The Gutter Punks Have Arrived!
Now that Williamsburg has turned into a post-apocalyptic-halted-condo-construction wasteland it’s attracting a nasty infestation: Gutter Punks. From The Daily News [via]:
Heroin-addict hobos from around the country are overrunning hipster haven Williamsburg – living in stalled luxury condo projects in the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood.
The squatters, from middle-class families, hop freight trains to the city, where they can earn up to $150 a day panhandling in Manhattan. At night, like plenty of other borough commuters, they return to their homes: grubby hideaways inside boarded-up lots that pock the once-booming neighborhood.
“I’ve got to sleep somewhere, and I might as well do it in Williamsburg,” said Stuart, 22, a Florida college dropout.
The admitted alcoholic and heroin user makes $15 an hour panhandling in Union Square, holding a sign that reads “Traveling Broke and Sexy.”
“The girls here like it that I’m dirty and I ride trains,” he added.
The vagrants – who also call themselves “crusty punks” – swarmed into Williamsburg this spring, drawn by open-minded young people and vacant lots.
Packs of punks and their mangy dogs clog Bedford Ave. in the evenings. They sprawl drunkenly on the sidewalk and heckle hipsters for money and cigarettes.
“There’s a big crowd of us here,” said Sethry, 20, of Portland, Ore., lounging near North Ninth St. one recent night. “Every night it’s a party with all our friends.”
Ew. Can we fumigate? Given the excess of crusty-ass beards and plaid in the neighborhood, it’s no wonder they feel at home.
Williamsboard has a huge thread on this nasty phenomenon.
Williamsburg’s very own Gutter Punks, “BB Guns” (l.) and “Robert” (r.): If you see these two don’t give them money and, it should go without saying, but don’t give them sex either.
‘Squatters said 510 Driggs Ave. is a “shooting gallery” – a hot spot for heroin.’
Gives new meaning to the thrift store right next door, ‘Junk’.
I always chuckle when I see young kids dressing exactly like my high school friends (c. 1983), who I made fun of back then, btw.
Yes, their authenticity scares me. I like Tom Waits, but their utter lack of irony is bothersome. It’s one thing when prep school kids pretend to run with another class and drink cheap beer. It’s an entirely different thing to be harassed by poor people who’ve never ridden in a Saab. Is that how black people feel about us being in Brooklyn? Weird… this should be our place.
I want to hurt you.
http://codypickrodt.com/2009/01/2009-01-14/
i found this cartoon about the douchey crust punks: http://codypickrodt.com/2009/01/2009-01-14/
Wow. I didn’t think Williamsburg could get any worse. As much as I hate them, I have to give the gutter punks credit on that one.
Only thing worse is all you poser hipster who fucked up Williamsburgh. Move back to the suburbs with your tight jeans and you gay haircuts. Your pissed at these developement it’s cause you fake artist hipsters destroyed the real art community of the Burgh and now you complain. What nerve!
you are all fucking faggots. it brings joy into my life that some real people have taken over your hipster bullshit town. hail satan.
FUCK YEAH! That was the first thing I have read that was worth even reading. LOL
People who pay big bucks to look poor are pissed off that actual poor people have moved into their neighborhood. HOW DARE THEY!
fuck you yuppies maybe if you chilled with them and lived the life you’d ether like it or get shanked. and on top of that thanks to your shity poorly thought out blog your gonna have to look at one more crusty smelly gutter punk. look out willamsburg here comes the BEAR. fuck you and give me all your change.
I hope they die of a overdose.
Thats messed up. You dont even know them and I happen to know for a fact that two the people in the picture dont do heroin. They used to be my roomates. They also usually have jobs and just spange on their spare time. You are an ignorant person!
As someone who spent a good amount of time living that life, Let me clear up a few points for the rest of you. Did you just assume that we just spontaneously come into existence? we don’t. We’re made the way we are. By the way not all of us are alchys or drugies either, in fact me and my friends drank moderately and used drugs never (except for one who used weed, but he was the exception and used it to help with a mental illness he suffered from). For another thing, I have found more compassion and loyalty amongst the so called “trash” than I ever experienced in the company of the “respectable” people (mind you I was one for a good long time too). These people may have their issues, but they’re sincere in who they are, and what they’re about. I know of no one who is “normal” who can look into their hearts and say the same.
Yeah, we got problems but let me tell you, yours are worse.
Wow you guys totally misunderstand us punks
im not gunna rant but every thing they do is for a cause sum are addicted to drugs but it dint start like that
ok so i have been living the homeless life for some time now. i don’t believe in spare changing people myself. i rather play music or sell something. however, i think its wrong to hate on an entire subculture that this author obviously doesn’t know much about at all. i feel sorry for the close-minded. i love my lifestyle and wouldn’t change it for anything. and by the way i know the guy in the bottom picture and hes good people in my book.
You all dont understand. Im a punk, but i dont even pick up a beer or speed. Dont thrash a whole subculture. Crust punk is about…. freedom. Anti corporatism, Anarchism, Pacifism, Anti Racism, Equalism, Feminism, etc. It’s based off of ideoligies. It’s a lifestyle. The drugs? unnecessary. It’s about freedom. The crazy DIY look is self expression and an identification type thing and a lifestyle identifier, basicly. We aren’t just mindless junkies. Learn more before you hate and judge. But it’s all good. Newspapers and blogs are just more propaganda control shit that us punks are against, so this shouldn’t bug us one bit. The antisocial lifestyle is meant to be what it is- A life off of the radar scan screen of society. Learn more before you judge, as I said. good day, ignorant fuckers.
