The latest issue of Paper Magazine asks, “Can the hipster ghettos of Brooklyn really replace Manhattan?” It’s really just a more sophisticated way of asking whether Bushwick is the new black. And after an afternoon investigation, Paper Magazine editor and publisher Kim Hastreiter has the answer: no. Though she enjoyed Bushwick’s colorful street art (some even not in a gallery) and tasty lunch at Northeast Kingdom, the “lone, yummy and cool restaurant in the nabe,” it was no match in her mind for the “powder keg of international culture, commerce, wealth, power, ambition, grit and danger” that is Manhattan, at least before it became “too clean, safe, uncreative and slick.”

Besides nostalgia trips and comparisons between apples and oranges, the August issue of Paper includes “Bushwicked,” a fashion shoot by photographer Jeffrey Kilmer featuring some “cute kids” from Bushwick. Two years ago, Paper would have called their vegan food cute and the kids dirty, but that was back when Bushwick was just “whiskey bars with iPod DJs and hastily but lovingly produced rock shows in little shit-hole venues,” not a “super-cool-kid ghetto” like it is now.

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