A 'Plague of Artists' Is a Battle Cry for Brooklyn Hasidim

[Kris]

February 17, 2004

A 'Plague of Artists' Is a Battle Cry for Brooklyn Hasidim

By TARA BAHRAMPOUR


Hasidic Jews in south Williamsburg, Brooklyn, fear the encroachment of artists and hipsters in their neigborhood as rents rise to the north. They worry that housing prices will soar and their community will unravel.

Several weeks ago Mikey Weiss, an electronics store owner with an overgrown blond Mohawk, was visited in his shop on the north side of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by a couple of men in mink hats.

"These two Hasidic guys, dressed as Hasidically as you could possibly dress, came in and asked me what kind of people live in this neighborhood," Mr. Weiss said, adding that he told them the area was largely populated with people in their 20's and 30's, including many artists.

"They said: 'Artists! That's it!' " he recalled. "They said, 'We want to hear about these artists we've heard are moving to our neighborhood.' They asked: 'Are they noisy? Do they cause trouble?' "

The visitors were from the community of 57,000 Satmar Hasidic Jews who live in south Williamsburg and who have in recent weeks been alarmed by talk of their neighborhood being invaded by "artisten," a Yiddish word that in local parlance is used to describe non-Hasidim who live on the north side.

They had come to the store after seeing fliers around the neighborhood that had portrayed the artisten as a looming threat. One flier even included a drawing of the World Trade Center collapsing, and read, in Yiddish: "How long did it take the Twin Towers to fall? Eight seconds. How long will it take for Williamsburg??? God Forbid."

Although the divisions are blurry, Broadway near the Williamsburg Bridge has long been seen as the border between the neighborhood's south side, a working-class Hasidic and Hispanic enclave, and the north side, which has become known for its artists, hipsters and, increasingly, affluent professionals. But as northside rents have soared, and ritzy boutiques and nightclubs have moved in, residents seeking cheaper housing have looked southward. Meanwhile, many young Hasidic families are large and their housing needs have grown accordingly. A collision was perhaps inevitable, and it has focused on a building at 60 Broadway, right on the dividing line.

On Sunday afternoon, five young Hasidic men stood in freezing wind outside the Gretsch Building, a 10-story, 200,000-square-foot former musical instrument factory that is being converted to luxury condominiums selling for about $550 per square foot. They had just taken part in a protest, one of several that Hasidic men have staged outside the building in recent months. Across the street, on an apartment building occupied by Hasidim, a large banner read: "The neighborhood is NOT welcoming the Gretsch Building. We need AFFORDABLE housing!"

That, the protesters say, is the main issue. Since World War II, when they immigrated from Hungary, the Williamsburg Hasidim have opened synagogues and lobbied for zoning changes to allow for more residential buildings in this formerly industrial area.

But recently, community members say, real estate agents and would-be buyers have knocked on their doors offering to buy their homes for at least double the $200 per square foot they are used to paying. Many fear that if even a few agree to that, market rates and property taxes will soar, leading to an unraveling of the community's tightly woven fabric.

"We are here since the Holocaust," said Moses Krausz, a tall, bespectacled man who participated in the protest. "We opened schools. I have 15 brothers and sisters; where should we go to live?"

With Australian Jarrah wood floors and Pietra Colombina limestone fireplaces, the Gretsch will be arguably the most luxurious development the neighborhood has yet seen. But it is not the area's only upscale new condominium complex. Two blocks away, a refurbished cast-iron building, the Smith Gray, has sold lofts at more than $400 per square foot without provoking the ire of the Hasidim.

Maier Katz, a protester, said that is because the owner of that building is not Jewish, whereas at least two of the Gretsch Building's developers are.

"If it's not a Jew, it's not our business, we can't do anything," he said. The men around him nodded. "If it's a Jew, we can do something."

The Gretsch owners in question are two brothers, Martin and Edward Wydra, Orthodox Jews who are not Hasidim. But to some in the community, they are close enough. Three weeks ago, they took their protest to Martin Wydra's house in Flatbush.

Most say the main issue is real estate. But in a neighborhood where shopping streets are lined with modest rugelach bakeries and felt-hat stores, where children in matching pinafores play on the sidewalks into dusk, some fear cultural conflicts with more cosmopolitan newcomers from the north side, where vintage jeans and yoga mats are the norm.

"We may have a problem with people using musical instruments at 3 in the morning, we may have a problem with people getting drunk, we may have a problem with an individual approaching young girls about private issues," said Sam Brown, 45, a real estate investor from the Satmar community.

Putting it more strongly, a flier handed out last month at a protest (and reprinted in the March issue of Harper's magazine) asked the "Master of the Universe" to "please remove from upon us the plague of the artists, so that we shall not drown in evil waters, and so that they shall not come to our residence to ruin it."

Mr. Brown added that tensions around the Gretsch are also high because the person who sold the building to developers two years ago was a Satmar Hasid, a man he said has since been shunned by the community.

"We made it very clear for the seller and buyer, in all kinds of language, to explain that they should not do this because it's hurting the interests of the community," Mr. Brown said. "Basically, they were ignoring our pleas."

But Martin Wydra said that far from ignoring them, he and his partners have made many concessions to the Satmars, even offering to sell the building back to them at cost.

"We felt that because we were Jews ourselves and because there was a concern in the community, that we would give the community an opportunity to develop it themselves and we'd find another project," he said, adding that the community leaders ended up declining. (Mr. Brown disputed that the building was offered at cost.)

