In Local News

[lapsedmodernist]

So apparently now there is a Williamsburg Slasher. As in, there is someone who has been stabbing/slashing (but not killing, so far) white hipster boys near where I live. Even though I am a girl, that does not make me feel warm and fuzzy. The three separate sources of information about this are a) crazy guy with black teeth on the L the other day (the first time I heard about this), b) several people who live in Williamsburg, and c) a big sensationalist article in the New York Post. Now, while each one of these sources in and of themselves is far from reliable (the crazy guy with black teeth because...well, he is a crazy guy with black teeth, the local hipster contingency because it is always possible that this is their version of "frontier myth," my 'hood of kinda ghetto East Williamsburg serving as "frontier other" to their totally gentrified Bedford/7th Williamsburg "self," and as we all remember all too well, The Post is the News(peak)paper that brought us the Axis of Weasels front page with doctored photos, and if you don't remember, you can come over and look at it affixed to my fridge with a magnet)), the fact that all three provided the same news kinda meets the criteria for independent channels of establishing evidence. Isn't it weird, though? It's kind of like a Williamsburg "Candyman" phenomenon--an urban legend, one that encapsulates all the anxieties of gentrification, comes to life? like, hipsters get theirs? except that getting slashed by the Williamsburg Slasher is the ultimate proof of true hipster cred. Like, "I'm a real hipster, and I have a scar to prove it." No, it's not funny. But shit, gallows humor is the new comfort blanket and has been for a while. What can I do? Maybe the next time it's 3 in the morning and I don't have enough money for a cab, I will hitch a ride with the ice cream man that must also be the local drug dealer, because NOBODY buys ice-cream at 4 AM in February, as his seizure-inducing horn creates doppler effect up and down my street.