When you're smilin', the whole borough smiles with you. (James Hamilton)

Even though the Barclays Center has yet to fully stock his beer, Brooklyn Brewery boss Steve Hindy still loves the project, as he makes plain in this email to The Observer, which we excerpted in the previous story. Even when people were hating on him for supporting the project, Mr. Hindy stood by it, and he believes prospered because of it. He covered a lot of territory in his note to us, so we figured why not post it in full.

We had initially asked Mr. Hindy why we could not seem to find any of his wares at the Barclays Center, and if his failure to buy a sponsorship (a very common practice among brands at the arena) had anything to do with it. Here is his response.

Matt,

We did not do any advertising in the new arena.  The big breweries did.  The asking prices were way beyond our ability to pay.

But we expect to have a good presence there, in bottles, cans and on draft.  We did purchase a suite and we enjoy Brooklyn Lager and Brooklyn East India there.

You are correct: I did strongly and publicly support the Atlantic Yards project.  I did not expect to be a big public supporter; I sort of stumbled into it.  The Brewery did a Nets promotion soon after the project was announced.  It was a family event, with Daryl Dawkins and the Nets dancers.  People brought their kids and got free hats and t-shirts.  It was fun.

The next day, some of the more radical opponents of the arena called for a boycott of the brewery.  The bar Freddy’s, which was bought out with imminent domain (at a great price), made a big show of throwing us out.  Some bars in Flatbush and Park Slope still will not carry our beer because of the controversy.  Not to whine, but it hurt because we have put a lot back into this community.

I did not back down and ended up writing an op-ed in Metro defending the project.

I think it is a great thing for Brooklyn, and I think the housing will be a big success.  Brooklyn needs all the economic activity it can get.  Brooklyn lags behind other parts of the city and state.  Those people who pooh-pooh the new jobs, part- and full-time, do not know how important those jobs are for the people of Brooklyn.

When the arena opened, I sent Bruce Ratner a note congratulating him.  He replied with a nice note thanking me for my support, which he recognized led to personal attacks on me and the company.  Ratner’s Metrotech, Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Yards are the biggest developments in the history of Brooklyn.  I believe they make Brooklyn a better place for all of us.

I know this was all a very small footnote to the development of the project, but it was a big deal for us at the Brooklyn Brewery.  We definitely suffered some collateral damage.

But the brewery grew rapidly in the past decade in spite of that, and we will grow 30% this year.  We hope to end up among the top ten craft brewers in the country.  (Last year, we were #13.)

Steve

Y'all thirsty? (Matt Chaban)

The Barclays Center is open, and like Brooklyn's favorite son who has been performing there all week, the arena lives up to the hype. It may not be universally loved, for its tortured past or rusticated design, but there is no question the Barclays Center is one of the most unique and interesting sports venues in the world. It is certainly the most exacting, with every inch of the place being burnished and detailed. It is like a Swiss watch—everything in its right place—albeit a Swiss watch with a discrete EmblemHealth logo on its face, the kind of thing handed out for a Christmas bonus. You eagerly wear it and just hope no one wants to see the thing up close.

One thing was out of place, though, when The Observer took in Wednesday night's packed Jay-Z concert: drinks, drinks everywhere, but not a drop from Brooklyn.

That is not exactly true. If we wanted a root beer float from precious Cobble Hill soda shop the Farmacy, there they were, 8 bucks a pop. (Get it? Pop? Forget it. You must not be from the Midwest like the rest of us in Brooklyn.) There were Budweiser taps as far as the eye could see, even a few Budweiser-branded Eighteen|76 bars, named for the year of the bubbly brew's inception. There were also rolling Stoli carts sprinkled throughout, reminiscent of the cocktail setups at a wedding reception or the basement of a frat house, with the lines to match.

And there was the expertly curated local food offerings—Calexico, L&B Spumoni, Fatty 'Cue, Cafe Habana, Nathan's—but that only threw into starker contrast the absence of any Brooklyn libations. It is not only the fact that Brooklyn has become home to numerous notable craft brewers and distillers but also the fact that one of them, Steve Hindy of the Brooklyn Brewery, very publicly defended this project for some time, even garnering boycotts from some of the haughtier establishments in the borough. His wares, despite much publicity to the contrary, were nowhere to be found.

There was another problem, as this reporter and his wife swilled a $10 Stella Artois (cheaper than many Manhattan bars, come to think of it). The tickets said the show started at 8 p.m., we had gotten here at 7:35 to be sure we had time for some delectable dinner, which cost a pretty penny, but then again it always does at arenas anymore, and at least the food was generally very good. Around 8, when we asked a very polite usher (everyone was trained by Disney) when the show might start, she said in about 40 minutes. In the end, Jay-Z would not take the stage for another hour and a half.

