Leading Economic Indicators: Gutter Punks!

Is it Williamsburg or Big Rock Candy Mountain? Hahahahahahaha:

Heroin-addict hobos from around the country are overrunning hipster haven Williamsburg — living in stalled luxury condo projects in the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood.

The newcomers, who call themselves “gutter punks,” are stirring outrage among residents and shopkeepers who charge the bums brawl on the sidewalk, shoplift and shoot heroin in trendy cafe bathrooms.

“It’s like St. Marks in the ’70s,” said Williamsburg activist Philip DePaolo[*], referring to the notorious East Village hangout. “It’s the bad old days all over again. There’s crack and heroin all over the neighborhood.”

The squatters, from middle-class families, hop freight trains to the city, where they can earn up to $150 a day panhandling in Manhattan. At night, like plenty of other borough commuters, they return to their homes: grubby hideaways inside boarded-up lots that pock the once-booming neighborhood.

“I’ve got to sleep somewhere, and I might as well do it in Williamsburg,” said Stuart, 22, a Florida college dropout.

The admitted alcoholic and heroin user makes $15 an hour panhandling in Union Square, holding a sign that reads “Traveling Broke and Sexy.”

“The girls here like it that I’m dirty and I ride trains,” he added.

*He’s gotten a couple of mentions recently; Honey, is the BS detector still in the garage?

What’s It Worth To You?

How about five dollars:

Loyalty apparently has no limits: Di Fara’s Pizza has raised the price of one slice to an astronomical $5, but devoted customers continue to gobble up the cheesy fare.

. . .

According to the pizza-centric Web site Slice, $5 for a plain slice is believed to be the highest pizza price outside of an airport or ballpark. Value seekers might want to invest in an entire Di Fara’s pie, priced at $25, or a round pie, at $30, the site notes.

Just last year, Di Fara’s raised its prices to $4 a slice. At the time, the shop said the increase was long overdue, and critical to cover the costly fresh ingredients.

Longtime customers remain unfazed. Some, like Park Slope resident Mitch Feldman, didn’t even notice the increase until queried by a reporter. “It’s certainly a lot of money, but then again, there’s pizza and then there’s pizza,” he said. “I’d rather pay more and get a better product.” He conceded his limit per slice would be $10.

Location Scout: Di Fara Pizza.

It’s Alright (The Way That You Live)

Kickball, dodgeball and now cardboard tube fighting.

Location Scout: McCarren Park.

Ironically Degentrifying Williamsburg

Alanis Morissette should check out this article because, unless I’m mistaken, it’s basically the textbook definition of “irony”:

Williamsburg is ground zero in the growing scourge of stalled construction that has left the neighborhood littered with 18 vacant lots and rusting steel building frames — more than in all of The Bronx, The Post has learned.

Block after block in the trendy Brooklyn community and a few adjacent streets in Greenpoint have been declared stalled construction sites by the city.

A team of building inspectors found 143 stalled sites around the city. But the cluster of lots in Williamsburg, where development was white-hot just two years ago, is the biggest.

By contrast, The Bronx and Queens each had just 14 stalled construction sites, and Staten Island had 13, city records show.

. . .

Philip DePaolo, who moved from The Bronx to Williamsburg in 1979, said the neighborhood looks like the arson-scarred streets he left behind.

“It looks like I never left,” said DePaolo, comparing his old neighborhood to Williamsburg today.

“The problem we’re having now is that we’re starting to get squatters in these buildings and lots,” said DePaolo. “Blight draws crime, and if you have blocks and blocks of vacant lots with no people, that creates a problem.”

DePaolo pointed to broken construction fencing surrounding some of the sites and piles of blankets and cardboard shacks left behind by homeless squatters who spend nights there.

Officials say they’re working on the problem as a growing number of developers struggle with financing in a slumping housing market.

Charming Thought Of The Day

Speaks for itself:

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the money and drugs appeared to have been what the robbers were after when they burst into Special Moments Daycare in East Flatbush on Friday afternoon — while a dozen or so children were napping.

Three men were arrested at the scene, including a suspect who was shot by the police.

“It now appears the day care center was a drug haven, or where drugs in significant quantities were kept, primarily marijuana,” Mr. Kelly said . . .