The Hipster Invasion is Real, and It’s Coming!


It’s actually happening—hipsters are invading Bay Ridge. Sure, laugh it up, and then the next thing you know, Caffe Cafe serves $11 coffee, Century 21 only sells skinny jeans, and the food at Chadwick’s is vegan. You might say, “they’d never make it this far south because the commute is too long,” but like viruses adapting to antibiotics, some of them have developed the ability to ride the subway for longer periods of time, and thus have spread cancerously to neighborhoods like ours.
There were warning signs that people didn’t take seriously. The Owl’s Head wine bar opened, catering to trendy youths with its wines and its foods from local independent vendors. The hipsters moved in to drink there. Then one of the neighborhood’s trendiest residents, the owner of the uber-hip Kettle Black and Ho’Brah, announced he’d open a third location, the full-hipster Lockyard. And people scoffed. While more hipsters moved in.
I’ve seen it: I’ve seen men wearing Club Masters in Three Jolly Pigeons, other men in red pants and Sex Pistols T-shirts under Elvis Costello-esque sports jackets on Shore Road. I’ve seen women wearing thick-framed glasses on Third Avenue sporting dresses with leggings.
Now Brooklyn Industries, with its relevant apparel, is opening a store in Bay Ridge, the Brooklyn Paper reports, near 86th Street, which used to have real businesses like Record Factory but is increasingly crowded with hipster favorites like halal food trucks. In Journalism, three things makes a trend, which means that Bay Ridge has officially gone hipster.