Williamsburg Flea Market

The photo above was taken at the flea market that’s in Williamsburg every Sunday.

In the back, you see a food stall called the Landhaus where I purchased a lamb burger. It was served on a crusty baguette (part of a baguette, not the whole baguette), and was dressed with grilled onions and melted feta cheese. The lamb was grass fed and came from a local farm, or so the sign said; I wouldn’t be able to taste the difference if the lamb was shipped in from thousands of miles away and fed normal commercial lamb feed. I think that the portion was kind of small for eight dollars, but I appreciate the effort that went into the idea. And it’s nice to buy food from a college-educated white person instead of a foreigner or a NAM.

I encourage you to click on the photo which will direct you to a larger version of the photo in which you can see what was going on in more detail. You can try to see if you spot anyone there who isn’t white. (I see an Asian male at the very left of the photo wearing a beige beret.) This is the neighborhood where the girls from the HBO show Girls live, and I think that show correctly captures the lack of diversity in this part of New York City, even though New York City as a whole is only 33% non-Hispanic white, and Williamsburg is close the very center of the city, being at the border of Brooklyn and Queens and right across the river from Manhattan. (Click here for detailed NYC demographics.)

However, the flea market was not 100% white. There were a few East Asians, mostly women. Asian men are typically there with an Asian female significant other (I can't tell if the Asian guy in the photo above is solo or not), while Asian women are often with another Asian woman or with a white male. There were a handful Oreo blacks. Black males actually outnumbered Asian males. Asian males don’t get this hipster scene at all. I didn’t see any Indians.

Comments

[chucho]

Sometimes ghetto blacks will hang out in the hipster scene to sell drugs or lend street cred to white guys who skateboard. Otherwise they are absent.

[Anonymous]

I was in Williamsburg on Friday night, well into Saturday morning. Great place. Everyone was White.

[Fetzen]

On the lamb sandwich: was there fat in the meat pieces? I've observed that NAMs tend not to care about eating or serving meat with big chunks of fat or grease in it, while SWPLs tend to be very picky on eating and serving 100% pure meat.

As to the Williamsburg "hipster scene" (flea markets, taste for ancient buildings and art, taste for European goods and culture, etc.) it is suggestive, to me (who is European), of a nostalgic regression towards an all-White, shameless and confident past. The mystery is that these people vote for Obama and not for some white nationalist.

[superdestroyer]

HS,

I was at the farmer's market in Bethesda Maryland. The only blacks were the guy selling BBQ sandwiches who looked successful and two black women selling slices of cake in a booth devoid of customers. There was also one mixed race couple (black male, white female). The black guy dressed and acted as part of the 1%.

All of the other boothes were staffed by whites and all of the customers were white.

At most farmers market there is usually one or two boothes manned by blacks and those boothes usually have the fewest customers. Blacks cannot bring themselves to use hipness to sell products.

[bluto]

City slicker, unlike beef almost all lamb is grass fed. Sheep exist, at least in the US, mainly because they will eat very scrubby grass, and they only very rarely fattened in a feed lot for market like cows.

[Peter]

Her face is partially obscured, so I can't be certain, but a woman near the center of the picture might be Asian. She is wearing a dark vest over a pink turtleneck and is directly behind the lady with the green shopping bag.

Also, while this is definitely in the realm of speculation, a man near the back *may* have darker skin. His back is to the camera so only part of his face is visible. He is immediately to the right of the older man who is wearing a light green baseball cap.

[Peter]

I'm guessing that the Asian guy in the beret is a vendor: his shirt matches the awning under which he's standing. It would be quite the coincidence otherwise.

In light of _l'Affaire_ Trayvon, it's a bit amusing to notice a hoodie-wearer at the extreme right. Can't see his face, however.

On a quite different note, a couple weekends ago I made lamb meatballs as a pizza topping. Probably quite similar to your lamb burger. They were very good, although the Pillsbury-brand 'za dough left a lot to be desired.

[AllanF]

Did Instagram give you that washed-out, overexposed look, or did you do it for yourself?

[HS: I brightened the photo and warmed it in order to give it the feeling I had when I was there.]

[Reggin]

Posted by: superdestroyer | April 29, 2012 at 10:03 PM

No farmer's markets in Baltamo'? Sheet...

[Blue Willow]

I have a chair almost exactly like the wooden chair in the lower left corner of the picture. It was in my father's law office for many years. It dates from the late '40's, I believe.

[Skeptique]

It doesn't seem overexposed to me.

[Daniel]

30 years ago I drove a yellow cab.My garage was located near Williamsburg. I Would pass through Greenpoint/Williamsburg everyday on the way to the city. In McCarren park there would be hos and bums getting high. They used to work the streets thereabout. No SWPLs back then.

