Why!!!! Hipsters!!! Why!!!!!

[nick123]

Whole Foods Mentality: lazy man's way of rattling off hipster's characteristics. Wasn't referring to it directly.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Whole Foods mentality: thinking it's all well and good when a Whole Foods displaces an old line mom-and-pop supermarket even though the working-class people who used to patronize the latter cannot afford to shop at the former. An approach that reeks of that hipster hallmark, oblivious class privilege.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to eat "natural" food. But better you should buy it from an actual farmer, not some big chain operation that's as viciously corporate and anti-worker as Walmart. John Mackey has never seen a nickel of my money, and never will.

 

[jamespowers]

And I hate kale, too. Disgusting stuff. Blech.

My birds love it. I hate it too. That just goes to prove that kale is indeed for the birds.

 

[jamespowers]

Whole Foods mentality: thinking it's all well and good when a Whole Foods displaces an old line mom-and-pop supermarket even though the working-class people who used to patronize the latter cannot afford to shop at the former. An approach that reeks of that hipster hallmark, oblivious class privilege.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to eat "natural" food. But better you should buy it from an actual farmer, not some big chain operation that's as viciously corporate and anti-worker as Walmart. John Mackey has never seen a nickel of my money, and never will.

Whole Foods is just one of those stores that deals more in pretentiousness than in products that are necessarily "whole foods." Trader Jpe's out here is the same kind of place. It is all symbolism over substance. It doesn't necesarily help the community any more than Safeway does but it pretends to be local and organic. There is a big business in positioning yourself to a market that cares less about price and more about how something looks on the shelf.
I also hate PBR.

 

[MisterCairo]

I gather that "Whole Foods" is a chain? I first thought it referred to some natural food/organic-type movement.

If you haven't seen it, watch the film Our Idiot Brother. Paul Rudd plays the idiot brother, a sort of Lebowski-esque, organic food growing, candle-making pot head who inadvertently brings his squabbling family back together.

Check out his ex-girlfriend and her new bf. Hipsters meet hippies meet lordy knows what...

I've nothing against hipsters myself.

In fact, I keep three in my basement as pets.

 

[Shangas]

My birds love it. I hate it too. That just goes to prove that kale is indeed for the birds.

May I get in on this? I also despise kale.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Sauerkraut is just as good for you, and a lot cheaper.

 

[Shangas]

I was reading back through this thread. How did kale enter the discussion? Are we discussing the dietary habits of the hipster now?

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I was reading back through this thread. How did kale enter the discussion? Are we discussing the dietary habits of the hipster now?

So far I haven't taken to growing kale on my roof.

 

[jamespowers]

I gather that "Whole Foods" is a chain? I first thought it referred to some natural food/organic-type movement.

If you haven't seen it, watch the film Our Idiot Brother. Paul Rudd plays the idiot brother, a sort of Lebowski-esque, organic food growing, candle-making pot head who inadvertently brings his squabbling family back together.

Check out his ex-girlfriend and her new bf. Hipsters meet hippies meet lordy knows what...

I've nothing against hipsters myself.

In fact, I keep three in my basement as pets.

Whole Foods is a chain of stores run by long-haired, maggot-infested, dope smoking hippies. I hardly see any difference between hippies and hipsters anyway. One might smell better than the other---that's about it.
In the basement? How ironic.

 

[jamespowers]

Sauerkraut is just as good for you, and a lot cheaper.

And it is good on hot dogs etc.

 

[jamespowers]

I was reading back through this thread. How did kale enter the discussion? Are we discussing the dietary habits of the hipster now?

Kale gives you gas---same thing.

 

[sheeplady]

So far I haven't taken to growing kale on my roof.

I would totally grow kale on my roof if it meant I could save money on my groceries (fortunately, I live in the dense suburbs). When I lived in an apartment I grew stuff on my balcony. I'd totally be into roof gardening if I lived in the city. There's plenty of people who do a little homesteading in the city.

While I get that there's a difference between growing things just to grow them and growing things to be cool, most people don't stick with something like gardening very long for the coolness factor.

But I also hate kale.

Well said tonyb. It comes off as a suckerpunch when older folks who've lived their lives and made their mistakes take shots at young folks just being young and doing what most of us have done.

