Vera Katz, the dynamic, three-term mayor of Portland, Oregon who helped give the city its reputation as a haven for hipsters, died this week at 84, the Oregonian reported. The cause was leukemia, her third cancer diagnosis since 2000. Katz was remembered in Portland as a warm yet outspoken political force who often advocated for…
NEW YORK (JTA) — Soon after Nechama Levy moved to Brooklyn five years ago, she opened a bicycle repair shop. The spacious, high-ceilinged store was just down the street from a new pub with exposed brick walls. Like many who have moved recently to the rapidly gentrifying borough, Levy, 33, was drawn to the area’s relatively…
This week’s New Yorker cover taps into the visual similarities between two very different types of Brooklyn dwellers: Hasidic Jews and hipsters. The striking image is named “Take the L Train,” referring to the Brooklyn-bound subway line, and features a hipster and a Hasid, back to back, sporting the same long black beard. The Orthodox…
Can you tell a hipster from a Hasid based on just a shot of their lips? That’s what Jimmy Kimmel tried to find out on Thursday night while shooting his show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in Brooklyn. “Between the hipster community and the Hasidic community here in Brooklyn, Brooklyn is by far the most bearded spot…
There’s an old Yiddish expression my Lower East Side grandmother Ida was fond of: “When luck happens, offer it a seat.” Luck happened. My family has been loyal customers of Moscot Eyewear for nearly 100 of its 100 years; my bespectacled elderly father will buy from no one else, and my grandparents bought there when…
The crowd leaned in closer toward the game table as the competitors nervously practiced spinning techniques before the final round of the first Major League Dreidel tournament of the 2013 season. But something wasn’t quite right. “I know exactly what this needs,” said Eric Pavony, 34, founder and self-styled “knishioner“ of Major League Dreidel, before…
Stanley Goldstein sits at the center of a narrow hat store in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, fielding customers’ questions about brim sizes, crowns and colors. Bencraft Hatters, which was first opened in 1948 by Goldstein’s father, has been selling hats to Jews and non-Jews for 65 years and carries everything from cowboy hats and…
No Woody Allen glasses for you! An Orthodox Brooklyn yeshiva has decreed that thick, hipster-like frames are too trendy and modern and banned the students from wearing them, the New York Post reported. Borough Park’s Bobover Yeshiva B’Nei Zion explained its reasoning behind the ban, in a recent letter written in Yiddish issued to parents…
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