I joined a group of volunteers at the weekly bar at Seco SC in Madrid last night. They were trying to karaoke, but the software was not cooperating. Earlier in the evening, there had been an assembly meeting at the SC Patio Maravillas (really a “CSO” for “Centro Sociale Okupado”; Seco is legalized). El Patio is under an order of eviction, which could come any day. They were discussing what to do. Earlier in the year, the authorities had announced the time of eviction, so hundreds of people were able to assemble. This time the cops are being more cagey. So tactics were discussed… Let’s just say at this point that an innovative use of technology is planned by the “hacktivists” of the place. Stay tuned to the website!
Ironically, Patio was criticized for negotiating with the authorities. This SC was hoping to legalize itself. Other squatters criticized this position, arguing that if one group negotiates, the state can more easily criminalize the other groups. The argument became incendiary, when some people planted a bomb in the door of Patio. The explosion blew out the door. Still, the incident was not reported, the perpetrators were suspected. A family argument? Perhaps…
Some at Seco expressed bewilderment about the younger squatters in Madrid. To these older social center volunteers, these youth seem “identitarian,” overly immersed in their sullen, conformist subcultures to be doing any useful political work. (I remembered the man outside Joe’s Garage in Amsterdam earlier this year, who told me that the place was “a social center for squatters”!) I suggested this might be after-effect from the Copenhagen “Youth House” eviction, in which the forces of the right pretty much rubbed young peoples’ noses in the facts of their powerlessness. Kids from all over Europe converged to fuck up the streets, and a new wave of squatting was born. I am told now it has even spread to super-sedate Munich.
Tonight in Madrid there is a party at a squatted social center in an old building inside a cemetery in the La Elipa neighborhood. This will be a very late night hardcore goth and rap scene, so again this old man won’t go. The motto of this squat, I’m told, is: “Dando vida en espacios muerte” – Bringing life to dead spaces.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The Big Political Show
It’s over now, the Creative Time “Summit” last weekend – a great hit, with many folks in town chatting up the work so far – that is, political art in its new formations. The Yesmen took the “prize,” since, indeed there was one. An award ceremony I missed, since the show at New York Public Library was sold out. I came later Saturday (pretending to be on my way to do research very overdue in that library), and managed to sneak into the shindig, thanks to a friend from Baltimore Development Cooperative.
The procession of artists with great schemes was consistent throughout the day. Then the presenters went upstairs to a conversation room for closer discussions. I heard of the terrible cost young people have paid for taking part in “pirate radio” projects in Mexico, pursued by corporatist death squads, and learned more of the harrowing conditions of prisoners forgotten in the U.S. in SuperMax prisons (TAMs movement). At the same conference, a rich artist spoke of his work portraying some of the poorest of the poor in Rio, then leveraging the money raised from the artworks to help create a cooperative enterprise that employed tens of thousands. It was an incredible story Vik Muniz told, and I’d really like to know more details about how it was managed. Mel Chin, another famous artist there, spoke of his project with schoolchildren to produce handmade hundred dollar bills – “fundreds” – in the amount needed to clean up the lead pollution in New Orleans’ soil ($300 million). Of course the famous were not the big story of this event. (But hey, it’s New York, so of course it will be.) Creative Time is very good about making their proceedings public, so I look forward to the DVD or whatever they choose to release about this stimulating convention.
In a party afterwards Jos of Bikvanderpol tipped me to the existence of two major catalogues of exhibitions which surveyed the Dutch squatter movement of the 1970s. I look forward to learning more. The question of how artists represent their squatting experience is at the heart of this project. I wrote of this in a text about Andrew Castrucci’s Bullet Space squatted art gallery project for which he is preparing a 25-year show. (It is posted at post.thing.net; URL below.)
The first Public School lecture class on the social centers movement went well. (It was a lecture only because time was short; another meeting is scheduled for November 22 at the Van Allen Institute.) The very day of the class, Miguel Martinez sent me the manifesto of a group of scholars studying social centers. They ask a host of good questions. Their third meeting is scheduled for June, 2010 in London.
