Listen to ‘Williamsburg Love Song,’ an East Village Restaurateur’s Ode to Hipsters

ADD Sounds Like This · Williamsburg Love Song

When we posted about the “Brooklyn Girls” remixes this morning, we weren’t expecting a local entrepreneur to come forward with his own hipster anthem, but that’s just what we got from Keith Beavers, owner of the East Village wine bar In Vino.

“Great remixes!” he commented on our post. “I am the owner of an East Village resto and watched the BillyBurg build up from across the river. I wrote my own song about that crazy place.” We had to know more.

Beavers, who’s been working and living in the East Village since 2003, found a stray guitar on the sidewalk about two months ago. “It was only missing one fucking string!” he says. He started strumming and what came out was “Williamsburg Love Song.”

“It was just my way of watching everything change, watching the trends, and trying to capture that moment of Williamsburg before it gets into Apple stores and fucking Whole Foods,” Beavers tells us.

“It’s basically my way of saying that I love New York City through and through. I love what Williamsburg was, but I’m a little sketched out about what it’s becoming,” he says, adding, “and I find Williamsburg pretty funny.”

The song has all your classic hipster tropes: PBR, flannel, homemade hummus, rooftop gardens, ramen… you get the idea.

“I wanted to capture the cheesiness of what we do in New York,” Beavers says. “But I do the same fucking thing. I brew my own cold-brew coffee at my apartment, so I’m guilty of all the hipster shit. I was trying to create a snapshot, because I don’t know where Williamsburg could go after this. It’s in a weird place right now with all those developers, and the Starbucks going in, and all that. Which is totally fine, but I think we can both agree there’s definitely a threat to the identity of Williamsburg right there.”