THE HIPSTERS ARE RUINING OUR SCENE




Today's New York Times has a piece about how the hip new accessory in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) is the tender coconut.



Here's an excerpt of the article, by Sarah Maslin Nir:

Strolling down the Williamsburg street, Martin Mancusi, 30, a tourist from Barcelona, Spain, and his friend Alejandro Kaed, 33, stopped to examine the items: young peeled coconuts, waiting to be pierced by a straw and sipped tiki-style by someone young and fashionable, as they have been all summer.

Like banh mi sandwiches and sriracha chili sauce, the young coconut and its juice is the latest formerly humble food to be discovered by New York City’s style set, and elevated — if not quite to the level of a status symbol — at least to that of a prized accessory.

In the last few months, retailers in hipster hot spots like Williamsburg and the Lower East Side say they have sold unprecedented amounts of the fruit for streetside consumption.

“I think it’s stylish, it’s pretty,” said Zarifeh Saleh, who owns Bedford Avenue Fruits and Vegetables with her husband, Ayman Ismail. “You feel like you’re on the beach, but you’re not on the beach."

....Some say the public ritual is part of the drink’s allure.

“I don’t ever go and buy a bunch of coconuts and stock them and drink them at home,” said Jennifer Verdon, 30, a band manager who lives on the Lower East Side. Others, like Fiona Byrne, 32, a music journalist who said she averages two coconuts a week, insist they drink the juice — which is prized by raw foodists for its nutrients — purely for health reasons.

When a friend of Ms. Byrne’s became overheated at the Coachella music festival in Indio, Calif., last spring, she said the first-aid staff advised her to rehydrate by drinking a young coconut on sale at the festival....

Read the rest here.





Of course the tender young Brooklynites are probably paying $4 for the things - which are available for just $2 in Chicago at Fresh Farms, 2626 W. Devon Ave (where they are anything but a fashion accessory).



Learn how to open them yourself - sans machete - here.