Williamsburg & Greenpoint Brooklyn's Whiniest Boroughs; This Blogger, Guilty As Charged

Last week The Brooklyn Paper reported that Williamsburg and Greenpoint are by far the whiniest pockets of Brooklyn. With an estimated 8,900 complaints registered with 311 since July, they beat runner-up Canarsie by a full 500 reports. Even Park Slope, a neighborhood infamous for its chalk-loving inhabitants, and the people that hate them, fell significantly short on complaints. In this case, hipster beats yuppie by 3,000 registered grievances. But what's all the fuss about? While noise complaints by far took the cake, residents also complained about illegal parking, blocked driveways, graffiti, lost property and "damaged, dangling or missing street signs."

In this week's follow up, The Brooklyn Paper goes looking for answers and interviews actual hipsters (yes, I'm well aware of the fact that the term is outdated, but what else would you call such a perfectly disheveled, glasses and fedora-adorned bunch? Save for the smiley one of course...). According to Josh Nelkin, an engineer and Greenpoint resident, it's the influx of recent suburban transplants who "aren't ready to actually live in the city." John Moore, who was evicted from the much blogged about artists' space at 475 Kent Avenue instead blames Manhattanites who have moved to condos in the hood. Overall, the general consensus seemed to blame the overprivileged and entitled.

So where does that leave me? As a Williamsburg-by-way-of-Manhattan resident who has called 311 half-a-dozen times since my move here last July, I'd hate to think I'm one of the aforementioned assholes. I pay too much for a rental apartment I can't exactly afford, and, no, my income is not supplemented by a trust fund. But does that mean I have to grin-and-bear-it when the bar downstairs (a recently Village Voice reviewed, chi-chi Grand Street bar I might add) allows drunkards to scream at the top of their lungs in the back garden at 4a.m. all summer long? Or when my landlord refuses to answer his phone when the heat has been broken for two days in 20-degree weather? Maybe the lesson to be learned is that while you're paying just short of Manhattan rents, the neighborhoods in no way treat your business as such. You're one of a countless twentysomethings swarming like locusts and, at least in this part of Brooklyn, the people who own these streets couldn't care less.