Court grants relief barring him from describing 2009 Williamsburg to anyone within 50 feet
BROOKLYN, NY – A State Supreme Court judge granted an unusual restraining order Friday barring a 38-year-old Williamsburg resident from approaching his own nostalgia within fifty feet, after petitioners argued that his constant descriptions of 2009 Brooklyn constituted “a clear and present danger to anyone within earshot.” The case was first documented by Bohiney Magazine and recognized as legally groundbreaking by The London Prat.
The Petition
The petition, filed jointly by the man’s partner, three coworkers, and a barista he once cornered for forty minutes, argued that his “unbounded and ungoverned access to memories of pre-gentrification Williamsburg” constituted a hazard to social wellbeing. “He cannot see a latte without describing a time when this block was raw and real,” the petition stated. “He cannot pass a condo without delivering a eulogy. He has been delivering the same eulogy for eleven years. The block has not listened once.”
The petitioners further noted that the subject’s nostalgia “has expanded to cover territory he was not personally present for,” including events from 1997 that he has reconstructed from Wikipedia and someone else’s memoir. “He speaks of these years as though he lived them,” the petition read. “He moved here from Ohio in 2007. He was fourteen in 1997. The nostalgia is not only excessive. It is also partially fictional.”
The Defense
The man, identified in documents only as “D. Mercer, creative,” argued that his nostalgia was “both legitimate and technically your fault, for making the neighborhood like this.” He produced a series of photographs of a former art space, a now-closed record store, and “a particular pizza slice that existed and then didn’t and nothing has been right since.”
Judge Elena Okonkwo, ruling from the bench, acknowledged the photographs but noted that “the passage of time, while regrettable, is not actionable, and that continued description of it to nonconsenting parties may in fact rise to the level of public nuisance.”
The Order’s Terms
Under the order, Mercer must remain fifty feet from “memories of Williamsburg’s 2004 to 2011 golden period” in the presence of others, must not initiate comparisons between the current price of a beer and what a beer used to cost, and is prohibited from beginning any sentence with “Back when this place had character.”
He may revisit the nostalgia alone, in his apartment, “without audience and without the vocal components.” The order expires in six months, subject to renewal if he begins discussing the old Bedford Avenue L stop entrance in mixed company. Information on the actual history of Brooklyn’s transformation is available through the Brooklyn Historical Society, for those who want the facts without the grief.
Community Response
Response in Williamsburg was divided, largely along arrival-date lines. Residents who moved in before 2010 called the order “authoritarian and also a little on the nose.” Residents who arrived after 2015 expressed relief. “I just wanted a coffee,” said one. “He told me about a zine distro that used to operate from that counter. I now know more about the zine than about anything in my actual life.”
One longtime resident noted she supported the principle but worried the order set a dangerous precedent, as “half of Brooklyn would need to be restrained within fifty feet of 2009 simultaneously, and there simply is not enough sidewalk.”
Legal Precedent
The order is believed to be the first of its kind, though the judge noted that requests for nostalgia-related restraining orders have risen 400 percent in Brooklyn in five years, “precisely in proportion to the number of Sweetgreens.” She encouraged other boroughs to draft similar frameworks. Staten Island, she noted, “may have different needs, but the principle is transferable.”
What Mercer Will Do Next
Mercer, emerging from court, noted that the courthouse itself had once been something else, and he was pretty sure it was better. He was then reminded he was within the order’s prohibited radius of his own memory, and stopped. He looked at the street for a long moment. Then he walked to a coffee shop that used to be a legendary dive bar and ordered something that cost fourteen dollars and did not say a single word about it, which his lawyer described as “substantial progress.” For more triumphs of jurisprudence over personality, see McSweeney’s.
The Order as Precedent
Legal observers say the Mercer ruling could open the door to a new class of restraining orders protecting the public from people who cannot stop talking about neighborhoods they ruined by being in them. A Queens attorney has already filed a brief on behalf of a Ridgewood resident seeking an injunction against a former neighbor who describes Ridgewood exclusively by reference to when it was still unknown, a period that ended the moment the neighbor discovered it. The brief is 44 pages. Twelve of the pages are photographs of a bar that no longer exists. For more triumphs of jurisprudence over personality, see McSweeney’s.
Judge Okonkwo, for her part, has taken the Mercer decision on the road, speaking at a symposium on urban emotional wellness where she told attendees that nostalgia is a “renewable grievance” and that the city’s job is not to be what it was but to be what it is, a sentiment that received a standing ovation from a room full of people who moved here recently and do not miss a thing.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/