It is not that this is terribly rude, or that we are terribly un-punk enough not to deal with it. Promise. It is not that, as The Observer was later informed, Jay-Z, no matter where he plays, always likes to take his time, let the excitement built, let the stragglers arrive, let the DJ work his magic, calling out for Brooklyn in the HOUSE? This did not bother us.

What did is that Jay-Z is a part owner in the massive, beautiful, unusual venue we were now inside—and my wife could not shake the feeling that we and the 18,000 or so other fans and affiliates all here to see one man were somehow being made to wait by him so that people might buy more $10 beers, more $13.75 mass artisanal sandwiches. As he relaxed and we waited, the crowd was lining HOVA's pockets.

Don't forget, as Bloomberg food critic Ryan Sutton recently noticed, water is more expensive than soda.

The next day, The Observer inquired with a Barclays Center spokesman about the whole thing. He said the organization had no interest in disclosing whether or not Jay-Z was indeed taking a cut of the concession sales, either as a performer or as a miniscule partner in the operation.

As for the lack of Brooklyn Brewery beer, of Six Point, of Kings County bourbon and Breuckelen Gin? "They have Brooklyn Larger in bottles and cans (they are poured into cups)," the spokesman wrote in an email. But we protested. We looked, there was none. Maybe at one of the bars that we missed, but what about the rest? "I suggest you go back, drink less, and look more closely for the beverages you desire," he responded.

To be sure, The Observer checked with Steve Hindy, proprietor of Brooklyn Brewery, just to be sure of what was going on. Basically, the arena purchased the beer and was working out where to put it still—not every kink had been worked out by opening day, and those who paid the right sponsorships (Mr. Hindy said he could not afford them) seemed to be getting the most attention. We also noticed the Kosher Kiosks had yet to be set up yet. Still, many of the luxury boxes had been outfitted with the craft brews in their mini fridges, one of Mr. Hindy's associates told us. Figures.

Even if he was elbowed aside for the time being, given second-tier status despite being the hometown favorite, Mr. Hindy's love for the project remains.

"Ratner’s Metrotech, Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Yards are the biggest developments in the history of Brooklyn," Mr. Hindy said. "I believe they make Brooklyn a better place for all of us. I know this was all a very small footnote to the development of the project, but it was a big deal for us at the Brooklyn Brewery. We definitely suffered some collateral damage. But the brewery grew rapidly in the past decade in spite of that, and we will grow 30% this year."

Did we mention the show was—like the arena—unlike anything we had ever seen? Not life-changing, a little too slick, perhaps, but still certainly not the kind of thing one gets to experience on a regular basis. Unless you're a season ticket holder. Guzzling glitches aside, totally worth it.

Sing a song about the G, get sent to Sweden! (Brooklyn Brewery)

The G train gets a bad rap sometimes. Residents of Brooklyn and Queens often grumble about the train's sporadic service, long waits, lack of weekend service, and its general uselessness. But there's at least one champion of the G out there (which will be extending its service thanks to the MTA's new budget allotment), and they want you to show your love as well.

The Williamsburg beer factory/garden Brooklyn Brewery is holding a contest for songsmiths to pen a tune about their experience riding the green rails, which, as they point out, is statistically a pretty decent train. The winning band will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Sweden, where the hops palace has teamed up with Debaser to hold the first ever Brooklyn music festival in Stockholm. (Why? Who knows.)

The official deadline for entry was July 24th (sorry!), but you can still vote on the ten finalists over on the Brewery's Facebook page. Tomorrow is the last day to pick your favorite, so get on this: the songs range from like Matthew Meyer's indie ballad "G Ode," which chronicles the trials of commuting "from a train to a bus," to the auto-tuned "I'll Wait For You" (Get it? Because the train is so slow?)

But our personal favorite is Teen Commandments' "No Burning Headlights," which took a time machine to steal the glam-rock vocals from David Bowie and coupled it with the synth  guy from Echo and the Bunnymen.

http://youtu.be/kP4qNsJLP9E

Brewing up some condos? (Property Shark)

It was perhaps inevitable. Even a beloved boutique manufacturer could only survive for so long on the condo-crazed shores of Williamsburg. Brooklyn Brewery was the city's first big-time microbrewer and helped bring the sudsy movement to the East Coast in the 1990s. Now, the brewery's home has been quietly sold, and it looks like a housing conversion of some sort is in the mix.

