Pork Pie Hats

Williamsburg, Brooklyn: Food and Flea Market

The Williamsburg section of Brooklyn has long been known as a working-class neighborhood with a gritty industrial waterfront and an ethnically diverse population ranging from Hispanic to Hasidic. Today the neighborhood's demographics include a third group that begins with H, for Hipster, and along with those trendy 20-somethings wearing porkpie hats and Chuck Taylor sneakers have come a slew of unique diversions that are starting to attract tourists.

But the attractions are not merely cute cafes and art galleries. There are offbeat thrift shops, specialty food stores selling coffee and chocolate, a retro bowling alley with a bar, and restaurants ranging from the famous Peter Luger steakhouse (178 Broadway), established in 1887, to Diner, which serves high-end bistro fare like duck and polenta in a 1927 steel diner (85 Broadway).

Brooklyn Brewery, at 79 N. 11th St., located in a former matzoh factory, gets 1,500 to 2,000 people weekend sipping suds in the shadow of their towering vats, and the brewery's tours are also popular; details at http://www.brooklynbrewery.com.

Through Nov. 19-20, two of Williamsburg's biggest draws are being held weekends on a waterfront lot with spectacular views of Manhattan across the way. On Saturdays, crowds come out for Smorgasburg, a food festival, and on Sundays, they jam it in for Brooklyn Flea, a flea market that also includes a number of food vendors.

Brooklyn Flea has been around for a few years in other locations but this is its first season in Williamsburg. Smorgasburg was created just this year. Food vendors sell everything from lobster rolls to frozen bananas, while finds at the flea market range from your very own Statue of Liberty to used bikes; details at http://www.brooklynflea.com/smorgasburg/.

"Every weekend that our market exists, it shifts more and more from the 95 percent local folks we started out with toward what's getting closer to half Brooklynites and the other half a mix of people from other boroughs, regional, national and international tourists," said co-founder Eric Demby.

Iz Andrew's Blog: The Pork Pie Hat

A pork pie hat or porkpie hat is a type of hat made of felt or, less commonly, straw. It is somewhat similar to a trilby or a fedora, but like the boater it has a flat top. The crown is short and has an indentation all the way around, instead of the pinch crown typically seen on fedoras and homburgs. The pork pie hat originated in the mid 19th century. Originally referring to a type of woman’s hat, it gets its name from its resemblance to a pork pie. The pork pie hat was a staple of the British man-about-town style for many years. Commonly worn by American Civil War soldiers and the US Army (unofficially) through the 1880s. Pork pie hats are often associated with jazz, blues and ska musicians and fans. Charles Mingus wrote an elegy for jazz saxophone great Lester Young called "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat". Many artists have performed this tune, including Jeff Beck, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Derek Sherinian, and Joni Mitchell. In Jamaica, the hat was popularized by the 1960s rude boy subculture, which traveled to the United Kingdom and influenced the mod and skinhead subcultures (although Jamaican and British pork pie hats are more similar to a very short-brimmed trilby rather than the US style). Jamaican ska artist Laurel Aitken performed the song "Give Me Back My Pork Pie Hat". Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist known as the father of the atomic bomb frequently wore a pork pie hat. Singer Dean Martin was known to be partial to pork pie hats, and they became a trademark of the silent film comedian Buster Keaton who handmade his own. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright was often seen wearing a pork pie hat with a cape and cane. The hat was prevalent in New Guinea in January 1944, when Australian troops had just defeated a Japanese stronghold at Kankiryo Saddle.

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