Even so, Mr. Wydra said, he tried to ease their fears. A plan to add balconies was scrapped to reduce the chance that scantily clad residents would be visible on them; tinting was added to windows on two sides for the same reason. When the Hasidim balked at an idea for an enclosed swimming pool because people in bathing suits might step out onto the sidewalk, that plan was discarded, he said, adding that a rabbi from the community gave the project his blessing.

Some say it is the Hasidim themselves who have helped drive up rents in the area by building market-rate units on the north side. "They're saying that they want affordable housing, but they're charging extortionist rents to non-Hasidic people," said Mark Firth, a local restaurant owner and resident. Hasidic-owned market-rate developments are also planned for the south side, but they will include some low-income units.

A spokeswoman for the Corcoran Group, which is marketing the Gretsch Building, said that the protest had not dissuaded buyers and that 70 percent of the 130 units have sold. But the protesters standing out in the wind said they hoped their stand would discourage future developers from investing in the area.

Perhaps, they reasoned, it was not too late even for the Gretsch.

"If they can't sell them at high prices, maybe they'll have to sell them at low prices," Mr. Katz said. He gazed at workers perched high up on a scaffold outside the Gretsch's windows. "Then maybe we can move in."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Gulcrapek]

There's a point but there's a point. The point is that overgentrification is a major problem that is growing all over the city, and should be limited to a certain amount. But the point is that these orthodox Jews feel as if the neighborhood literally belongs to them, and shun anyone who does not follow their teachings. The same thing happened in Borough Park. On Saturdays in Borough Park, it is impossible to drive on a good deal of streets because residents put up barricades. They want to keep out anyone who doesn't observe Shabbos and is driving.

They're spreading through areas formerly occupied by others, so why are they bitching so much if others spread to theirs?

[Ninjahedge]

Intolerant bahstards.

I hate it when these guys get like this. They think that people are going to be parading up and down the streets in bikins with filthy men looking to sleep with their daughters.

"We opened schools. I have 15 brothers and sisters; where should we go to live?"

Um, first off, why do you have 15 siblings? I know you do not believe in birth control, but we are no longer in an agricultural society that demands additional siblings for risk of loosing them to childhood illnesses and th elike.

I HATE intolerance, and these anal-retentive hate mongers are worse than the hell that they portray.

You request provisions to help integrate into the neighborhood, but DEMANDING that a development not have things such as balconies is attrocious.

Welcome to the USA, land of the free. Now that you are in, feel free not to allow anyone else in.

[normaldude]

Bigotry is always ugly. It's surprising how even today, people are openly pushing for segregation and ethnic/religious purity.

If someone wants to live in a neighborhood, they shouldn't be judged based on their race/religion/ethnicity.

Here's a similar article from New York Magazine:

====================
Hasidim vs. Hipsters
Trucker hat, schmucker hat: Williamsburg’s religious Jews want the ’hood’s arty arrivistes to go away.

By Steven I. Weiss & Zackary Sholem Berger

On Sunday, January 4, as many Jews around the city fasted to commemorate the historical siege of Jerusalem by Babylonians, more than 100 Williamsburg Hasidim were protesting what they consider a siege of their community—by New York hipsters. Under steady rain, rabbis, laymen, and schoolboys gathered across from the newly renovated Gretsch Building at 60 Broadway, an old musical-instrument factory where rapper Busta Rhymes just bought a million-dollar-plus apartment. “We’re trying to keep this neighborhood clean and honest, and these people are destroying it,” said a protester, Hershl Grinfeld.

Hasidim have called Williamsburg home since the early part of the last century, and they have little interest in seeing their slice of Brooklyn become the next Manhattan. To their way of thinking, the only things hipsters (artist’n in Yiddish) contribute to the neighborhood are skyrocketing real-estate prices and morally suspect nightlife. And as one typical message on a Yiddish online bulletin board recently put it, the trendoids “pollute the eyes and the mind.” At the same time, some hipsters have their own complaints about the Hasidim: “When you willingly have ten-plus children based on your religious beliefs, feed most of them on food stamps, and displace everyone else in the neighborhood, there’s hardly any sympathy to be had,” says Dori Mondon, a designer who recently left Williamsburg.

The two groups have little in common besides a taste for black attire, and amicable co-habitation seems unlikely. There are even ads in Yiddish papers comparing the hipsters to the 9/11 hijackers. At the Sunday protest, Rabbi Zalman Leib Fulop declared that the growth of the local artist population was “a bitter decree from Heaven.” Those selling real estate to the hipsters, said the rabbi, would “never be able to leave hell.” Meanwhile, organizers distributed a prayer entitled “For the Protection of Our City of Williamsburg From the Plague of the Artists.” Could frogs and locusts in trucker hats be next?

http://www.nymetro.com/nymetro/news/...gencer/n_9756/

[billyblancoNYC]

BUY a house/condo/co-op and this won't be an issue.

[TLOZ Link5]

"Oy! Foist the Nazis, then the Crown Heights riots, and now these hipstehs! That's the last strawr, Sheila! Get the kids togetheh, weeh moving to New Rochelle!"

[Clarknt67]

it's funny I'm glad you're all equally unsympathetic to the hasidum, as it validates my own feelings that amount to: "tough, you're in America and the dollar reigns supreme!"

and yet, I sympathize with them. I've built a life here in NYC based on a rent-stabilized apartment. If rent stabilization laws fall by the wayside, I cannot imagine myself being able to stay in my 'hood or my home. I can't today pay market value for the apartment I rent.

So how am I different? both these jews and I have built a life in a neighborhood that is based on social/economic factors we have little power to control. Would *I* like to be evicted from my home just because I couldn't keep up economically?

I guess I would try to handle those circumstances with grace and dignity. I do remind myself daily only those who own their homes can afford to feel safe in their homes.