The 135,000-square-foot five-building complex, originally the Dr. Brown's Soda factory, sold for $16 million, according to Crain's. The brewery, as well as two design studios, still have years left on their lease, 14 years in the brewery's case.

The reason for the sale was given as personal, but it does raise questions about the future of the lager-maker in New York. Steve Hindy, its founder, spent years looking for new space to brew in, but complained the city had become unfriendly to manufacturers. After scouring the five boroughs for new facilities, and considering a move upstate, Brooklyn Brewery eventually decided to stay put in Williamsburg and expand within the complex.

Now that the site has been sold, and could go residential, it simply proves Mr. Hindy right, that there is not enough being done to protect the city's industrial base. Just take a look next door, where Jed Walentas is building a new hotel in the manufacturing district thanks to a zoning loophole.

UPDATE: Brooklyn Brewery boss Steve Hindy emailed The Observer to say that the site housing the brewery itself, 79 North 11th Street has not been sold, but instead two buildings used as warehouse by the brewery, located at 118 North 11th Street. This still creates a challenge for Brooklyn Brewery.

The warehouse is an important part of our business. It houses the "warm rooms" and "cold rooms" where we mature our bottle-conditioned beers like Brooklyn Local 1. It also contains our barrel aging rooms where we store some beers in whisky barrels for a few months before bottling. Brooklyn Black Ops is conditioned in bourbon barrels in those rooms.

Mr. Hindy agrees that allowing non-industrial business types into manufacturing areas, and even the supposedly special Industrial Business Zones, creates problems for businesses like his.

The Industrial Business Zone is a great concept, but allowing hotels, banks, chain stores, clubs and other retail businesses does raise the bar (rent) for industrial tenants. The brewery is surrounded by a bowling alley/club, a 72-room boutique hotel and a very popular used clothing store--all of which can afford higher rents than we can. I would like to see IBZs that are limited to industrial tenants.

And just because he has a lease through 2025, he is not convinced the landlord will not try to act sooner than that. "It will be interesting to see if the new owners of 118 North 11th St try to force us out," he wrote in his email.

Also, an earlier version of this post pictured 79 North 11th Street, not 118 North 11th Street.

mchaban@observer.com

There has been a fair deal of handwringing over yesterday's announcement that nine out of 11 boardwalk stalwarts will be gone next year. "People in the summer love to come in for a drink in their bikinis and bathing suits. It won't be the same when they're told to dress up because it's a 'high-class place,'" Melody Sarrel, owner of the 76-year-old Ruby's, told the Post.

The same article, as well as The Times' account, reported that Brooklyn Brewery was a candidate to replace the old timers. Yet the L Magazine points out that this is not the case, and even notes that The Times expunged its refernce to the boro's favorite sudsmaker without also adding a correction.

"Perhaps their source had mentioned a Brooklyn brewery, not the Brooklyn Brewery," Dan D'Ippolito, the brewery's communications coordinator, wrote in an e-mail to a boycott-proposer. "We have not discussed building or operating a beer garden in Coney Island--nor do we have any interest in doing so."

So what can beachgoers look forward to? Atomics Wings and Shake Shack, says the News. Our favorites!

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

What: The Great American Beer Festival

Where: Denver, Colo.

Why: Because the Mile High City celebrates its craft beer culture in a way New York is just coming around to

The City of Denver, along with the trade group the Brewers Association, hosted a jolly bus tour of Denver’s more notable beer destinations—and one distillery!—during the annual Great American Beer Festival this past Friday.

The tour ended at the Wynkoop Brewery. It is two levels, done in that sort of faux English pub style that seems a prerequisite to being taken seriously as a gathering place for beerheads (wood paneling = authentic). Except that the Wynkoop has another, much more tangible claim to authenticity: It’s Colorado’s oldest brewpub. More than that, its founder is John Hickenlooper, the mayor of Denver since 2003 and, at the personal urging of President Obama, the current Democratic nominee for Colorado governor (he's way ahead in the polls against two more conservative opponents splitting the GOP vote).

Mr. Hickenlooper, a struggling geologist (seriously) and homebrewer, opened the Wynkoop in 1988, during the Middle Ages of craft brewing in America (anything before 1980 or thereabouts being the Dark Ages, when a few clued-in souls, like the monks of central Europe of yore, squirreled away kernels of knowledge that would keep the movement going). He and his business partner chose to locate their brewpub in a then-rundown area of Denver that would, as these things go, come to be called by an acronym: LoDo, for Lower Downtown. Picture it today as Dumbo, with a lot more space between buildings and parallel sidewalks, and views of the Rockies. It is hip and desirable, and Mr. Hickenlooper's dice-roll 20-plus years ago is a big part of that transformation.

