Fundies are fundies, regardless of flavor
This article from NY Mag does the impossible: It makes me sympathetic toward hipsters.At immediate issue is the Bedford Avenue bike lane. It’s the longest in Brooklyn and runs through every imaginable ethnic enclave-including the South Williamsburg redoubt of the Satmars, the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish sect. In December, after many complaints from the Satmars about “scantily clad” female riders, the city sandblasted off a small stretch of the lane; some enterprising bikers painted it back in protest; the city then painted over the unauthorized paint job. Now two activists are up on criminal-mischief charges, the lane is gone, and the two groups are glowering at each other with even less empathy than usual. Worse yet, each group finds itself standing in for a larger one in a larger fight: the Satmars for all Orthodox Jews and the bikers for all young secular Williamsburgers, i.e. hipsters.
The reporter attends a panel held at a local bar meant to settle the dispute. The Satmar side is represented by three men in "authority beards. Heritage beards." The bicyclist side is represented by three women, one of whom tried to stage a "topless bike ride" through the neighborhood. "God stopped [it] with a blizzard. Damn him!" she says, creating a wave of awkward giggles and turning Satmar faces to stone.
This anecdote is amusing:Right now, on a slow Thursday afternoon, the talk of the deli is Rachel, an 18-year-old Hasidic girl who “went off”-the local term for breaking with tradition.
“She got a huge tattoo,” reports Baruch Herzfeld to a gangly copper-haired cook in full beard and payess.
“No way,” says the cook, ecstatic. “No. Way.”
“Seriously. She shows it if you ask, too. Right here”-Herzfeld points at his thigh. “So fucking hot.”
The cook just grins.
“What, you don’t believe me?”
Herzfeld grabs his iPhone and opens Facebook, searching for photos of Rachel. The Hasidic Facebook is its own phenomenon, a parallel universe where the prim girls you see on the street in turban hats and snub-nosed forties shoes post their bikini snapshots and glamorously lit studio pictures. Herzfeld enthusiastically scrolls through his four-figure friend list, picking out the hotties for us to look at. “Esther. Hot girl. Her father is super-religious. The interesting part is how many friends they have. Look: 273 friends. Most of them are Hasidic guys.”
Herzfeld, like many younger Orthodox Jews in Williamsburg (he's 38), has one foot in the hipster world. He calls the Satmar leaders "Talibanowitz" and says things like, "There is no community more homoerotic than the Hasidim, they’re so fucking gay" and “Orthodox is you don’t want to look at a girl in a bathing suit. Ultra-Orthodox is you want to close down a beach.”
His shop (Traif Bike Gesheft, meaning "Unclean Bike Business") lends bicycles to Hasidic men for free, just to get them to explore New York beyond their neighborhood. Most of them don't know how to talk to women; the first thing they ask Herzfeld is how to find a prostitute. He encourages them instead to expand their horizons beyond the shtetl.
I'd recommend reading the entire article and all comments (even though some of the comments are, of course, stupid). The batshit intolerance and hypocrisy of the Satmars, and their power in NYC politics, are pretty astounding. LOL @ this: "I suspect if the prostitutes of Brooklyn started a Lysistrata-style boycott of Satmar johns until the bike lane came back, you can bet your ass that lane would be painted up faster than you can say 'black hats love black poontang!'"
Another commenter notes that no one in power much cared when they were pushing West Indians and Hispanics around; when white hipsters became their target, all of a sudden the issue got attention. Yet another: "If it were a different religious community also with roots in the middle-east vandalizing city streets, i'm sure the response from the authorities and general citizens would be rather different, don't you think?"
I agree with this person: "If the Satmars don't like [the 21st century], they can go back to the 17th Century (where they would not benefit from the democratic, secular freedoms they conveniently make use of when it suits them to profit, for instance, from real estate)."
Via bites_the_sun, who found this article at Feministe. Jill Filipovic, who lives in Brooklyn, goes into much more background about NYC neighborhoods, Brooklyn in particular, and jerky attitudes on the part of both hipsters and Hasidim. Although I disagree with her, and agree with Sotonohito, about the topless bike ride: It would have served the black hats right.
