(Photo: Chris Tonucci)
We know that Greenpoint is a “hipster haven” — a term you’ve used at least 114 times in recent years — but does that really make McGuinness Boulevard the “Hipster Highway”?
Because that’s what you called it in yesterday’s item about reduced speed limits on McGuinness Boulvard. Sure, Hipster Highway sounds catchy (yay, alliteration!) but what makes you think McGuinness is any such thing?
Is it all the hipsters who get tans at Margaret’s European Beauty Center on the corner of Driggs? or buy truck parts on the corner of Calyer? or hang out at the funeral home on the corner of Nassau? or get their cars detailed on the corner of Engert? or get a bumpin’ sound system installed at All-Boro Car Stereo on the corner of Newton? or take karate lessons on the corner of Meserole? or get a tune-up on the corner of Huron? or fill up their ironic cars at any number of gas stations?
Or maybe it’s all the hipsters who buy flourescent safety vests at Workmates & Contractor’s Aid Outlet? Everybody knows safety vests are the new bomber jacket.
But wait, “Hipster Highway” is in quotes, so maybe someone else has been calling it that? Let’s Google! Ah yes, it’s been called that two other times — by the Daily News. One item manages to use the word hipster five times in describing a “hipster son” and “hipster deejay” who were killed by vehicles.
Commenters said it was “shameful and disgusting” to reduce victims to a “Williamsburg stereotype” and someone even wrote a letter to the editor. Brooklyn 11211 helpfully shared a list of people in their 40s and 60s who had also been killed on the boulevard.
More recently, 32-year-old Nicole Detweiler was struck and killed on McGuinness. It’s uncertain whether the Daily News would’ve classified her as a hipster since she was a dog care specialist and hairstylist who worked with Emeril Lagasse (not exactly the skinny jeans type); but then again she was also worked with Sandra Bernhardt (ding ding?) and was into dance (that’s artsy!), so who knows.
Either way, Doyle Murphy — the reporter who broke the news that even in “Brooklyn’s hipster nabes” people get dry cleaning done — is still trying to make Hipster Highway happen.
Guys, it’s not going to happen.
Just stop.