“Hipster” Cafe Opens, People Freak the Fuck Out
A new cafe opened in Bay Ridge this month, and the hipster haters are worried it spells the end of the neighborhood. “Wasn’t it only a few months ago that the rule was hipsters would never be in south[ern] Brooklyn?” one commenter writes at the Brooklyn Paper. The Coffee Lab, on Third Avenue near 69th Street, is owned by Dora Wu and Don Lee; the latter grew up nearby on Sixth Avenue, but the couple only recently moved to the new neighborhood to fulfill their cafe-owning dreams. The shop will offer “coffee from Williamsburg roaster Toby’s Estate, organic milk from Whole Foods’s distributor, and fancy French cookies courtesy of Macaron Parlour in the East Village.” And therein lies the rub.
“Long Live $1 Actual Brooklyn Coffeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” diehipster himself writes. He and his compatriots are outraged that now Ridgeites will be able to buy $4 lattes (four dollars?!) and $2.50 macarons (two dollars and fifty cents?!), forgetting of course that it’s been years since Starbucks opened on Third Avenue and that there are now three in the area, and that Caffe Cafe, which is like almost 20 years old or something, sells 12 oz. lattes for $3.75 (or 24 oz. iced lattes for $6) less than a mile down the road. “set a date in your empty calendar for October 2015 and take down this joke of a business’s phone number and call it then,” diehipster continues. “I guarantee you the person who answers won’t say ‘Coffee Lab, how can I help you?’ How dumb are these ‘under the hipster influence’ business owners? They are taking already over-priced trendy products and marking them up again to sell in a working class neighborhood????LOLLL”
Or, you know, you could think of it as a locally, independently owned small business to compete with the mega coffee chain already here, servicing the class-diverse community, or at least those in it who enjoy good coffee—that is, the people who keep multiple Starbucks in business!
Follow Henry Stewart on Twitter @henrycstewart