Brooklyn, The Borough: Bowling Alone in Williamsburg
On a recent Saturday night, I did a little experiment: I broke the rules of youthful social engagement and went to a bar by myself. I sat in the dimly lit courtyard behind Union Pool in Williamsburg. I made myself available, quietly sipping a pint of Blue Moon.
By 11, small groups had perched themselves all around me on wooden benches chatting about their lives, jobs and families. A group of three pretty ladies gossiped vehemently about their film industry jobs. I sat nearby in my frilly dress eavesdropping. After an hour of enjoying the warm weather, and having not made any new acquaintances, I made my way to sit at the bar. Again, no luck.
Rarely are Brooklyn's local watering holes a place to meet new people these days. The age-old complaint of post-college social isolation was now fresh in my mind.
While advising me about my love life, my mother always likes to tell stories about her youthful evenings spent at her local singles bar. The rules of engagement are much different now. It's been a long time since there were social mores about which gender approaches the other, pays for dates or makes the first move on a first date. A cursory glance at Craigslist's missed connections section proves that many 25- to 35-year-olds, especially recent transplants, don't necessarily have the stones to introduce themselves in person.
“Especially in a bar scenario chicks automatically think you're a creep more often than not,” said one of my 27-year-old guy friends about approaching women at bars. “I've got a couple of minutes, if I'm lucky, to show how smart and funny I am and prove that I'm legitimate.”
While Manhattan and even some choice Brooklyn spots (see Union Hall or Metropolitan on weekends) might still have the meat market label, for the most part Brooklyn bars have a far more low-key tone. For the dating 20- and 30-somethings, that low-key tone still makes it difficult to meet a mate, or even make a friend.
Beyond the velvet curtains framing the doorway at Flatbush Farm, a barbecue restaurant and bar with a beautiful backyard, there isn't much of a pick-up scene for its 25- to 45-year-old demographic. “So often there's two guys and two girls sitting at the bar but they don't usually talk to each other,” said bartender Jason on a recent afternoon. Or, he says, people meet for first dates where “it seems like they've talked on the phone but never met in person.”
Jason offered up a story about how he had been chatting with a female patron who awaited her date's arrival. He was late. They had never met before. Jason ran downstairs as the gentleman walked in, and upon his return to the bar, the date was gone. The woman had sent him away. He wasn't her type. Why waste time? On to the next date.
Meeting people in bars, especially one's local watering hole, is indeed a rare occurrence these days. “You're not going to find the person,” offered Lem, Jason's 36-year-old bartending counterpart. “It's going to be a hookup.”
Since the days of the singles bar, meeting people socially has gone virtual in the form of various Internet dating and networking sites. Increasingly, Craigslist has become the dirty little secret introducing young couples. One recent headline even asks point blank: Are you willing to lie about how we met? That's not really news, but Craigslist is increasingly the destination for young people (and a few olds) to make new friends and meet new lovers. Perhaps Craigslist is more convenient than the days of singles bars, as it allows one to sift through various pictures, desires and hobbies until a match is made. And besides, many have found apartments and jobs through the site, so why not love or friendship?
Another friend recently moved to Seattle and admitted having to place a Craigslist ad to make new friends. Already in a relationship, and employed in a job with much older co-workers, she had no outlet for meeting new people in a new city.
With the still-unwritten laws of Internet dating, it can be tough to navigate making new friends. No longer in a setting like college, teeming with potential new friends, late-20-somethings are awkwardly emerging from long-term college relationships and wondering what the next step is. Where, exactly, do they find new people, and more importantly, where do they find new people with whom they'll actually have something in common?
Back at Union Pool, ennui eventually set in. I started text-messaging friends for real, live human engagement. Though there had been a few other single people at the bar, nobody found reason to strike up a conversation. I finished a second beer and headed to a house party nearby. Surrounded by friends, finally, I was poured a shot of sake by the host and introductions to new guys were suddenly fluid and simple. And then I realized they were all gay.
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they're always all gay...
As I believe the bartender stated, far too many women, certainly in Dallas, feel that if you introduce yourself in a bar you are a creep. For men, if a women talks to me in a bar she has probably hooked-up with every other guy there and I'm the newby. However, in Dallas, possibly contrary to New York, the best way to meet ladies is to always carry around a copy of your certified financial statement and the direct line to your banker, a girl has to have references...at least in Dallas.
Who really cares about these people
maybe you look like a narc??
Interesting commentary on approaching a bar by yourself.
