick's narrow meatheadedness spirals out of control until he sobbingly admits to having stubbed his toe once when he was six. He'll decide to go home after this shocking revelation.

Magenta Shirt: Ninjizza, 23, Miami. Went to Emory, has a degree in French and Political Science. Is overbearing, bossy, demanding, and secretly very sad. Has one drunken night where she keeps saying she's going to "throw my damn self off the New York Bridge." Deftly recovers when the job challenge emerges—creating a Brooklyn bus tour—and she can take control of that. No one is sad when Ninjizza leaves at the end of the season.

Striped Shirt: Misty, 20, St. Louis. Shy and nerdy, Misty will be very much the shrinking wallflower of the season. She'll harbor a quiet, sad crush on Broderick, who will lead her on mercilessly. She will, of course, get very drunk one night and stab Ninjizza. She'll have to go home.

(OK, I know there's one cast member missing, and that if you look at the other photos on NewYorkology there are other people who could be cast members and Jeremy could totally be gay, but whatever, I'm on a fucking bus.)

The religious double standard meme returned with a vengeance soon after this moment of civility. A commentator called the Brooklyn Flea "abjectly disrespectful to the Christian sabbath," and then declared that "You better not believe this would happen with Hasidic Jews." Boos. She ignored them, though, and raised her voice. "If it can't happen on a Jewish sabbath, it can't happen on a Christian sabbath!" A combination of boos and cheers followed. A man stood up and said he'd been in the neighborhood since 1987, when he "was attending Pratt and saw a fellow student get shot in the face in front of [his] dormitory." He called out the previous commentators for antisemitism, said he loved the flea market, and then began to sit down. Someone shouted, "where do you live?" He didn't say anything, and the shouts got louder. "Where do you live? Tell us where you live! Do you live around here?" It was absurd. Finally the guy stood up and said, "I live three doors down from here," and everyone grew quiet.

In Field of Dreams Iowa, you get called a Nazi cow for threatening to ban a 60's peacenik novel. In the outer boroughs, for harshing on the tchotchke vending.

[Racked]

What prompted the move to Brooklyn?

New York is just a more hospitable environment than L.A. ever has been or will be. L.A. is devolving quickly, and I think I got out in the nick of time. The L.A. Times is imploding, our public radio is terrible, the [L.A.] Weekly’s been devolving for years. Local media’s being run into the ground and I don’t think anybody cares. The public’s dumbed down and poorly educated. L.A. is a psychic death hole to me, and I don’t want a part of that. There are so many impending crises — the political structure, the traffic, the educational system. L.A. is failing worse than ever, and I felt that if I can get out, I should. I found a way out. For a long time now I’ve been going back and forth between L.A. and New York, and every time I got off the plane in L.A. I felt dumber.

...I’ve been [in Brooklyn] for weeks, and nobody noticed. I don’t mean to sound petulant, but I realized that a lot of people actually didn’t know I’d left, so I let Kevin Roderick [of L.A. Observed] know."

We're not really smarter or more cultured here, though—we just think we are! In two weeks, Jay, you will find yourself at some rich person's party on the Upper West Side, where you don't know the host—but some friends said you should come. Someone might pass you the cocaine and although you said you wouldn't, or shouldn't, do that ever/anymore, you'll try it—what the hell—and will spend the next hour staring as people's heads turn into insects as they conversate—or more accurately, wait for others to stop talking so they can chime in. You'll spill red wine on your shirt, accidentally hit on the host's daughter, and watch the day break as you head home in a cab, wondering if this is perhaps an inauspicious start to your new life in New York. Cab fare to Brooklyn: $30. Note to self: sign up for Internet dating account.

But seriously, welcome to Brooklyn.

Reportedly the exact address of the building is 204 Van Dyke St., so if you live nearby, shutter your windows and blood your doors, because the Lord's wrath is on its way. Luckily, though, you ought to get a pretty clear idea fairly quickly of where the gaggle of idiots will be hanging out, because MTV usually signs preemptive filming waivers from one or two bars/restaurants before shooting so they don't have to worry about getting clearance at a bajillion different places. So find out which two bars those are, and avoid them like the plague for the next six months or so. Come on up to Park Slope in the meantime. We have strollers! And a park! And, uh, a slope!

