Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.04.2006, Blaðsíða 44

talk to a landlord? I say, ‘I sell guitars to musi-
cians.’ That’s the only way they’ll rent to you, if
you tell them you take money from musicians.
That’s my secret. Don’t ever print that,” he
tells me.
Defending from Whom?
“I love Brooklyn, but you just have to grow up
and move on,” my former roommate, an adver-
tising copywriter who moved from Brooklyn
to the Lower East Side of Manhattan tells me.
“You can only fight it for so long, but now
Brooklyn costs as much as Manhattan, and
people have the same kind of jobs, it just takes
longer to get home.”
Even a friend who broke through her writ-
ing slump by publishing City Baby Brooklyn:
The Ultimate Guide for Parents has men-
tioned getting out. That they are moving out is
nothing new: one-quarter of all Americans are
descended from people who lived in Brook-
lyn… and moved out. The amazing thing
about people who move away from Brooklyn
now is how bitter they are over what they’re
losing by moving.
Our guide for a good portion of our visit
was Details magazine’s Senior Writer Bart Bla-
sengame – a man every bit as hip as his name.
Dodging the sell-out culture of Manhattan,
and the overhyped areas like Williamsburg,
he settled down in Greenpoint five years ago.
A ruggedly handsome Polish neighbour-
hood stocked with excellent used-clothing
stores, camera shops, record shops and Thai
restaurants, to say nothing of local bars run
by displaced Southerners, to hear Blasengame
tell it, Greenpoint was paradise a few months
ago. By sheer coincidence, over brunch, the
producer of Point Break LIVE! walks into the
restaurant, registering only casual surprise that
we would be in this neighbourhood, and joins
in on the gentrification discussion and tells us
he’s happy to be away from Williamsburg, safe
in the haven that is Greenpoint.
Blasengame splits from us: we walk the
Brooklyn Bridge and check in on Williams-
burg galleries, he spends the ideal day going
to the Laundromat, then buying used shirts
and records. That night we decide to check
the difference – if everybody is moving back
to Manhattan, especially the Lower East Side,
Manhattan must have gotten cooler, surely,
by now, as New York Magazine suggested in
a cover story back in 2003, “Manhattan is the
new Brooklyn.”
Following the best advice we can get, that
of New York gossip and night life columnists,
we charge through the Lower East Side, hop-
ing to come into contact with genius, intel-
ligence or at least cool indifference. We get
fitted jeans, sport coats and exposure to the
lines, “Excuse me, big guy, I’m gonna scoot by
you,” and “I wouldn’t kick her outta bed for
eatin’ crackers.”
Bitter and drunk, we crash a party of New
York journalists. Before we can explain to the
hosts why we feel we should have restitution
for our crappy night out, our guide, Mr. Bla-
sengame, is accosted for wearing a sweatshirt
with the slogan “Defend Brooklyn.” A gossip
columnist is bitter to see such a shirt.
“Who are you defending Brooklyn from,
exactly?” the columnist asks, his own shirt
unbuttoned to expose as much toned chest as
possible.
“From people like you!” Blasengame
shouts, launching into a lengthy tirade, heavy
on the f-bomb.
Mercifully, the loudest man at the party
decides that he likes our photographer, and he
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