"Unhappy Hipsters" Blog

[Mocheman]

Yes and I expect and accept that sense of discovery from young folks and not grown-ups!

That whole "the feeling of discovery of grilling vegetables and having drinks with friends" shtick might play on the Food TV Network but comes off as so damned contrived in real life.

And that's the thing, these are not teenagers. These are 20, 30 and even 40 something adults. (Though kidult is probably a more appropriate term)

I can only imagine what that apartment must smell like. shakeshead

 

[Feraud]

And that's the thing, these are not teenagers. These are 20, 30 and even 40 something adults. (Though kidult is probably a more appropriate term)

I can only imagine what that apartment must smell like. shakeshead

That is right! I re-read my earlier post and went back to edit it for clarify.
And that photo... :eusa_doh:

 

[Edward]

The thing is, you can use pretty much any animal -- or inanimate object -- in that sentence and it comes across same-same but different in ways only limited by the listener's imagination. And if the listener is me, there pretty much is no limit. As the girl said.

Nudge nudge, wink wink , say no more Squire!

Well, a lot of it is actually bands putting out new music on vinyl. Digital and vinyl, often sold together (digital for immediate consumption, vinyl for better sound and as a collectible, often with extra art). That doesn't necessarily drive up prices for older music, rather makes sure vinyl record players stay in production.

Yeah, some great vinyl out there these days, and lovely to see it being made. If I had unlimited funds, I'd buy everything on 180g vinyl - the quality of the releases being put out these days is outstanding. I love my CDs and my edPod for convenience on the move, but for really listening to music, where that is your sole, main purpose, you simply cannot beat vinyl.

What drives me bonkers isn't hipsters. It's people from obscure small-towns moving to my city and buying city flats and thinking their more of a "Stockholmer" than I am because I live outside the city proper (here "suburb" doesn't mean houses and middle-class, it would rather translate into American as "projects" since it denotes big concrete slabs built in the 60s and 70s as part of a public program to provide cheap housing and I'd be rich if I had a penny for every snide remark I've had about living there) because they think you get shot if you actually live in a spot where you might meet more than two people a day with less than lily-white skin. They drive up the prices for anything built before 1960 to absurd levels and they decorate their homes minimalistically in white-on-white and dress minimalistically in black-on-black. The female version is tall and blonde and have limp handshakes, and they're all crazy about running and skiing and have 2.1 spoiled brats all called the same nonsense names. Worst of all, they have awful taste in music.

The scourge of capitalism. Bloody Yuppies. Cultural vampires (and not even the cool kind - the nasty, glitterball, naff Twilight kind) who move into an area because they are attracted to its soul, only to suck every last ounce of soul out of the place within a few short years and make it a pathetic shadow of its former self. See, for instance, Camden Town....

Doesn't every generation?

Yes. And then when they're done, they hate their successors for doing exactly what they did in their day. Circle of life.

I like minimalist aesthetics myself, and understand why some may choose to embrace a lifestyle related to it, but those houses/apartments just look very barren and empty. Is hipster even a subculture, in the sense that the rockers/greasers and mods, or skinheads, punks, and goths are? Do they all generally listen to the same kind of music and dress pretty much the same, or is it just an all-encompassing term for any young person that wears very skinny clothing and listens to indie music?

It's a distinct subculture in parts of London at least, though I don't know what they call themselves. Hipster is, I think ,a label imposed from the outside, but I've not heard anyone in Shoreditch self-label as such (mind you, it's much more complimentary than the usual colloquialism..... ). It's been around for a long time - the sitcom Nathan Barley was satirising the hipster thing over a decade ago.

One has to experience the Brooklyn hipster in their element to appreciate the depth of the diehipster blog author's anger and accuracy of his descriptions.
This -
is spot on accurate! It would be very funny if it weren't an extremely sad reality.

I wish more people were out demanding decent cycling provision in London. I would dearly love to be able to cycle through this city, but what we have currently is a pathetic joke. The Cycle superhighway scheme amounts to a strip of blue paint along some of the city's busiest roads. Less a cycling scheme, more a heavily subsidised ad for Barclay's Bank.

