Let's Talk Hipsters

Mr. White wrote: Gary Sax, you live in Lubbock. correct?

Sorry, didn't answer this! Yes, I've lived in Lubbock for... fuck, now five years. Jesus.

Gary Sax wrote: I'm sort of with you guys on the self conscious types... but I hear this term being thrown around more often to refer generically to young people (millenials does not equal hipster) and I can't get behind that. There's a reason young people are pissed, and it is because they are getting systematically fucked hard by older people for the last 10-20 years.

www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/re...income?CMP=edit_2221

While I don't argue with the article, hipsters in particular seem attracted to living in some of the most expensive urban areas they can flock to , which doesn't exactly help things.

That article describes the challenging economic conditions faced by an entire generation of young people in developed nations. As Msaample points out, the hipsters are the ones who want to live in the most expensive cities, and for that matter, wear nice clothes, drink high-quality beer, own expensive electronics, and dine out often. Sure, everybody wants nice things, but many people able to distinguish between their wants and their needs without running up debt and getting snarky with everybody. The hipsters are just the ones with the snobbiest tastes and the least capability to afford those tastes. Maybe their search for authenticity should start with a long look in the mirror.

Alastair MacDirk wrote: Regarding Austin live music capital of the world.

Live music is hurting. Young people (including hipsters) don't go to clubs to see live music like we did. They will go to clubs to hear DJs mix stuff. It scares me to think about where American music is headed in the future. Not exactly on topic, but kinda.... so many great rock MUSICIANS in the 60s, 70s, some 80s. Where did the musicianship go?

Part of the problem is that young people today have less disposable income to spend entertainment, compared to baby boomers and gen x in times past. A bigger problem is that people stopped paying for music about 15 years ago. Yeah, artists can out and tour and sell merchandise, but that's time-consuming and takes them away from downtime when they can recharge their creativity and write more music. There are still performers and bands putting out good music, but it's a lot harder for them to make a career out of it now.

jeb wrote: The whole world is a fucking lie, and this group is striving for something real. Go to college, you'll get a good job: Lie. Corporations have destroyed the economy like three times since you were born, but they'll be punished: Lie. Ads for mainstream products are selling you something good, of high quality: Lie. We need to protect women's health, that's why we force them to have unwanted children: Lie. A house is a solid investment: Lie. Everything: politics, media, the economy, careerism--it's all bullshit.

Hipsters, the ones that sharpen knives and make shoes and shit--they are on to something with this authenticity kick. I like it more than my generation's obsession with consumption, that's for sure. We've poisoned the world, wrecked the economy, fought wars for fun--and all on a diet of Awesome Blossoms® From Chilis®. Let some cobbler run things, it can't be a lot worse.

You are one of the few people whose posts I miss on Facebook. I miss the days of LA punks running around terrorizing the yupsters.

Minneapolis / St Paul went from having a handful of decent small breweries started by people who worked hard at creating great beer. It wasn't all great of course, but it wasn't all mediocre either. Now we've got tons of little breweries . 95% of them are completely mediocre and were started because of the attention and status that comes with being able to say, "I work at a craft brewery" in some circles. Most of them seem to have put a lot more thought into their art design and merchandise than their beer. A lot of them have their own iPhone apps for some reason.

I thought I'd enjoy tons of unique beer options, but they aren't unique. Most of the mediocre beers are mediocre for all the same reasons. When they go out of business, as many of them eventually do, it isn't because the market is over-saturated with mediocre little breweries and a spiffy logo isn't enough to sell beer. Oh no. It's because they couldn't raise enough capital for advertising and because Anheuser-Busch is undercutting them. Always said with a straight face.

Achievement and status aren't things you immediately deserve just because you tried. Ask the college athletes, the small-town bands, etc. The anecdote above is exemplary of the problem I have with the hipster world-view; the lack of self-awareness and entitlement on display that comes with it. I do have friends that would probably identify as hipster though; I think like most large groups of people it's a loud minority that give the rest a bad name.

Man, Awesome Blossoms from Chilis. This is why Jeb is a better poster than me. I would have written the same post, but referenced Blooming Onions from TGI Friday's, which is a tired and inferior joke on every level.

Chapel wrote: Those times have passed. .

they never existed

Chapel wrote: Austin has lost, and I mean totally lost is "Live Music Capital of the World".

you probably mean live music capital of the USA (your part probably), you just did that thing where you think that USA automatically means "rest of the world you've not really seen or experienced first hand".

I dunno, Lee. I've been a lot of places all over the world, and Austin's live music scene is pretty fucking awesome.

Have you been to Austin, Lee? Been to 6th Street, White Horse, Carousel Lounge, Saxon Pub (where I once saw Willie Nelson and Bob Schneider in the same week), and about a thousand other venues, bars, dives, and roadhouses?

On Hipsters
I feel like I saw the creation and evolution of hipsters start back in 1999/2000s. When I was a freshman at BYU in Provo, UT, I had friends and friends of friends who now I call "proto-hipsters" but at the time I just called "indie rock kids." A couple of them were from places like Maryland, upstate New York and Oregon. They wore tighter pants than everyone else in the heyday of baggy jeans, vintage thrift store t-shirts, rode skateboards. They listened to bands like Modest Mouse, Built to Spill and the like. For the most part they were just trying to be themselves and be different from all the other clean-cut BYU drones. I liked them, they were fun to hang out with and had different tastes from me. Then one of my friends started hanging out with some local kids who didn't go to BYU, they were all in little punk/ska/indie bands, said acted like they were into art while drawing crap with crayons and would crash our Intro to Film class. They were extremely annoying and phony and I couldn't stand them.

