A Eulogy of the Hipster from NY Magazine

This interesting piece from New York Magazine (ironically, a magazine not really known for its writing) seeks to ask posthumously, What was the Hipster?  While I wouldn’t say that this hipster phenomenon is totally dead, it certainly has peaked and been fully commercialized.  The line between where hipsters end and everyone else begins has just seemed to end. This author claims hipsters started in the late nineties and evolved over the last decade. While I think a lot of this article is incessant babbling and uses one too many “big words” to show off, there are some clever observations.  He essentially chronicles what led to the end of hipsterism as being an alternative trend and more of an adopted, commercialized mainstream trend.  It became something cool and new, that you could buy at Urban Outfitters.  Essentially you could be an individual, just like everyone else:

“The rebel consumer is the person who, adopting the rhetoric but not the politics of the counterculture, convinces himself that buying the right mass products individualizes him as transgressive. Purchasing the products of authority is thus reimagined as a defiance of authority. Usually this requires a fantasized censor who doesn’t want you to have cologne, or booze, or cars. But the censor doesn’t exist, of course, and hipster culture is not a counterculture. On the contrary, the neighborhood organization of hipsters—their tight-knit colonies of similar-looking, slouching people—represents not hostility to authority (as among punks or hippies) but a superior community of status where the game of knowing-in-advance can be played with maximum refinement. The hipster is a savant at picking up the tiny changes of rapidly cycling consumer distinction.”

He also sums up well why their is so much anger and resentment around hipsters and hipster trends:

“This in-group competition, more than anything else, is why the term hipster is primarily a pejorative—an insult that belongs to the family of poseur, faker, phony, scenester, and hanger-on. The challenge does not clarify whether the challenger rejects values in common with the hipster—of style, savoir vivre, cool, etc. It just asserts that its target adopts them with the wrong motives. He does not earn them.”

And finally he makes an interesting point that at its core there is small number of people actually writing, creating art, and contributing to items they’ve made to the public. And most of the other people around them are just consuming the trend:

“It has long been noticed that the majority of people who frequent any traditional bohemia are hangers-on. Somewhere, at the center, will be a very small number of hardworking writers, artists, or politicos, from whom the hangers-on draw their feelings of authenticity. Hipsterdom at its darkest, however, is something like bohemia without the revolutionary core. Among hipsters, the skills of hanging-on—trend-spotting, cool-hunting, plus handicraft skills—become the heroic practice. The most active participants sell something—customized brand-name jeans, airbrushed skateboards, the most special whiskey, the most retro sunglasses—and the more passive just buy it.”

Hipsterism was a trend centered around being alternative, unique and against the mainstream. And somewhere along the line small pieces of these trends seeped there way into popular culture and next thing we knew we all had to have them (think flannel, indigenous print shirts, skinny jeans, Rayban sunglasses, and summer scarves.  We hate that the only thing that is hip in the moment is everything hipster, and that somehow we can’t escape it.

Read the whole article by Mark Greif here.

Mission cafe review: Ritual Coffee Roasters

Ritual is an interesting cafe. Set along the Valencia Street corridor its bright red flag marks the entrance, which often has line out to the sidewalk. Their logo is interesting to say the least.  At first glance the design reminds you slightly of a socialist sickle and hammer, the symbol of the communist party in the old U.S.S.R.  It seems they took inspiration from this design and morphed it into an open coffee cup sitting at the same 45 degree angle.  They then added a small handle, dropped the hammer, and kept the star.  What statement they are trying to make by co-oping this image is a mystery to me. The ritual image is on the left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The espresso is excellent – one of my favorites.  With its smooth and nutty flavor, it is reminiscent of French or Italian espresso.  They also seem to be quite fond of heart shaped foam at this cafe.  I got a cappuccino and an almond croissant.

They also sell cups of drip paper filtered coffee for $3.50 – $5.25, which I think is outrageously overpriced.  They make a big point of explaining to you that their coffee comes from specially chosen plots in places like Brazil, Ecuador and Costa Rica.  They roast up their own beans in these seasonally changing brews (saying that coffee changes seasonally – like purchasing fresh produce) and use words like strawberry, banana leaf, starfruit, raisin, walnut and floral aromatics.  In their own words: “We walk with these producers through their small farms. We sleep on the farm, we breathe the farm, trying as hard as we can to understand how our producers make magic happen in our cups.”  It seems that by discussing the varietal, elevation, climate, and somewhat imagined flavors (melon – really?) they are aiming to make the gourmet coffee experience into something akin to wine tasting.

Like many coffee shops in the mission, it’s patrons can be found typing away furiously at their Macbook Airs or reviewing each others poetry while wearing indigenous print sweaters.