I can only imagine what that apartment must smell like. shakeshead

Better than you'd think - pigs are very clean animals in actuality. The most unpleasant, smelliest pets I have ever encountered have been, without exception, dogs.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I can think of few things sadder than the generation that held its ground all during the difficult days of post-Dodger, post-white-flight Brooklyn being mercilessly shoved out of the picture by an army of transplanted phonies quacking and honking endlessly about "authenticity." What's wrong with that picture?

Hipsters are the social equivalent of Walmart because if and when the Calebs and Megans finally do grow up, get a real job and move back to Michigan or Minnesota because they will no longer be able to afford their $2400 a month loft and "New Brooklyn," like many fads, becomes passé, the damage they leave behind, socially, culturally and even economically will be irreversible. In the case of the latter it's another another bubble that will eventually burst because just as Caleb and Megan are dependent on that monthly check from Mom and Dad to subsidize their playcation, so is the local economy by extension.

In many ways this is much akin to Walmart moving into a town, driving out the local businesses and then closing or moving to bigger premises in the next town a few years later leaving economic devastation in its wake from which the town never fully recovers.

EDIT: And then many years later Caleb and Megan still with ironic smirk firmly in place will look back at that time as the little "phase" they went through.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Funny you should mention the Walmonster. We got one here twenty years ago, it decimated our local businesses, and it's taken that long for a crop of tourist/"creative economy" driven art galleries and trinket shops to fill in the empty storefronts on Main Street, few of which have anything to offer to those of us who actually live here. And next year, a SuperUltraMega Walmart will open in the next town, while the old obsolete undersize 92,000 square foot store here in town will be abandoned. I guess the best we can hope for is that the hipsters will turn it into a roller-derby arena.

 

[Mocheman]

I guess the best we can hope for is that the hipsters will turn it into a roller-derby arena.

An artisan, cruelty free roller-derby arena.

 

[Smithy]

Sounds rather like my old school. Many, many years ago!

And wouldn't you believe it...they banned corporal punishment from school the year after I left!

What do they say? Joys of a classical education

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Real Brooklyn vs. "New Brooklyn"
Warning: Explicit Language
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqtCCDWIiN4

 

[Amy Jeanne]

LIZZIEMAINE -- just got your downtrodden tunes!! They went into my spam folder!! FAIL!

[ETA]: THANKS!

 

[MissMittens]

Well, a lot of it is actually bands putting out new music on vinyl. Digital and vinyl, often sold together (digital for immediate consumption, vinyl for better sound and as a collectible, often with extra art). That doesn't necessarily drive up prices for older music, rather makes sure vinyl record players stay in production.

What drives me bonkers isn't hipsters. It's people from obscure small-towns moving to my city and buying city flats and thinking their more of a "Stockholmer" than I am because I live outside the city proper (here "suburb" doesn't mean houses and middle-class, it would rather translate into American as "projects" since it denotes big concrete slabs built in the 60s and 70s as part of a public program to provide cheap housing and I'd be rich if I had a penny for every snide remark I've had about living there) because they think you get shot if you actually live in a spot where you might meet more than two people a day with less than lily-white skin. They drive up the prices for anything built before 1960 to absurd levels and they decorate their homes minimalistically in white-on-white and dress minimalistically in black-on-black. The female version is tall and blonde and have limp handshakes, and they're all crazy about running and skiing and have 2.1 spoiled brats all called the same nonsense names. Worst of all, they have awful taste in music.

I'll take a vinyl-loving, poor, will-design-for-food, hipster any day, thank you very much.

LOL!!!!!!! We call those the Fauxhemians

 

[MissMittens]

Hipsters are the social equivalent of Walmart

You know, you just hit the nail on the head

 

[MissMittens]

[video=youtube;8vC4vdoEwPs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vC4vdoEwPs[/video]

 

[Undertow]

I definitely do not get the urban farmer thing. If I wanted to do farming I'd move to Iowa, not Brooklyn!

