Not So Hip "Bag" Men

New York's Williamsburg neighborhood has some interesting architecture and features, including the Kings County Savings Bank and the Domino Sugar Refinery building (which is being converted to residential housing) and is a melting pot of religious and ethnic groups as diverse as folks from the Dominican Republic to ultra Orthodox Jews so it shouldn't be surprising that an iconic church, the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration, figures prominently on a tote bag.

The problem isn't that they feature the church. It's that these graphic designers, Derick Holt, 30, and Milton Carter, 33, think to call it a mosque.

Derick Holt, 30, and Milton Carter, 33, both of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, said they considered it "ironic hipster" humor to deliberately mislabel the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration on North 12th Street.

"That's just what everyone calls it, as in 'Let's meet at "The Mosque" side of the park,' " said Carter, who, along with Holt, runs a business called Brooklyn Novelty.

"If you were new to the neighborhood, you wouldn't know what [the church] was, but you'd know the domes."

Carter said he and Holt had no intention of offending anyone.

But "what can be a joke for you can be offensive for others," said Igor Ksynyuk, 35, the church's deacon. "If someone didn't know it was a joke, he might think our church wants to offend Muslims somehow."

"The Mosque" gag has the Russian Orthodox community fuming.

"We celebrated our 100th anniversary three weeks ago. This is one of the oldest landmarks of Williamsburg," said the church's angry pastor, the Rev. Wiaczeslaw Krawczuk.

Clueless doesn't begin to describe these two graphic designers.