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From our recording studio in Brooklyn, we make audio that celebrates human creativity, history and the spaces we live to learn about.

Late one night during Covid, we started wondering “Did Williamsburg invent the hipster?”

Turns out the answer is no. In fact, probably closer to the opposite. The first hipsters were fashionable non-conformists and creative countercultural types. But, what happens when a movement founded on non-conformity becomes something you can buy off the rack? 

Join us on a sociological dive into this subculture. We’ll find all of the markers of hipsterism, from thrifting and vinyls, to beer and bowling, and even (vegan) ice cream.

This walk was created in Summer 2020.

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Williamsburg

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New York

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“It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.”
― E.B. White

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In a neighborhood like Williamsburg, change is the only constant. 

You’re standing next to the neighborhood’s oldest greenspace, McCarren Park. It’s not a huge park and you’re only seeing about a third of it here. It extends off and has a huge pool that was built by Robert Moses in the 30s, who supposedly used old sections of boardwalk from Coney Island. In the late 2000s, the pool was drained and you could buy tickets to see bands like MIA and Sonic Youth play in front of a sun soaked crowd.  But like every summer fling, this one was destined to end. Due to public outcry from those who wanted their swimming pool back, the city reclaimed the concert venue and made it a public pool again.

Face Bernies across the street, and turn left to start walking along the sidewalk.

Let’s go back in time about a hundred years. Take note of that old brick building on your right, the one with the green copper sign at the top. When Royal Lace Paper Works opened in 1911, they specialized in hand-engraved products like doilies and placemats. Their wealthy customer base probably didn’t live nearby. The workers did, though.

For over a century, the neighborhood reflected a patchwork of working class immigrant communities. To the north and into neighboring Greenpoint, it was predominantly Italian and Polish; to the South, Hasidic and Puerto Rican. Many of these communities remain, especially the Hasidic Jewish enclave in South Williamsburg, while others have been priced out.
These days, you’re surrounded by locals that are more socioeconomically aligned with Royal Lace’s former customers. Drastic gentrification took place over the past 20 years when Williamsburg became synonymous with ‘Hipster’. The term is passé at this point, because the stereotype has been commodified and parodied to no end.
  
In its heyday, people used the term Hipster to describe Williamsburg's overall aesthetic. These hipsters were fashionable non-conformists and creative countercultural types. They combined intellectual sensibilities and liberal politics with a preference for workwear, the kind of clothes someone might wear while hauling lumber or welding. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu defined it as “an enchanted superiority in scattered individuals,” which points to our individual desire to stand out...but humans are inherently social beings, so what happens when hipsterism becomes a global subculture? 
 
Up ahead, keep walking straight to cross the street, then turn left. 
 
People-watching should be fun on this walk, pay special attention to style. Because style is  a form of resistance, a refusal to be reigned in by social convention. This is evident throughout changing empires and bloody revolutions, amongst the beat generation of the 50s and the punks of the 70s. Today, in Williamsburg, hipster non-conformity collides with late stage capitalism, subsuming its style into the mainstream. You’ll notice this in the way people dress and in the retail landscape.
 
That tension is what we’re exploring on this walk. Many of those early businesses that set up shop here in the late 90’s and early 2000’s are still here today. We’re going to find them and see how they continue to shape the fabric of Williamsburg, holding out and thriving amongst the newer entrants.

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McCarren Park (Lorimer and Driggs)

Tour Item

Primer McCarren Park

After you've crossed the street, turn left. 

Ok you got me... We called this a Williamsburg tour but we’re technically in Greenpoint. Historically, Greenpoint has woven together a tapestry of immigrant communities, but that’s also changing as Williamsburg’s gentrification spills outward. 

Turn right on the next block. 

For those of us who lived through that hipster phase, you’ll know that to dress the part, a curatorial eye for vintage is a must. We’re on our way to Beacon’s Closet, a vintage clothing store that originally opened on the other side of the park, and from there we’ll make our way into the heart of Williamsburg. 

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Beacon's Closet

Look for a sign with a neon baby in thick rimmed glasses down the block, the kind Roy Orbison wore. If you decide to venture in, take your time! Or, you can linger out front for a few moments and peer through the windows. Either way, I’ll let Henna tell you a little bit about how this vintage mecca came to be.

