Sigh. It happened again. After City Councilwoman Diana Reyna stated that “‘hipsters’ may be part of the cause” for the New York City’s inaccurate census results, the media went wild, with L Magazine bringing up the tired “hipsters are too cool” argument, and Metro NY going as far as to accuse hipsters of costing NYC billions of dollars in federal funding. (The Awl has a shot of the even-more inflammatory print headline here).

As we pointed out last April, the “hipster” areas of Williamsburg etc had census return rates that were about on par with the rest of the city, making this more of  a story of media sensation and less a story of substance. It also, as City Limits points out, blatantly ignores very real issues that get in the way of census returns: the fact that so many residents live in inaccessible-to-the-public apartment buildings, that so many residents live in illegally subdivided or sublet apartments, that undocumented immigrants may be less-than-willing to talk about their living situation with a government representative, or that the city’s population may indeed have plummeted due to the this-city-being-so-fucking-expensive-no-one-can-afford-to-live-here-anymore factor.

So can we get over this hipsters-hate-the-census thing already,  and move on to some real problems? Like how you can never reach Northside carservice on weekend mornings, or that it’s been almost two months, and the Weeknd has STILL only put out one mixtape?

ps – you all had better have actually filled out your damn census forms, otherwise I’ll look like a real big idiot.

Lazy-ass census workers covering Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Greenpoint, and Williamsburg had until July 10th to survey approximately 97,000 households in the neighborhood, but they weren’t even cutting it close.

To try and make their numbers, Alvin Aviles and Sonya Merritt decided to use the internet to come up with 10,000 fake or incomplete names — and fudged their census reports. They were caught, fired, but now the U.S. Census Bureau’s all like, “Do over!”

“I want to stress that our highest priority is to get a complete and accurate count in 2010 for Brooklyn,” the bureau’s regional director told the Epoch Times. “While I regret [that] some of the work must be redone, I’m sure the people of Brooklyn share in the goal of getting this right.”

Perhaps the second time’s a charm. Williamsburg ranked dead last in the city earlier this summer for people returning their forms — which kicked off a round of idiotic press reports calling hipsters lazy, when in reality it was the hasidic community which chose not to participate.