Wynwood has art galleries. It has trendy restaurants. It has a craft coffeehouse and a bar where you can buy indie magazines and boutiques stocking clothing made by local designers. And yes, it has droves of young, creative people, some of which wear thick-rimmed glasses or mustaches or both.
Miamians have known Wynwood as the city's hipster hub for years. But now, even stalwart national business publications are taking notice. Forbes ranked Wynwood at number 19 in its list of "America's Hippest Hipster Neighborhoods" yesterday, right between Boston's Allston-Brighton neighborhood and Lower Westheimer in Houston, Texas.
Forbes considered a variety of factors in ranking the neighborhoods, from coffee shops per capita to the number of food trucks and farmer's markets to walkability and the number of residents in each neighborhood who work in artistic jobs. Wynwood made the list, the story says, based on two things:
....its arts district and its fashion district. In the mid-2000s artists began taking up residence in the area's abandoned warehouses. Today more than 70 galleries occupy the area and the hood hosts an ArtWalk every second Saturday of each month. The area also boasts one of the largest permanent outdoor mural exhibits in the world, called Wynwood Walls.Hipster cred, in this case, doesn't seem like such a bad thing; as Forbes defines it, it seems to mean that there are plenty of creative, artsy things happening in a given area (rather than roving hoards of Gallery Girls types sneering at each other). And Wynwood's the only Florida neighborhood to rank on the list; it's also just one of a handful of areas in the southern U.S. to rate.
Williamsburg in New York City, an area defined more by its hipster appeal than any other quality, came in third on the list, beat out by two California neighborhoods: The Mission in San Francisco at number two, and Silver Lake in Los Angeles as the most hipstery hipster hip spot in the 50 states.
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