Denver recognizes that, and has for decades. New York, though its craft beer subculture has burgeoned by leaps and bounds since the late 1980s, has only just started to celebrate it as an economic driver. It's about time.

NEW YORK’S THIRD annual Craft Beer Week starts Sept. 24 (a plethora of info here, including how to get discounts on beer and where). It is the most striking example of Gotham’s embrace of craft beer as something good for the city economically.

Take Steve Hindy, our John Hickenlooper. Mr. Hindy, along with Tom Potter, his then-downstairs neighbor in a much grittier Park Slope (Mr. Hindy and his wife paid $89,000 for a two-bedroom co-op on Eight Street back in the early 1980s—they could no longer afford the Upper West Side), founded Brooklyn Brewery around the same time Mr. Hickenlooper started Wynkoop 1,900 miles away.

Messrs. Hindy and Potter wrote a book about their entrepreneurship called Beer School (Mr. Hindy was an editor at Newsday and, before that, a Mideast correspondent for the AP; Mr. Potter worked at Chemical Bank). In Beer School, there’s a photo of a smiling Mr. Hindy, his hand on the roof of a burned out, stripped car outside the old Otto Huber Brewery at 260 Meserole Street in Bushwick—Brooklyn Brewery’s first warehouse. Below that photo is a shot of the brewery’s first storefront office, on a stretch of Fourth Avenue that then looked like B-roll for a Firing Line debate on urban blight but that now rests mere paces from the apogee of Park Slope presumption.

Such migration toward the bourgeois was, of course, no accident; and it cannot be separated from beer.

Says who? Says Hizzoner.

“[T]heir success story is about more than the birth of a brewery; it’s about the rebirth of a borough,” wrote Michael Bloomberg in the foreword to Beer School. “In so many ways, the Brooklyn Brewery symbolizes—and helped to create—the renaissance that has taken hold in Brooklyn.”

Indeed, the economic arc of Brooklyn over the last century could be charted with beer. The borough, before Prohibition in 1920, was home to as many as four dozen commercial breweries; and rivaled St. Louis and Milwaukee in beer production. This industrial manufacturing base employed thousands of residents, who could commute or walk to work, and then head home, where they might enjoy a comfortable, conventional middle-class life. Prohibition did a number on Brooklyn, though—most of the breweries never returned after repeal in 1933. The last few, like Rheingold, petered out by the 1970s, as Brooklyn’s—and the city’s—economic base shifted inexorably from industrial manufacturing to… whatever it’s become today: an apparently healthy mix of retail, media and everything inside and tangential to the same FIRE that stokes Manhattan.

The old factories, including the breweries, have become reliquaries of the city’s economic past (Brooklyn Brewery, it should be noted, contracts much of its production to a brewery in more cost-effective Utica, though it maintains a wonderfully fecund facility on North 11th Street, along Williamsburg's old Brewers Row). In the factories’ stead, however, has grown that curiously crunchy, yet unmistakably pricey, consumerism that itself has become a leading export of New York, Brooklyn in particular. How else to explain Bored to Death?

And the beer is a part of that. As Mr. Hindy recounts in his book, the best marketing tool for his beer was the borough where it was conceived. “Tom and I had settled on ‘Brooklyn’ for our company and its beers because we believed that ‘Brooklyn’ had meaning far beyond the borders of New York City’s most populous borough. We believed that Brooklyn was more than a place.”  

They were right, of course. And Brooklyn Brewery beer, as well as the local fruits of several other craft breweries and brewpubs (and the niche appeal of beerhead bars and shops), became one of contemporary New York’s emblematic economic drivers, just as similar beer did for Denver.

Denver began celebrating this reality earlier—the city has hosted the Great American Beer Festival since the 1980s, and other local businesses love them some beerheads: Hotel rates in Denver were higher during the festival last week than during the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

New York is, then, fairly late to its great, big beer hug. But better late than never. Cheers.

tacitelli@observer.com and Twitter @tacitelli

PREVIOUSLY > THE MAN WHO SOLD NEW YORK ON CASK ALE

Approval of the grant, approved today by the Empire State Development Corp., comes after Brooklyn Brewery had a hell of a time looking for new manufacturing space, given that their lease was set to expire (founder Steve Hindy wrote an essay about that search here). Then, the real estate market went sour, and Mr. Hindy was able to renew and expand, hence the grant.