Hipster New Year’s Resolutions?

What do you think would be a good New Year’s resolution for a hipster?  Please send me your ideas to missionhipstersblog@gmail.com and I’ll publish them in a post before the clock strikes 2012.

Mission cafe review: Four Barrel Coffee

This is my first in a series of reviews of cafe’s in The Mission.  I’ll be trying cappuccinos at each cafe and providing a review based on the taste of their coffee, their pastries, and making a few remarks on the ambiance encountered on the visit.

First, let me say that I like Four Barrel.  With it’s high vaulted ceilings, large glass windows and reclaimed industrial space look, it’s a treat for the senses.  Peering past the coffee bar, you can actually see the staff preparing the beans on large roasting machines. 

On to the coffee. The cappuccino was served with the milk foam gently placed on top, and then lightly stirred until he created this little heart on top.  (I guess love is the secret ingredient?) As far as taste goes, I found the coffee slightly bitter and acidic.  I know that many hardcore java aficionados like that dark, smoky complexity but I find the lighter, nutty roasts more agreeable to my palate.  

The ambiance.  As you approach the counter after queuing in line for 10 minutes, it becomes obvious that all the people who work there are way cooler than you are.  Their mix of flannel, plaid, and denim shirts along with rolled up sleeve hoodies and muted color beanies give them a distinct look from some of the patrons.  The line going out the door is not particularly hipster, having many iPod toting commuters wearing sweaters and button up shirts.  I suppose the only thing cooler than actually getting your daily coffee there, is working there. 

High up on the wall are four stuffed boar heads – but don’t worry, they all seem be smiling.  I’m not sure why taxidermy has become some popular in hipster neighborhoods – but stuffed, dead animals seem to be all the rage at stores like Paxton’s Gate in The Mission or restaurants like Lodge in Williamsburg.  Hanging near the entrance is a large sculpture of stiff, braided rope that looks like it was pulled from old ships down by the San Francisco piers.  To add a little vintage street cred, there is record collection on one wall and the bathroom has a clearly visible old chandelier.  Naturally, there is a city sponsored sidewalk parklet out front with arching metal structures and plenty of vertical bike parking – isn’t that really the preferred way to show up to a coffee shop?

The Hipsterification of America

In case you haven’t heard, hipsters are everywhere.  As this NPR article points out – in some ways its cooler to be a hipster in a small city than in a bigger, more well known city.  So you live in Williamsburg, NYC? Well, my friend, that has so been done already.

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/16/142387490/the-hipsterfication-of-america?sc=17&f=1001

The Hipsterfication Of America

by Linton Weeks

The hotel lobby in Franklin, Tenn., has an ultra-urban loft-esque feel — exposed air ducts, austere furniture and fixtures, music videos projected onto a flat panel. Everywhere there is lava-lampish aqua and amber lighting.

Sale racks near the front desk display chargers for iPods and BlackBerrys and a variety of snacks, including Cocoa Puffs and Red Bulls. Every room features a media box for digital video and music.

Welcome to Aloft, a hipster hotel on the outskirts of Nashville.

Nearby are Plato’s Closet, a recycled-clothing store where hipsters shop, and Which Wich, a sandwich shop — touting its “edgy, magnetic environment” — where hipsters eat.

On the streets of Franklin and Nashville and almost every town throughout America now, hipsters scuttle by on scooters, zip around in Zipcars or Smart cars, roll by on fixed-gear bikes or walk about in snazzy high-top sneakers and longboard shorts. They snap Instagram photos of each other — in black skinny jeans and T-shirts with funky epigrams like “If You Deny It, You Are A Hipster” — and turn the pix into iPhone cases. They buy cool-cat snuggle clothes at American Eagle and down-market monkey boots at Urban Outfitters. They drink cheap beer, listen to music on vinyl records and decorate their lairs with upcycled furniture.

What’s funny is that people who aren’t hipsters generally express distaste for them and those who appear to be hipsters hate to be identified as such. Everybody hates hipsters … especially hipsters. – Peter Furia

They follow indie bands and camp out at Occupy movements. They work as programmers and shop clerks, baristas and bartenders. They are gamers and volunteers, savvy entrepreneurs and out-of-work basement dwellers.

In case you haven’t noticed, hipsters — and those who cater to them — are everywhere. And that really galls some hipsters.

The Ironic Hipster

“Hipster culture is omnipresent,” says Peter Furia, a founder of Seedwell Digital Creative Studio in San Francisco. “It dominates fashion, music and lifestyle. It crosses borders of ethnicity, socio-economic status and sexual preference — something that we haven’t seen since the boom of hip-hop culture.”

