As a new show set in Brooklyn, MTV’s “I Just Want My Pants Back,” is not, as you might guess, about the late night hijinx taking place at your local 24 hour laundromat. No, it’s a quasi-anthropological lookee-see at some impossibly sexy hipsters trying to find a little love and laughter in a contrived and coldly ironic world. I guess. Here is episode three:
Anyway, I first heard about the show last year, when the city of New York cordoned off parking on Suydam street, our block on Suydam and the next over. The city also helpfully put orange cones out on the street where the autos were not to be parked on the night that the film crews would be shooting.
So I presume the idea would be that all the car owners should move their vehicles elsewhere, lest their heaps be towed or ticketed. This didn’t actually take place on our block, however. On our block, orange cones and paper signs from NYC held no authority. Instead, people parked their cars behind the cones. Or over the cones. In some cases, the cones were moved aside, the car was parked, and the cone was replaced on top of the car!
Defiance! I thought, my Bushwick pride swelling, as I walked my way to Pearl’s past all the un-moved cars and a midnight film crew shooting some critical plot advancement taking place in the back seat of a black sedan.
Maybe the parked cars were a logistical hassle for the crew, or maybe they got in the way of MTV’s attempt to represent the true grittiness of Hipster Brooklyn. I hear Park Slope is more accommodating:
I lived in Wburg 22 years ago. Then, and now, if I had that many tattoos I would not have been able to arffod the rent on my apartment. Funnily, an informal poll at local fauxhemian cafe revealed that not ONE of these lovelies admitted PAYING for their tats. They all, “knew an artist”. How do artists make their living?