Here's the full info from ESDC, sent out today:

The Brooklyn Brewery has been awarded a grant of up to $800,000 to be used toward the cost of the purchase and installation of new machinery.  The Brewery, limited in its operations due to the size of its facility, leased a building adjacent to its current building in early 2010.  This 10,500 square foot former distribution center requires extensive renovations to become a functional brewery.  Architecture and engineering improvements, a new concrete slab, new electrical, plumbing and solar panels, and the installation of tanks, silos and other equipment will increase the company's production from 8,000 barrels to 20,000 barrels a year.  The Brooklyn Brewery will retain 27 existing jobs and create nine new jobs.  Total project cost is $4,660,000.

Mr. Ross wouldn't comment, but the beard seemed to represent at least a couple months' worth of growth. Either he had been planning far in advance for a single appearance at this party, or the New York City real estate market is Billyburg-ifying. On a balcony overlooking Manhattan, up seven flights of stairs (the elevator in 58 Metropolitan was out of order), brokers and prospective buyers had caught 'burg fever.

"I think Williamsburg is bubbling back to life," broker Thor Thors said.

"I like the area, which I wouldn't have said a year and a half ago," broker Barbara Rogers said. "There's more going on now."

"I think it's the Bohemia of New York," party guest Ashok Pai said. "It has every conceivable service."

Mr. Pai, who dreams of starting a media company ("I want to become a left-wing Rush Limbaugh- or Glenn Beck-type person"), lives in a condo at 80 Metropolitan, which he bought in February. He showed up at 58 Metropolitan with one of his new friends, a neighbor in his building. Wearing a seersucker blazer, a silk pocket square and pressed khaki trousers, with a mop of black hair covering one eye, Mr. Pai said he likes to eat vegan food in the Financial District and study in the Columbia library. His home base, though, is Williamsburg.

"This is my baby," said Douglas C. Steiner, CEO of Steiner Companies, which developed 58 Metropolitan. He's the grandson of the founder of the company, which also runs a movie studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. "We built Steiner Studios in 1999, so we're big Brooklyn fans," he said.

The balcony of 58 Metropolitan affords a clear (and protected) view of the Manhattan skyline. Although the apartment building is at least a 10-minute (11-minute, according to Google Maps) walk from the Bedford Avenue L stop, Steffan Stern, president of real estate at Steiner (and a big fan of The Observer), doesn't think that matters.

"The best stuff in Williamsburg is not on Bedford. The best stuff is on side streets," he said. "You look around and there's always something new and creative."

Despite the general enthusiasm, there were some at the party who hadn't drunk the Kool-Aid (or the Brooklyn Brewery Brown Ale, as the case may be). Nalini Sommer, a prospective buyer, said if she moved to Williamsburg she'd fear for her safety. "I like the neighborhood if I'm in a relationship. I don't see myself being a single person living here," she said. "It's a little on the creepyish side."

Broker Mike Alba was frank.

"I don't like it," he said. "It's too industrial. A lot of people like that, but I don't."

He said the party was a cleverly designed marketing strategy to perpetuate the myth of Williamsburg. Indeed, speakers played tunes from Brooklyn's own Grizzly Bear and the Dirty Projectors, along with Pitchfork darling Girls. Brooklyn Brews complemented chicken and sweets from Williamsburg artisan food purveyor Pies 'n' Thighs.

Near the end of the event, Mr. Pai said he had plans to crash another real estate party at Northside Piers. He said it was a formal dinner party but that he'd be able to get in anyway. He did this kind of thing all the time.

"Let's go," he said, brushing his hair out of his face. "It'll be easy."

walden@observer.com

“But after a frustrating, futile four-year search for a new Brewery site to expand operations in the city, I am now asking myself a question our success should have definitively answered: Does New York City really have a place for light manufacturing businesses like ours,” Mr. Hindy writes.

He and his partner started brewing beer from a defunct, Prohibition-era facility in Bushwick in 1987, and in 1991 leased a new 75,000-square-foot plant in Williamsburg for $3.50 per square foot. The Brewery was able to withstand 15 years of sweeping gentrification, the rezoning of industrial areas, and spiking real estate prices in Williamsburg that ultimately pushed their rent to $8.50 a foot; but by 2003 they needed to expand. Thus began a tortuous and taunting search during which they saw two potential relocation sites slip out of their grasp.

