Issue #71: Cafe Hysteria x Brand Baby Talk About “It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl”

Chatting about the article of the week!!

A few weeks back, I reached out to

Madison Huizinga

who writes the amazing publication

Cafe Hysteria

(go check it out if you haven’t yet!) to meet up for coffee. I just moved to San Francisco from New York, and I was hoping to make a new friend and chat Substack stuff with Madison. Little did I know that Madison did the exact same move (for many of the same reasons – which I’ll get into in a reflection piece soon!) just around 6 months ago, so she had a lot of wisdom to share. We spoke about influencer culture in New York City, and how it feels to be somewhat removed from that very specific scene now that we’re living in SF.

Then The Cut worked their magic, as they do, and published “It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl” literally the next day. I reached out to Madison to see if she’d be open to having a chat about it for this week’s issue of Brand Baby, and she kindly agreed. So without further ado, our thoughts on the article of the week (or month, perhaps?)!

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Caroline: Hi Madison! Okay, so we met up for coffee over the weekend, and you asked about my adjustment to SF. Transparently, I hesitated before mentioning it, but I thought you would get it since you’re also a 20-something who did the same exact move. I’ve been feeling a little bit of – for a lack of a better word – FOMO since leaving NYC. The influencer community is so centralized in New York that it feels weird to be so far away from it. When I lived there, I used to feel like I was a part of it. I could go to the buzzy matcha café that just opened up in Noho, I could stop by the pop-up in Soho on my way home from work. I was in the scene.

Madison: “FOMO” is exactly how I would put it! For the first couple of months after I moved to SF, I remember feeling like I was being left out of a big cultural epicenter that I was a part of for several years. When you live in NYC - especially lower Manhattan - stepping outside to go to the grocery store feels like being the star of a sitcom.

I think this “main character” feeling is what The Cut piece captured well. When I first started reading the article, I thought it was going to feel a little redundant. There are so many neighborhoods - in and outside of NYC - undergoing gentrification, but the West Village’s case is unique because it’s the home of everyone’s favorite It Girl: Carrie Bradshaw. The fact that NYC is the backdrop of so many beloved TV shows and movies makes the feeling of living there intoxicating, in addition to it now being all over our TikTok feeds.

What was your impression of the article?

Caroline: YES. It’s the Sex and the City-fication of it all. The West Village has existed on our TV screens and now all over our phone screens, making it almost seem like a TV set that people can actually live in.

The article felt so relevant to how I’ve been feeling these past few weeks. I’ve only been living in SF for the past few weeks, so I still feel very connected to NYC culture. I miss my old neighborhood and my New York friends a lot. So it felt strangely validating for the article to be like, oh yeah, New York – and specifically the West Village – actually is such an epicenter for women in their 20s right now.

I’ve also been really interested in the broader public’s response to the article. It has popped off online, and I will say, a lot of the commentary I’ve seen has felt pretty critical and misogynistic. People are describing these women as ‘annoying’ and only after finance bros. I think a lot of people don’t like to see young women thriving. But then it’s also complicated by the fact that many of these West Village girls are very privileged, and many of these girls are white. What discourse have you been seeing about the article online?

Madison: I found a lot of the article to be validating too. Specifically, the parts that touched on how the Digital NYC-It Girl identity is constructed and mediated. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that all online identities are performances to an extent - I think the article did a great job of painting just how reliant the West Village Girl identity is on consumerism (ordering the Aperol Spritz, wearing the Aritzia puffer and the Ana Luisa micro hoops, etc.). After living outside of NYC for closer to a year now, it’s much easier to see just how constructed that construction is.

It’s interesting that you’re seeing a lot of misogynistic commentary on the article because I’ve kind of been seeing the opposite! I’ve seen people being critical of writer Brock Colyar for being slightly sexist in their evaluation of these girls. Many people in my feed have been talking about how flimsy your identity is in your twenties and how common it is to try on different personalities as you figure out who you are. The twenty-first-century-West Village Girl may just be a phase these girls are passing through as they figure out who they want to be and how they want to spend their time. I think this criticism is fair, but a bit generous, given it’s a privilege to use your discretionary funds to sip Aperol Spritzes and chat the day away to “figure yourself out” - but maybe I’m a cynic!