(The people in the thread whining about the Satmars being a "marginalized" group whose ickle fee-fees about "modesty" should be coddled can piss right the fuck off. They might be Jewish, they might be Holocaust survivors, but they're still a bunch of misogynist thugs with unwarranted political power. And, yes, Jill, fundies of any sort are scum.)
Unlocked.
The reporter attends a panel held at a local bar meant to settle the dispute. The Satmar side is represented by three men in "authority beards. Heritage beards." The bicyclist side is represented by three women, one of whom tried to stage a "topless bike ride" through the neighborhood. "God stopped [it] with a blizzard. Damn him!" she says, creating a wave of awkward giggles and turning Satmar faces to stone.
This anecdote is amusing:Right now, on a slow Thursday afternoon, the talk of the deli is Rachel, an 18-year-old Hasidic girl who “went off”-the local term for breaking with tradition.
“She got a huge tattoo,” reports Baruch Herzfeld to a gangly copper-haired cook in full beard and payess.
“No way,” says the cook, ecstatic. “No. Way.”
“Seriously. She shows it if you ask, too. Right here”-Herzfeld points at his thigh. “So fucking hot.”
The cook just grins.
“What, you don’t believe me?”
Herzfeld grabs his iPhone and opens Facebook, searching for photos of Rachel. The Hasidic Facebook is its own phenomenon, a parallel universe where the prim girls you see on the street in turban hats and snub-nosed forties shoes post their bikini snapshots and glamorously lit studio pictures. Herzfeld enthusiastically scrolls through his four-figure friend list, picking out the hotties for us to look at. “Esther. Hot girl. Her father is super-religious. The interesting part is how many friends they have. Look: 273 friends. Most of them are Hasidic guys.”
Herzfeld, like many younger Orthodox Jews in Williamsburg (he's 38), has one foot in the hipster world. He calls the Satmar leaders "Talibanowitz" and says things like, "There is no community more homoerotic than the Hasidim, they’re so fucking gay" and “Orthodox is you don’t want to look at a girl in a bathing suit. Ultra-Orthodox is you want to close down a beach.”
His shop (Traif Bike Gesheft, meaning "Unclean Bike Business") lends bicycles to Hasidic men for free, just to get them to explore New York beyond their neighborhood. Most of them don't know how to talk to women; the first thing they ask Herzfeld is how to find a prostitute. He encourages them instead to expand their horizons beyond the shtetl.
I'd recommend reading the entire article and all comments (even though some of the comments are, of course, stupid). The batshit intolerance and hypocrisy of the Satmars, and their power in NYC politics, are pretty astounding. LOL @ this: "I suspect if the prostitutes of Brooklyn started a Lysistrata-style boycott of Satmar johns until the bike lane came back, you can bet your ass that lane would be painted up faster than you can say 'black hats love black poontang!'"
Another commenter notes that no one in power much cared when they were pushing West Indians and Hispanics around; when white hipsters became their target, all of a sudden the issue got attention. Yet another: "If it were a different religious community also with roots in the middle-east vandalizing city streets, i'm sure the response from the authorities and general citizens would be rather different, don't you think?"
I agree with this person: "If the Satmars don't like [the 21st century], they can go back to the 17th Century (where they would not benefit from the democratic, secular freedoms they conveniently make use of when it suits them to profit, for instance, from real estate)."
Via bites_the_sun, who found this article at Feministe. Jill Filipovic, who lives in Brooklyn, goes into much more background about NYC neighborhoods, Brooklyn in particular, and jerky attitudes on the part of both hipsters and Hasidim. Although I disagree with her, and agree with Sotonohito, about the topless bike ride: It would have served the black hats right.
(The people in the thread whining about the Satmars being a "marginalized" group whose ickle fee-fees about "modesty" should be coddled can piss right the fuck off. They might be Jewish, they might be Holocaust survivors, but they're still a bunch of misogynist thugs with unwarranted political power. And, yes, Jill, fundies of any sort are scum.)
Unlocked.