At the same time my best friend from high school went off to school at a liberal arts college in upstate New York. He used to wear nothing but earth tones, baggy khakis, loose shirts, had really long curly hair, very smart and knew a ton about music, especially electronic music. When we both went home for Christmas break he was wearing tight pants, tight fitted black shirts, had cut his hair short, wearing eyeliner, etc. His style had changed but he was still really, really into music. He's the most knowledgable person I know when it comes to music. So for me, hipsters were all about music and this was coming about more so in the early '00s. At this same time is when scenesters started showing up. People who wanted to be a part of the cool scene, be one of the cool kids. They dressed like the hipsters, but they couldn't really hold a conversation with them. I remember watching some MTV pub quiz tournament on TV and this guy, totally dressed like my idea of a hipster at the time, tight black pants, black chuck taylors, black rimmed glasses, short cropped jacket, etc. And he got a pretty easy music question and was just flummoxed, he had no idea what the answer was. That's when I realized some people just want to be a part of the look.

Hipsters have definitely evolved since then. There was the whole ironic phase, wear irony was ground down into the dirt, and now it's more about authenticity. Which of course is ironic because as a lot of you have said most of these hipsters aren't really hip to anything other than the idea of being a hipster. But how do you even identify a hipster anymore? A lot of it has just bled into everything else, a lot of hipster ideals are just shared amongst millennials. A lot of hipster fashion is now just fashion. Just because you have a flannel shirt, a bit of stubble and a tight-on-the-sides-long-on-top haircut doesn't mean you're a hipster, you're just trendy.

TLDR: I don't know what I'm talking about

On Austin
We lived in Austin from 2010-2015, and by 2010 I don't think Austin really had much of it's weirdness left. My wife was like "Everybody says 'Keep Austin Weird' and wears those shirts, but this town doesn't really feel all that weird to me." I kind of defended the city a little at first, I mean there are still a lot of restaurants, regional chains, stores and landmarks that are unique to Austin, but a lot of it is getting lost to commercialization. The drag on Guadalupe next to the University of Texas is filling up with big chains, Starbucks, Noodles and Co, Qdoba, Urban Outfitters, etc., are replacing the little mom and pop restaurants and thrifts stores that used to border campus. And that's happening all over the city. And that happens all over the country, it's a homogenization of America where everywhere you go has the same Walmart, Whole Foods, Target and Old Navy.

On gentrification, someone saying that's a good result of hipsters, sure you've got cool new art galleries, small businesses and hip bodegas, but what about the poorer minority population that gets displaced and its culture co-opted by those were are moving into their area. There are lots of taco stands setting up shop in East Austin, but they're not really authentic to that part of the city.

metalface13 wrote: On gentrification, someone saying that's a good result of hipsters, sure you've got cool new art galleries, small businesses and hip bodegas, but what about the poorer minority population that gets displaced and its culture co-opted by those were are moving into their area. There are lots of taco stands setting up shop in East Austin, but they're not really authentic to that part of the city.

Gentrification has been around longer than hipsters, at least in big cities. Artists need affordable space to live and work, so they tend to gravitate towards rundown industrial areas. Gradually, they make the area more attractive and interesting, and the trendy bars and restaurants start popping up there. Eventually, the people with serious money come in and really develop the area, driving up rents and driving out the artists. So, the artists move elsewhere and the cycle begins again. Twenty years ago, I predicted that northeast Minneapolis would be the next cool section of town, and that has gradually come true over the years. The previous cool section of town has been largely replaced with condos full of aging baby boomers.

So... the operating definition of a hipster is 2012 Macklemore plus oiled facial hair?

I remember when a Gap store was put in on Queen Street in Toronto. Sad.

With regard to taco places, Maria's Taco Express is the King Shit of all food places...


The food is spot on and Hippie Church is a rare treat.

To your point on "urban renewal", Shellhead, yeah, gentrification really means "exporting brown people to the shitty suburbs" in the eyes of those who watch their neighborhoods become socioeconomically different very quickly. I've lived in 3 places now that did that. It never worked out for anyone but the Bougie, yupster crackers that decided they needed to turn that bad ass chicken-and-waffle place into a Qdoba. That little dive bar that always has the brothers outside, congregating, is looked upon as an eyesore and crime magnet, but in reality has some of the baddest underground battle rap.

So, what happens is that those scenes dry up, and places that were there for generations, the places that make a community "a community" get bulldozed and turned into high-rent apartments that are right off the new non-viable light-rail or streetcar project so that these pretentious cunts can feel righteous for taking mass transit whilst consuming vast quantities of goods made by Chinese wage-slaves.

Now, the best part: the displaced people who had a community get betrayed, then have to move to a suburb 4 busses away from the factory they've worked since 1978, and they move to some place they have no roots in, nothing in common with the people who live there now, and then tensions flare up. Scared white people cry that the city is becoming too diverse too fast and that property values will drop (the worst form of insidious, non-chalant racism) and the brown people who moved there resent them, and don't speak up if those same people get robbed by the disenfranchised youth who now have a house in a suburb, yet no place to call home.

Fuck gentrification. Fuuuck it.

I suppose the Twin Cities might not fit the usual gentrification narrative. There are literally hundreds of lakes in the metro area, scattered all over the place. Even so, that lakefront property is valued higher, so there isn't any dramatically bad section of town, just some areas less nice than others. The outer suburbs do feature a much whiter population that prefers SUVs and Republican politicians. A significant chunk of land that might have attracted gentrification by now instead got targeted for hardcore urban renewal in the mid-'50s, when they ran I-94 straight through the Rondo neighborhood, which was predominantly black at the time.