If it wasn’t bad enough that Williamsburg was being flooded with bros, it’s now the choice of comfortable exile for at least one defeated politician, former Georgian president Mikehil Saakashvili, per the Times. What does a former foreign president who lost a war to Vladimir Putin do in Williamsburg? Well you know, the same things that you do: go to Smorgasburg and talk up your former glory, ride a bike and wear ridiculous sneakers, visit your war-crazy pals like John McCain, hope to god you don’t end up being convicted of embezzlement and human rights abuses in your former country and just hang out in the “time-honored tradition of mysteriously sourced wealth” as the Times puts it.
The next time you’re in Williamsburg and a barfly tells you “I started a war with Vladimir Putin,” you should probably believe him, because it might be ex-Georgian president Mikehil Saakashvili. As the Times reports, the former president is spending his forced political retirement in Williamsburg, just kinda hanging out. Like many Brooklynites, Saakashvili is nothing more than a common freelancer, except unlike those of us pumping out similar-looking blog posts making fun of uh, well this exact situation, Saakashvili is getting paid big bucks to give speeches. Don’t worry though, even the man giving “very well-paid” speeches thinks that Williamsburg is too expensive.
And like a lot of new Williamsburg residents, Saakashvili is under the impression that he’s not living in what is essentially an extension of Murray Hill, telling the Times that the Wythe Hotel of all places isn’t “a posh like in Manhattan.”
Is this the start of a new trend, a “Williamsburg is the new Corsica,” if you will? Time will tell we guess, but we hope it is. We love the idea of someone saying “Ah Christ, don’t go to Williamsburg. You can’t spit without hitting some washed-up old ex-president. And having their security detail beat the shit out of you for spitting on them.”