ECCE HIPSTER: A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY'S YOUTH

    Several years ago, I noticed a whole lotta facial hair sprouting along Bedford Avenue.  To a middle-aged friend of mine, I confidently predicted that beards would soon be in style.  He scoffed, shaking his head, incredulous at my naivete: "Naw, that's a hippie thing.  No way."  But a few months later, he started growing a beard and still sports the most bountiful crop of face-fuzz of anyone I know.  Meanwhile, all the young dudes of Brooklyn have left him behind: they're now sporting mustaches.
    There's no question that the sprawling youth colony clustered around the L subway line is a significant bellwether — and boy, do they know it — although it remains to be seen whether it can engender anything more significant than fashion trends.  I think it will.
    I just read a book of essays, What Was the Hipster?, published by the journal n+1.  New York Observer senior editor Christian Lorentzen wrote a very sharp, funny piece, but for the most part What Was the Hipster? is full of high-falutin', hyper-educated discourse, academic concepts studded with exotic surnames like Bourdieu and Zizek.  I have never been able to fully comprehend stuff like that; all I have is a pragmatic take on the hipster phenomenon, which I will now offer to you, dear reader.
    A recurring theme in the n+1 book is the idea that no one ever cops to being a hipster.  Various writers offer theories about this but in my humble opinion they either aim far too high or (more often) don't really answer the question.  Here's the deal about why you don't admit to being a hipster: being a hipster means you have an intuitive grasp of what is hip — or, more precisely, what is about to be hip.  If you say you have it, you don't.  It's like saying you're cool. Or like saying you're lucky.  The very act of declaring so jinxes it, renders it false.
    Here's another recurring theme: Why does everyone hate on hipsters?  Well, the thing is, not everyone hates on hipsters.  A reality check: Most people out in the real world don't even come across them, don't know they exist, would not even recognize a hipster if they saw one.  The people who can recognize hipsters enough to dislike them en masse do so for one and sometimes two reasons.  One is that the arrival of hipsters in a neighborhood means that many of its residents will imminently be pushed out by rising rents.  And who could blame those people for hating hipsters.
    But for the other haters, hipsters are a living, breathing reminder that they are not totally hip (anymore).  And that can be hard to take.  In a culture that prizes being ahead of the curve, being unhip can be a source of shame, jealousy and resentment; there's a type of person who likes to feel that they are generating trends, not passively conforming to them.  It's a point of pride.  So those people lash out at hipsters, just as the hippies lashed out at the punks and, before that, the beatniks lashed out at the hippies.  In those cases, the older group insisted their bohemia was better.  I'm not so sure that's true this time — I get the feeling that deep down, hipster-haters wish they could be in the club.
   The thing is, to be in touch with the zygote of the zeitgeist (and I truly apologize for that turn of phrase), you need a lot of what hipsters have: free time and few obligations.  Hence the rationale – "I could still be hip if I didn't have a 9-5 job, kids and a mortgage."  Of course, you also need a very rarefied and prescient aesthetic, but then a lot of people think they have that.
    The class component — "fucking trust fund hipster!" — stems from the fact that affluence is one sure way to have enough free time and mental space to remain alert and receptive to the slightest cultural vibrations, rather than being distracted by the hurly-burly of, you know, making a living.
    It's a mistake, though, to dismiss hipster culture in toto.  Sure, there are tons of clone kids with their clown glasses, unflattering haircuts and awful Reagan-era thrift store clothes, living rigorously unexamined lives punctuated by fleeting, superficial allegiances.  But there's a lot of really, really smart, progressive hipsters too.  Like their more vapid confederates, they fully acknowledge that we are what we buy.  (I'm sure that makes some people hate on them even more, but it also happens to be true.)  The difference is, they're trying to figure out how to turn that to an advantage.  And actually, they may already have figured it out.  There's no sure way of knowing until we see how it plays out but I'm with n+1 co-editor Mark Greif: my hunch is that the fixed-gear bikes, the used vinyl LPs, the tribalism, the DIY ethic (cooking, clothing, music venues, etc.), the pervasive non-ownership of TV sets, and yes, even the beards, all forecast a larger move toward simplification and, in the broadest sense, economy.  As we reel from the devastating consequences of living beyond our means, those are clearly Good Things.
   I think the kids are all right.  And I'm probably correct — after all, I totally called beards.

Comments

[Rabbit]

Was sent this by a friend--maybe one of the greatest blog posts I've read this year, spot-on. Kudos to you!

[jz]

Thank you for succinctly articulating what I suspect is the repeated theme of the n+1 book.

I agree with you: It's gonna be OK.

Did you see this piece in the awl?

http://www.theawl.com/2010/10/being-a-hipster-is-an-excellent-and-wonderful-thing

Brilliant!

