I want to clarify
not trying to trash bushwick or say it’s bad. i genuinely had a good time and met cool people. i’m mostly trying to calibrate whether my expectations were off. I went there looking for a community and realized I was just looking at a product.
i’m 24 and visited bushwick before. I always thought it’d be perfect for what i’m looking for because i’ve always heard it described as gritty, creative, genuine, and community driven. exactly what i want ive visited once or twice but this was the first time i got to spend a while there.
i’ve wanted to live in nyc for a while, and bushwick felt like the perfect overlap of big city ambition and a strong young alt scene i could actually fit into.
i booked a 5 day trip. made friends with a couple guys who live around there and spent 3 nights seeing things from their perspective. the rest i did solo. i made it a point to talk to a bunch of people. they kinda shared the opinions i have.
at first i was honestly impressed. the density of alt culture is real. i felt more socially normalized than i usually do in chicago. i just blended in. that part felt really good.
but as the days went on, some of it was not ideal. a lot of coke, a lot of identity signaling, a lot of people leaning really hard into the “artist” persona. the vibe felt more curated than authentic. many people didn’t really have a personality outside of being a artist in bushwick. same ideas, same thoughts, very one dimensional.
one thing that caught me off guard was it also felt like some people came from pretty comfortable backgrounds but were very invested in presenting themselves as underground. there also seems to be a strong “creative and blue collar vs everyone else” divide. maybe that’s always been part of the scene and i just didn’t realize.
it felt like people were inhabiting a template of what “alternative” is supposed to be rather than coming to it in their own way. when conversations went a level deeper, it felt thinner than i expected.
i’m not judging. i had fun and the guys i met were cool and welcoming. but i expected something more grounded and less performative. what i felt instead was kind of socially disposable, performative and exaggerated almost like i was in LA if not worse. like everyone was orbiting the same bars, dating the same people, playing the same roles. the grittiness, dirty aspects were fine by me, my main hiccup was the people at the end of the day.
so i’m trying to figure out if
is that just what the nightlife looks like
has bushwick shifted over time
or did i just catch a very specific pocket and mistake it for the whole thing
i really did enjoy parts of it. i just left feeling more conflicted than i expected. it felts like a alt themed playground for rich kids to roleplay in. i didn’t even need artsy, im not a super artsy guy, i just was hoping for some genuine alt people. also not giving shade to rich people, just confused why so many of them are pretending. i thought this would be a bit more a genuine environment. curious how locals see it.
Edit:
I do want to clarify a thing or two, because I’ve been getting DMs or a few comments here that are braindead and I feel like are missing my point. Some serious projection.
This is NOT me saying
“these people aren’t alt enough”
“these arent real artists”
“this is what bushwick is”
“theres no art scene here”
“they have money so they shouldn’t be there”
or any other random extreme that comes to mind. This is me saying, that in the time I was there, I was out 24/7 and a large amount of people were intentionally putting on a act for ulterior motives. I saw many people who avoided talking about how their parents paid their rent after talking about how broke they were. Talking about how they look down on corporate jobs, while they lived off investment income to pay for their art. Multiple guys getting mullets, earrings and going to shows just to pick up women and not caring about the scene beyond what it gets them. These aren’t people who actually want to dress this way, who want to look this way, or even like the things here, they’re just trying to roleplay in a group they normally wouldn’t fit into. These people are outright lying and then being pretentious to those around them. I’m not a artsy guy, Nor do I consider myself super alternative….
That said, I was hoping for a genuine environment, where I can lean heavier into being alternative. I struggle to find that community in some cities, and I was super excited at the prospect of a whole neighborhood where I could fit in. Non genuine people is normal in any environment, sure.. But I noticed a significant amount of that in bushwick. It seemed overall immature and filled with nepobabys. In 5 days, I cant say I’ve seen it all and it may have been my weird experience, which is why I’m posting.
This is not me saying that a community can’t be built in NYC, or that I don’t think the city is worth it anymore. It’s me questioning my experience up against my pre visit idea of bushwick, and what a local thinks.
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