Remember when the McKibben Dorms (er, Lofts) were the place where everybody knew your name? Where you could play experimental 8-bit music until six in the morning while throngs of creatively pierced fellow artists interpretively danced about you with nary a care in the world? Well, those days are drawing to close as a crime wave sweeps the area.
While the two buildings have always been close to Bushwick housing projects, most of their young residents have avoided direct contact with the locals. Until now, when gun-toting robbers have started breaking into the apartments, robbing tenants of their expensive toys: "Give me all your stuff, I have a gun, I shoot people,” said one robber before snagging his victim's laptops, cellphones, iPods and Xbox games. In the past two weeks, there have been three robberies within the building, plus another mugger who stole a woman's iPhone in front of the building as she was coming home from work.
The residents are mourning the loss of their once-utopic hipster oasis: "McKibbin was an open place where people kept door unlocked—now it’s almost a gated community," one resident told The Brooklyn Paper. Oh, the times, they are a-changing; pretty soon those kids will have to start paying their own rent!
