Hipsters Voluntarily Get Asses Beat on Upper East Side
In the killing of hipsters for sport, realtors are the ruthless bounty hunters, quietly sniffing out dive bars and thrift stores and gay enclaves before moving in for the kill. Once the realtors smell blood, it's only a matter of time before the endangered hipster is priced out of his or her own habitat. (For reference, read: most of lower Manhattan, Park Slope, Williamsburg.) So where, then, are the homeless bohos to go? Somewhere unchartered, undiscovered, untouched by the hands of trendiness — the Upper East Side, of course. Just ask pioneering 27-year-old Will Hooks, who recently defected from Williamsburg and is a fan of uptown life:
"In Williamsburg, I had to wear my corduroy pants or my tight jeans, and I was very emo-ish - even though I didn't listen to emo," he says, laughing. "I had mohawks. I had a mullet - and I'm black! That totally worked there, but it wouldn't work uptown."
Though freed from the strictures of the scenester dress code when he fled uptown, Hooks (who lives in a pocket of what is technically Spanish Harlem and home to a growing yuppie scene) asserts that even today, "you could not peg me as an Upper East Sider - especially with the downtown mentality that I have."
Also, because he's black.