Overheard in front of the Prince St. Intermix around lunchtime today:
(Yappy blonde in Uggs, to her friend): "So will someone please tell me where Williamsburg is?"

Why, we'd be only too happy to tell you — not only where Williamsburg is, but how to get there and what to do once you've arrived! There's a lot of myth and disinformation floating around about Williamsburg, and we think it's only fair to let you in on some of the "insider" secrets of this much-maligned neighborhood, which seems to exist in a perpetual holding pattern between "so totally over" "so totally about to be Park Slope once all those new waterfront condos are finished" "so over it's cool again, but only this northerly part of South Williamsburg that just stopped being called Bushwick where I live with twenty performance artists and a cat named Vagina Dentata." Come, take our hand. Let's board the L train together.

Yes, the L train, that newly robot-ized conveyance, is how our journey begins. But what you, Miss Uggs, may not realize is that, depending on what L stop you choose to be disgorged at, you'll encounter a completely different neighborhood. Let's take this one step at a time.

Bedford Williamsburg:

You know that uncomfortable feeling that you get sometimes in Boston or Washington Square Park when you realize that everyone you've passed on the street for the last half hour has been younger than you, and you're only 25? Well, get ready to experience it during every moment you spend in Bedford-and-environs Williamsburg, which is pretty much one big NYU dorm. Since this neighborhood is the most convenient to Manhattan, it has the highest rents, but it's still sort of treeless and industrial and crappy. Ultimately, this means that the only people who live here are o.g. hipsters who have lived here forever and dumb students whose parents are willing to pay $2000 a month plus a sky-high Orthodox Jewish broker's fee to live in a leaky tenement. However, as buildings like Northside Piers and North 8 Condos near completion, the neighborhood's demographic base will shift, becoming more of a panoply of well-dressed, multiethnic yups. Also the sun will always be shining, and there will suddenly be, like, an old-growth forest along the waterfront. (We are basing this on research that we did by looking at an "artist's rendering" on the Toll Brothers website). If you're wandering around the Bedford strip and you need a cup of coffee in order to deal with the thoughts of your impending mortality /likely inescapable poverty, head to the Read, which has good scones. Verb has a pretentious name and will always fuck up your order. Also, even Starbucks doesn't charge $2 for tea.

Onwards, then, to Lorimer Williamsburg:

Highlights of this area are mostly food and drink related. Otherwise, let's face it, this neighborhood is butt. There are a lot of vinyl-sided houses inhabited by old Italian ladies. The food is a-ok at Dumont (one of the many Williamsburg restaurants that subscribes to the "burger for the poor folk, real food for the rich folk" philosophy of menu-building) but there is always someone annoying (or worse, someone you knew years ago but whose name you have totally forgotten) talking loudly at the table next to you. Union Pool is a good place to do coke and have sex in the bathroom.

We remember the first time we ventured out to the Graham Avenue stop of the L train:

We were answering a Craiglist posting for someone seeking a babysitter. (In retrospect, we were an idiot! What kind of moron goes to a stranger's house alone based on a Craiglist ad? A naive 19 year old who trusts the universe, we guess). We didn't get the job, and we remember thinking (about the prospective babysittees) "Poor child! How near-abusive of these parents, to raise their kids basically right under the BQE." Now we think of this neighborhood as relatively posh and kid-friendly, which says something about how the neighborhood has changed, or how our standards have gotten much lower, or both. Anyway, this neighborhood has an Old World charm, thanks to the authentic Italian pork stores and pizzerias that line Graham Avenue. Daddy's is a good bar with a good jukebox.

Of course, there's a lot more to Williamsburg than two new highrises, two coffee shops, two bars, and one restaurant. And there's a whole other tour to be taken off the J train. But we hope that this will at least get you started, Miss Uggs. Or at least keep you from shrieking dumb questions at your friend as you walk down the street in Soho ever again.