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Meet Catey Shaw: The Rebecca Black of Brooklyn Gentrification

Goodbye Brooklyn.

Well, that does it. Brooklyn is officially dead. It pains me to say this since the borough holds such a dear place in my heart. My grandparents met, fell in love, and settled in Brooklyn after World War II. My parents pushed their genitals together and created me in Brooklyn. But over the last few years, a lot of things have pushed Brooklyn close to the edge of being a festering shithole of pretentiousness and trust funds—Lena Dunham and her insufferably self-centered HBO show, Bushwick loft parties, multi-million dollar Williamsburg high rise condos, tourist walking tours, and the seemingly unending proliferation of vintage fedora shops. (Seriously, how many fucking hats do we need?) But here to put the last nail in the coffin is Virginia Beach-turned-Brooklyn-subway-ukulele-player (because OF FUCKING COURSE) Catey Shaw with her new song “Brooklyn Girls.”

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“Brooklyn Girls” is basically the Rebecca Black “Friday” video of Brooklyn gentrification. Every fucking thing in this video is an ugly stereotype of the worst elements of Brooklyn, like a three minute and thirty second SNL spoof. All of the most cliched trends and landmarks are on display:

The Bedford L stop! Where everyone gathers to smoke e-cigs and clog up the train before that last push into Manhattan.

A tough pit-mix city dog! He drinks from the bowls outside the cool bars.

Shoes hanging from wires! So #urban!

Someone who looks like Lorde!

The Nets! They’re in Brooklyn now and they play baseball or something. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of!

Spontaneous backyard parties! Those happen all the time in Brooklyn! And they always have string lights! Take an Instagram!

Graffiti!

Diversity!

This video half-makes me wish another Son of Sam killer would emerge to scorch the borough of these types of assholes. I’m not saying I’m advocating for a murder spree, per se, but if just three fuckheads with carefully curated Instagram accounts turned up dead and it resulted in 10,000 midwestern college grads deciding to move to LA instead of Williamsburg, would that be the worst thing? I think not. Surely, the Valencia Filter Killer is just around the corner.

Dan Ozzi lives in Brooklyn, where all assholes live - @danozzi

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