Would you rent an apartment in "West Bedford"?
DUMBO, Nolita, Stuyshwick, Stuy Heights, East Bushwick—it seems with every new day the city's neighborhoods are getting chopped up into increasingly specific new territories, usually with hybrid names in tow. And it may be time to add one more to the pile: "West Bedford."
Yesterday, Curbed took note of @WestBedfordNYC, a Twitter account with seemingly a single mission: getting the stretch of the 'burg between McCarren Park, the BQE, Broadway, and the East River recognized as its own new neighborhood, "West Bedford." As explained in the feed's inaugural tweet from back in September 2013, "As many of you have noticed, there is a massive amount of huge new bldg's in West Williamsburg, near the river. Time for the the next DUMBO." (After going dormant for a little over a year, the account swung back into action in mid-November, tweeting images of new development in the area.)
Below, a map of exactly the boundaries they have in mind:
While it seems unlikely these efforts will be well received—artists are already in the midst of planning an actual funeral for Williamsburg—let's play devil's advocate: there are generally accepted boundaries that delineate North Williamsburg, South Williamsburg, and East Williamsburg. Depending on your perspective, something equivalent to the west is either inevitable or totally unnecessary, since it's already implied in comparison to all the others. Either way, the biggest oversight here might be the fact that no developer—or condo dweller—out there would give up the lucrative cachet already attached to the "Williamsburg" name. Besides riling up the locals, it's just bad business.
In any case, if the movement does take off and you come across "West Bedford" options in your next apartment hunt, now you know what it means.
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