In the depths of East Williamsburg, past Pumps Exotic Dancing and one of America’s dirtiest estuaries, a neon-yellow glow marks the entrance to a concrete warehouse.
Inside, Gen Z girls in low-rise denim film TikToks while techno gays breeze by in black mesh. Past a jungle of palm fronds and banana leaves, an Adonis in a white tux offers prosecco for the freight-elevator ride up, where a second sentry smiles in a cloud of Jolly Rancher–smelling vape smoke. If her iPad permits, she guides puzzled pilgrims to a Moroccan-rugged mecca where towers of halvah loom and pretty people smoke hookahs to a mix of Bedouin beats and Drake. Welcome to Habibi, a Levantine oasis above the North Brooklyn Industrial Business Zone.