Sure, if you have anywhere from $7k-$10k per acre. If your pocketbook is a little thin, you could always move to a small town adjoining some farm fields - 'course, you're going to have to fight off the meth addicted zombies and small town bigots. Or if you'd rather live in relative peace, you could join the rest of us hicks who live in the cities and grow things off our balconies. But that's urban farming, so...

And yes, there used to be a baseball diamond out in the cornfields of Dubuque Co. Iowa but the son of a gun was sold off to a private company. [huh]

 

[LizzieMaine]

For that matter, there used to be a really nice baseball diamond right in the middle of Brooklyn. And we all know how that turned out.

"Bwahahahahaha!"

 

[STEVIEBOY1]

And wouldn't you believe it...they banned corporal punishment from school the year after I left!

What do they say? Joys of a classical education

A couple of related sayings spring to mind on this subject: "Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child" and "School days are the happiest days of your life."

I think having to wait outside the headmasters office was worse than the beating that normally followed when you went inside. Although we also had a schoolmaster who used to give out large numbers of "Lines" that had to written out and handed in the next day, it was so tedious and took ages. I had 500 one time, seemed to be doing them all evening.

 

[Smithy]

A couple of related sayings spring to mind on this subject: "Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child" and "School days are the happiest days of your life."

I think having to wait outside the headmasters office was worse than the beating that normally followed when you went inside. Although we also had a schoolmaster who used to give out large numbers of "Lines" that had to written out and handed in the next day, it was so tedious and took ages. I had 500 one time, seemed to be doing them all evening.

fftopic:

Haha Stevie! More blasts from the past! Having to write lines was one of the tortures we were subjected to as well, usually for something as simple as running in the corridor or talking in class.

And I agree, if the "crime" was particularly heinous and the teacher thought that the added terror of getting whacked by the headmaster was warranted, we were sent to the head's office where as you say, the wait was a nerve-racking experience.

We had a teacher at my first school who just happened to be the coach of the 1st XI and used to "bowl" the strap - he'd make the unfortunate victim stand at the end of the corridor, whereupon he would do a complete fast bowler's run up and use a bowling action on the unfortunate's hand. You'd probably get sent to jail for the same thing now!

 

[Fletch]

Ironically enough, talking positively about corporal punishment might be acceptable here on the Lounge, but decrying it would be talking politics. Kind of like how it used to be ok to throw the first punch in school, but not the second!

 

[jamespowers]

Ironically enough, talking positively about corporal punishment might be acceptable here on the Lounge, but decrying it would be talking politics. Kind of like how it used to be ok to throw the first punch in school, but not the second!

There is a difference between corporal punishment and capital punishment you know.

 

[Touchofevil]

fftopic:

Haha Stevie! More blasts from the past! Having to write lines was one of the tortures we were subjected to as well, usually for something as simple as running in the corridor or talking in class.

And I agree, if the "crime" was particularly heinous and the teacher thought that the added terror of getting whacked by the headmaster was warranted, we were sent to the head's office where as you say, the wait was a nerve-racking experience.

We had a teacher at my first school who just happened to be the coach of the 1st XI and used to "bowl" the strap - he'd make the unfortunate victim stand at the end of the corridor, whereupon he would do a complete fast bowler's run up and use a bowling action on the unfortunate's hand. You'd probably get sent to jail for the same thing now!

Not only jail, but the school district would most likely be sued. Corporal punishment is a thing of the past. Kids, parents, society today are so different that even though the public in spirit likes the idea in truth they are against it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My seventh-grade social studies teacher was called an unflattering term for a certain tumescent body part by a mouthy kid. Said teacher put the kid's head thru the classroom wall -- smacked him right into the sheetrock and left a head-shaped hole -- and then threw him down the stairs to the principal's office. Said teacher was not only not disciplined, he was promoted to Vice Principal the next term. And nobody ever called him that -- to his face -- ever again.