If you can identify this machine, you qualify.
A reader writes to us because he’s trying to hatch a video-y, comic-ish type business for brokesters and he needs to do a little research on the relative nerdinesss of Brooklyn, as if this alone weren’t evidence enough. Here’s what our enterprising young friend wants to know:
How “nerdy” is Brooklyn? What sorts of people make up what could loosely be defined as the nerd community here, in terms of their jobs and levels of education and interests? I’m trying to get a sense of the consumer nerdscape here for lack of a better word.
We say: pretty damn nerdy. But don’t judge our borough by its Buddy Holly glasses and tight blazers, judge it by places like Twenty Sided Store and Dr. Who-watching parties. By our D&D playing, Steampunk bar-going, A/C-jerry rigging, electronics-hacking, iOS developing, robot-drum-inventing, scifi graphic-novel writing armies. Yes, there’s DUMBO, the new epicenter of tech geekery — but we don’t just have computer nerds, we also have bike nerds, music nerds, Etsy nerds, gay ones and so on. And what are artisanal mayonnaise lovers if not food nerds of a sort? Come to think of it, is there any place nerdier than Brooklyn? Relative to other places, where do you think Brooklyn falls on a nerdiness scale of π to ∞ ?
I always thought as Brooklyn as the revenge of the nerd class. All the jocks that hassled me in high school are now fat and on their fourth unhappy baby somewhere in the tragic New Jersey suburbs. Meanwhile, we’re making 3D printers and Etsys, packing the room for Secret Science shows and drinking bars full of skeeball machines or bocce courts here in Brooklyn. I’ll take it.
I don’t even see how anyone could begin to contest Brooklyn as nerd capital.
Case in point: I have to get to my pick up kickball game tonight…