BLACK HATS VS. TRUCKER HATS: From the people who brought us Jewsweek.com, there's a piece in New York Magazine about the growing, "Do the Right Thing"-like feud going on in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood between the Hasids and the hipsters. The Orthodox Jews in the area don't appreciate the hipsters' "morally suspect nightlife" and contribution to high real estate prices, whereas members of the Trucker Hat Brigade counter that the Hasidim "willingly have ten-plus children... feed most of them on food stamps, and displace everyone else in the neighborhood." About all the two sides can agree on, according to authors Steven I. Weiss and Zachary Sholem Berger, is "a taste for black attire."
I never know who to root for in these "old neighborhood"/hipster/gentrification battles, because I generally have equal contempt for the territorial hubris of all sides. But I wouldn't worry too much about another Crown Heights happening; the hipsters are generally way too wussified to ever start an actual riot. Then again, maybe Howard Dean's withdrawal will have the same effect on them that Judy Garland's death had on the Stonewall people...