Astoria and other western Queens neighborhoods have become magnets for young, fine arts-aspiring hopefuls and club trotters who would have been too frightened to come here during the crime-ridden 1970s and '80s. The impact these hipsters have had on this once-residential and family-oriented neighborhood is negative. Their growing presence serves no one's interest, not even their own.
A sense of ultimate safety and self-assuredness is the wrong reason to be in this or any other city. Urban life must be unpredictable, spontaneous and dangerous. From what I have observed, hipsters are incurious. They bring an ethic of non-involvement, an almost comical refusal to make eye contact or move too far from their tightly organized little cadres of sameness and exclusivity.
The suburban ethic aside, the economic effects have been devastating. Rents are up, but wages down. The neighborhood has begun to take on a dorm-like quality, with its sloppiness and impermanence.
Hipsters and fine arts hopefuls take little time figuring out that the New York audience they think will give them the accolades they missed as residents of small town America is actually a small market. There are too many aspiring actors and models for ventures to be lucrative. Supply far exceeds demand. What we are left with is highly-educated office clerks, Shakespearean waiters and receptionists with impressive portfolios. Without intending to, they will displace those who need and want those working-class jobs.
Looking for an apartment here a few years back, I was shocked by the bunk-bedding taking place and the many landlords going along with it. The asking price of a modest apartment was astronomical, mostly because hipsters were splitting rents four, six, eight different ways and no one had a problem with that.
John Borrillo
Astoria
