It's hard to convey to today's nouveau gentrifier how much Williamsburg has changed since the dawn of the Bloomberg administration. With the completion of the massive luxury apartment towers along the river, the past few years in particular have seen an unprecedented explosion of upscale retail and nightlife establishments. The neighborhood now resembles some deformed inbred spawn of the fratastic Meatpacking District and the so-precious-your-eyes-bleed West Village. Even that Polish liquor store by the Bedford L stop went under; it's now the most darling boutique dealing exclusively in feathers, or something.
None of this dandified nonsense seemed possible in 2001, when the Japanese-owned cafe Supercore opened in an old defunct retail outlet on Bedford Avenue, between South 2nd and South 1st Streets. This was the first hipster-oriented barstaurant to pop up on Bedford in Williamsburg's Southside, which was and still is, to some extent, a largely Puerto Rican neighborhood, and has traditionally gentrified at a slightly less obnoxious pace than the northside.
There was nothing in the way of hipster amenities on Bedford south of Grand at that point; Stinger Bar (RIP) or maybe Black Betty (RIP) was pretty much the last stop before Kokies (RIP) and regrettable decisions made in someone's acoustically orgiastic loft-share (RIP). I remember passing Supercore on the way to a Rubulad party (this was back when Rubulad was on South 5th—there's a massive luxury apartment building there now) and someone noted that you know the neighborhood's really changing once the first Japanese hipsters are spotted.
"No signage, Japanese hipsters, Nouvelle Vague posters on the bathroom wall. Almost too cool," is indeed how the L Magazine described Supercore. Almost, but not really. The rotating staff of Japanese kids on work visas were always friendly and attentive enough, the food they turned out in the little open kitchen was fresh and nothing too complicated (addictive shrimp shumai), and the backyard was a tranquil oasis a decade before Lucky Dog brought the party next door.
Oh well. After 12-plus years, Supercore closes tonight, signifying for some the end of a certain era: a brief period when, for a certain demographic, Williamsburg crackled with an electrifying creativity to a degree that's long gone. Last night the mood inside was all shellshocked sadness—regulars who'd heard the news filtered in to express their disbelief. "This is super sad," one customer at the bar observed, adding something about so many other places in the neighborhood being "overpriced bourgeois bullshit."
The staff was equally morose; one employee said Supercore's owner, who resides in Japan, had given them just four days notice. "He doesn't want to do it anymore," one staffer explained, but nobody could elaborate beyond that. On some level, we get not wanting to do it anymore in Williamsburg. Studio apartments in that gigantic new deluxe building on South 4th start at $2,500 a month. The people moving in there shouldn't have to walk all the way to North 7th to buy their artisanal feathers.