Furia’s studio is producing a documentary-style Web series, American Hipster — for its nascent YouTube channel — that will debut in April 2012. “What’s funny is that people who aren’t hipsters generally express distaste for them and those who appear to be hipsters hate to be identified as such. Everybody hates hipsters … especially hipsters. And the ironic part is that hipsters’ opposition to pop culture has become pop culture.”

You might think that as hipsterism ripples out, in concentric (and eccentric) circles farther and farther from its big-city epicenters, the ultra-coolitude would lose its authenticity, Furia says, “but the opposite may be true. Cities are known for setting trends; hipsterism is about anti-trends. It sounds funny, but hipsters in Omaha may actually be cooler than hipsters in New York City — everyone knows about New York City.”

Sam Swett/FlickrHipsters like these urban dwellers in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago have now spread to the farthest reaches of small-town America.

American society, Furia says, often thinks of hipsters as “posers who appropriate an image of cool individuality but lack authenticity, but we think there may be real substance beneath it all.”

He points to social waves such as urban farming, the Do It Yourself initiatives and the Occupy movement. “There are lots of hipsters in all of these movements,” he says, “who are authentic in their passions.”

Revenge Of The Hipster

To many the American hipster represents more than ironic graphic T’s and gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. “I like to believe there’s something smarter lurking within our romance with hip … an idea of enlightenment and awareness,” says John Leland, a New York Times reporter and author of the 2004 book Hip: The History.

America does have a long love affair with being hip — not only up to date and au courant, but ahead of the curve. The Urban Dictionary defines hipsters as “a subculture of men and women typically in their 20s and 30s who value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter.”

The greatest concentrations of hipsters, the hiptionary definition continues, “can be found living in the Williamsburg, Wicker Park and Mission District neighborhoods of major cosmopolitan centers such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco respectively.”

Sure enough, just a couple of years ago everyone was writing about discrete hipster enclaves. A 2009 essay in Time magazine focused on the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, noting that because of a lagging economy and neighborhood gentrification, “Hipsterdom’s largest natural habitat, it seems, is under threat.”

But in fact, the opposite happened. In the past couple of years, Hipsterdom has entered — and in some cases, dominated — dominant culture. Hipsters, after all, know how to adapt: how to make the cheap chic, the disheveled dishy, the peripheral preferable. A shaky, shabby economy is the perfect breeding ground for hipsters.

A New Hipsterdom

Modern historians trace the term “hip” at least back to the Jazz Age. The word’s origins are in dispute. Some believe it came from “hop,” a street word for opium; or the hip flask carried by clandestine drinkers, or “hepi,” an African word meaning “open-eyed awareness.”

The hipster’s ancestry no doubt involves hepcats and beatniks and hippies. Today some hipsters are so hip they refuse to use the word self-referentially and believe that anyone who does so is, well, hip-o-critical.

As long as hipsters were confined to cool urban corrals, they were easy to deride. Robert Lanham’s 2003 The Hipster Handbook poked fun at them. A hipster, he wrote, is someone who has one Republican friend whom the hipster always describes as his “one Republican friend.”

Seth Wenig/APKnown online as the “Hipster Cop,” Detective Rick Lee (center) walks with protesters in New York in October. The plainclothes officer has been doing community affairs work at the Occupy Wall Street protest.

But with the hipsterfication of America, today’s hipsters come in all stripes and all political persuasions. Rachel Maddow and S.E. Cupp to courtesy phones, please.

And all ages: Not everyone who is hip is young, and not everyone who is young is hip. Hipsterishness is a state of mind.

We are seeing the dawn of a new hipsterdom. The subculture has become an omniculture and its denizens can be found outside Nashville and in Grinnell, Iowa, and in Omaha, Neb. Visit the Little River Coffee Bar in Spartanburg, S.C., the Busted Lift in Dubuque, Iowa, or the Bikini Lounge in Phoenix.

And hipsterfication is happening at hyperspeed. “Hip used to have a lag time,” the Times‘ Leland explains. “Weirdos and creative people fled their intolerant small town for the city, where they could be anonymous and find other weirdos. Together they combined their knowledge — of style or wisdom, of outsider lore, black and white — to produce hip.”

The expression of hipness, Leland says, “had to be private to be distinct, understood only by the inner circle.”

Eventually the hip sensibility was adopted by bigger and bigger circles until it boomeranged back to the small towns, Leland says. “Now there’s no lag time. Those syntheses and exchanges take place not in physical spaces but metaphorical ones — in cyberspace, in the marketplace, in the media. So stuff that looks like hip is everywhere.”