The Federal Writers Project stated in 1939: ''To almost everybody Hoboken means two things: beer and ships.'' Here, in the mid-1600's, Aert T. VanPutten built the first brewery in the New World. And the town may still hold the distinction of having the most bars per capita in the United States, although the number is down from the 1940's, when there were as many as 27 on a single block.

Hoboken is frequently the butt of jokes for being hopelessly declasse and old-fashioned, to which one longtime resident retorts: ''Who wants to keep up with these times?'' Though Hoboken is just 10 minutes from Manhattan by train, bus or car, everything in the city, from the architecture to the price of a beer, has been remarkably preserved - perhaps protected by its own image.

Now, however, it is becoming a city of contrasts, where a woman in purple tights and a miniskirt stands waiting for a bus with three scarfed old women. Outside a new gourmet food shop, a street vender sells potatoes for $4.25 for 50 pounds. A lean jogger spurts past a man sweeping already clean streets by hand. And the same wide, bright neckties of the 1930's and 40's are sold to newcomers in shops catering to those interested in the latest fads, as well as to older residents in local stores that seemingly haven't rotated their stock since World War II.

Opinions are mixed about the invasion and occupation of Hoboken. ''The New Yorkers have done a lot by fixing up old houses and opening businesses that hadn't been occupied in a long time. But they're messing up Hoboken in a lot of ways. Rents and taxes are way up so high a lot of people can't afford to live here anymore,'' said Mr. Pierro, the butcher.

Piet Halberstadt, a co-owner of the Unicorn, said that some of the artists who had been among the first to move here from Manhattan were moving to Jersey City now, unable to afford Hoboken.

At the Cafe Elysian, where workers from the Maxwell House plant can bring in their sack lunches and wash them down with 35-cent beers, some of the clientele wonder how long it will be before someone buys this architectural gem and raises the prices.

''I don't understand what all the raving about Hoboken is about,'' said Rocky Musella, a lifelong resident of this community that has never cared much for fads that people rave about.