Gothamist posted a reader-submitted photograph today (reposted here, to the left), of a sign outside the Williamsburg bar Hugs, which, at first glance, seems to be a fairly direct exclusion of a certain demographic.
For what its worth, my personal take is that, inadvertently or otherwise, there is a racial element present here, but aside from that, I’d like to suggest that the idea that you could (or should) start a bar/club in Williamsburg that touts its exclusionary practices on a big dumb sign (rule of thumb: the more exclamation points you need, the stupider you probably are) is a little bit ridiculous. I spent a sizable percent of my waking hours this weekend in a hoodie, for example, and I would guess I’m not of the demographic being targeted here.
Not to say that Williamsburgers aren’t exclusive types (imagine the local response to applying tan schmear for a show at, say, Don Pedro) — part of the reason we started this blog was to push against that. But whether their sensitivity is genuine or simply to maintain liberal street cred, you don’t often see what amounts to borderline racial profiling from that neighborhood, unless its, you know, the cops (and, really, cops in the ‘burgh seem to hate mostly everyone).
Gothamist commenters have a range of opinion (also, installment 249,323 of the hipster/anti-hipster debate), which is sort of surprising, given the relative lack of sanity in blog comments, well, globally. They’ve also pointed out that the bar has taken down this sign, maybe in recognition of its foible, maybe because they were getting some shit for it. We’ll be contacting Hugs to see what they have to say about it. Update forthcoming…
BREAKING: Blog post sparks semi-sane debate about important topic
For what its worth, my personal take is that, inadvertently or otherwise, there is a racial element present here, but aside from that, I’d like to suggest that the idea that you could (or should) start a bar/club in Williamsburg that touts its exclusionary practices on a big dumb sign (rule of thumb: the more exclamation points you need, the stupider you probably are) is a little bit ridiculous. I spent a sizable percent of my waking hours this weekend in a hoodie, for example, and I would guess I’m not of the demographic being targeted here.
Not to say that Williamsburgers aren’t exclusive types (imagine the local response to applying tan schmear for a show at, say, Don Pedro) — part of the reason we started this blog was to push against that. But whether their sensitivity is genuine or simply to maintain liberal street cred, you don’t often see what amounts to borderline racial profiling from that neighborhood, unless its, you know, the cops (and, really, cops in the ‘burgh seem to hate mostly everyone).
Gothamist commenters have a range of opinion (also, installment 249,323 of the hipster/anti-hipster debate), which is sort of surprising, given the relative lack of sanity in blog comments, well, globally. They’ve also pointed out that the bar has taken down this sign, maybe in recognition of its foible, maybe because they were getting some shit for it. We’ll be contacting Hugs to see what they have to say about it. Update forthcoming…
Mini-Update: Hadn’t noticed that freewilliamsburg covered this, too. There’s some comments on their thing, also.