I have found it very easy to meet people at Bars, just not in NYC. Many a time I have been in the first one in the group to arrive at bar and found myself in the situation of people watching not friend making. People are very hesitant to approach anyone unknown at a bar in the new young bars of NYC, I think it comes comes down to the hip appearance. I have also found if you frequent more established Dive style bars like the Turkey's Nest and Timboo's people are much friendlier and not stuck up.
People now have the ability to connect to friends anywhere, through cell phones, texting and even now with iPhones the web. So people attach themselves to these things like an umbilical cord and can not reach out and have true communications with a person they do not know.
I hate to be the one to point this out, but you're in NEW YORK CITY. It's been known for a long time that you come here for fashion, for art, love, work or glamour -- but NOBODY comes here to embraced by warm, friendly strangers.
Sure the city's safer, but you can still drop to the ground bleeding and have commuters step over you all day long.
All so true. I travel fairly frequently for work, always alone, and therefore flying solo if I want to go out and explore the places I'm in, have a drink, etc.
I am always amazed at how much more frequently people approach one another in other cities.
The constant assault of people trying to hustle one another in NYC, the con men, perverts, creeps, panhandlers, etc. forces people to put their gaurd up and leave it up, even to their detriment and isolation.
I also contribute a lot of this, on the female side, to having to fend of the constant "hey mamis" and catcalls that men, particularly men of certain socio-economic backgrounds, engage in here. This barbaric behavior is much less common in other cities.
All the attractive girls sport dyed-black choppy messy shaggy hair, dress like lesbians, act like feminists, and listen to bands you've never heard of...and that's the way NYC boys like them apparently. The types of people who wear brands such as Abercrombie, American Eagle, and Hollister are seen as culturally backwards, cheesy, and decidedly uncool by the cultured and hip. Tight jeans, shaggy hair, and rockstar good looks is the chick magnet here, and not that "fancy car" that you have in the suburbs. It is intelligence, culture, and style that rule in this city, and not suburban herd-mentality conformism, muscle and might. NYC is a city of liberal-arts hipsters that pioneer the social and cultural evolution of the rest of the country. It is not for those who like to stick to traditional and old ways. If you're not hip enough to survive here, then don't move here.
All the attractive girls sport dyed-black choppy messy shaggy hair, dress like lesbians, act like feminists, and listen to bands you've never heard of...and that's the way NYC boys like them apparently. The types of people who wear brands such as Abercrombie, American Eagle, and Hollister are seen as culturally backwards, cheesy, and decidedly uncool by the cultured and hip. Tight jeans, shaggy hair, and rockstar good looks is the chick magnet here, and not that "fancy car" that you have in the suburbs. It is intelligence, culture, and style that rule in this city, and not suburban herd-mentality conformism, muscle and might. NYC is a city of liberal-arts hipsters that pioneer the social and cultural evolution of the rest of the country. It is not for those who like to stick to traditional and old ways. If you're not hip enough to survive here, then don't move here.
Union Pool is notorious for cute guys giving you the eye but never stepping up to a girl. Alone or even in a small group, they seem to wait for the friend introduction especially on a Saturday night.
I was born in NYC and you hipsters all need to know the problem is you.
Back in the 80s, it was possible to meet strangers in NYC, people were open minded and wanted to experience life. It was more dangerous then, yet it seemed that there was a code of conduct that allowed people to say hello without acting like you had already wasted their precious time. Now it's just a cesspool of pathetic wannabe hipster douche bags living on cash from the first bank of mom & dad who learned how to act 'Noo York' on local Wisconsin TV.
I had many friends who were the first wave to move to Greenpoint in 1992 when it was still a polish hood. Then we were all broke and everything was cheap, so there was fun to be had. Now its all faux-crapola central because the people may look good, but inside they are all one dimensional consumers who can only talk about their clothes. Try to talk politics or philosophy - you must be kidding.
Good thing I'm married now (to another NY native) and own a coop in Ft. Greene (which still has a little character). I'd hate to be young and single in a industrial wasteland like Williamsburg, surrounded by self-absorbed over-sized children with no personality or individuality whatsoever.
Now I know how the hippies from 1965 SF felt when all the losers showed up in 1968.
Did you ever try approaching anyone? Why not? Give any signals? I know you're a girl but this is 2008, and you should take some responsibility for your own happiness.
This down is as dead as my grandmother. As a native new yorker I've watched this place go from an exciting interesting place to live with new and exciting things happening, to a giant freaking mall.
Williamsburg is just the giant hot topic where all the "cool" kids hang out. Except their all just the same douchebags that hung out outside an actual hot topic back in cleveland or whatever freaking flyover state they came from.
