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Robert Anasi

The Last Bohemia: Scenes from the Life of Williamsburg, Brooklyn Paperback – August 7, 2012

by Robert Anasi (Author)

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A firsthand account of the swift transformation of Williamsburg, from factory backwater to artists' district to trendy hub and high-rise colony

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is now so synonymous with hipster culture and the very idea of urban revitalization―so well-known from Chicago to Cambodia as the playground for the game of ironized status-seeking and lifestyle one-upmanship―that it's easy to forget how just a few years ago it was a very different neighborhood: a spread of factories, mean streets and ratty apartments that the rest of New York City feared and everyone but artists with nowhere else to go left alone.
Robert Anasi hasn't forgotten. He moved to a $300-a-month apartment in Williamsburg in 1994, and watched as the area went through a series of surreal transformations: the warehouses became lofts, secret cocaine bars became sylized absinthe parlors, barrooms became stage sets for inde-rock careers and rents rose and rose―until the local artists found that their ideal of personal creativity had served the aims of global commerce, and that their neighborhood now belonged to someone else.
Tight, passionate, and provocative, The Last Bohemia is at once a celebration of the fever dream of bohemia, a lament for what Williamsburg has become and a cautionary tale about the lurching transformations of city neighborhoods throughout the United States.

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

FSG Originals
Publication date

August 7, 2012
Dimensions

5 x 0.54 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0374533318
ISBN-13

978-0374533311
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"His clear-eyed, heartfelt elegy shows why a Williamsburg―free, fecund, gloriously threadbare―is so vital to the culture."―Publishers Weekly

"With a fine ear for dialogue and a nonjudgmental eye, Anasi conjures the pre-9/11 atmosphere of the place, in which the beer flowed like water and there was always a place to crash after a night of pub crawling. An impressive bit of literary journalism and a sympathetic look at a vanished era."―Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Robert Anasi is the author of The Gloves: A Boxing Chronicle (North Point Press, 2002). His work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Observer, Salon, and Publishers Weekly. He teaches literary journalism at the University of California, Irvine, where he is a Schaeffer and Chancellor’s Club fellow. He is also a founding editor of the literary journal Entasis.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ FSG Originals (August 7, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374533318
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374533311
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.54 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,536,223 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,720 in Sociology of Urban Areas
- #7,755 in Traveler & Explorer Biographies
- #9,791 in United States Biographies

Customer Reviews:
30 ratings

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5 star		52%
4 star		15%
3 star		18%
2 star		9%
1 star		6%

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Top reviews from the United States

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d-k, as E. wiLsOn

Courageous; Cool; Celebrate It

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 24, 2022

Verified Purchase

The story is pretty good if you come at it from my perspective; I mean - & though I revel in it —
1. I am now in my mid-sixties years
2. I had an especially cumbersome middle yrs.
3. But, & here’s my point, 16y-26y - “I was it.”
So, I lived that a long time ago, but, this story
and I’m somewhat familiar with ‘the Beats’
I like Auden, Whitman, Kerouac.
—- anyway, I learned a lot of what I might have done, heard, said and meant — if it was
ME in 1994 —- in that place.
That’s what I really really took from this —-

What’s going on. I couldn’t be there - but, you were Robert A. And your friends.
So thank you - for keeping a record of it and sharing it too.
I wanted to know.

Helpful

13radley Spinelli

An oral history and moving personal narrative

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 15, 2014

Verified Purchase

It’s impossible for me to be objective about a neighborhood I’ve called home for fifteen years, and I recognize some of the characters and most of the locations in Anasi’s book. But if anything, my lack of objectivity makes me a harsher critic of any examination of Williamsburg—and The Last Bohemia is a blistering achievement, at once an oral history and a moving, personal narrative.

These collected personal stories sing, not of “hipsters” as a group but of specific people, misfits—both New York natives and transplants—who forged their own community. Anasi plays anthropologist as well as part-time protagonist, and writes with a hedonistic love of language that most fiction writers would envy.

Anasi skillfully raises the dead, recreating a scene of scavenged lives, heroin habits, and a DIY entertainment ethic that planted the seeds for the North Brooklyn hipster scene including the modern movements of mixology, burlesque, and artisanal everything. That this bohemia exploded into a boomtown landgrab is described without undue bitterness.

Anasi’s personal adventurousness as an explorer is inspiring. Anyone who was here before 2005 crawled through the hole in the fence at the waterfront to look at the view amongst burnt-out cars, but Anasi went far further—and far later in time—proving that the urban jungle offers treasures for the bold.

If we have lost something—and we most certainly have—Anasi has graced it in elegy, and he’s given us hope that further treasures await if we’re only willing to look.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Scootergurl

I Can't Put the Book Down, Stayed up All Night Reading

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 9, 2012

Verified Purchase

As a person who grew up living in Williamsburg Brooklyn, I can really relate to the way Robert Anasi describes the unique rawness of living in Williamsburg in the 80 & 90's had to offer. It was a hidden gem, extremely affordable, close proximity to Manhattan a haven for future artist, yet dark and dangerous at times making you develop a tough thick skin about you. Now with all these new developments and high priced real estate moving in like the Edge, Wholefoods, Duane Reade's, and original burg people like me dodging over crowded Bedford Avenue sidewalks with Yuppy outsider types pushing expensive stollers ready to knock me over in a second, I feel as though Williamsburg is sadly losing its charm and what made it so special. If you want to go back in time, see what care fee living was like living in the Burg before all this gentrification happened then I suggest you read Robert Anasi's The Last Bohemia.

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jake

Love hate relationship

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 14, 2012

Verified Purchase

As a Bostonian, I am drawn to New York. There in no denying it's greatness. But I also feel disloyal to Boston if I enjoy NY too much. I think of Manhattan when I think "New York." Anasi's descriptions of Williamsburg were so powerful that I now feel that I "know" a bit about Brooklyn as well. His phrasing is wonderful. He can tell you a great deal about a location or even a person with few well chosen words. One quick example.... he describes an old roommate as a girl, who in college, majored in "Art History and Substance Abuse." What a formidable portrayal. This is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

4 people found this helpful

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Mark Acevedo

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 29, 2015

Verified Purchase

A great reference for the Diaspora change in a community!

One person found this helpful

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Gavin

A great read about the changing of Williamsburg

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 9, 2015

Verified Purchase

A great read about the changing of Williamsburg. Robert mixed his personal experiences with municipal history. Very compelling for anyone that has ever lived or been to Williamsburg.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Jennifer

Nice Gift Idea

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 27, 2014

Verified Purchase

My boyfriend loved this book as he lived in Williamsburg and he said it was fun to remember many things he had thought he forgot about.

Helpful

megareader

It's Newtown...not Newton

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 26, 2012

Verified Purchase

Drugs, drugs and more drugs. Total ugly misrepresentation of decent people in a community trying to rid itself of crack and heroin and hookers and waste transfer stations (and silly idiots like the writer). Oh btw Barretti was mafia and did go to prison.

5 people found this helpful

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