Mr. Hindy recounts how the city Economic Development Corporation’s push for them to relocate to Pier 7 in between the Brooklyn Bridge State Park and the heavy manufacturing plants on the waterfront put them smack in the middle of a battle between the Bloomberg administration and American Stevedoring, the company that runs the container port there.

“We were the baby that was thrown out with the bathwater,” Mr. Hindy writes of the aborted plan.

Then the Brooklyn Brewery joined with a developer on a rejected proposal for a residential project on the Gowanus Canal. Meanwhile, Mr. Hindy supported the rezoning of vacant industrial land in Williamsburg in the hopes that they would be able to remain there. (They have seven more years left on their current lease.)

The Brooklyn Brewery’s story is worth a read and serves up a damning indictment of local government—he writes that only two city programs have helped the company in its 20-year history by reducing costs, at least temporarily.

Williamsburg hasn’t got a meal plan, but everyone under a certain age eats at all the same places all the time, so it might as well! There are also stores where everyone’s clothes come from—a collective Williamsburg Co-op, if you will. There’s a campus green, and dorms, some of which were built under the present administration in impressive glass and steel that both disgust and impress our alumni. (We even got our own “endowment” to make that happen—but in the real world that’s called a tax abatement.)

Everything’s pretty close to everything else—again, just like campus!—but the B61, the L and the G form a sort of campus shuttle. So lace up those retro Nikes (or Sauconys, if you’re studious!) and start walking!

One thing to keep in mind: Like all college towns, Williamsburg has its share of grown-ups around. These can be bosses, or grumpy old artists who say they’ve been there forever and seem to like dirt and poverty. They like to remind you that once upon a time there were only a few grimy bars, one Thai place, one coffee shop and no boutique clothing stores—just some giant warehouse called Domsey’s that isn’t near the L. Never mind! It’s a race between high rent, death and exasperation to see which will drive them out of the neighborhood first. You won’t have to lift a finger.

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DORM LIFE

Let’s start with where you live. A key factor is how far you are willing to walk to get to the Bedford Avenue L stop. Like the Student Center, there’s nothing there that doesn’t repeat itself in every micro-neighborhood of Williamsburg: a thrift store, a few bars, a bagel place, a bodega, a pizza joint and someplace to pick up a packet of seitan or C. Howard’s violet-flavored gum. But since it’s right at the first L stop in Williamsburg, it’s sort of the place you have to swoop through if you want to feel like you know what’s going on.

You’ll go there often at first, so you don’t want to be too far away. But then, the further you are, the cheaper the rent.

You might have got one of those railroad apartments—and if you’re lucky, the front room has its own door, which means you and your roommates don’t have to traipse through each others’ bedrooms to get to the bathroom in the back by the kitchen!

Or else you’re in what might have been a pretty little brick townhouse covered in aluminum or plastic siding some decades back. There is no cat in the house, but it sure smells like one!

Fear not. Room draw in Williamsburg (it’s called the Real Estate Market, but it’s just as random) is no worse than anywhere else.

But once you advance a year, where to go? It will say a lot about who you are, and in Williamsburg, neighbors are apt to become the stalwarts of your new New York kinship network. As Evelyn Waugh once said of Oxford, you spend the second year getting rid of all the friends you made your first year. So where to move once your Craigslist roommate finally crosses the fine line between postgrad louche and bona fide meth addict and it’s time to scoot?

On principle, East Williamsburg’s massively shoddy, cramped, hard-partying wonderland, the McKibbin Lofts, is less cool because of last month’s front-page Times profile, but it’s still “an art-school dorm,” says a former neighbor. A local architect in a drone-rock band likes going to parties there, even though he once got an egg thrown at him from a McKibbin rooftop and it hit his “sand-suede Clarks desert boots.” Things could be worse: “Bedbug-central! Chlamydia! It houses a lot of the STDs that come from everywhere,” said another local.

But its geographic location—far from everything but the Morgan L stop—guarantees a certain cachet as well. This is the off-campus apartment, a place to aspire to live your second year in Williamsburg if you haven’t yet hit it big.

But if your parents have got the dosh, you can skip that step and move directly into the Rocket Factory at 100 South Fourth Street. This place is for the arty yuppies, the ones who shun both labels and belong to neither group but can be described no other way. A sign on the front door from a big production company asks for an apartment to feature in a film about an Idaho orphan who “discovers his place in the New York City art world.”

If you’re still in Williamsburg by the time you reach middle management at an arts organization in Chelsea, you might want to consider the Esquire Building at 330 Wythe. Yes, they made shoe polish there once upon a time! And some of the aura must be messing with the feng shui. Residents sustained, for the better part of two years, a bitter squabble over what color to paint their apartment doors; Teal and Dark Charcoal each had its partisans, but the final compromise was a purplish affair called Raisin Torte.