BTW, here is some half sigma bait. I smile when I read things like this

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/education/parents-owe-full-tuition-after-withdrawing-children-from-private-schools.html?hp&gwh=1AEC78EF858D0BC723FA80985AA453CB

[Steve Johnson]

Pink turtleneck is no way an Asian woman.

Check her hair and ankles.

[Saint Louis]

The guy right behind the oriental guy in the beret looks to have darker skin. It's difficult to tell if he's part black or maybe just a darker skinned white guy.

[dearieme]

We get ostrich burgers at our Sunday market. Delish.

[Peter]

No children or teenagers are visible in the photo. There's also only one definite man-woman couple, who also are the only seniors in the picture. The hipster in the fedora and the blonde woman in the black jacket may be a couple, it's hard to be sure.

[HS: There are lots of man-woman couples at the flea market. However, you are right about their being no children and hardly any seniors.]

[Camlost]

My father grew up a few neighborhoods down Metropolitan in Ridgewood, Queens. (just across the county line)

Whenever I visit remaining relatives there, everyone over 40 is white and anyone under 30 is a NAM.

[Turambar]

"I think that the portion was kind of small for eight dollars, but I appreciate the effort that went into the idea."

Yeah I wasnt buying that frugality claim.

But nice job doing some undercover zombie-time recon on the Girls scandal.

[HS: If you have a six figure income, $8 (plus another $3 for a lemonade) isn't an extravagant amount of money to spend for a lunch. It's less expensive than going to a movie. I could stay home and eat ramen noodles, oatmeal, and peanut butter and jelly all the time, but I wouldn't save that much more money.]

[Tanizaki]

"On a quite different note, a couple weekends ago I made lamb meatballs as a pizza topping. Probably quite similar to your lamb burger. They were very good, although the Pillsbury-brand 'za dough left a lot to be desired."

Wait, there are actually people who call pizza "za"? I thought that was just a Michael Scott-ism.

Anyway, you should step it up from Pillsbury. The next time you're in Manhattan, you want to try this great place called Sbarro on 47th and 7th.

[The Engineer]

The old couple is my mom and her boyfriend. I shit you not.

She's got a place over in Forest Hills, and he's got a brownstone in downtown Brooklyn. He's lived there for 35 years, well before any gentrification. He raised his kids there. Blows my mind, being the same age as his kids and growing up on "The Island", I can't even imagine what Brooklyn was like in the Dinkins years. Must have been hell on earth.

Dude's kids are total SWPLs. One has an antique shop in Brooklyn, the other is a hippie up in Vermont (dude has a place up there as well, evidently the weekends up there were very influential on the one kid).

It is ironic that I live in the dreaded 'burbs, but my kids' classes are like the UN: Indians, Arabs, Mexicans, real Africans, Chinese, and Koreans.

[Turambar]

[HS: If you have a six figure income, $8 (plus another $3 for a lemonade) isn't an extravagant amount of money to spend for a lunch.]

Oh I am fine with it. Just that the web frugality movement would have you bringing your own lentils from home and living on $5K per year.

[Peter]

"Pink turtleneck is no way an Asian woman.
Check her hair and ankles."

???
Straight dark hair, could be Asian (or not, of course).
As for her ankles, if you can tell my how they indicate that she's not Asian, I would be very curious to know.

--

"The guy right behind the oriental guy in the beret looks to have darker skin. It's difficult to tell if he's part black or maybe just a darker skinned white guy."

Bandana dude? My guess is that his face looks darkish mainly because he hasn't shaved in a while. He *could* be Hispanic, but more likely not.
Ethnicity aside, he's the one clearly prole-ish looking person in the crowd. Of course he could be a vendor.

--

"Anyway, you should step it up from Pillsbury. The next time you're in Manhattan, you want to try this great place called Sbarro on 47th and 7th."

Ha ha. I had been planning to make my own dough, but things intervened and there wasn't enough time for me to do so. Pizza dough has to rise for several hours before use. So the pre-made Pillsbury crap was the only choice.

--

"The old couple is my mom and her boyfriend. I shit you not.
She's got a place over in Forest Hills, and he's got a brownstone in downtown Brooklyn. He's lived there for 35 years, well before any gentrification ... I can't even imagine what Brooklyn was like in the Dinkins years. Must have been hell on earth."

Given what he must have paid for the brownstone 35 years ago, compared to what it's worth today, I'd have to say he has been VERY well rewarded for living through a few years of hell.

--

"My father grew up a few neighborhoods down Metropolitan in Ridgewood, Queens. (just across the county line)
Whenever I visit remaining relatives there, everyone over 40 is white and anyone under 30 is a NAM."

