The NY Times recently ran what I thought was an unnecessarily snarky but pretty funny takedown of Williamsburg’s hipster culture. At one point, he visits the hipster chocolate haven that is the Mast Brother’s Chocolate showroom:

“Great food wants a great dessert, so I hied myself to the showroom of Mast Brothers Chocolate, a lodestar of the artisanal foods movement. This company makes it a point to wind-sail its cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic to Brooklyn, then to hand-sort these beans, then to let its chocolate ‘rest’ 30 days before sale. Only Leona Helmsley?s dogs have ever been so cosseted.

“The store smells like heaven; I would happily die there. For $10 you can buy a burlap sack used to haul the beans in, perhaps for use as a satchel. I told a freckled young employee in a peasant blouse: ‘I bet those sacks are very popular with single men. If all your stuff smelled like chocolate? Bingo.’ The girl nodded and enthused: ‘I got one for my birthday. Most of the people who work here have them.’ “

By Rosa