10KB: The 1990s

[iconoplast]

http://www.viceland.com/int/v15n1/htdocs/kokies.php

Just before the turn of the millennium, on the soon-to-be gentrified corner of Berry and North 3rd in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, there was a bar called Kokie’s Place. It was the stuff of legend. Or, to put it more bluntly, it was a dingy Puerto Rican coke bar. But really, it was so much more! 1999-2001 was a pivotal era in Williamsburg history—it’s when the neighborhood finally went from kind of depressing because it wasn’t Manhattan to really depressing because it’s full of assholes fresh out of art school—and Kokie’s was at the center of that transformation.

Think Rick's Place, except boring and grimy and pretensious.

[Crafty_Alex]

Ah, gentrification. My personal urban development nemesis. There's plenty of places just like this in 10kB, most notoriously in the working-class-slum-cum-yuppie-village called Bellingham Park. The name of that place, and the story of the guy doing coke off the end of a knife dipped in a Folger's can full of dope was pretty damn cool. Good find!