“They’re into the austere, raw look, and they’re very proud of that,” a broker said of the residents, contrasting them with those who live a little farther south in the Gretsch Building.

The Gretsch is that thing way on the south side of Williamsburg that looks like it was built by the firm that brought you Stonehenge. The building was a warren of DIY “lofts” for years before a developer came in and made the building into pretty condo units. While the prices are high, the quantity of Ikea furniture visible from the street will give you an idea of how accessible the Gretsch will be to you if you opt to stay in Williamsburg past your first promotion.

Sometimes the responsibilities of adulthood are thrust upon the young when they least expect it. That’s what will happen if you move to the Aurora, at 30 Bayard. The just-built park-front building, which reportedly set a neighborhood record last year with a $3.8 million sale, has mostly young couples with wee Williamsburgers in tow. Babies having babies!

“There are a lot of people that got pregnant after they moved in,” says a broker.

Besides the families, there’s this one really model-like Japanese guy, a neighbor says. (Write to us on Craigslist’s missed connections, O.K.? LOL!)

EATING, DRINKING AND SHOPPING, OR, PLACES TO LOOK REALLY CUTE

There’s not much in the way of gray sweatshirts that say “Williamsburg” in a collegiate slab-serif across the bust, but a small exercise in translation will be necessary anyway to explain to you the rules of the Williamsburg color guard.

Start at Buffalo Exchange, where you can fill your closet with the school colors: plaid, clash, and ugly! Blindingly bright ’80s-style togs, iridescent leggings and shiny windbreakers are like the spirit sticks of the Bedford set. Don’t forget the handbands and knee socks with shorts! And for the boys: A little ambient dinge is not only fine—it is to be cultivated. Jeans should be slightly shiny, like the paint they call “eggshell finish.”

If you find you just can’t get the hang of it, you can always go the obvious route by shopping at Brooklyn Industries, where things actually say Brooklyn right on them! But beware—that might be a little bit too obvious. If you plan to spend time in public in Williamsburg, you should look more like something that just leapt out of (a) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, (b) Franny and Zooey, (c) a Neu! video or (d) the closet.

Not everything older than 25 is worthless. Take the Brooklyn Brewery, where that ubiquitous quaff of aley-tasting beer is brewed and, in fact, served! On a given Friday night or Saturday morning, a massive sea of picnic tables seat as many of the bros in button-ups and white baseball caps as can be found in the neighborhood. They’re playing Beer Pong and Quarters, which is either cool in an ironic way or just plain cool, but probably not uncool. High five!

Occasionally in postcollege life it becomes necessary to exercise your brain, which can be hard to do when there is no alcohol around, and harder to do when there is! The solution may
well be Trivia Night at Pete’s Candy Store. These are not like those depressing things on the Upper East Side where old alcoholics stare at a screen and answer dumb questions with a little thing in their laps until it’s time to stumble home to the cats. But that would be cool, though. No, here you’ll learn how to identify a song when it is played backward. Pete’s also has free BBQ in the summer and all sorts of other mind-expanding educational classes like spelling bees, Scrabble and bingo!

Sometimes a styrofoam cup of hard noodles or a questionable burrito from next to the Lorimer Street subway stop just won’t do the trick, and you need more than just something to soak up all that mojito sloshing around in your gut.

Consider Enid’s your “home away from home,” where you can roll out of bed in your sweatpants with “JUICY” spelled across the butt, eat brunch with your friends and review last night’s house-party happenings. “Did you, like, see that girl?”

If you happen to live a little bit east, there are plenty of places for basic provender. Sumac, right next to the Lorimer L stop, is one of those kinds of places where you can get cans of Pellegrino Aranciata with the little foil tops; so is Khim’s, the Korean deli at Grand and Bedford that sells chocolate too nice for most gourmet shops in Manhattan, even if the front does look a bit like every Korean grocery you’ve ever been to. Never judge a book by its cover!

Speaking of which! If you’re looking for the kind of place that will give you an escape from your awful apartment while you work on the next Great American Novel or a grant application, you could do worse than Café Grumpy up north, or the vast Roebling Tea Room further south. It’s also a good place to read the newspaper on your computer.

