east village idiot

intelligent and unintelligible thoughts about life in these five boroughs

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A ‘Hood By Any Other Name

Oh, New York City neighborhood names: manufactured by real estate scum and delivered directly to you. Sure, there’s the now-overused East Village (somebody shoot me), the completely misleading East Williamsburg (somebody shoot me, seriously), and the long-standing East New York (somebody has probably already shot me). But there are also those in-between neighborhoods - the ones that straddle the border between two ‘hoods with names - where slumlords have also gotten creative. There’s BoCoCa, GraMurray, and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, just to name a few. But too many in-between areas in New York have gotten overlooked. So, I’ve taken it upon myself to bestow a name upon some areas that get lost in the New York City neighborhood shuffle.

First up, Hell’s Kitchen. It’s the neighborhood that is defying the re-naming tradition. Some real estate agents have the nerve to call it “Clinton.” What a boring, non-descript name with no respect for the recent history of the ‘hood. But what’s up with the “kitchen?” What about the rest of the apartment? Well, “Hell’s Bathroom” has to be somewhere, and I know exactly where it belongs:

Hells Bathroom

Next, we head to Brooklyn, where the neighborhoods of Kensington and Borough Park are worlds apart. One is a quaint yet heterogeneous residential community, while the other is one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities outside of Israel. Clearly, there needs to be some transition here:

Broken

Over to Queens we go, where Hollis and Fresh Meadows sound like places that are worlds apart. But I propose a great way to unite these two neighborhoods:

Ho Meadows

Back to Southern Brooklyn, where its proximity to both the beaches and a subway line that stops at West 4th Street provides a great backdrop for a new satellite gay neighborhood in Brooklyn:

Manwood

Finally, we head over to the vast wasteland that is Red Hook. For too long, the residents of The Point’s well-kept rowhouses have tried to distance themselves from the eastern side of Red Hook, with its public housing and proximity to the disgusting Gowanus Canal and exhaust-spewing Gowanus Expressway. Well, their wish is my command:

Red Anus

This entry was posted on Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 12:28 am and is filed under As Seen On Gawker, Life in NYC. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

15 Responses to “A ‘Hood By Any Other Name”

  1. November 16th, 2006 at 7:40 pm

    says:

    Brilliant. Absolutely Brilliant.

  2. November 17th, 2006 at 12:02 am

    says:

    nice!

  3. November 17th, 2006 at 8:37 am

    says:

    lol! awesome.

    ps i hate the name gowanus. isn’t it so ugly?

  4. November 17th, 2006 at 11:01 am

    says:

    OK the neighborhood you so lovingly referred to as “Manwood” in Brooklyn is right around where my parents grew up. So thanks for that.

  5. November 17th, 2006 at 11:26 am

    says:

    I’m going with Amish on this one.

    This may be your best post ever. Nice work, yo.

    Cue Gawker…

  6. November 17th, 2006 at 11:54 am

    says:

    Chris,

    I must say I’m somewhat insulted. Red Anus, my Carroll Gardens address is not.

    For the record, no self-respecting resident would even think of referring to our area as BoCoCa.

    xoxo - Z.

  7. November 17th, 2006 at 3:44 pm

    says:

    That Red Anus name gives me the willies!

  8. November 17th, 2006 at 9:29 pm

    says:

    you’re such a nerd!

  9. November 18th, 2006 at 12:15 pm

    says:

    ha, excellent post. but you forgot about the marketing genius behind calling the south bronx “sobro.”

    manwood….awesome!

  10. November 19th, 2006 at 7:59 am

    says:

    Hi, I found you via pinknest. I was roaring reading this. Funniest blog post I have read in a while!

  11. November 19th, 2006 at 11:43 am

    says:

    You know some real estate scum will see this and use the names! Red Anus could sell! :)

  12. November 19th, 2006 at 10:04 pm

    says:

    Well done pinky.

  13. November 22nd, 2006 at 12:14 pm

    says:

    Red Anus?

    There’s a neighborhood named for A-Rod?

  14. November 22nd, 2006 at 6:51 pm

    says:

    Hilarious! New York’s got real neighborhood names; I thought those fake, designery names were just a product of lazy Vancouver real estate agents, but I see the plague has spread.

    The latest thing around here is to take an old neighborhood like, say, Dysfunction Junction, and give it a New York-ese name, like in this case SOMA. The Brave New World reference is lost to the Yuppies.

  15. November 27th, 2006 at 10:05 am

    says:

    I can just see Bushwick being broken up into the area along Broadway as NoBro & So Bro( North of & South of Broadway);

    Then again, the area of Yankee Stadium would be called “A-Hole.”