The origin story of Beacon’s Closet sounds like a fairy tale. An Arizona girl moves to Brooklyn in 1996, lives with her brother in a converted warehouse, then in the storage room of what would become the original Beacon’s Closet on Bedford Street. 

Somewhere along the way Carrie Peterson starts an internationally recognized vintage clothing trade, first by selling her own collection then raiding friends’ closets, and then thrifting. 

Fast Forward a few fun decades, Peterson built the store’s massive home right here, along with a handful of other locations in New York.

Today, Beacon’s Closet is something of a temple of pre-loved clothes, where customers worship at the altar of vintage. The inventory is plentiful and organized by color, so digging is half the fun. If you dig long enough, you’ll find some amazing gems -- the perfect mom jeans, a pair of Givenchy boots, 70s era sundresses and all manner of ironic t-shirts with silk screened quotes from films you’ve never heard of. 

When you’re ready, retrace your steps and head back to Nassau. We’ll take a right to continue down the block.

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At Beacon's Closet

Inside Beacon's Closet

When you get back to Nassau, turn right. Continue walking straight for a few blocks, 

The role of a vintage emporium like Beacon’s Closet speaks volumes about the dominant subculture here. 

People thrift shop to literally and figuratively try on identities. And to connect to the past, to a greater narrative. 

In the Theory of the Leisure Class, economist Thorstein Veblen coined the concept of conspicuous consumption, we buy in an effort to appear who we aspire to be.

 For some, that’s to stand out from the crowd. But equally implicit within that impulse is a fundamental desire to belong to a group you can relate to, to find your tribe. And so we thrift. 

Thrift shopping has always been a hipster calling card. Beyond style, it also fit with the hipster commitment to repurpose and reuse, from the clothes we wore to the spaces we lived in.

Keep walking straight another block. We’re looking for North 14th.

The neighborhood’s sartorial flair is contagious. Hipster style became a global export, new coffee shops, bars, co-working spaces, luxury lofts that followed the Williamsburg and Shoreditch aesthetic began popping up from Talinn to Taipei. It makes you wonder, have the social and cultural values of hipsterism also spread?


As you walk, you may have noticed a big high school across the street to the left, the one under scaffolding. This school was originally built in the 30’s as an automotive vocational school, back when the Great Depression had ravaged American jobs. At the time, President FDR’s Secretary of Labor was a woman named Frances Perkins. This school used to bear her name, but she shouldn’t be forgotten. As of 2018, it’s the Automotive Technical High School. Thanks in large part to Frances Perkins’s work, we now have Social Security, unemployment insurance, the 40-hour work week, and the minimum wage. 

Perkins’s accomplishments are particularly meaningful here in Williamsburg. Historically, the neighborhood was an enclave of working class and immigrant communities. Her New Deal initiatives created safer conditions for workers who labored in the former factories we’ll pass throughout this walk.

Once you reach North 14th, cross the street towards a boutique and coffee shop called Upstate Stock. It’s in that white building ahead. We’ll continue once you’re across the road.

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Frances Perkins High School

New Styles, New Deal

After you cross the street, turn right onto North 14th. About half way down the block, on the left, do you see the red Coca-Cola sign that says “Bar”? That’s where we’re headed.

Since McCarren Park is so centrally located in Williamsburg, afternoons spent in the park often evolve into evening hangouts. As a result, there’s no shortage of dive bars and craft cocktail places around here - depending on your preference. For the moment, we’re going to stay dive-y.


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En route to the Gutter

En route to the gutter

When you’re under the coke sign, you’re in front of The Gutter, a dive bar and bowling alley combo. Pause here for just a second

The one-word marquee unassumingly beckons Williamsburg hipsters who are fed up with other, more lavish nightlife options. The alley’s dive bar feel neatly conforms to the neighborhood’s aesthetic -- scruffy but intentional, like a well-kempt beard.

If you’re already in need of a drink or a turn on the lanes, you can just pause me and pick me back up when you’re ready. Don’t worry, I have the memory of a goldfish, so I won’t be hurt. If you’re more in the mood to keep charging forward, there will be plenty of other options for drinks later, trust me.

Let’s keep going straight down this block, and take a left at the end of it onto Wythe. While we’re walking to the next spot, Mike will tell you a bit more about this place.