While I confess I was making fun of these guys earlier, the Berlin-based An Architektur group is swinging into action here with a conference, “Ten Days for Oppositional Architecture: Towards Post-Capitalist Spaces” in Brooklyn, November 12-21. They have lined up a good bunch of speakers, including Neil Smith and David Harvey from NYC, Teddy Cruz from San Diego, Brett Bloom from Urbana, Max Rameau from Miami, and Peter Linebaugh from Toledo, Ohio. Many other great people are involved, and although I will miss this conference, I am hoping to locate the “House Magic” library of social center books and films in their “reading corner.”
Creative Time “Revolutions in Public Practice”
http://www.creativetime.org/email/Summit.pdf
my text, “Bullet Soaked in Piss” – about the Bullet Space gallery in NYC
http://post.thing.net/node/2872
“Ten Days for Oppositional Architecture”
www.oppositionalarchitecture.com
The procession of artists with great schemes was consistent throughout the day. Then the presenters went upstairs to a conversation room for closer discussions. I heard of the terrible cost young people have paid for taking part in “pirate radio” projects in Mexico, pursued by corporatist death squads, and learned more of the harrowing conditions of prisoners forgotten in the U.S. in SuperMax prisons (TAMs movement). At the same conference, a rich artist spoke of his work portraying some of the poorest of the poor in Rio, then leveraging the money raised from the artworks to help create a cooperative enterprise that employed tens of thousands. It was an incredible story Vik Muniz told, and I’d really like to know more details about how it was managed. Mel Chin, another famous artist there, spoke of his project with schoolchildren to produce handmade hundred dollar bills – “fundreds” – in the amount needed to clean up the lead pollution in New Orleans’ soil ($300 million). Of course the famous were not the big story of this event. (But hey, it’s New York, so of course it will be.) Creative Time is very good about making their proceedings public, so I look forward to the DVD or whatever they choose to release about this stimulating convention.
In a party afterwards Jos of Bikvanderpol tipped me to the existence of two major catalogues of exhibitions which surveyed the Dutch squatter movement of the 1970s. I look forward to learning more. The question of how artists represent their squatting experience is at the heart of this project. I wrote of this in a text about Andrew Castrucci’s Bullet Space squatted art gallery project for which he is preparing a 25-year show. (It is posted at post.thing.net; URL below.)
The first Public School lecture class on the social centers movement went well. (It was a lecture only because time was short; another meeting is scheduled for November 22 at the Van Allen Institute.) The very day of the class, Miguel Martinez sent me the manifesto of a group of scholars studying social centers. They ask a host of good questions. Their third meeting is scheduled for June, 2010 in London.
While I confess I was making fun of these guys earlier, the Berlin-based An Architektur group is swinging into action here with a conference, “Ten Days for Oppositional Architecture: Towards Post-Capitalist Spaces” in Brooklyn, November 12-21. They have lined up a good bunch of speakers, including Neil Smith and David Harvey from NYC, Teddy Cruz from San Diego, Brett Bloom from Urbana, Max Rameau from Miami, and Peter Linebaugh from Toledo, Ohio. Many other great people are involved, and although I will miss this conference, I am hoping to locate the “House Magic” library of social center books and films in their “reading corner.”
Creative Time “Revolutions in Public Practice”
http://www.creativetime.org/email/Summit.pdf
my text, “Bullet Soaked in Piss” – about the Bullet Space gallery in NYC
http://post.thing.net/node/2872
“Ten Days for Oppositional Architecture”
www.oppositionalarchitecture.com
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Deadlines, Falling Leaves
Rolling forward on the project -- end of year events, May 2010 for version 2. Just a quick note to let you know I am presenting the “House Magic” project on European squatted social centers as part of the Public School (Architecture) Tuesday, 10/20 at 4pm at the Center for Architecture on LaGuardia Place. This is a part lecture, part round table to consider how best to represent this movement based on the first “House Magic” as an object of critique.
536 Laguardia Place between West 3rd St. & Bleecker
Public School for Architecture website: http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/
(see below for session title, details)
We will look at Dara Greenwald’s “Tactical Tourist” (2007; 15 min.), a video of a trip to Barceona to visit Milles Flores and Can Masdeu SCs, then discuss the recent “House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence” shows at ABC No Rio and Sculpture Center as part of the University of Trash. Virginia Villardi will present on her work with ESC Atelier in Rome.
(Dara's great video is online here: http://www.daragreenwald.com/ )
Related news:
I plan to produce a second incarnation of the “House Magic” exhibit project in May of 2010. There is as yet no venue and no budget. Any suggestions are welcome. The project is invited to Baltimore in December. We will also likely visit in Philadelphia during the winter months. I will be in Madrid for a week or so during early November.