[via Razor Apple]

In Arlington for his girlfriend's dance rehearsal, Simmermon wandered into the inauspiciously named Murky Coffee. Sensibly ignoring a ridiculous sign (left), the Time Warner Cable executive ordered an iced triple espresso, it being July and all. Told this couldn't be done, because it was against policy, Simmermon then switched his order to a triple espresso and a cup of ice. This request was accepted very, very grudgingly.

A short time later, the most awesome exchange in the history of coffeeshops took place:

The barista called me over to the bar. I reached for [the espresso], and he leaned over and locked his eyes with mine, saying “Hey man. What you’re about to do … that’s really, really Not Okay.”

I could hear the capital letters in his voice, could see the gravity of the situation in his eyes.

He continued: “This is our store policy, to preserve the integrity of the coffee. It’s about the quality of the drink, and diluting the espresso is really not cool with us. So I mean, you’re going to do what you’re going to do, and I can’t stop you, but”

I interrupted. “You’re goddamned right you can’t stop me,” I said. “I happen to have a personal policy that prohibits me from indulging stupid bullshit like this — and another personal policy of doing what I want with the products I pay for.” Then I looked him right in his big wide eyes and poured the espresso onto the ice.

On his blog, Simmermon illustrates this exchange with a clip of Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. Go check it out, if you like, he tells the pre-publicity part of this story wonderfully.

Anyway, Simmermon later has to place another order because, well, it's been an hour and needs some more goddamned caffeine! The fact that he's jonesing for more coffee only 60 minutes after a triple espresso maybe should have clued in the coffee shop to what sort of customer it had on its hands. But of course, at this point it was too late.

Simmermon orders "the strongest iced beverage your policy will allow," and is served an iced, four-shot Americano. He liked it! And he left a tip!

Simmermon also said (later, on his blog post) "the only way I’m ever coming back to Murky Coffee in Arlington is if I’m carrying matches and a can of kerosene." Well.

The post found its way to MetaFilter and BoingBoing. Simmermon posted an update, saying "it’s a little embarrassing. I mean, I can freely admit that I acted like a total dick here." He posted a clip of Lily Tomlin acting like a total dick somewhere else.

Then the cafe owner responded on his blog! He was not pleased!

To Mr. Simmermon, you overplayed your hand with your vulgar tip-schtick. While I certainly won't bemoan you your right to free-speech, I have to respond to you in your own dialect: F*@k you, Jeff Simmermon. Considering your public threat of arson, you'll understand when I say that if you ever show your face at my shop, I'll punch you in your dick.

The owner, Nick Cho, also said his coffee shop is basically known for its anal policies, including some serious sadistic BS like "no modifications to the Classic Cappuccino," whatever that's about, and, bizarrely, "no questions will be answered about the $5 Hot Chocolate" (emphasis added).

Cho also tried to claim that the iced espresso ban is "mostly for quality reasons... when [espresso] hits ice, it seems to go through a chemical change that we can't fully explain." But then he admitted his shop used to serve iced espressos, but most people who bought them added milk to create a cheap "ghetto latte." So really the whole ban is about money, not quality.

The Post thinks "both sides look like drips" in this feud. But do they? A cable guy accidentally earned a national reputation for standing up for good customer service, which will probably never happen again anywhere, ever. And a cafe showed espresso snobs worldwide that it will defend the delicate acids in its shots come hell or high water.

Isn't that, in the end, really, really OK?

[Post, And I Am Not Lying]

(Photos via Simmermon's Facebook, tbridge on Flickr and And I Am Not Lying.)

Stephen Witt, a reporter from the New York Post-owned Courier-Life chain, seized the microphone to try his hand at stand-up comedy during the delay.

“What do you know about Brooklyn 99-cent stores?” asked Witt, who last made headlines for hugging Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner at a 2006 rally. “Have you ever been so broke that you had to put something on lay-away at a 99-cent store?”

Witt’s quip was met with boos...

“It was just awkward, and I feel kind of embarrassed for him,” said one woman, who said she saw Witt consuming alcohol before his artistic contribution to the evening.

And look, there's a clip!

[Brooklyn Paper]

Surprisingly, not everyone camping on line is African American - two white Park Slope residents, Rob Tanzer, 24 and Jake Feingold, 23, have also joined the group.