Bowling alleys have long been trash-talked as the poor man’s country club. The Gutter, however, wears that insult as a badge of honor, with a self-deprecating name to match. Inside, they’ve furnished the place with well-worn leather booths and salvaged antique chandeliers to match the unpretentious comfort of your favorite hometown watering hole. The lanes are unapologetically low-tech, the PBR plentiful, and the throwback vibe just authentic enough without feeling like a pastiche. This place walks a cultural line in Williamsburg, between the “OG residents” who have lived here a long time, and the newer transplants. 

Like several other stops on this walk, it also reflects the Williamsburg subculture’s pull towards nostalgia, to all things retro and vintage. The Gutter’s allegiance to old-school bowling alley culture stands in stark contrast to so many of the newer businesses that have popped up around it.

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At The Gutter

Inside the Gutter

You’re about to turn left, here onto Wythe. But before you do, did you notice the skyline off in the distance? I always delight in catching a glimpse of the Empire State Building, especially when the foreground contrasts this example of art deco refinement and how midtown once was the center of the world, and now new business empires are built here. 

Ok, let's go left, and continue for two blocks. 

As you’re walking, you’ll start to get a sense for the enormous capital investment that has poured into developing this neighborhood. To the left, that giant white building that looks like a cruise ship on stilts is a luxury hotel called the WIlliam Vale. There are three more luxury hotels coming up in the next 3 blocks. Can you spot them? Take a minute to consider how this section of Williamsburg -- the Wythe corridor, as it’s called in developer-speak -- was just 20 years ago surrounded by abandoned warehouses. Contrast that post-industrial streetscape with the bevy of trendy hotels you see here now.

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En route to Brooklyn Bowl

We’re getting pretty close to Brooklyn Bowl, another bowling alley I want to show you. This one’s quite a bit more elaborate. Before they opened, the idea of going to see your favorite band at a bowling alley seemed a bit...random. If you think about the crash of pins and squeak of bowling shoes on shiny lanes, it may have been a little distracting even. But somehow it works. During the 2010’s, a bowling alley in a former industrial wasteland became one of the hottest places to see a concert in Williamsburg.

This, of course, is no accident. Owner Peter Shapiro went to ridiculous lengths to make bands sound acoustically pristine while bowlers vie for a strike. The alleys are right next to the stage, so Shapiro installed string-based pin setters to eliminate the low-end hum and grinding noise of a typical bowling alley. The stage is also way larger than most, a sprawling 35 by 20 feet. Concertgoers rarely think about this stuff, but it makes a big difference when you come to see a show and your friends want easy access to the bar.

All this adds up to explain why Brooklyn Bowl’s particular stretch of Wythe Avenue has become such a hub for Williamsburg scenesters. 

That was not the case in 2009 when Brooklyn Bowl first opened. 

The area was nearly barren, and people laughed at Shapiro when he shared his idea of building a combination concert hall and bowling alley here. 

But with new locations now open in Las Vegas and Nashville, Brooklyn Bowl seems to have found a winning strategy.

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At Brooklyn Bowl

Inside Brooklyn Bowl

One thing you’ll notice about Brooklyn Bowl is the ubiquity of Brooklyn Brewery beer on tap. These two hipster holdouts have intentionally supported one another as new businesses continue to flood into the neighborhood. Keep walking just past Brooklyn Bowl to see the enormous mural on your left which belongs to Brooklyn Brewery. Let’s take a left at the corner and walk down the block.

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En Route to Brooklyn Brewery

After you take a left at the mural, walk down the block past the big red doors of the main entrance to Brooklyn Brewery.

When Brooklyn Brewery first set up shop in 1990, this area was a post-industrial no-man’s land of abandoned warehouses and factories. Now, rental prices are ten times higher. This entire block of North 11th between Wythe and Berry earned the name, Brewers Row, in 2000. It’s important to note that this moniker is more of a historical callback. It reminds us that Brooklyn was home to dozens of micro-breweries long before craft beer was trendy.

Actually, if you go all the way back to the 1880’s, Brooklyn was home to the very first wave of New York brewers. German and Austrian immigrants arrived here with family heirlooms and traditions handed down through the generations, and brewing was one of those traditions. They took advantage of Long Island’s pure water to transform Brooklyn into a beer-making capitol. By the turn of the century, Brooklyn produced more beer than Detroit and Milkwaukee combined. There were almost fifty breweries between here and Bushwick, and ten percent of all American beer was brewed right here in Brooklyn.

By the time Prohibition had come and gone, mainstream taste was leaning more towards national-brand macrobrews, and that trend held until the craft beer revival brought Brooklyn’s brewery culture full circle.