Last year, I wrote a piece about influencer migration - specifically how the mass exodus from LA to NYC accompanied the rise of TikTok/short-form and decline of YouTube/long-form. Do you think NYC will continue to be the place for influencers? Or do you think the needle will move elsewhere?

Influencer Migration

Caroline: So fascinating – it’s an identity constructed on the basis of consumerism, but such a specific consumerism. That’s I think what gets me the most, that the West Village girlies are all dressing similarly, going to the same restaurants, etc. Of course, I think people should be able to wear whatever they want – if that’s Levi’s and a white tank top with Adidas sneakers, then that’s completely fine. I guess I’m left hoping that this particular brand of influencer culture doesn’t limit individuality and self-expression in style, interests, even places to live. In some ways, social media has expanded our views and opened our eyes to so many different subcultures. I actually truly feel like I learn a lot on TikTok! But in other ways, some influencers seem to be creating a very homogenous culture.

But to your point, maybe the West Village girl is an individual identity – it’s something that women are choosing to try on and then deciding whether or not to continue to embody it.

To your question about the influencer migration, this is something that we also chatted about a little over coffee this past weekend. I think New York became the place largely as a result of the pandemic. Young people lost some really formative years due to the pandemic and we were deprived of social activity for so long, that maybe we experienced a backlash of sorts. When the world finally became more normal, we flocked to one of the busiest, most congested cities and even congregated in the West Village, thus creating a little ‘sorority’ or ‘fraternity’ to try to mimic the experiences that we missed out on due to the pandemic.

However, I do think that things will shift again. I don’t have any specific predictions, but one thing I’ve been pondering is how climate change will affect where Gen Z and Gen Alpha choose to settle down. Do you have any predictions?

Madison: The sameness and sanitized nature of the West Village Girl identity is also something that struck me in the article, particularly when Colyar compared the West Village of today to the West Village of several decades ago. The neighborhood used to be a hotbed of gay culture and artist culture - it’s hard to believe the Stonewall Inn is just a few blocks away from Bleecker. In some ways, influencer culture is becoming a lot more heterogeneous with all the different algorithm niches that exist, but in other ways (such as the case of the WV Girl), it’s seeming to further homogenize.

Something I really loved about living in New York was how much it felt like a college campus with the walkability, grid layout, and mix of commercial and residential spaces. As someone who went to college in-state during the pandemic, I definitely considered my time in New York to be an extension of my college years (or even a make-up for them).

In the aftermath of the pandemic, so many millennials and Gen Zers are continuing to work from home, which I think is making them crave community more than ever. For that reason, I think the next hot influencer spot will definitely be another urban setting, but perhaps one with a bit more space. NYC will always be popular, but I think we may see an overcorrection from its congestion, which may result in a switch back to the sprawl of Los Angeles. Or perhaps a city that will feel less of the effects of climate change, like Chicago. Selfishly, as someone from Seattle, it would be cool to see some kind of migration to the wide, open spaces of the PNW. To avoid adding wait times to my favorite SF/Seattle restaurants, I’m fine with the influencers staying in NY/LA for now, though.

Caroline: I arrived in SF and was immediately like, where are all the people? It feels so empty compared to NYC – which I’m not mad about. I saw Viv Chen post this Substack Note (which I think I saw you liked too!) of a screenshot of a Reddit thread about which SF neighborhood feels most like the West Village. It made me think about how these microcosms of youth affluence and privilege exist in most cities, but New York is the hot spot right now.

Okay, one more question for you: How have you changed since moving from NYC to SF last fall (if at all)?

Madison: Lol! That Reddit screenshot cracked me up (the answer is the Marina District, by the way).

One major way I’ve changed since moving from NYC to SF is returning to my “granola” roots - I’ve been going on way more hikes and going to the beach way more than I did in New York. I feel a lot more connected to nature, which overall makes me feel a lot more grounded. Over coffee, I mentioned to you that I feel like time moves a bit slower in California compared to New York, which isn’t necessarily better, but certainly makes me feel a lot more relaxed. It’s fun to live in a cultural hotbed, but I’ve been enjoying the change of pace that comes with living in a place with less of a “scene,” for now.

Caroline: I completely agree. I went on a bike ride to the beach yesterday and then got fish tacos. I feel so lucky to be able to do that.

This was so fun. Thank you so much, Madison!

Madison: So much fun! Thanks Caroline!