Resident Starts Petition: Wants ‘East Williamsburg’ to Secede From That Other, ‘More Hip’ Williamsburg

Gothamist interviewed him:

“I live in Williamsburg,” Ian MacAllen tells us. “Or East Williamsburg. It all depends on the year, the real estate broker, the cab driver, the girl you are trying to impress. For people who know the difference, I tell them Graham Avenue.” His petition, which calls on the federal government to “peacefully grant the neighborhood of East Williamsburg to secede from Williamsburg and create a new, hipper neighborhood,” currently has one signature. But once the hardcore punk DIY crowd at East Williamsburg’s Huckleberry Bar hears about this, it’s going to catch fire.

Here is MacAllen’s reason for the petition — which currently has 5 signatures:

The founding hipsters first arrived on Bedford Avenue two decades earlier convinced that the East Village was “overpriced” and that more generally, Manhattan was “so over.”
In recent years, the trustifarians have turned the Bedford Avenue area into a disneyland of fashionable shops and expensive cocktail bars. The baby-bankers living in the glass, waterfront towers have pushed out the smack junkies and complain to the police about “noise” from rock musicians.
As such, the grittier East Williamsburg would prefer to disassociate from Williamsburg as a fully separate and independent neighborhood. The people of East Williamsburg actually have real jobs. Their shops are not particularly fashionable. Some of the bars are genuinely dangerous dives. Please allow the neighborhood to secede.