Do you spot that handsome warehouse building on your right? The one with the cast iron facade? Good. Pause here for a moment, and I’ll tell you about it. This landmarked building is called The Hecla Iron Works. It was completed in the late 1890s and was named after Mount Hekla, an active volcano in Iceland. It was originally a design studio and foundry established by two Scandinavians: Niels Poulson who’s Danish and Charles Eger who’s Norwegian. 

Two fires engulfed the complex in 1889 and 1891, which amounted to half a million dollars in damages, but the two didn’t give up, they were relentless and after much iteration, they pioneered a fireproof design for future buildings. You can spot iconic works that were made right here by Hecla around the city, including the clock in front of the Flatiron building, the Lullwater Bridge in Prospect Park, and the decorative railing of the Dakota on the Upper West Side. You can also see their work in the Grand Central Terminal and New York Stock Exchange 

The foundry has gone through several iterations, but what earned Hecla its landmark status is the eye-catching metal sheathing in front of you. The innovation here is a new patination, which meant exposing the iron element to super-heated steam that converts the rust into magnetite. The result is a surface that appears soft and velvety, that is mostly impervious to weather. 
Today, it looks like Brooklyn Brewery has absorbed this building into its holdings, but you can rent office space here under the original vaulted ceilings. What do you think Mike, can we afford it yet?

I don’t think we’ve quite outgrown our dining table yet. 
Let’s continue on down the block, where we’ll take a right.

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German ale + Scandinavian design

German ale and Scandinavian design

Take a right on the next street, which is Berry and walk down a block.

As you make the turn, look up at the building on your right. You’ll notice the brooklyn brewery logo up high above the graffiti.

Over 3,000 people visit the Brooklyn Brewery taproom on a normal weekend. Most will crack open a bottle or can and pause a moment to glance at the trademark cursive “B” printed on the label of their lager. This logo was designed by one of the most celebrated designers, Milton Glaser, who also made the I Love New York logo. Brewery cofounder Steve Hindy settled on that logo after first envisioning an eagle to soar alongside the company’s original name, Brooklyn Eagle Beer. Hindy was a former correspondent with the Associated Press, and he liked the idea of using a newspaper masthead eagle for his brand. 

After workshopping the image, the company lost the bird in favor of a single cursive white “B.” For Hindy, the “B” was a nostalgic callback to the Brooklyn Dodgers’ “D.” That feeling crystallized into something more timeless, and the “B” has survived as Brooklyn Brewery adapts to Williamsburg’s metamorphosis. 


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Brooklyn Brewery Logo

The Brooklyn Brewery Logo

Turn right on to North 10th, and make your way to the next intersection, where you’ll go left.

The rise of post-industrial Williamsburg is on full display to your right. The Bathhouse, which is a stylish wellness spa and restaurant occupies the site of the old Dr. Brown’s Soda Factory.

Dr. Brown’s is an iconic brand of old Brooklyn. Their labels are snapshots of New York monuments: On their Cream Soda, you’ll see the Statue of Liberty. On their Cel-Ray, the Brooklyn Bridge. Perhaps this is what Karl Marx meant when he called commodities “social hieroglyphs.” Encoded within Dr. Brown’s Soda is a symbol of what New York means to people who have roots here.

As you walk down this block, we’ll pass two murals on your right that I’ll tell you about. You’ll notice that these murals blur the line between street art and advertising. Since 2004, Colossal Media has taken on the labor-intensive task of resurrecting the hand-painted billboard for a modern sensibility. 


These ads are an homage to the bygone era of wall dogs, the men who spent their workdays suspended several stories high to paint massive images on the sides of buildings. 

The height of the hand-painted sign industry in New York fell between the 1920s and the 1940s.

Colossal’s aesthetic is also a nod to New York’s rich history of street art. In the 1980s, New Yorkers began to see more and more graffiti and street art scattered around the city’s walls and subway stations. Artists typically created their work invisibly and subversively -- late at night or out of public view. Advertisers have found a way to commodify and perhaps even domesticate this practice, so the creation of this street art now takes place visibly and legally. This trend has fundamentally altered the nature of street art. What was once a process of piece-making is now about place-making, in a way that’s more in service of commercialization than art for art’s sake.

When you get to Wythe, turn left.

