Neighborhoodies in the News

Yet Another Way to Mark Your Status in New York
by Sara Stewart

Where you live says reams about you.
Lower East Side? You're a liberal trust-fund baby with an artistic bent. Upper West Side? You have a dog, two perfect children and a Kate Spade fetish. Red Hook? You are easily duped by real estate people who hawk "up and coming" areas.

Twenty-eight-year-old Michael de Zayas knows the importance of location. He also knows that few articles of clothing are as enduringly cool as the hoodie (the zip-up, hooded sweatshirt).
His simple-yet-genius creation is the "Neighborhoodie" - customized tops that bear the logo of New York neighborhoods.

"It's really taken off," says de Zayas of his fledgling enterprise, which is just a few months old. "We [sell] like 200 a week." The most popular requests, he says, are for Murray Hill, Greenpoint and TriBeCa - but he'll take orders for any neighborhood in the world.

The most unusual request?

"It was for '1,000 Tacos,' " he says. "But that's not really a neighborhood."