I'm a bit surprised. As recently as the 1990's, maybe even more recently, Ridgewood was attracting a lot of people from Eastern Europe and especially the Balkans. I would have thought that some younger ones are still in the area.

[The Engineer]

What's crazy about the Chicago 'burbs is that, when you go to Sam's or Home Depot of whatever, there are so few white people, it's like the UN, and even those who look like they're white are inevitably Poles, Russians, or Serbs or off the boat Eastern European of some sort.

It is getting to the point that I can't even relate to SWPLs. I'd rather hang out with Indians. I encourage my kids to do whatever the Indian kids are doing, I just signed them up for tennis lessons.

[Anonymous]

@ the engineer

"It is getting to the point that I can't even relate to SWPLs."

I think it was OneSTDV who proposed that in the animal kingdom the differences between SWPLs and regular whites would --easily-- make them distinct species.

[Fiddlesticks]

Is shopping in direct sunlight SWPL? Un-self-conscious markets usually exist under large pavilions or open warehouse-type spaces.

[HS: It's located at an outdoor site that one day is going to be the location of a new residential tower.]

[johnny]

More and more i think that WIlliamsburg is the future of NYC. I've lived in the area for 15 years, and things I thought would never happen, happened. Ten years ago my brother lived very close to that market, and he had a gravel pit out his back window. It was replaced last year by new condos. I don't think there is any area closer to Manhattan with anything even close to the level of willingness to develop. And there are still many old industrial buildings that could be converted easily to residential, as well large lots that are used for parking or low-value businesses that could be built on.

The big problems I see are is more load on an already-overloaded L train and little non-retail business in the area. There needs to be more white collar work there so not as many people commute.

[theakinet]

The Twee Party
Is artisanal Brooklyn a step forward for food or a sign of the apocalypse? And does it matter when the stuff tastes so good?
http://nymag.com/news/features/artisanal-brooklyn-2012-4/

Money Quote:
"By Brooklyn owner Gaia DiLoreto, a 37-year-old former IT worker, is black and wants to be 'a role model to young black women,' she tells me. She had one intern from East New York who 'knew nothing about artisanal food. An $8 candy bar was insane to her.'"

DiLoreto says the Artisinal food game is a winner-take-all market:

"A second job is the norm — DiLoreto...estimates that only a quarter of her vendors are full-time artisans — but waiting tables to pay the rent is almost an anachronism. The old waiter-actor has been eclipsed by the actor-artisan. Now the risky dream job is starting your own pickle company, and the art hustle is your fallback."

The Artisans: http://nymag.com/news/articles/12/04/brooklyn/index9.html I say ~85% non-hispanic white. ~5% hispanic white. ~5% *east* asian. And the rest mostly black.

@theakinet

[Park Slope Pubby]

I was in midtown Manhattan the other day, and i noticed that all the people who looked like they were working (as opposed to the tourists) were white.

When I was a white kid growing up in NYC, it was possible to live a life where you only interacted w/ white people, either in the Upper East Side (rich white) or in the working class neightborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens (prole white). And now it is possible again, although the working class neighborhoods have by and large become white SWPL; even the black neighborhoods (Bed Stuy) are rapidly becoming white SWPL. (The working class white neighborhoods in State Island are still prole white.)

[BlueWillow]

I concur that pink-turtle-neck is probably not Asian. Her hair is brown rather than black and seems somewhat fine and wispy. (I used ctrl + to blow it up).

I must stop wasting time on this sort of thing now and do some work!

[E. Rekshun]

With respect to blacks, the whole of NYC fails the 20% rule, while just two boroughs do not. Guess I will never be moving to NYC, and haven't visited in fifteen years. I'm surprised the ratio of Whites in Manhattan is so low and the ratio of hispanics so high; where in Manhattan do the hispanics live?

[E. Rekshun]

I just bought an $8 8-pack of frozen "Bubba Turkey Burgers." They're delicious, high protein, low fat, and quite large. I don't feel like getting of the couch to look at the package for the actual nutritional specs.

[Peter]

"I'm surprised the ratio of Whites in Manhattan is so low and the ratio of hispanics so high; where in Manhattan do the hispanics live?"

Inwood and Washington Heights in upper Manhattan north of Harlem are mainly Hispanic. Harlem itself has quite a few Hispanics, as do many other neighborhoods.

[not a hacker]

"Blacks cannot bring themselves to use hipness to sell products."

This was serious, right? But hipness is exactly what blacks believe they effortlessly project, since Mailer and other white writers told them so in the early '60's. If blacks aren't in farmers' market stalls, I assume it's because (a) they're not the growers, and (b) the growers don't want them alienating customers or stealing, and feel the authorities won't be filing discrimination suits against such casual enterprises.