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Soda and Walldogs

Bubbles and Graffiti

Who says records are dead? We’re en route to a music store that totally contradicts that claim. The shop’s name, Rough Trade, may acknowledge the record industry’s uphill battle, but the smashing success of their Williamsburg location and parent record label have proven vinyl doomsday predictors wrong in New York and beyond.

Rough Trade finds its roots in 1970s West London. The early punk ethos was all about DIY energy. Any band who had pressed their own records could bring them to Rough Trade for distribution, and this egalitarian approach was pretty radical for the time.

The indie label got off its feet at the very moment the powder keg of British punk was about to explode. Luminary labelmates like the Smiths and the Fall influenced the rise of post-punk, a subculture that still gives voice to the angst of young listeners. It’s a bleak and tortured sound that reverberates through Rough Trade NYC, which has been in the neighborhood since 2013. 

Turn Right when you get to North 9th.

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En route to Rough Trade

Destination record shops like Rough Trade, along with Amoeba in Los Angeles and Third Man in Nashville, have carved out a viable new space for analog music while adapting to digital distribution trends. Events like Record Store Day, the audiophile’s Christmas in April since 2008, exploits social media outreach to prop up the vinyl lifestyle. At Rough Trade, there is a light that -- hopefully -- will never go out.


Take your time at Rough Trade, and see if you can find any new favorites.

When you’re done, keep walking down the block in the same direction. I’ll meet you on the corner of Kent Street.

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At Rough Trade

Inside Rough Trade

Take a left onto Kent. We’re going to walk down this street for a few blocks, all the way to North 6th. 

As you’re walking, you’ll notice a park to your right, which offers great views of the Manhattan skyline. The park was renamed in February 2020 to honor Marsha P. Johnson, a gay rights activist and self-identified drag queen. She was an important figure in the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front. Johnson also modeled for Andy Warhol and performed onstage with the drag performance troupe Hot Peaches. 

Historical commemoration, or, the way we choose to honor the past, reveals a lot about a city’s priorities. Back in 1909, McCarren Park got its name from State Senator Pat McCarren. By all accounts, McCarren’s political maneuvers were mired in corruption. But, if not for him, we might not have the Williamsburg Bridge. More on that later. Compare that origin story to Marsha P Johnson Park. In 1909, New Yorkers honored a scheming politician. In 2020, a champion of LGBTQ rights.    

Keep walking straight until you hit North 7th, where we’ll take a left. 

The southern part of the park, which is coming up on the right, is normally home to Smorgasburg, the largest weekly open-air food market in America.

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Marsha P. Johnson Park

It should be obvious by now that plenty of investment went into making Williamsburg the way it is, but a ton of credit is due to artists

At the next intersection, if you look to your left down the block, you spot a purple building which is home to Artists & Fleas. Poke your head in, I’ll tell you more about it as you make your way. . Artists & Fleas is a space where makers bring their goods to market. The terms hipster and artisanal have become so intertwined that we take ‘artisan’ goods for granted these days. , but how did that happen? .

See, way back in the late 90s, in the dot-com era, it was the norm to buy things that were shiney and -new, and maybe even a little homogenous. In the wake of 9/11, Politics seeped into material culture, into the way people wanted to live. It was a time of uncertainty and fear. Americans from Williamsburg to Wyoming yearned to nest, to return to humanity, to warmth -- to something with a narrative. Less mass-produced, more small-batch and handmade. 

We live in unprecedented times now amid the coronavirus pandemic, and in some ways, we can parallel this sense of uncertainty and the return to craft to the movement of the early 2000s. On a different scale of course.

Two years after Amy and Ronen founded Artist & Fleas...Enters Etsy, the craft and vintage e-commerce company that began in a Brooklyn apartment in 2005. Then massive corporations like domino’s pizza and wendy’s started using the term artisanal in their advertising, so now it’s easy to be dismissive of the term all together.  but like anything else in Williamsburg, once it becomes too ubiquitous or commodified, you can lean on creatives to consistently innovate. 

When you’ve taken it all in, retrace your steps back to Kent and turn left. Keep going until North 6th.

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Artists & Fleas

Artists and Fleas

Creative reuse is a trademark of material culture in Williamsburg. Well, then it should come as no surprise that one of the neighborhood's most well known music venues was once a mayonnaise plant.

When you reach North 6th, turn left.

