THE INCESSANTLY NOISY VITALITY OF WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN

First time I have visited Williamsburg, then a very raw section of Brooklyn, in the summer of 1981. It was a time of Solidarity movement heyday in Poland, several months before the imposition of martial law by infamous general Jaruzelski. I was then a young student of Jagiellonian University in Cracow, who was lucky enough to have a good aunt in Williamsburg, who invited me for the summer to see New York City. I spent six weeks traversing the boroughs and sections of New York City; everything was so new to me, a student who got for the first time a peak of the United States through his own pair of eyes. Williamsburg of 1981 was quite a scary kind of place. Full of dilapidated factories, with the areas of Kent and Wythe Avenues between Domino Sugar Factories in the south and Greenpoint in north, occupied by vulgar prostitutes and drug pushers. Williamsburg in those bleak years, under the good mayor Koch, was so raw and bleak, that I gladly went back to my native Poland at the end of August of 1981, with hope that Poland rejoined the free world for good. But Jaruzelski was already preparing the implementation of his Martial Law plans. At the last year of my studies at Cracow's Jagiellonian University I was lucky enough to get a visa to the United States, and gladly took off for New York City again. Initially, I stayed with my aunt in Williamsburg again, but after a couple of months I got my own room in Woodside, then I went through other boroughs of New York City, including crossing Hudson and getting my own New Jersey inhabitant experience; I did not have to deal on a daily basis with the scary looking Williamsburg for the next three years. Eventually, I returned to Williamsburg in March, 1989, and since there I was a witness to its slow transformation from the raw, industrial neighborhood (occupied initially in its north side by Italian, Polish and Irish immigrants, and on the south side by Puerto Rican community, and further to the south, by Hasidic Jews), through invasion of artists and musicians in the early 1990, to the present gentrified hipsters capital of the world. I still remember the time when the entertainment in Williamsburg was limited to Johnny Gallagher Ship Mast (featured heavily in Nick Gomez's movie Laws of Gravity which was shot on $20,000 budget yet it went on to win Sundance Film Festival), Teddy's, Charleston and one spot of xxx entertainment. Slowly, during years of Mayor Giuliani, the prostitution disappeared from Kent and Wythe Avenues and from the bank of East River, the wild construction boom was started by all out conversion of the factories into lofts and artists studios, and then developers got their hands on more and more parcels of land, and soon new buildings started to appear like mushroom after summer rains, and obfuscate my view of Manhattan skyline; the Williamsburg I used to know was suddenly in the midst of its conversion into the hipster capital of the world. Now, to get a view of Manhattan skyline, I have to take stroll to the Northside Piers beyond Kent Avenue, on the banks of East River. On the other hand, the area around the Ferry Terminal at Northside Piers became so esthetically pleasing that I do not long much for the raw Williamsburg of early 1990-s. The amount of bars and nightclubs in Williamsburg, tempting the strollers, is staggering though. So good, that I have given up on the night life several years ago! Nowadays, I just wish that the amount of bars and nightclubs could somehow be limited, stopping the hordes from Manhattan and from other sections of Brooklyn, from disrupting our life night after night. And if someone could do something about those construction noise, I would be eternally grateful.

Janusz Andrzejewski is a New York City based attorney, writing on legal as well as other important community topics. You can contact him by telephone (212) 634-4250 or by e-mail: janusz@januszandrzejewski.com