"We read about this on Curbed, and we just thought that being on this side of the fence seems like a far more authentic Brooklyn experience," explained Mr. Feingold, "We basically want the black community to know that not all white people are here to displace them; That really, we're part of the solution. And of course we're also down to get paid."

[Blognigger]

Here's the story: My girlfriend moved to Connecticut from Greenpoint last year. She misses it terribly, and constantly pines for the days spent with friends in the neighborhood. So, for her birthday this weekend, on Sunday night I installed a life-sized cutout of her at the southeast corner of Franklin and Noble Streets in Greenpoint. I am asking anyone who can to go to Greenpoint and photograph themselves with the Birthday Girl, and then, email or pix message the photo to birthdaygirl08@gmail.com . Soon she will have an entire album of images of herself and many, many friends partyting in Greenpoint! I will also be uploading all images to my flickr account, so all can watch as the piece progresses.

"Calling the police seemed extreme, so instead he dialed up friends on his cellphone. But no one picked up — it was 6 a.m. Finally, a friend who was staying at his apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant answered and tried to shake Mr. Hausmann's roommate awake. "Kyle's stuck somewhere; he needs your help," the friend mumbled. But the roommate slept on and the friend fell back asleep.

Next, Mr. Hausmann picked up the bar's phone and hit redial, inadvertently calling the mother of one of the owners in Las Vegas.

"How did you get this number?" the woman asked. "You can't be calling because you're locked in a bar."

Like all of the Observer's Williamsburg coverage, this piece causes the reader an even greater level of apoplexy by using a breezy, ironic tone, rather than just putting its head down and pounding out a list of bars, parks, and restaurants where the postgrads who populate the terrifying neighborhood can go to meet one another and, 47 minutes later, have coke-fuelled sex in an Enid's (there's one!) bathroom.

That said, if you want to go read the entire tortured Williamsburg-as-college metaphor (your apartment search is like "room draw!"), be our guest. Call us enablers, if you will. But remember this, twenty-something Observer staff writers: at least 25% of the Gawker editorial staff lives right next door in Greenpoint. We go to some of these places that your story proposes to morph even further into postcollegiate hellholes. It's only a matter of time before we catch you walking down the street one night.

So say hello, why don't you?

[Observer]

"I absolutely can't believe that they're going to put these United Colors of Benetton kids into a high-rise in the middle of downtown brooklyn. Talk about some post-apocalyptic shit. I grew up BLACK in New York, and even I didn't set foot in Downtown Brooklyn until I was 30..."

Now they got some camera-ready glossy-ass Real Dolls™ living in a rotating health club above where the old Church's fried chicken used to be.

...it's times like this I wish I was a real black guy, a thick darkskinned brotha from east flatbush with a big-ass 'fro pick, instead of my little software engineering over-educated ass, so that I could summon a crew of like-minded ignorant black gentlemen with nothing to live for such that we could go and beat the FUCK out of these little survivor wanabees and take a dump in their hottub."

29-year-old Lawrence Jackson, a player on the kickball team Los Piratas Mechanicos (the Robot Pirates), was acting the fool up in Macy's Herald Square department store. Specifically:

A rabble-rousing kickball player for a recreational team called the Pirates was busted yesterday for brandishing a swashbuckler's sword in the middle of Macy's Herald Square, cops said.

Jackson and his [eight months pregnant] girlfriend said he was carrying the sword for fun on the way to a game and that it was nothing more than a prop befitting his team's zany image - but cops said his explanation didn't cut it.

"He didn't think there was anything wrong with it," said Police Officer Richard Perrone, who responded after frightened shoppers called security. "He thought it was a toy. But it's not a toy. It's sharp."

The Post added that the Robot Pirates team "occasionally wear drawn-on mustaches."

Adrian Foster, 32, an employee at Petland Discounts, also dreamed of stardom. “It’ll be good, once I’m on it,” he said. But he questioned the choice of neighborhood.

“Compared to other places they were living, I think this would be a downgrade,” he said. “A few bars, a few stores, that’s about it. Clubs, they have to go to Manhattan. It’s kind of rough out here. They’ve just got to keep their eyes open and ears open.”