This is Rome and the hipsters, the banks, and the drugstore chains are the freaking barbarians here to sack the place!
Run For The Hills!
I began travelling alone about three years ago. At first I was freaked out by being alone in places with no one to talk to. And yeah, I realized that people don't generally strike up converstations with the woman sitting alone at the bar.
But guess what? I have a mouth. I can speak.
I began striking up conversations with people around me. INCLUDING in NYC, and I have had lovely times and met a lot of good people. Seriously. You have to give a little to get a little.
I met my husband a few years ago in a bar - in Queens, no less. Still, I am the odd one out among my friends, who all met their mates on the Internet.
I am also a native, and while I don't recall this place ever not being overrun with transplants, I have to agree about it being hard to strike up a conversation with a stranger. You do have to give to get a little, but it is not helping that people are attached to their phones any time they are in a public solo situation - from doing laundry to waiting on line at Chipotle. Things are bad!
Like it or not, the modern hipster movement is here to stay. Deal with it. It was something that was started over 15 years ago by creative types in Williamsburg and has spread into the mainstream. In a sense, the hipsters have won as they have successfully "hipsterized" modern life and modern attitude. Have a look around. Elements of hipster fashion and hipster sensibilities are everywhere. Both men and women sport similar androgynous hair styles that include combinations of messy shag cuts and asymmetric side-swept bangs. They wear vintage and thrift store inspired fashions, and they date inter-racially. You'll find a surge of jeans made to look old and worn (i.e. "distressed") even at stores such as Gap, American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Hollister...being marketed to the mainstream consumer. The modeling industry have been hipsterized as well. The traditional athletic all-American male ideal is now seen as a symbol of male oppression, sexism, and misogyny. According to a recent NYTimes article, muscular male models are being rejected in favor of skinny hipsterish ones. In a parallel manner, culturally-vapid sorority-type girls with fake flat-ironed blond hair, and "Guidettes" with overly tanned skin and "Britney Spears tube-tops" are seen as symbols of female insecurity, low self-esteem, and a lack of cultural intelligence and independent thinking. What's especially amusing is that if you ever stand on the corner of Bedford and North 7th on a weekend, you'll also see some fratty UES-type guys in retro sneakers, stuffed into tight jeans, topped-off with their Brook's Brothers blazers worn over an ironic t-shirt, humbly slinking around...trying to blend into the crowd of naturally thin art-school boys with shaggy hair, all because they heard through the grapevine that Williamsburg is the "new hip place" to hang out. That's right...even jocks are part-time hipsters on weekends, and they're just following in the footsteps of hipsters that have moved on before them.
What does this really mean? Basically anyone who embraces a youthful and edgy urban style, who enjoys going to rock shows and divey-type bars is labeled a hipster these days. These people represent a significant fraction of the under-30 population in this city who enjoy keeping up with the latest in nightlife, music, art, and culture. Hipterism is the new mainstream, and basically anyone with a healthy and active social life is a "hipster". It's irrelevant whether hipsters truly re-invented certain elements of culture and style, or if they're just cultural consumers and social leeches like others would retort. It's simply the new reality.
Judging from their comments, a lot of anti-hipster sentiment evidently comes from "tough guy" non-intellectual homophobic macho types who feel that the more sensitive, intelligent, and culturally aware hipster ideal threatens their insecure sense of masculinity. At some point in their lives they probably got mocked and ridiculed, or even had beer poured all over their heads, by some downtown girl with a tattoo (aka "hipster") after trying to pull some lame move on them. If you think about it, in some ways the entire hipster revolution came about to mock and ridicule such people and their mentalities. It's not about meat and muscle anymore. Anti-hipster sentiment often comes from people who simply can't keep up with social change and are envious of those who can. Remember...you can always rate the amount of insecurity someone has by the amount they rant about hipsters.