After you’ve made the turn, look up ahead on the right, about half way down the block, and you’ll see the awning of the Music Hall of Williamsburg, which houses a state of the art performance space. 

The club first opened in the spring of 2001. Back then, it was called Northsix and quickly gained a reputation for ear-bleedingly noisy rock shows and grunge appeal. 
Six years later, Williamsburg was deep into the next stage of gentrification, and Northsix was replaced by a sleek new club to match the neighborhood’s transforming aesthetic. Weathered floors and high school risers gave way to a glossy new paint job, upscale balconies and acoustic makeover. Patti Smith played opening night.

Keep walking on this block to see another live music venue. In the early 2000’s, an indie music scene was growing in Brooklyn. Right after 9/11, the political and cultural tensions hadn’t fully set in yet, and musicians who lived and played shows in Williamsburg operated with a sense of fatalistic freedom. Out of that era came a slew of post-punk and art rock outfits like TV on the Radio, Les Savy Fav, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. At the time, most of the music venues in Williamsburg were dusty dive bars. Today, we’ve got Brooklyn Bowl, Music Hall of Williamsburg, and National Sawdust.


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Music Hall of Williamsburg

On the right, you’ll see “National Sawdust” written in huge block letters at the top of a building.

The National Sawdust Company facility shuttered decades ago, lying fallow in industrial Williamsburg until the neighborhood’s infamous zoning changes in the early 2000’s. That’s when many industrial vestiges were demolished or repurposed to make way for new Williamsburg. This building, for example, is now a state of the art nonprofit music venue. 

You can turn right here to walk down Wythe for another couple blocks. 

After you turn right, look at this side of National Sawdust and you’ll notice a huge mural. Of course, National Sawdust isn’t the first or last to dress up their industrial facade with a flashy mural. It’s basically become the gold standard in creative placemaking here in Brooklyn and beyond. Graffiti and collage styles also trace back to the earliest hipsters. When Norman Mailer first wrote about the subculture in the 1940s, he described this particular aesthetic as a superimposition of your presence on someone else’s. Someone with power. It’s another show of resistance, which is pretty on-brand for a holdout like National Sawdust.

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National Sawdust

When I lived in Williamsburg back in 2011, after spending the afternoons catching up with friends over coffee and vintage shopping, we’d stop at the Van Leeuwen Ice Cream truck which was typically parked on Bedford. 

When its founder, Ben Van Leeuwen, began churning ice cream in his Brooklyn kitchen in 2007, he had childhood nostalgia on his mind. He wanted to bring out the quintessential joy a kid feels running up to a neighborhood ice cream truck.

I certainly felt that way as an adult when I saw that intriguing flavors like Earl Grey and Honeycomb were on offer. 

In a few short years, Van Leeuwen has upgraded from a single ice cream truck to a $20 million business in 44 states. They now purvey 35 regular flavors sold in a cup, a cone, or in an easter egg-colored pint. Your vegan friend doesn’t have to sulk either, Ben’s got you covered.

We'll wait for you further down the block.

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Van Leeuwen Ice Cream

Continue straight for one more block on Wythe. We’ll turn right North 4th.

Much of what we’re seeing may be historically or geographically significant, but embedded within these sites are countless personal stories as well. And they’re often hidden from view. Two such stories belong to Jonas and Adolfas Mekas, who settled in Williamsburg in 1949 after fleeing Lithuania during World War II. Within weeks of getting here, they borrowed money to purchase a Bolex camera and began documenting everyday life on these very streets. Their films told stories about the immigrant enclaves that shaped this section of Brooklyn. As a result of a lifetime of work, Jonas Mekas is referred to as the “Godfather of American avant-garde cinema”, and his work has been exhibited in museums.

Up ahead on the next block, you’re going to take a right.

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Mekas Brothers

The Mekas Brothers

As we narrow in on the home stretch of this walk, take a few beats to take in all of the juxtapositions of old and new. We’re about to approach North 3rd Street. A fading painted sign hints at the past life of the building on the south corner of the street, where it reads, “Washing.” The absence of the surrounding letters leaves more questions than answers. Was it an old laundry? A business owned by someone named Washington? The jury’s still out on this ghost sign. Let’s turn right on this block.  

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A Ghost Sign

Walk along North 4th for a couple blocks until you get to River street. 
We might associate the term hipster with the 2000s, but the term appeared in the 1940s when Norman Mailer wrote of the hipster as a subculture of rebellious young Americans, predominantly white, who came out of World War II disillusioned and in search of something to liberate themselves from society’s confines. For some, that liberation came by growing a jungle of cannabis right here in Williamsburg.

