EVENT DETAILS

The Last Bohemia: Scenes from the Life of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with Robert Anasi

Join the Literary Journalism Program to celebrate the publication of Robert Anasi's
critically acclaimed new book, "The Last Bohemia." A reading will be followed by a
Q
and A, along with a book sale and signing at the conclusion of the event. Free and
open to the public. Light refreshments. For more information, contact Patricia
Pierson
at piersonp@uci.edu. Sponsored by the Literary Journalism Program. Co-
sponsored by the
departments of English and History.

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ABOUT ROBERT ANASI: Robert Anasi is the author of The Gloves: A Boxing
Chronicle (North Point
Press, 2002). He teaches Literary Journalism at the University of California, Irvine,
where he is a
Schaeffer and Chancellor's Club fellow and a Ph.D. candidate in English. He is
also a founding editor of
the literary journal Entasis.

ABOUT THE LAST BOHEMIA:

A first-hand account of the swift transformation of Williamsburg, from factory
backwater to artists’ district
to trendy hub and high-rise colony

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is now so synonymous with hipster culture and the very
idea of urban
revitalization—so well-known from Chicago to Cambodia as the playground for the
game of ironized
status-seeking and lifestyle one-upmanship—that it’s easy to forget how just a few
years ago it was a
very different neighborhood: a spread of factories, mean streets and ratty
apartments that the rest of New
York City feared and everyone but artists with nowhere else to go left alone.
Robert Anasi hasn’t forgotten. He moved to a $300-a-month apartment in
Williamsburg in 1994 and
watched as the area went through a series of surreal transformations: the
warehouses became lofts,
secret cocaine bars became sylized absinthe parlors, barrooms became stage sets
for inde-rock careers
and rents rose and rose—until the local artists found that their ideal of personal
creativity had served the
aims of global commerce, and that their neighborhood now belonged to someone
else.
Tight, passionate, and provocative, The Last Bohemia is at once a celebration of
the fever dream of
bohemia, a lament for what Williamsburg has become and a cautionary tale about
the lurching
transformations of city neighborhoods throughout the United States.