The neighborhood was changing fast. Being a barista in North Brooklyn was wildly different than in any other coffee shop I’d worked. It might have been that I held that job for the longest, or that other blocks on which I’d worked previously weren’t sprouting high-rise condos at such an alarming pace. But thanks, in part, to the narrowness of the wood-paneled, low-lit aesthetic logic of the creative class, it wasn’t just a coffee shop I was staffing, but a gentrification.
To staff a demographic shift as massive as the one that’s taken place around Williamsburg and Greenpoint requires quite a bit of manpower. More than 130 new buildings went up in the space of just a few years; rents rose almost 175% in under than a decade; also, the "Hipster Olympics" was born. We have rockabilly vegan diners and bars that dole out free pizza; nautically-themed coffee shops and Italian-themed coffee shops and the coffee shop where Hannah worked in "Girls."
The transition is that the neighborhood is known better for its production of capital-e Experiences than salable goods. These experiences feed new residents’ hunger for "third place" interactions, as well as a growing tourism industry. Brooklyn's CB1, the community board responsible for Greenpoint and Williamsburg, was so shocked by the density of bars cropping up in the neighborhood circa 2009 that they attempted to put a moratorium on new liquor licenses, until enterprising business owners (and the New York State Liquor Authority) intervened. A survey of Yelp counts 36 coffee shop and cafes in Greenpoint, a neighborhood spanning 1.2 miles and largely zoned for residential and industrial use.
