Hipster Alley - A Street View
Hipster Alley. I'm stuck in it, people, and I can't get out. I work smack in the middle of one of New York's most aggressively Hipster neighborhoods.
Feel free to weep along with me knowing there is more than one aggressively Hipster neighborhood in NY. It's enough to make one knock back several martinis, pour oneself in a cab, and head home to smoke dope.
The Hipster hairdo, which is supposed to look as natural as if it's been dragged through a hedge backwards, is created by a process that takes more product and blow drying to style than mine, yet it is artfully stuffed underneath a ratty fisherman's cap intended to appear as if it suddenly took root on top of hipster heads.
It needs to go away now.
Ditto for the faux professional bowling shirts with the name "Lew" stitched on the breast pocket. Need we add the puka shell necklace or stringy wristlet? When and why, in the name of all that's holy, did these retina-burning accessories call from their shrines to Leif Erickson circa 1974 and, in the clean dawn of 2006, inflict more pain?
I think they all bathe in eau de Hemp every morning and make their wardrobe choices from the attendant aroma. The 70's sneakers, the ill-fitting jeans, the subversively lettered t-shirt or a button down shirt last seen on your grandpa circa 1949 - these are not new things, by God.
They are merely old things recreated as new things somehow gaining an ironic stance of street credibility by being semblances of old things, thereby rendering their old thing status new by virtue of hiding in the attic for 30 years.
If you can understand and parse that sentence, chances are you are a hipster.
Granted, I'm not especially close to hipsters but I do have to share the streets with them, so most of my conclusions are contingent on how I view them.
Hipsters love to think that they are individuals wearing comfortable yet functional clothing, doing their own thing while still espousing a perfectly trendy look.
Nah. It's a uniform, by God, and they should realize they are cut from a cookie cutter as much as the 50's company man who wouldn't deviate from the standard uniform of suit, button down shirt, and tie.
Whom they despise.
I would love to see one of them break out and go into a Beau Brummel 19th century fop look.
Now that would be different.
posted by Miliana at 10:17 PM
2 Comments:
I almost hate telling you this (except I had to learn it, too), but getting older is a real bitch...and your disdain for the retro-hipster alleycats shows the lack of appreciation that means age. snicker and snort. It really sucks when you start sounding like the old timers in the family.
Apparently, I'm also living in the wrong place. Here I've saved all those atrocious rags and caps (my hair has their look naturally), so I'd be right in the thick of it without effort! The only giveaway would be the crags and deep creases we slyly call crow's feet and the gimpy walk that says I now sleep with Ben Gay.
Kaz - too true! I'm two steps away from throwing my hands up at how sloppy the younger generation is, how in my day we had a lot more-...sigh.
A lot of these hipsters channel the 70's, though, and they usually give me quite a start, as they look EXACTLY like the boys I went to high school with. Shivers!
And as to your description of yourself, I can only place fingers in my ears & chant "na na na na na I can't hear you!", as I seem to always identify a person with the age they were when I first met them (so you know exactly how old I always think you are).
Nice to be ageless somewhere, no?
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