Like it or not, the modern hipster movement is here to stay. Deal with it. It was something that was started over 15 years ago by creative types in Williamsburg and has spread into the mainstream. In a sense, the hipsters have won as they have successfully "hipsterized" modern life and modern attitude. Have a look around. Elements of hipster fashion and hipster sensibilities are everywhere. Both men and women sport similar androgynous hair styles that include combinations of messy shag cuts and asymmetric side-swept bangs. They wear vintage and thrift store inspired fashions, and they date inter-racially. You'll find a surge of jeans made to look old and worn (i.e. "distressed") even at stores such as Gap, American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Hollister...being marketed to the mainstream consumer. The modeling industry have been hipsterized as well. The traditional athletic all-American male ideal is now seen as a symbol of male oppression, sexism, and misogyny. According to a recent NYTimes article, muscular male models are being rejected in favor of skinny hipsterish ones. In a parallel manner, culturally-vapid sorority-type girls with fake flat-ironed blond hair, and "Guidettes" with overly tanned skin and "Britney Spears tube-tops" are seen as symbols of female insecurity, low self-esteem, and a lack of cultural intelligence and independent thinking. What's especially amusing is that if you ever stand on the corner of Bedford and North 7th on a weekend, you'll also see some fratty UES-type guys in retro sneakers, stuffed into tight jeans, topped-off with their Brook's Brothers blazers worn over an ironic t-shirt, humbly slinking around...trying to blend into the crowd of naturally thin art-school boys with shaggy hair, all because they heard through the grapevine that Williamsburg is the "new hip place" to hang out. That's right...even jocks are part-time hipsters on weekends, and they're just following in the footsteps of hipsters that have moved on before them.
What does this really mean? Basically anyone who embraces a youthful and edgy urban style, who enjoys going to rock shows and divey-type bars is labeled a hipster these days. These people represent a significant fraction of the under-30 population in this city who enjoy keeping up with the latest in nightlife, music, art, and culture. Hipterism is the new mainstream, and basically anyone with a healthy and active social life is a "hipster". It's irrelevant whether hipsters truly re-invented certain elements of culture and style, or if they're just cultural consumers and social leeches like others would retort. It's simply the new reality.
Judging from their comments, a lot of anti-hipster sentiment evidently comes from "tough guy" non-intellectual homophobic macho types who feel that the more sensitive, intelligent, and culturally aware hipster ideal threatens their insecure sense of masculinity. At some point in their lives they probably got mocked and ridiculed, or even had beer poured all over their heads, by some downtown girl with a tattoo (aka "hipster") after trying to pull some lame move on them. If you think about it, in some ways the entire hipster revolution came about to mock and ridicule such people and their mentalities. It's not about meat and muscle anymore. Anti-hipster sentiment often comes from people who simply can't keep up with social change and are envious of those who can. Remember...you can always rate the amount of insecurity someone has by the amount they rant about hipsters.
I routinely go to bars alone, usually sitting with my MP3 and listening to stuff while thinking. I probably look like the biggest weirdo, but I don't care. I enjoy it, the 'tenders are friendly...once they see me a few times and know I don't want to sit at the bar hitting on them but just want to read or think. People ignore me, and although I usually spot someone I wonder about, definitely there's a chasm. I've basically given up on trying to figure it out, and just resolved that if I feel like going, I'll go.
The only thing is, in my favorite place, I prefer the tables so if it gets crowded I usually leave. Now that it's summer though I can sit outside.
wow...good point, esp. about the ranting. I've known more than a couple of people who are like that. I think there is something to be said about how homogenized WbUrg as become but at the same time how there is still a hell of a lot of people looking from the outside in. I'm a big guy - not fat, but could never pull off the fashions these people are wearing. But at the same time, I'm more liberal, lefty, and sexually adventurous than these people will ever be, esp. given some of their mid-western roots. But I don't dress like they do, and therefore I get judged. I could give two shits, but at the same time its indicative of how shallow being on the cutting edge of art and fashion really is. Try hitting on a girl who sees me in my jeans and sweater in wburg with her adorable haircut and low-cut jeans. not a chance.
Which goes back to the comment about NYC and no one giving a shit. People are mating in Wburg on how the other person looks and advances their own agenda - whether it is to be seen, to art social climb, or to satisfy the self image they have for themselves. I am just as guilty, trying to hit on that girl, b/c I also want to be seen as cutting edge because I think I am, esp. with my career choice and politics. ah well.
The modern hipster MOVEMENT? I could just as easily have capitalized modern. You sound like a fucking idiot.
I would have talked to you if you were alone... and I had a couple of drinks in me.
Generally we're scarred from trying to talk to women in bars because women come in packs and then their friends act like wolves everytime somebody tries to talk to one of their friends. Grab a bottle and stick to your apartment. Sheesh.
Union Pool doesn't serve Blue Moon Beer. Are you sure you were really there?
You said it!
Not that I lived here when the cool was cool, but I hear that from my friend who isolder than me.
I am 35 nd i am trying to find people but it really is about the clothes more than about ideas and ideals. I my self I find myself looking in the miror and makink sure I "match". What the fuck? It's really the problem of 'overized' children.
I odn't know where is this gonna go....