Of course, actual newspapers are for suckers and for people who aren’t good with computers. But Vice magazine is for neither, so you should pick up a copy. It’s basically news that only you can possibly use. What you shouldn’t be caught dead wearing on Bedford Avenue, but also what certain people think is the next thing. It almost always is, so embrace it even if you feel like a fucknut in those sunglasses with no lenses but just slats! It means more if you did it before it was cool.

Speaking of which, there are some places in Williamsburg that are really nice, but it’s a crap shoot whether it’s cool to pay that much money for food that is mostly not seitan.

Still, when your folks come to town to visit, they might want to absorb a little of the local color instead of making you meet them for dinner at like Del Posto or some shit.

When that happens, it’s good to know about places like Aurora. On a given night there, between the rustic stylings of the dining room and the breezy, beautiful garden, you’ll find you’re not the only one bringing the ’rents out for a bite. And it’s a bit out of the way, down on Grand Street, so roving packs of pierced kids won’t acknowledge you on the street and ask you how you’re recovering from the previous night’s bender.

If your parents are really fancy, go to Dressler. There will be lots of professional- (and old-) looking people there.

When things get boring at bars, restaurants, cafes and little shops, you sometimes have to buy tickets to events.

By no means overlook the activity center, McCarren Pool! Here is where all the cool bands like Sonic Youth and Death Cab for Cutie and the Black Lips play. (O.K., maybe some of them are not cool. But many are.) There’re also movies like Wet Hot American Summer. (Is Michael Ian Black your hero? Srsly?!!!1!) And what is supercool and ironic is that on Sundays there are dodgeball games—dodgeball!—and hot babes participating in a Slip ’N’ Slide slam. Great spot for flirting with new friends, btw!

Nearby is the place to establish yourself in the Williamsburg social ecology this summer. It’s called McCarren Park, but you can secretly think of it as the Quad.

By all means join the kickball and hacky-sack games if you want to be that type. Or grab a drink from the nearby dive, the Turkey’s Nest, and splay out on the lawn, checking out everyone’s bikes and hot legs in summer skirts. In Williamsburg, unlike in south Brooklyn, smoking is cool. Nobody will complain.

When it’s time to detox and get healthy, you’ll want to enroll at the YMCA in Greenpoint. It’s a bit of a social network because of the low price and the nice Village People irony of it all. Polish bodybuilders abound, but they are by now so used to your prancings on the StairMaster that it’s probably they, and not you, who will stop going there first.

GET INVOLVED!

After you’ve been here a while, you may find that some things need improvement.

Is Williamsburg green enough? Are there opportunities to enjoy the finer things in life, like composting, parks and bike racks, for the less fortunate people who were here before you and will probably be here after you leave?

Evan Thies is a 29-year-old running for City Council to represent the neighborhood.

Here’s what he thinks you can do.

“We are finally in sight of the promised land,” he told us on the phone.

He admits that he doesn’t fit the typical profile of the Williamsburg hipster.

“I think I’m really one of the most square people in Williamsburg,” he said. “When I moved here, I think I was the only person on my block wearing a suit. I still am. But with my age combined with a suit, it’s helpful; people trust me, like an accountant.”

But he hopes that won’t keep the slangy youth from joining him in a bit of Hipster Civics.

“With the influx of new residents into the area, coupled with all the families that have been here for generations, you have a potent mix of activism.”

Activism? Where? What can excited “new residents” do?

“N.A.G., it’s great,” he said. “I’m on the board. They’re a global group, with a small g, but very focused on the community and the Brooklyn waterfront. They used to be known as Neighbors Against Garbage.”

Now, the G does double duty standing for “Good Growth,” and the group focuses specifically on “a desire to recapture the waterfront, reduce local environmental hazards, and advocate for public policies promoting healthy mixed-use communities,” according to its Web site.

Mr. Thies’ second suggestion is for the more “avant-garde” of you.

The $50 million McCarren Park Pool renovation is about to take place.

“The pool won’t be available anymore next summer, so the arts programming and the concerts will have to leave,” Mr. Thies said.

Gasp. Mr. Thies recommends that concerned “younger folks” turn to the Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, a brand-new organization focusing on the relocation of the pool’s concert venues and art projects to the Brooklyn waterfront.

Then, after you fight for space for Feist to play, stay in McCarren Park and compost.

Saturday mornings the women of United Friends of McCarren Park are stationed in their compost-corner, over the fence, next to the small-dog park. This is a fantastic activity to remember if you are trying to score points with a Park Slope love interest.

This is your invitation, Williamsburgers. It might be worth dialing up Mr. Thies, if you plan to stay a while.

Do you?

—Max Abelson, Gillian Reagan and Em Whitney contributed reporting to this article.