[Vic]

The most obvious thing to me was the nice ass in the right forground with the tight black pants.

[Wencil Jones]

Half, I love the part of Williamsburg around the Bedford Avenue Subway. Much more relaxed vibe than Manhattan.

prices for meals are demonstrably lower on Bedford Ave vs Manhattan.

I looked at the price of a two bedroom apartment in the glass condo buildings in the background of your photo - basically the cost is $900 a square foot vs about $1400 a square foot for an equivalent building in Manhattan - sort of the discount you would expect

[HS: The building in the photo is The Edge.]

[paleopaleo]

That photo is quintessential "digital photography sucks". Shitty Shadow/Highlight filter processing. my $.02

[Wencil Jones]

One thing I noticed when you compare the crowd on Bedford Avenue vs in Manhattan is the almost complete lack of kids on Bedford Avenue.

In manhattan you have many many neighborhoods with either spectacular public primary schools (the famous one in Tribecca comes to mind) OR private schools within walking distance. But Bedford Avenue neghborhood has no good public schools and no good private schools.

not that there is anything wrong with a neighborhood lacking in kids,

[Rifleman]

"...even though New York City as a whole is only 33% non-Hispanic white."

Maybe only 33% of NYC RESIDENTS are White people but it's clearly a much higher % when you factor who is actually there working or visiting.

A high percentage of NYC's non White residents are just blobs of non contributing entities who live in neighborhoods most White people don't want anything to do with.

White people are well over 50% of the people who make NYC matter.

[superdestroyer]

not a hacker,

I have been to quite a few farmers markets, craft fairs, street fairs. There always seems to be the one booth with middle age black women trying to sell baked goods, sauces, or some other type of good.

The black women are always quiet bad at one-on-one sells that are the key to farmers markets, etc. The black booth operators never have the 10 second pitch, cannot carry on a conversation, and always act like you are imposing on the. For all the talk of blacks being good at verbal communication, I have never seen it at the local level for sales.

White males are usually the best followed by other ethnic males. Many white women always seem like they are forcing themselves to do sales.

Blacks will also be on the cell phones more than more booth operators. Anyone who is operating a booth at a farmers market while spending all of their time talking on their cell phone is just not very serious about selling.

[Park Slope Pubby]

Maybe it's just NYC, but in my observation, many blacks are very good one-on-one marketers in restaurants, stores, etc.

The people who have horrible customer service skills are the Asians. They don't smile, they snarl at their customers, they never chit-chat. They ring you up and tell you the total, and that's it. They have no eye contact. They have never bothered to learn English in order to even say "good morning." No wonder so many of them work for the Post Office. (I'm white. I suspect they are even nastier to blacks.)

[HS: I like the efficient Asian service. I don't need my waiter to be my best friend, I just need him to fill my water glass when it runs out. Asians are good at actually doing that boring grunt work.]

[Peter]

"The black women are always quiet bad at one-on-one sells that are the key to farmers markets, etc. The black booth operators never have the 10 second pitch, cannot carry on a conversation, and always act like you are imposing on the. For all the talk of blacks being good at verbal communication, I have never seen it at the local level for sales."

At a farmer's market there's not much in the line of "sales" required on a vendor's part if by that you mean explaining the product being sold. In most cases customers can see what's being offered and there may be labels to help them. Having a pleasant, outgoing personality may help a bit, but the basic rule remains the same: if the customers are interested, they'll buy, and if they're not interested, they won't. It really doesn't matter what the vendor says or does.

Come to think of it, this rule applies in most types of sales.

[superdestroyer]

Peter,

At one farmers market, I go too regularly during the summer, there are usually four booths selling baked goods. One of the booths is manned by white men, two by white women, and one by two black women. The booth with the white men usually has a line and the workers are capable of discussing everything they are selling. The two white women sample their goods and are capable of telling you about what they are selling.

The booth with the two black women usually has no customers, everything is wrapped in plastic, and the two women are either talking to each other or talking on their cell phones. If one walks up to the booth, they will not say a word to you and customers are forced to interrupt their personnel conversation to actually purchase something.

For two years, I have wondered why those women bother. Maybe it is a tax scam or some form of money laundering.

However, out of the farmers markets, craft shows, and street fairs that I have attended, I notice that booths staffed by blacks are lousy salesmen. No attracting reluctant customers, no up selling, no push to create repeat business.

[drole prole]

You folks are wrong about SWPLs wanting to only live among whites. SWPLs love living in diverse neighborhoods. The optimal level of diversity for SWPLs is as follows:

65% white
15% gay
10% asian
5% black (the right kind)
5% hispanic