I’ve observed among the older hipster types a sincere interest in handicrafts, gardening, whole foods, anti-consumer attitudes, etc. My wife is a longtime knitter/crochet/quilter. I was surprised to see how many hipster types are into these crafts. Likewise the appreciation of quality handmade goods, clothing, and gardening. There is a solid group of older hipster types that are all about the “thinking locally, acting globally” mentality.
We may loath to admit it but there is another subculture keeping alive many of the traits of the culture of the Greatest Generation..

Exactly. I do think that we need more of the above and I really don't care how people come by it. Please let me live next to a handcrafting, gardening, whole foods movement, anti-consumer attitude hipster rather than someone who is interested in keeping up with the Joneses and thinks my clothesline is an eyesore.

Having never heard the word hipster until joining this community, I would have called these people "back to the land-ers," "homesteaders," and/or "hippies" depending upon their characteristics. The back to the land movement was very much a golden era occurrence- the "Have More Plan" which inspired thousands upon thousands to seek a better life through homesteading was first published in the 1940s- by and about people who had started it decades before.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Back-to-the-landers and hipsters are two different things. You hardly ever see back-to-the-landers in town because they're usually busy, working hard on their land. They don't play urban kickball, ride unicycles, play ukuleles, or sit around coffeehouses talking about how much they hate big multinational corporations while pausing to take calls on their shiny new Apple Brand I-Phones (reg. TM.). Back-to-the-landers actually walk the walk, and while they might not always smell good, their smell is the smell of honest labor, not the stink of Parliaments mixed with fair-trade patchouli.

I respect back to the landers. But I still don't like beards.

 

[MisterCairo]

New bumper sticker idea:

SAVE THE KALE!

 

[jamespowers]

Back-to-the-landers and hipsters are two different things. You hardly ever see back-to-the-landers in town because they're usually busy, working hard on their land. They don't play urban kickball, ride unicycles, play ukuleles, or sit around coffeehouses talking about how much they hate big multinational corporations while pausing to take calls on their shiny new Apple Brand I-Phones (reg. TM.). Back-to-the-landers actually walk the walk, and while they might not always smell good, their smell is the smell of honest labor, not the stink of Parliaments mixed with fair-trade patchouli.

I respect back to the landers. But I still don't like beards.

:clap:
:rofl:

 

[MisterCairo]

Like a few others, I had not heard of hipsters prior to reading about them here in the Lounge. Having done some scholarly research, I found the following:


http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

“Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.

But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of "counter-culture" have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the "Hipster." An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning.

Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the "hipster" – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.”

 

[sheeplady]

Back-to-the-landers and hipsters are two different things. You hardly ever see back-to-the-landers in town because they're usually busy, working hard on their land. They don't play urban kickball, ride unicycles, play ukuleles, or sit around coffeehouses talking about how much they hate big multinational corporations while pausing to take calls on their shiny new Apple Brand I-Phones (reg. TM.). Back-to-the-landers actually walk the walk, and while they might not always smell good, their smell is the smell of honest labor, not the stink of Parliaments mixed with fair-trade patchouli.

I respect back to the landers. But I still don't like beards.

I think the issue is that for a portion of the hipsters, their interest in things like self-sufficiency, whole foods, etc. is part of a long line of people who have done the same thing, just by a different name: in the 40s and 50s they were "back to the landers," in the 60s and 70s they were "hippies," and in the 80s and 90s they were "homesteaders."

Most of these people came to the back to the land movement by some other means- for instance- a lot of hippies first got exposed to going back to the land through contact with other people in the movement who had done so (or wanted to do so.) Of course, the vast majority of hippies didn't go back to the land, so not every hippie is a back to the lander. And not every back to the lander is a hippie- it was simply a larger movement that supposedly had ideals like treating the earth kindly. Some people took those ideals to mean that they should homestead. I think the hipster focus on organic and whole foods is a similar ideal- some will take that to heart (much like some of the hippies did)- and some of those people will head back to the land.

 

[jamespowers]

New bumper sticker idea:

SAVE THE KALE!

Kill the Kale. Drink Sanka.

 

[jamespowers]

Like a few others, I had not heard of hipsters prior to reading about them here in the Lounge. Having done some scholarly research, I found the following:


http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

“Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.

But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of "counter-culture" have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the "Hipster." An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning.

Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the "hipster" – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.”

I think they may be smoking Sanka. I don't think we are doomed but if we get tons of hipsters and hippies together.......