Danny Perez, 37, works at Gallery Religious Supplies, which sells, besides the anti-jinx soap, candles and bath salts that claim to attract money or love and dispel evil. He knows the neighborhood as well as anyone, acting as a confidant to his customers, who whisper to him of some ill or want that he addresses with a special candle.

“They’d be jeopardizing their safety,” he said of the cast members. “Too many side streets.” But he promised to do his best for any of them. “I’ll help them out,” he said. “I’ll help them out.”

Gosh, it sounds like throwing a bunch of young, privileged, mostly white youths into downtown Brooklyn might produce some unexpected complications. If you think about it, it's almost as though that's what MTV wants.

[Times]

He is prone to writing sentences like, “Look at M1, M2 and M3 FED money supply. They have gone parabolic for the last 6 years,” as well as sentences like, “Y’all are fucking finished and the asshole Brokers who pumped this shit up will get ass-raped!” He went through a period in March 2008 during which he promised to “reframe from using profanity.” (Short-lived.) He’s posted comments such as “First order of Business: Citigroup is planing to sell 400 Billion dollars of their assets. I find this very scary. I think they need to raise their capital base.... The upcoming Depression will prove we overstepped out boundaries. And out children will pay for our folly.”

And he’s posted comments such as, “Real Estate is fucking over!!!!! Real Estate is fucking over!!!!! Real Estate is fucking over!!!!! Real Estate is fucking over!!!!!” His posting style is so schizophrenic that one might suspect he is either (a) several very different people posting under the same name or (b) schizophrenic. He sometimes sounds like he’s locked in a basement somewhere, surrounded by newspaper clippings on all four walls.

He touches down in comment threads like a rhetorical Tasmanian devil, huffing and puffing in such a hysterical manner as to become, well, kind of hysterical—as when he wrote this (and I’ve made every effort to retain the integrity of the punctuation), in response to an item about Clinton Hill titled “Price Cuts at 936 Fulton Street”:

WHAT?!!!!! Already?!!!! NO!!!!!!! Everyone wants to live on Fulton St. This can’t be happening…… Please help me.… please.….

****Sobs into sleep*********

Chuckie getting ass-raped.

(Chuckie, for the record, appears to be The What’s generic name for the average white Brooklynite. Either that, or it’s a reference to Chuck Schumer. Or possibly Chuck E. Cheese, though it’s not clear why anyone would want to ass-rape Chuck E. Cheese.)

The writer of the article tries, and fails, to figure out who The What is, and uses him a springboard from which to raise issues of anonymity, class anxiety, sublimated anger, fame in the modern era, etc. etc., much as Emily Gould did in her piece in the Times magazine on being a blogger. Which is all well and good, but all that hand-waving is just an excuse to reprint bitchy comments from the What and other Brooklynites, not that anyone should have a problem with that.

The only truly significant issue raised by the story is who will be first to write a big article about blog lurkers. Who are they, and WHY DON'T THEY SAY ANYTHING?

[New York]

Though, they won't say this is definite, and do confirm that they're considering a lot of other safe, white borough neighborhoods like Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights, and DUMBO. Proximity to Manhattan is apparently a concern for the producers (and yet they also say they've been looking at Coney Island?), but they are totes committed to Brooklyn and its "cachet" and "vibrancy." Isn't "vibrancy" TV-code for "ethnic"? Ain't that much ethnic about Brooklyn Heights or Carroll Gardens or most of Park Slope at this point. Sigh. This sure-to-be disaster stumbles on. [Via Gothamist]

Slope-bashing hit the big time last February, when The New York Times’ David Brooks pegged the ’hood as ground zero of the “hipster parent moment.” He wrote: “Can we please see the end of those Park Slope alternative Stepford Moms in their black-on-black maternity tunics who turn their babies into fashion-forward, anticorporate indie-infants in order to stay one step ahead of the cool police?”

Some of this sentiment, to be sure, springs from the area’s transformation in recent years: Trendy boutiques and bars have replaced bodegas on Fifth Avenue; and the neighborhood’s nickname has gone from nice, crunchy “Dyke Slope” to crowded, congested “No Park Slope.” According to a recent study, nearly half the drivers cruising at any given time are searching for a parking spot.

