From:	gwyneth.vg
To:	gwyneth.vg
Date:	March 31, 2002
Subject:	Cultural tyranny

     In Febraury, we moved to Williamsburg, the hipster, Hasidic, and Hispanic ghetto in Brooklyn, directly across the East River from the East Village. The move itself was awful, mostly due to the pathetic battery in our U-Haul and the shocking volume of our belongings. But as we’ve slowly settled into our loft, we’ve come to believe what we hoped we would when we signed our of-course-it's-a-commerical-lease lease: Williamsburg is fabulous. Why? Well, here's our top ten reasons:
      10. Industrial wastelands that are slowly finding their way to pseudo-gentrified residential neighborhoods have more edge, and are ultimately cooler, than their Strokes-loving, Pahulnik-reading inhabitants. We like our artsy neighbors, but we like even more what our friend Jason said while helping us unload the U-Haul: “You know, if I was going to dump a body, I’d do it right here.”
      9. Three blocks from our apartment is a restaurant called Diner. Decorated by the love child of David Fincher and Norman Rockwell, populated by the best-looking freaks in W-burg, and serving tasty and complex nouveau bistro cuisine, the most expensive restaurant in the neighborhood (that isn’t Peter Lugar) is still cheaper than anything within a mile of our old place in the Village.
      8. Sure, after having apartments in the West Village and the Upper West Side for the last five years, we like living in a neighborhood with some diversity. But really, the folk we most enjoy seeing on the sidewalk and hanging out in the café down the street are the uber-trendoids with shaggy hair, interestingly placed piercings, and tattoos of all designs and denotations. Partly, we want to be like them. Partly, we want them to like us. Partly, we want to have sex with them.
      7. We love that it’s okay to be arrogant about where we live. Long live the cultural tyranny of the underclass!
      6. We can buy the coolest shit here. Second-hand stores abound, and most of them don’t mark up their goods 3000% like the “vintage” furniture “galleries” in Manhattan. We can get gorgeous, crafted, and sturdy 60s and 70s furniture for the same amount we’d pay for the new, badly constructed equivalents at Ikea.
     5. We live in 1500-square-foot loft with 12-foot ceilings and windows, windows everywhere.
      4. All politics is local: Our congresswoman’s office is under the JMZ on the corner of Roebling and Broadway, and from the street we can see the painting of Che Guevara hanging in the reception area. We repeat: Long live the cultural tyranny of the underclass!
      3. Each bodega in our neighborhood is smaller and stranger than the next. Our favorite is on S. 6th, near Berry. The attached junkyard is populated by chickens, pheasants, a rooster, a grouse, and several cats--all who strangely leave the birds alone. In the store, while listening to a dozen men play craps in the back room, we can buy bright orange peanut-butter-and-cracker snacks, some potato chips, and a Coke for $1.25.
      2. We live about 150 feet from the Williamsburg bridge, just high enough to look down on the slow traffic and look into the yellow-lit JMZ as it makes its way across the East River. The passing of the train is strangely, wonderfully soothing; it’s as regular as the tide and rumbles like the heartbeat of a giant (no irony intended).
      1. On the side of our building is a large sign that says “Dandy Zipper Factory.”