Back then it was mostly a neighborhood composed of older Eastern Europeans, many Polish, although twenty-something artists and entrepreneurial types had begun to cram into the cheap (and often illegal) lofts lacking public utilities. “Young men and women who were just recently out of college moved to Williamsburg because it was cheap and had relatively easy access to midtown New York City,” recalls Tony Wolf, an actor and artist who came to the area in 1996.
Can you play some more Minogue? And keep up with the tracks that everybody knows,” sings Har Mar Superstar in his 2002 song “ EZ Pass.” It details a night of bar-hopping for the husky white R&B performer, as he’s on a mission to find the “hypest party,” starting on Orchard Street in Manhattan, before taking the subway across the East River to northern Brooklyn and a bar called Enid’s.īy then, Williamsburg and neighboring Greenpoint were starting to usurp the East Village and Lower East Side as the coolest neighborhood in the five boroughs, laying groundwork for what would become one of the greatest bar scenes in American history.
