The four fashionable faces of Williamsburg.
Stupidly Idiotic. Idiotically Stupid. I have given NYC real estate ads a rest lately, because all NYC real estate ads are fucking moronic. But when Twenty Bayard, "Williamburg's premier parkfront condominiums," sticks the above sort-of Warhol knockoff in front of my face on the A train, I gotta dig out my camera. Who are those people? Did you do a photoshoot? Are they friends of yours? Models? Do they all live in Williamsburg? Who cares, right? With four succinct words, you've perfectly captured the essence of New York City's hipster enclave. And what an attractive building you've designed! Neighbors are thrilled, I'm sure.
previous stupid NYC real estate ads:
1. Caledonia slightly updates its ad twats.
2. Corporate real estate stooges redefine "shocking."
3. CLEARLY defining your target audience.
4. She feels pretty empty.
5. Jonathan Swift Realty, Inc.
posted by copyranter @ 8:50 AM
22 Comments:
I agree, and also hate this ad. What's worse for me though, is that I see it everyday on my way home to Williamsburg on the L Train. The building looks like a crappy technical school.
Not being a NYCity dweller, but noting the constant talk about real estate (and observing the insane prices in the Times)is Williamsburg one of those neighborhods striving to remake itself? Doing the "artists and multiculturism thrive here" thing, therefore asking outlandish prices?
But the views from that place are pretty nice, if it's all about the view.
In the spirit of Warhol, I want to throw a can of soup at it.
The building is ugly as piss and built on polluted land, overlooking a "park" (a desolate athletic field permalit 24/7 for drunk Polish v. coked up Puerto Rican soccer matches).
So, they gotta sell it somehow - I'll give them radically chic. but chicly radical? total bullshit.
I'll take the coked Puerto Rican team over the drunken Polish team any day of the week.
You are so high, MTLB. I'll take that bet. You DO NOT fuck with drunk Poles, especially when they have soccer balls.
The trucker-hat hipster is not represented in this poster. Or whatever the fuck they're wearing these days.
Isn't the whole point of living in Willamsburg to get away from twatwafflery such at this? I mean, I thought Manhattan had been abandoned to the mindless drones of capitolism and all the boho types moved across the river to escape the obscene rent. Then again, I'm from Nashville, and my idea of a great city is Austin, so maybe there's something here that I'm not getting.
Polish on my father's side and even I say fuck 'em. It's the Irish and the Brits in Sunday morning rec leagues hungover from Saturday night who you have to watch out for.
In what delusional yuppie fantasy do these fifth-wave gentrifiers see themselves as being greeted with beaming smiles by the native Hasidic community? Not to cast generalizations, but they're not exactly famous for warmly welcoming outsiders.
Hippies in half mil crash pads? Doesn't compute.
this ad disgusts me to no end. the "warhol"-ification of the faces seems to illustrate perfectly the cartoon lens through which the $500,000 renter must look at a perversely economically disparate neighborhood and see it soley for the novelty of its "diversity" while not even beginning to understand those implications. i also find it a problem that in order to make the latino presence in the neighborhood seem less threatening to prospective half-mil renters, they chose to represent them with the "safer" image of a woman and then even went as far as to literally color her face white. and what the hell does "radically chic, chicly radical" even mean? the more i think about it, the less sense it makes...
Strictly from a layout sense, they should have moved the Hasid out of the top left, and buried him under some text. I can't imagine the prospective tenants of this shithole really want to be reminded of what Williamsburg used to be most famous for. I suggest swapping him with the asshat in the lower right, after giving the asshat a scruffy beard and some stupid ironic hat.
"In 'Radical Chic,' [Tom] Wolfe describes an intriguing phenomenon of the late Sixties: the courting of romantic radicals—Black Panthers, striking grapeworkers, Young Lords—by New York's socially elite. He focuses primarily on one symbolic event: the gathering of the radically chic at Leonard Bernstein's duplex apartment on Park Avenue to meet spokesmen of the Black Panther Party, to hear them out, and to talk over ways of aiding their cause. Tom Wolfe re-creates the incongruous scene—and its astonishing repercussions—with high fidelity. But he gives us more than just a wry account of life among the Beautiful People; he also provides a historical perspective on that impulse of the upper classes to identify themselves with what they imagine to be the raw, vital lifestyle of the lower orders."
At least the asshat in the lower right corner is getting poked in the eye with a fugly building. Makes me feel a little better somehow.
"a desolate athletic field permalit 24/7 for drunk Polish v. coked up Puerto Rican soccer matches."
ahahahaha, nice!
Notably, this ad was first put up in the subway on the same day that AM New York ran a front-page article called "Tell That to the Other Half of Williamsburg," all about the 50% of native Williamsburgians (Hasidic and otherwise - they are largely Puerto Rican and Dominican families that were driven out of lower Manhattan by rising housing costs) who are living under the poverty line. It's obscene how this ad glosses that fact and even tries to make it sexy.
The guy in the bottom right looks like that tall guy from Spin City!
I've lived in Williamsburg/Greenpoint for 5! years (I left the area year ago) and have constantly listened to people moaning about the neighborhood being overtaken by yuppies and corporate America. After travelling all over Europe and coming back to visit the 'Burg it made me realize how really unspectacular/ unspecial/ dirty/ polluted/ ugly Williamsburg really is. I used to think that it was a very special neighborhood but I think it was blown out of proportion in my mind. I suggest to hipsters (or whatever you want to call them) of W'Burg who think their neighborhood is the center of the world to travel and get out and see the world! Every big city has a neighborhood like Williamsburg (Berlin/London/Stockholm, etc) and many of these equivalent neighborhoods are just plain cooler.
i see
ritualistic religious community
confident climber diversity
party girl with priorities maybe, sense of spontaneity definitely
and
inevitable white banker boarish/boring beefy type built in (obviously...fundamentally...
forgettable, even,
for the chicly radical
and I saw all that in less than a second. my intuitive/my trained analysis and dismissal
ko
10 to 1 the non-Polish soccer players are Mexican, Salvadoran, Honduran, Nicaraguan, or from another Central American country --places where lots of people actually play soccer. Which they really don't do in Puerto Rico, or among the New York City-born Puerto Ricans who have lived in Williamsburg (they call it "Los Sures") since way before the hipsters were even born.
i went in there asking how much their cheapest place was, during hte construction, the snobby cunt at the desk said, mmmmm well we have only studios prices starting at 880K.
i laughed at her.
and i think the drunk poles all are in mc gorlick park or some shit.
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