The “House Magic” zine catalogue #2 deadline closes December 1st, 2009. There are a number of texts based on presentations at ABC and in Queens that are going into the zine, but your experiences and reflections on the social center movement are also very welcome. The deadline is hard; production begins on that date.
BTW: Thanks to the Solo Foundation for a grant to assist with printing for the first zine catalogue, and the purchase of a video camera.
The “course” is titled:
“Representing the Social Center Movement”
The squatted social center has been an important movement globally, and especially in Europe, since the late 1970s. The life cycle of these "monster institutions" (coinage by Universidad Nomada in Transversal) reveals a lot about autonomous political intitiatives and state responses. This course considers the movement, and seeks new strategies to represent it to a general audience. An earlier effort, "House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence," will serve as a case study and object of critique.
http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/class/1584
536 Laguardia Place between West 3rd St. & Bleecker
Public School for Architecture website: http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/
(see below for session title, details)
We will look at Dara Greenwald’s “Tactical Tourist” (2007; 15 min.), a video of a trip to Barceona to visit Milles Flores and Can Masdeu SCs, then discuss the recent “House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence” shows at ABC No Rio and Sculpture Center as part of the University of Trash. Virginia Villardi will present on her work with ESC Atelier in Rome.
(Dara's great video is online here: http://www.daragreenwald.com/ )
Related news:
I plan to produce a second incarnation of the “House Magic” exhibit project in May of 2010. There is as yet no venue and no budget. Any suggestions are welcome. The project is invited to Baltimore in December. We will also likely visit in Philadelphia during the winter months. I will be in Madrid for a week or so during early November.
The “House Magic” zine catalogue #2 deadline closes December 1st, 2009. There are a number of texts based on presentations at ABC and in Queens that are going into the zine, but your experiences and reflections on the social center movement are also very welcome. The deadline is hard; production begins on that date.
BTW: Thanks to the Solo Foundation for a grant to assist with printing for the first zine catalogue, and the purchase of a video camera.
The “course” is titled:
“Representing the Social Center Movement”
The squatted social center has been an important movement globally, and especially in Europe, since the late 1970s. The life cycle of these "monster institutions" (coinage by Universidad Nomada in Transversal) reveals a lot about autonomous political intitiatives and state responses. This course considers the movement, and seeks new strategies to represent it to a general audience. An earlier effort, "House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence," will serve as a case study and object of critique.
http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/class/1584
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Getting Schoolish
The Public School project from Los Angeles is doing a "public school" here in New York. I have proposed a "class" on the social center exhibition project, and a few people are interested. The title and description is as follows: "Representing the Social Center Movement: The squatted social center has been an important movement globally, and especially in Europe, since the late 1970s. The life cycle of these "monster institutions" (coinage by Universidad Nomada in Transversal) reveals a lot about autonomous political intitiatives and state responses. This course considers the movement, and seeks new strategies to represent it to a general audience. An earlier effort, "House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence," will serve as a case study and object of critique."I put this in quotes because my intention is to present the information I have gathered and the project so far, and open the question of representation up to discussion. I invite all who are around -- and even some who are not -- to join us when the meetings are finally scheduled. (Who knows when that will be? Soon, I hope.) I want to do the next events in May of 2010. If you want to attend meetings, go to the website -- http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/ -- "browse classes" and sign up for this class, or express interest. You will be contacted when the meetings are arranged. The fund raising effort is slowly beginning... Solo Foundation gave $1,000!
Speaking of schools -- be sure to check out the occupation underway in University of California's idyllic Santa Cruz campus -- http://likelostchildren.blogspot.com/. It is really inspiring -- like a movie. As our Spanish friends say, occupying spaces produces subjectivity. You don't know what it feels like until you do it.
Speaking of schools -- be sure to check out the occupation underway in University of California's idyllic Santa Cruz campus -- http://likelostchildren.blogspot.com/. It is really inspiring -- like a movie. As our Spanish friends say, occupying spaces produces subjectivity. You don't know what it feels like until you do it.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Return from Vacation
[NOTE: Hyperlinking is causing problems and delays in posting -- here they are indicated by asterisks, and put at the bottom.]