At least to non-locals (such as Brooks, who doesn’t realize that Williamsburg is actually where the “hipsters” are), the Slope seems to represent all that is reprehensible about gentrified New York and modern urban parenting. “Non–New Yorkers think of it disparagingly as a hipster alterna-playground, and Manhattanites think of it as a sanctimonious PC stroller derby, like one big suburban PTA meeting stuck in a food co-op,” says novelist Steven Johnson, a longtime Sloper who jokes on his blog that “all writers with young children in NYC are legally required to live” there. “To the outside world, it’s too cool for its own good, and inside New York, it’s not cool enough.”

Even many residents maintain a love-hate relationship with their nabe. Graphic designer and community organizer Aaron Brashear says that his family shops everywhere but jam-packed Seventh Avenue. “We will not walk there because of the stroller brigades,” he says. Slope psychotherapist Peter Loffredo has sworn off the kid-crammed Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and both Tea Lounges, and not because he doesn’t like the coffee. “They’re overrun pseudo Romper Rooms,” he says. [TONY] [photo: Ben Goldstein]

“Park Slope isn’t even part of Brooklyn anymore,' wrote one commenter on Gothamist. "It’s seriously a lower rung of hell, filled with hateful English teachers." And on Eater.com, one posted comment said: "Park Slope and its ilk are why NYC is becoming more and more pathetic by the day."

And the locals?

"Park Slope is a perfect storm of stereotypes that provoke derision,” said Steven Johnson, a local writer and a father of three. “Since Park Slope is the neighborhood most explicitly associated with urban parenting, it attracts the wrath of people who think parents have gone way overboard. I imagine there’s some horror fantasy fusion: the well-off Park Sloper and co-op member who is obsessed with his kids. Oh, wait, I just described myself.”

By the same token, when we talk about “people who hate Park Slope,” we are talking in large part about a certain stratum of the chattering, Twittering class. “This whole thing sounds like white people being annoyed by and jealous of other white people, which I find kind of funny,” said James Bernard, a union organizer and a member of the local Community Board 6. “I live in the Slope. I love it. I talk about it as much as anyone else does. But I founded a charter school near Brownsville and I don’t hear anyone talking about Park Slope over there.” [NYT] [photo: Nicole Bengiveno]

The two buildings of (mostly illegal) lofts, full of idiot kids in stupid pants and two olds, are renowned for their loud parities, ridiculous band rehearsals, and chewy chewy bed bugs. Wouldn't it be super to watch Amilynn from Ole Miss trying to nail some plywood together to create a bedroom? Or to gawk at troubled, angry water polo player Nickariah (from Duke) try to sex some girl who only eats tempe, cigarette butts, and old cans, like a common goat? That would be the real fake Real World. Plus then us quiet (read: scared) folk in the slightly sleepier neighbs wouldn't have to deal with camera crews crowding our most horrible bars. Are you listening MTV? Sell that tricked-out thing on North 8th! Pack your bindles and head on over to McKibbin.

The Real World Brooklyn. For Real. [Observer]

"They didn't know where Havemeyer was. I hung up and jogged to another cop car parked at the Williamsburg Bridge Bus Depot. 'There's a street sign that a dump truck just crashed into. It's in the middle of Broadway and Bedford,' I said. 'Oh yeah?' asked the cop. The cops just sat there. Then another cop car pulled up and they chatted for a while." [My Memoirs via Curbed]

Do you have what it takes to be an adult star??? Niki Wilder production studio, has moved to bushwick. We are now casting for the film *Niki gets lost in Bushdick* A gang bang scene in the climax of the film, when Niki is lost in Busdick "and stumbles upon a band playing with instruments, wanting them used on her by the band, and audience. If you can perform in front of camera, and people, and have a large penis, than we are looking for you!!! Sign up, and send us video to show us what you can do.

As Brooklyn gets less trendy and more mainstream (and more expensive), the hip young celebrities, flush with a little bit of money, will choose more convenient places to live. It used to be something of a tip of the hat for a rich famous person to move to the borough. "Aren't we shy and intelligent!" "We're just like you!" That kind of thing. But now all sorts of people live out here and there's no gesture or identity associated with "brownstone Brooklyn" anymore. If they moved to Crown Heights, that'd be something! But, they won't. They'll go for ease and (though they'd never admit it) status. And then we'll just be left with a bunch of boring old writers, who actually spend time in the neighborhood and clog up the streets. More pictures of the Connelly/Bettany manse at Curbed.