Brooklyn Vegan Declares New Haven Safe For Hipsters

As a New Haven native living in Queens who has spent a lot of time in Brooklyn, be New Haven, it's your best quality. Every borough in the city is trying to be "the next Brooklyn." No one even knows what that means, and most people these days are sick of Brooklyn and it's pseudo-hipness anyway. I love New Haven.

Slow news day? This is an article reporting about the comment thread on a news post... The original article referenced simply stated the College Street Music Hall opened.

While the talk of making any city "The New Brooklyn" is bound for discussion and criticism, it seems like a cheap shot to rally against hipsters. If you're intent was to criticize city officials for trying to market the city as anything other than New Haven, good job.

I, for one, am happy to see any activity of creative and cultural interest happening in the city—whether that means hipsters, artists, entrepreneurs, food trucks, whatever. I'm sorry, but a lot of New Haven is stuck in the past, and if it takes some hip people to propel it forward I'll take it.

For god's sake we already have enough vegan hipsters in the city.

Yay! Lets all grow beards and cease smiling.

New Haven is the next New Haven

This town could use some more "hipness" like Brooklyn. The main issue is the transient student population, which doesn't really promote community or small business growth. When you create jobs, diverse people from different regions and cultural backgrounds move here to give a city a unique flavor.

Point: This town has not job growth and no one wants to move here. We wont be hip until we start to grow in size or attract people back to the urban center.

<i><b>New Haven:</b> the second best place after Brooklyn</i>

I'd much rather New Haven be like Boston than Brooklyn.

Boy, I miss The Doodle!

Brooklyn Vegan mostly posts about shows in and around NYC, and typically they will rope in CT if say, it's the closest stop a band is making to New York, or to show where they're playing in the general area. So for them to say "Hey there's a new venue in New Haven" makes sense.

I think we're going too overboard saying we're "safe for hipsters." Hipsters - whatever the hell that means anymore - are anywhere. It seems New Haven wants to be hip, but the more we refer to "the hipsters" as if they only exist in Brooklyn, the more it makes us look like slack-jawed yokels from the sticks. Like hapless tourists.

Same with describing a restaurant or building as looking like it's "from New York." To some degree it's a fair comparison sometimes, but it can't be from the standpoint of "Oh look, we here in little ol' New Haven have a cute little New Yorky place, ain't that great!?"

I don't know if any of that makes sense.

@woosterman, I don't think your "point" is a fact. New Haven has been growing, at a modest pace, in population and there are a couple thousand of apartments under construction and/or approved for the urban center.

According the census, the population of New Haven city was about 123,626 in 2000 and was 129,800 by 2010 and is now estimated to be slightly higher (above 130,000). As indicated by construction activity, we have one of the hottest downtown rental markets among cities of our size.

Remember, New Haven was the Paris of the 80's.
(According to a gallery poster pasted all around town back then.)

Wait... is someone trying to imply that New Haven already isn't full of hipsters?

There are plenty of places to dance; near train tracks, in an abandoned flour mill, in an abandoned steel plant, while playing tractor chicken…

Wow, that commenters on that thread are absolutely awful. Arrogant.

Forget Brooklyn - look to Austin. In 1991, some bureaucrat discovered that (allegedly) Austin had more live music venues per capita than anywhere else in the nation. Probably just a b.s. statistic, but the city adopted "live music capital of the nation" as its official slogan and it has proven to be one of the best marketing tags ever, that perfectly captured the city's brand. With Toad's, Firehouse 12, Cafe Nine, and now CSMH, New Haven should be calling itself the "Austin of the Northeast."

abg22,

I love where that train is going. Great suggestion!

+1 HewNaven