It is beautiful fall weather in New York City right now, and I am back in town and be back on the job. Right after a road trip vacation, I slammed into the weekend symposium with Franco “Bifo” Berardi organized by 16 Beaver Group. This was very heady, and ultimately rather depressing. Bifo considers the social center movement in Italy to be of the '90s, although he did note that a new one had just started, called Bartleby -- after Herman Melville's Wall Street clerk who "preferred not to."Some friends came soon after from Seco Centro Sociale in Madrid. Although there were five of them, they were a little shy, and we did not have a chance to do a public event with them. They brought an armload of books from Traficante des Suenos bookstore, and we sat down and had some beers. They had attended a 40th birthday party for the Young Lords Party in Harlem! (The Young Lords, as I note in the first post on this blog, were inspirational political occupation artists in NYC in the 1970s.) I hope in November I will have a chance to renew contact with Madrid, and go further on cooperation.Hamburg, where Michel Chevalier had the “House Magic” catalogue in his Autonopop store this summer, is sending us two artists to talk about their experiences in self-organizing. They are from the FRISE aka Künstlerhaus Hamburg, and they are doing an exchange project with Le Petit Versailles garden here. That project is run by Jack Waters and Peter Cramer, former directors of ABC No Rio. On October 5, Sabine Mohr and Torsten Bruch (both FRISE artists) will speak about artist organized projects and the development of artists’ self-organization in Hamburg at the Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building on East 3rd St. NYC on the 5th of October. Their project, installed from Oct. 2 – Oct. 12 at LPV garden focuses on the artistic exploration of the use and preservation of public space and public premises—particularly open green spaces in highly developed, urban environments.My German is slim, but their web links look pretty cool, and I’ll Google translate some of this stuff and study it. The Frappant group seems most directly concerned with architecture and urban space. They also run an internet radio station, and have started a new artists’ house occupation which they are blogging into My Space Comedy! An extended conversation/symposium with other European groups has been loaded onto YouTube as “Gaengeviertel versus Subvision” parts 1, 2 and 3.In book news, the Prestes Maia occupation in Sao Paulo (2002-07) is described in a text by Andre Mesquita in the Australian catalogue “There Goes the Neighborhood” (May 2008). That is the high rise occupation many in NYC have dreamed of, as they contemplate all those halted and vacant luxury co-op developments in formerly poor neighborhoods. Andre contacted me, but I have not been able to follow up to learn more about self-organization in Brazil. Virginia Villari, who wrote the text on ESC Atelier in the first issue of the HMBFC zine, has agreed to work on a second iteration of the “House Magic” project, which we have agreed to try to put together in May. Maybe this will be the “museum of the social centers” that one Canadian editor envisioned. At least our next phase of work will include the social center movement Latin America, long overdue for investigation. BTW -- let me know via email to awm13579 [at] gmail.com if you want me to send you a compressed "House Magic" zine #1. Next – a report on the visit of the artists from FRISE in Hamburg.
Bifo symposium
http://www.16beavergroup.org/monday/archives/002940.php
Seco
http://www.cs-seco.org/
Young Lords Party anniversary reunion
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/ylp220809.html
Frise
http://www.frise.de/
http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/ney/kue/en5032894v.htm
Le Petit Versailles garden
http://www.alliedproductions.org/cgi-bin/view.cgi?n=/lpv/home.xml
Frappant
http://www.frappant.org/
[see also projects on Radio --
http://www.fsk-hh.org/ ; Comedy -- http://www.myspace.com/vorwerkstift]
Prestes Maia background
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestes_Maia
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Busy at Last in NYC
HOMELESS TENT CITY! One Hundred Homeless and Allies Grilling Food, Playing Music, Taking Back The Land at 115TH AND Madison Avenue in New York City. Call for all to come out and show your support. Bring food, hang out, share company...
At 11am EST, July 23 Picture The Homeless and allies installed a tent city in a vacant bank-owned lot at 115th and Madison Ave. 100 people are in the lot, enjoying corn, beans, bread, fruit, and music by the Welfare Poets. Police are on the scene, but everything's calm. We have a casita, a stage, barbeque grills, banners, signs, cardboard shovels and pick-axes, and tent structures!
