I don’t know anything about music. Real music, that is. It’s probably because I ‘m not a real hipster. I mean, yeah, I wore trucker hats back in the 80′s, way before Ashton Kutcher made them cool. But I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky where EVERYONE wore trucker hats. I never owned a full set of of ironic t-shirts, but I did shop for clothes at thrift shops, mainly because I needed to be thrifty. And yeah, I did drink PBR, but so did my dad, so did his dad, etc. etc.
Twenty years ago, the hipsters I knew and continually met in clubs like Tewligan’s and Uncle Pleasant’s looked just like the pictures I see of hipsters today. They’re easy to spot:
The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst would never be accused of being a trend-follower. But in 2008, such things have become shameless clichés of a class of individuals that seek to escape their own wealth and privilege by immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the working class.
This obsession with “street-cred” reaches its apex of absurdity as hipsters have recently and wholeheartedly adopted the fixed-gear bike as the only acceptable form of transportation – only to have brakes installed on a piece of machinery that is defined by its lack thereof.
I’ve noticed a lot of aging hipsters are riding bikes, too. Me? I walk. That’s not hip.
What is hip? Check The New York Times, or better yet, the guy who wrote The Hipster HandBook.
I have no chance of being a real hipster, which is good, because evidently it can be dangerous. So, I’ve pretty much given up on being a true audiophile. Maybe if I got some better clothes? Probably not. Heck, I can’t even rock a Ralph Kramden:
THIS summer the unvarying male uniform in the precincts of Brooklyn cool has been a pair of shorts cut at knickers length, a V-neck Hanes T-shirt, a pair of generic slip-on sneakers and a straw fedora. Add a leather cuff bracelet if the coolster is gay.
In truth this get-up was pretty much the unvarying male uniform last summer also, but this year an unexpected element has been added to the look, and that is a burgeoning potbelly one might term the Ralph Kramden.
Too pronounced to be blamed on the slouchy cut of a T-shirt, too modest in size to be termed a proper beer gut, developed too young to come under the heading of a paunch, the Ralph Kramden is everywhere to be seen lately, or at least it is in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene, the McCarren Park Greenmarket and pretty much any place one is apt to encounter fans of Grizzly Bear.
But I have to be careful with all these arguments as to why I’m not a hipster. The defining trait of being a hipster is to deny hipster status. According to Adbusters:
“So… this is a hipster party?” I ask the girl sitting next to me. She’s wearing big dangling earrings, an American Apparel V-neck tee, non-prescription eyeglasses and an inappropriately warm wool coat.
“Yeah, just look around you, 99 percent of the people here are total hipsters!”
“Are you a hipster?”
“Fuck no,” she says, laughing back the last of her glass before she hops off to the dance floor.
No worries. The real reason I can never be a part of the musically elite has to do with my taste in music. You see, I’ve got some. And my taste is boringly mainstream, not to mention far too limited. If asked to come up with “The Top Tracks of the 2000s” I’d probably list 10, 25, maybe 50 songs. That’s not enough for a real hipster.
HEADLINE OF THE DAY
Naked Jacqueline Onassis Photo Found With Warhol’s Junk