Yep, in the 1950s, Williamsburg had its own illicit green rush. This whole area was scattered with weed fields. City officials were nonplussed, dubbing the crop an “evil harvest.”

Within 60 days, city officials had ripped out millions of dollars worth of weed. The seven foot high plants had covered fields from the Williamsburg Bridge all the way to Cobble Hill and East New York. Of course, this marijuana jungle was no accident. Beatnik culture was deeply rooted in New York City by the early 1950s. For this subculture, smoking weed was part and parcel of what they called “getting hip,” which also included frequenting jazz clubs and poetry readings. For some reason reason, city officials decided to leave jazz and poetry alone, and only went after the weed.

The 1951 marijuana crackdown spurred a cat and mouse game between beatniks and the man that would continue into the ensuing decades. The hipster descendants of beatnik culture are still firmly anti-establishment, though today they source their weed from craft growers without much risk of getting busted. 

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Evil Weed

When you get to Kent, cross the street, and walk towards the “Dead End” sign just before the river, then turn left on River Street. 
 
A feeling of stark newness encroaches on these older vestiges. Just like the constellation of fading signage around the neighborhood, Williamsburg’s industrial past is gradually being painted over by new development. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing -- it’s just complicated. The emergence of chain stores and condos is part of what has raised the quality of life in Williamsburg. But ask yourself, for whom and what has the neighborhood lost in the process?
 
The hipster culture of the 2000’s tapped into a sense of collective identity, which elevated values like wellness, environmentalism, and social equity. They showed up at Occupy Wall Street, and are now chanting Black Lives Matter. It’s a subculture that is generally aware of its privilege and emphasizes cultural and social capital sometimes over material wealth.

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Old and New

Development...its complicated

Turn left on River Street. Then look straight ahead and find the teal cranes way up ahead. That’s Domino Park, where we’re headed.
 
Nowhere is this tension more obvious than where we are now, the Williamsburg waterfront. On your left, the surrounding blocks are lined with luxury condos. To your right, a chain link fence divides us from a fleet of garbage trucks, another reminder that Williamsburg has been one of New York City’s industrial dumping grounds for over two centuries. When Robert Moses developed the land around here in the 1930s and 40s, he envisioned large roads as a buffer between residential neighborhoods and the industrial waterfront. He never would have imagined the direction developers are taking this area nowadays, as they carve out as much space as possible for upscale housing and a picture-perfect park.

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The Waterfront

The Williamsburg Waterfront

Keep walking straight ahead, towards the bridge. 

The Williamsburg Bridge wasn’t the first bridge to span the East River, but its construction in 1896 came at a boiling point in New York City politics. The bridge’s evolution from idea to edifice can be credited to a scheming state senator by the name of Patrick McCarren -- the same McCarren as in McCarren Park. McCarren was corrupt and conniving. He walked a thin line between advocating for the working class of Brooklyn and currying favor with big industry. Sound familiar? Well, at that time sugar and oil were the industrial giants in Williamsburg, and New Yorkers later discovered that McCarren was actually on the payroll of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company.

However, thanks to the bridge, Williamsburg’s growing population now had easy access to Manhattan. Politicians also used the construction of the bridge as a ploy to cleanse one of Manhattan’s seediest areas. Corlears Hook, is on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge, sandwiched between FDR Drive and the East River on the Lower East Side. By the 1890s, it had become a notorious red light district. If you’re wondering where the term “hooker” came from, look no further.

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The Bridge

The Williamsburg Bridge

We’re coming up on the old ferry terminal for Williamsburg, back when it used to be its own town. At the time there was an H at the end of the burg. 

In 1802, a land speculator named Richard Woodhull got the bright idea to turn this land into New York’s first residential suburb. He named it Williamsburgh, with an H, after the first guy to survey it, Colonel Jonathan Williams. Woodhull went bankrupt a short time later, but the plans for Williamsburgh went forward. From that point on, Williamsburgh’s transformation in the 19th century bears an uncanny resemblance to the 21st century gentrification we’ve grown to know too well.