As the foreclosure crisis festers, Bloomberg and the banks fail us. Across the street from the tent city is public housing, where families are doubled and tripled up. Over-crowded apartments, the shelter industrial complex, or sleep on the streets - we need better options. From Miami to Sacramento to now here in NYC homeless people aren't waiting around. Come show your support! 115th and Madison, we'll be here as long as we can. (They're bloggin' it; for Twitterers, it's pthny; and Facebook tiny.cc/pthonfacebook.)
Yes, that's the press release. And I've just left the lot. This is a great project, a long time planning, and they have generated a very friendly atmosphere. The set is by the Not An Alternative crew from Brooklyn, and it looks both festive and homey. Frank Morales is the lead organizer; an Episcopal priest and a long-time eloquent squatter, he is wearing his clerical collar. I found a little poison ivy in the lot, but we took it out pretty much before anyone got bit. Oh, and twenty plus cops and plainclothes are standing by in a line just outside the lot. I met up with the gang at Union Square Park and we headed uptown on the subway, trailed by police. Experienced activists chatted with the cops -- Ben of ACT-UP, and Chris of the Shadow newspaper. Legal observers in their green hats rode along with us, just as they did during the RNC 2004 protests. Most of this activist crew is young, however, and I'm happy to see it. When we got to East Harlem, we were split into groups. Our group, me and the Japanese writer and journalist Sabu, were followed by five cops. We went around in circles and finally hailed a black car. Where but in America can you ask a cab driver to take us somewhere because we're being followed by cops? He was like, "Okay, where to?" Some congeros showed up and beat drums, played guitar; one guy danced very nice. Then lunch was dished out, and everyone relaxed under the tall trees in the shady grove and chatted. I'm back at work on my writing here in the library -- hope it's gonna last up there! (BTW: "House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence" zine is ready to ship, and it looks real slick. It costs $8 to make and post in the USA.) Wow, only a couple hours, and the cops are massing. It looks like everyone still there is going to jail. It's raining in New York. At least they made the New York Times. This is one inventive group of creactivists.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Stalled construction in NYC: My first reblog...
Hi folks -- first some project news.... I cannot post the 'zine catalogue to the web. It is too big, even compressed. If you want me to sent it to you via FTP, please contact me at awm13579 [at] gmail.com with subject line "send me the HMBFC zine, please!", and I will get it to you.
There is some serious business in the air here -- I'll report it when it goes down. In the meantime, the glossy bourgie magazine New York has started paying attention to the scuttlebutt about squatting in Brooklyn with the following article on what they are calling "the Billyburg [as in Brooklyn's Williamsburg] Bust"....
[This blog post is here, along with many snarky comments, and another article on "heroin-addicted hobo invasion" of squatters to Williamsburg. Repression, anyone?]
Oh pity the poor denizens of Williamsburg. The erosion of hipster trust funds is leading their greasy little utopia to slowly devolve into some sort of Mad Max-esque, post-apocalyptic real estate wasteland, just like Miami! So says New York Magazine. Anyone who's walked around Williamsburg lately can see the painful signs of a busted bubble. New developments sit virtually vacant. New building constructions have stopped cold with the landscape of the area littered with semi-constructed buildings. We already knew things were bad, but we had no idea that things were this bad.
With sales across Brooklyn down a staggering 57 percent from a year ago, Williamsburg, with its high density of new construction, has taken on an ominous disposition. Walk down virtually any block and you'll come across an amenity-laden building that sits nearly empty: relics of a moment in history that seems, increasingly, like a fever dream.
Most unsettling are the cases of the developers who seem to have vanished, leaving behind so many vacant lots and half-completed buildings-eighteen, to be precise, more than can be found in all of the Bronx-that large swaths of the neighborhood have come to resemble a city after an air raid.
All over the city, overleveraged developers have seen their projects stymied by the recession, but the highly speculative nature of what's happened in Williamsburg stands out as exceptionally dramatic and misguided-New York's version of the collapsing exurban "boomburgs" in Florida and Arizona.
Oh but wait—This is only the beginning!
Part of what makes the present situation so dire is that it is still in the early stages of unfolding. There are already about 400 new apartments on the market in Williamsburg, and additional condos are completing construction every month. According to a study (Real estate broker David) Maundrell released last month, 2,818 new apartments will have hit the market by the end of this year, with another 2,766 projected by the end of 2010. On top of this, Fannie Mae, the country's most dominant home-mortgage lender, recently implemented a policy requiring that buildings be 70 percent in contract before guaranteeing mortgages, thus delaying the moment when a developer can stop covering the taxes and common charges on a finished project.