Fuck yeah! Thanks for standin up! One of the kids in the pictures was one of my good friends! Thanks! Cheers!
I think this bullshit site and people need to be taught empathy. This is the life I want honestly. It has so much more meening then any of u fuckers know.
they’re probably forty times more human than you stuck up hipster outcasts. you’re doing the exact same thing they are in overpriced clothes, and bitching about it.
you think you’re actually contributing to society any more than drunk panhandling kids?
fuck off yuppies!
God forbid that people squat in empty houses!
This whole ‘the building has been empty for years, but YOU cant live there’ attitude bites ass.
You’re on the outskirts of a major city, where thousands of homeless people sleep in danger on the streets every night.
Buildings are made to be inhabited.
This article sounds to me like your ‘perfect’ little town could do with a shake up, instead of small minded folk being prejudice against a group of punks. Theres nothing wrong with living differently.
Yes some of us punks are obnoxious, yes, some are probably drug users, but that comes down to personal reasons. For the thrill of a high, or just to forget.
But ‘normal’ people do drugs too. Including you. Looked in your bathroom cabinet lately?
Don’t jump to the conclusion that everyone in a studded jacket is a scumbag junkie.
Because us punx, we’re free.
I can’t believe what I just read. Actually, at first, I thought it was a joke, but no, you really are a pedant ignorant MOFO. They know a bit, a lot more about solidarity, honesty and integrity than all of you hipster together. When you look at yourself in a mirror, what do see, well, I’m going to tell you, you see nothing more than a carcass, filled with bourgeois dreams and fake artists crooked ambitions, but otherwise empty. I live in Montreal, and let me tell you, hipsters here are considered a real fucking joke, because everybody knows what they’re all about, in their American Apparel uniforms, ready to wear 80 $ ugly t-shirts and tight ass pants combos, all for what, to cover your nothingness. Don’t you dare judge something you don’t know. You’ll say I judge, it’s because I know too well, at the end of the day, I know you’ll be the one left alone, backstabbed by people you call friends and cheated on…I feel sorry of the semi animal poverty of your soul
Good comments Eva, I can’t say anything else. Just I like the Quebec Punks
Got to love all the “true punks” showing up to comment undoubtedly using their Mac laptops their parents bought for them thinking they’d actually stick it out in college. “Haha! I’m totally stealing wifi from those hipsters! I’m such an anarchist!”
Lol!
Dear Gutter Punks: You never fail to tell anyone who will listen of the superiority of your ways, then ask for donations for your lifestyle. I understand that regular people do drugs too, and that you can be homeless and be a good moral person. But don’t go around acting like you’re more independent than “regular folks” who “don’t get it” when your life is made possible by the handouts of those people you claim are enslaved by “the man”. You want to be truly free, get off of the library computer, move to the forest, build a hut, and live off the land.
Im at an internet cafe in ny and ive been asked to leave a couple of times because i smell so bad and they said my mohawk is full of lice and might intimidate the customers. thats what i hate about the usa i cant help it if i smell and have lice i blame it on the obama regime. We should have never voted a nigger in office he doesnt understand what its like to be punk and poor.
No, what the man doesn’t understand is what it’s like to be poor and _uneducated_. Read a book, shithead.
Um, dickhead? Shut your fucking hole and proceed to the nearest bridge with the rest of the idiots who have taken over my hometown (Brooklyn). I’m a old ass, crusty ass punk and I would like nothing lore than to shove your head up the author’s ass.
I hope Micheal Savage rapes you in your sleep
to the author of this internet literature- you disgust me. go consume yourself into a gluttonous stroke. thanks for wasting my time.
Get the fuck out of my borough! You, yes, you! I’d rather have the fucking crusties than you fucking invading ass white hipster fucks. OUT OF BROOKLYN WHITEY! THIS MEANS YOU!!!!!
one guy said to go live off the land…well, gimme yer change and watch me go! i hate when people say GET A JOB like its that easy to come by in todays economy. travelin broke hungry folk didnt make the world the way it is today, all the psycho voting left and right wingers with all your problems and evil hatred toward anyone whos not like them made the world this way. go fight your wars, drink your ten dollar starfucks coffee, and consume the world…us dreadhawks are just sitting here on the sidelines watching them destroy the world while we’re laughing getting drunk having fun playin music singing along and…oh yeah asking for change but that doesnt mean we HATE you, we actually, really, love you. most of us realize we stopped giving a shit long ago. street kids are the salt and butter that add taste to the town, dont hate us. smile, if anything, even if you dont like us.
well said dontaskmeforchange
where would you crust punks be without the ‘normal’ people you feel so superior to? if you hate modern day society, go off the grid. and you dont need change to get there – you can walk.
PS: if your way of life is so much better than ours why are so many of you smack heads?
im pretty sure the “halted-condo-construction wasteland” is the “nasty infestation” just being taken advantage of in it’s pause of a “post-apocalyptic” time.
BTW. I would like to agree with what X says and add that the dangerous cities are filled with wasteful pricks throwing away a poor mans dinner every lunch making tons of pollution anually (personal and work related), gangs of pieces of shit that will rape and beat your kids for nothing, pigs that will do the same and ignorant fucks just like you!