Now let's move on to a deep discourse on the origins and effects of a lesser-studied but no less important subculture: the douchebag.

[Greg]

i friggin' hate hipsters. They always go to the gig and stand there immobile while the band is rocking out on stage.

[Jody]

Michael,

I don't think you've correctly identified the people who would spray paint "Die Hipster" as either people who rightly don't want to be pushed out of their neighborhoods or people for whom hipsters are "a living, breathing reminder that they are not totally hip (anymore)." I don't think people in either of these groups would go out spray painting. But there's another group of people. This group contains people who may appear to be hipsters, but upon closer inspection, are probably much dirtier than the hipster, and may be smiling. They have core values that aren't aligned with consumerism. The hipsters buy the interests and external trappings of this group. Hipsters are very, very clean (although their hair may not be), value design over fun, and don't like to make fools of themselves or mingle with people who aren't like them. I think these may be some of the big, but subtle to the naked eye, differences. FWIW. As to the question of whether the kids are alright... Always!

Jody

[Michael Azerrad]

Despite the placement of the photo near the text, I wasn't actually referring to the type of person who would spray paint "DIE HIPSTER" on a subway platform. Nonetheless, I think you're right, Jody.

[Johnny Black]

I rather like hipsters.

My son had a beard a few months back but it's gone now. Is he ahead of the curve? He usually is. He's a lot hipper than me, but then I'm an old geezer.

And, as such, I like hipsters but no longer care whether or not I am one.

I love it if some youngish person seems pleasantly startled by the kind of music I like, but I don't go out of my way to find the next hip band or singer-songwriter or whatever. I just stumble over them.

And if I don't stumble over them until they're passe, that doesn't matter. As my beloved Holy Modal Rounders once proclaimed, good taste is timeless. Greensleeves was a good song in the 16th century. It still is.

Clothes-wise I'm equally unhip. Black t-shirt, black trousers, black jacket has been my standard garb since 1976. The cheaper the better given my income.

At my age I've no need to be hip. I can just try to be me. Hell, that's more than hard enough.

Ultimately, of course, it all depends on how you define a hipster. I still think of a hipster as someone who keeps abreast of what's happening in any cultural activity.

I distinguish hipsters totally from scenesters which sounds to me like what a lot of people are actually objecting to.

Scenesters are people who only have enough wit to know what hipsters have recently cottoned onto. They're the ones who show up at gigs and gawp blankly. The ones that Robert Smith of The Cure always had trouble dealing with when the band breifly went mega.

My kind of hipsters certainly don't 'value fashion over fun' in Jody's words. That's what scenesters do.

I remember being with lots of people I'd have regarded as hipsters watching Jonathan Richman sing Ice Cream Man a capella in Hammersmith Odeon thirty odd years ago. Now that was fun.

I was similarly attracted to the people half my age watching Cancer Bats at T In the Park a cou7pkle of years ago while Faith No More (or was it Rage Against The Machine?)was on the main stage. The kids in the Cancer Bats tent - all fifty of them - were having a ton of fun.

I'll have a well-scripted zombie movie any day before The King's Speech. Is either of those hip? I don't know. Don't care. I still crack up every time I hear the line "Send more paramedics" in Return Of The Living Dead. Now that's funny.

Sorry. I'm rambling now, but it is very late at night and I'm old. Time for beddy byes.

[jesse]

you hint at towards the end but don't fully give credit to a third reason that people resent hipsters: the value of the whole enterprise of focusing so much on "being hip" is somewhat bankrupt. "yr so jealous" as an analysis is a bit thin, no? you rightly note that hipsters generally have a surfeit of time, and i think many wonder if said time could be used more productively to other ends. as lorentzen notes in that new york magazine piece, the hipster produces dj's, not songwriters; designers, not artists. there have been no great political or cultural movements produced by the current generation of hipsters. so perhaps they are resented for having the rather significant privileges (education, race, class) that help accord them their hipster status without using those privileges to do much more than *be* hipsters.

my granpda has a ton of free time - why would we think it was pathetic if he tried hard to be hip?

[Bob the builder]

I think I'm going to say one of the most stereotypical hipster things, but .... being in my late thirties and having spent the last decade living in remote Australia I think I get a free pass. I don't really know much what a hipster is or even if the term is used here, but in my brief forays into the cities I think I know what you're talking about.
My little group of reject friends 10+ years ago didn't have TVs, had beards (the men on faces, the women under arms), some had old vinyl and we rode everywhere (though not on fixies, the most idiotic fashion for a long while!), though didn't know our political-environmental choices would become so fashionable! If only I'd waited to be born a decade later, I could have got into all those kool clubs and hob-nobbed with the beautiful people!