In 1819, Williamsburgh got its first distillery. Then, wealthy professionals started popping up at private clubs and beer gardens. Yuppies and craft beer, check. Big business followed. Pfizer Pharmaceutical opened a molasses plant that would eventually manufacture penicillin. Havermeyers & Elder Sugar -- now Domino Sugar -- also set up shop here along the water. Within a hundred years, Williamsburg, now with no “H,” went from being sparse farmland to the most densely populated area of Brooklyn. 

Of course, now that Williamsburg is a coveted place to hang your hat, residents want more of what the area was back when the steam ferry zig zagged the East River -- they want greenspace. So in 1998, the newest iteration of Grand Ferry Park opened, which will appear on your right at the end of the chainlink fence. The designers preserved the more charming elements of the waterfront’s industrial past, the old smokestack and the circular pattern of cobblestones that bordered the molasses plant, which sounds quaint, but again, it was operated by Big Pharma. Make sure you look to your right immediately after the chainlink fence. It’s a pretty small park.

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Grand Ferry Park

Keep walking straight, and we’ll go into Domino Park. Stay on the sidewalk so we can take you to one final place before you cut right for the waterfront views.

One of the biggest ways Domino Park has transformed the Williamsburg waterfront is simply its footprint. City planners have recently taken to putting areas of the city on strict road diets to make room for pedestrians, cyclists, and wherever possible, natural beauty -- even if it’s heavily manicured. The two-lane River Street now runs along this colorful reimagining of a former industrial area. 

After the refinery closed in 2004, city officials and residents clamored to get their two cents in about the opportunities for profiteering and sunbathing that this area could offer. Affordable housing was another hot button issue in those early conversations. Not for nothing, around a quarter of the Domino corridor’s newly developed apartments are available through the affordable housing lottery.

At first, it might be surprising to see this candy-colored waterfront park so close to a rusted-out former factory. But if you look closer at the barrel-like structures and the teal color scheme throughout the park, you’ll realize that James Corner Field Operations, the park’s designers who are also behind the High Line, designed the park around the factory’s artifacts.

Sugar is still the thematic throughline here. Mark Reigelman designed the playground as a post-modern history lesson about the sugar production process. Between that and the dormant cranes painted teal to match the color scheme, Domino Park is a testament to Williamsburg’s theory of change. What was once an industrial caterpillar can butterfly into a photogenic park. Just ahead of you on the left, you can now see the old facade of the domino sugar factory.

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Domino Park

Long before Van Leeuwen’s Ice Cream and Smorgasburg’s artisanal s’mores, Williamsburg was even more sugar-crazed. For over 150 years, the area was one of the sugar-refining capitals of the world. The rusted-out building up ahead on the left is living proof.

The Domino Sugar Factory originally belonged to the Havemeyer family and their saccharine empire. By the end of the Civil War, their refinery was the largest worldwide. 

Today, the remains of the domino sugar factory, which eventually closed in 2004, serve as a backdrop for the newly developed Domino Park to your right.

Feel free to wander around the park, or find a bench somewhere with a nice view. As you enjoy the skyline views from Domino Park, think back on our walk today. If you take away anything from it, I hope it’s that Williamsburg’s development is a delicate ecosystem. Green spaces like Domino Park and upscale shops fronted by colorful murals add value to a place, for sure. 

That kind of creative-placemaking transforms a collection of streets and buildings into an attractive neighborhood. Does it make a cohesive community? What happens  when these murals are commissioned by brands? What role do they play in the artistic legacy of the neighborhood?

Here in Williamsburg, like in so many other neighborhoods in New York and cities around the world, corporate development is in a perpetual tug of war with independent, locally-owned endeavors. 

Some of these holdouts are still managing to survive, and even thrive, while others have been knocked out by exploding rents. How does the meaning of a place change when original residents and businesses get priced out? More importantly, what can we learn from the unlikely survival of places that are unusual and eclectic? Whether it’s a gathering space for artists, a live music venue or a retro dive bar, these places have made Williamsburg the vibrant section of Brooklyn it is today. They are critical  to keeping the fabric of the neighborhood, so we hope you’ll continue to support them.



This audio walk was created in August 2020 for Gesso. The script was written by Sarah Holtz, Henna Wang and Michael Reynolds as a cross country collaboration between Sarah’s home office in Berkeley, and Henna and Michael’s home office in Brooklyn. Narration by Henna Wang and me, Michael Reynolds, the creators of Gesso. Audio production, including all editing and sound design performed by Sarah Holtz

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