The writer of New York's massive piece, David Amsden, took some time to visit a few of the new developments in the neighborhood.
I made my way to a building called Warehouse 11, on the corner of Roebling and North 11th Streets. Marketed by David Maundrell, the building has 120 total units (plus the requisite yoga center, playroom, parking garage, 24-hour concierge, gym, and communal sundeck). While the model apartment seemed an appealing enough place to live, there was something generally off about the building as a whole: Despite having been on the market since early 2008, only 30 percent of the units were in contract, and it was clear that construction wasn't complete. The list prices, too, were significantly higher than comparable products, as if the developer had not been informed about the current state of the economy. A few weeks later, I noticed the front doors of the lobby had been padlocked shut. The process of foreclosure had begun.
Looking at the bright side, we suppose all of these vacant new developments will lead to some awesome squatting opportunities for the hipster looking to enhance his or her hardcore street cred. We look forward to having our tips line flooded with ridiculous Williamsburg hipster squatting stories for years to come!
There is some serious business in the air here -- I'll report it when it goes down. In the meantime, the glossy bourgie magazine New York has started paying attention to the scuttlebutt about squatting in Brooklyn with the following article on what they are calling "the Billyburg [as in Brooklyn's Williamsburg] Bust"....
[This blog post is here, along with many snarky comments, and another article on "heroin-addicted hobo invasion" of squatters to Williamsburg. Repression, anyone?]
Oh pity the poor denizens of Williamsburg. The erosion of hipster trust funds is leading their greasy little utopia to slowly devolve into some sort of Mad Max-esque, post-apocalyptic real estate wasteland, just like Miami! So says New York Magazine. Anyone who's walked around Williamsburg lately can see the painful signs of a busted bubble. New developments sit virtually vacant. New building constructions have stopped cold with the landscape of the area littered with semi-constructed buildings. We already knew things were bad, but we had no idea that things were this bad.
With sales across Brooklyn down a staggering 57 percent from a year ago, Williamsburg, with its high density of new construction, has taken on an ominous disposition. Walk down virtually any block and you'll come across an amenity-laden building that sits nearly empty: relics of a moment in history that seems, increasingly, like a fever dream.
Most unsettling are the cases of the developers who seem to have vanished, leaving behind so many vacant lots and half-completed buildings-eighteen, to be precise, more than can be found in all of the Bronx-that large swaths of the neighborhood have come to resemble a city after an air raid.
All over the city, overleveraged developers have seen their projects stymied by the recession, but the highly speculative nature of what's happened in Williamsburg stands out as exceptionally dramatic and misguided-New York's version of the collapsing exurban "boomburgs" in Florida and Arizona.
Oh but wait—This is only the beginning!
Part of what makes the present situation so dire is that it is still in the early stages of unfolding. There are already about 400 new apartments on the market in Williamsburg, and additional condos are completing construction every month. According to a study (Real estate broker David) Maundrell released last month, 2,818 new apartments will have hit the market by the end of this year, with another 2,766 projected by the end of 2010. On top of this, Fannie Mae, the country's most dominant home-mortgage lender, recently implemented a policy requiring that buildings be 70 percent in contract before guaranteeing mortgages, thus delaying the moment when a developer can stop covering the taxes and common charges on a finished project.
The writer of New York's massive piece, David Amsden, took some time to visit a few of the new developments in the neighborhood.
I made my way to a building called Warehouse 11, on the corner of Roebling and North 11th Streets. Marketed by David Maundrell, the building has 120 total units (plus the requisite yoga center, playroom, parking garage, 24-hour concierge, gym, and communal sundeck). While the model apartment seemed an appealing enough place to live, there was something generally off about the building as a whole: Despite having been on the market since early 2008, only 30 percent of the units were in contract, and it was clear that construction wasn't complete. The list prices, too, were significantly higher than comparable products, as if the developer had not been informed about the current state of the economy. A few weeks later, I noticed the front doors of the lobby had been padlocked shut. The process of foreclosure had begun.
Looking at the bright side, we suppose all of these vacant new developments will lead to some awesome squatting opportunities for the hipster looking to enhance his or her hardcore street cred. We look forward to having our tips line flooded with ridiculous Williamsburg hipster squatting stories for years to come!
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