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

[Jaxworx]

Greeting the neighbors...

Considering the number of people riding NYC subways and living in such close proximity, I'd say we're doing pretty good as a functioning city.
Feel free to make eye contact and say hello the next time you're in town. We don't bite.

Hear, hear!

The two cities I grew up thinking would be hostile to outsiders were Paris and NYC; I've found both to be delightful places to travel, do business, and make new discoveries. The French, in particular, were very receptive to my fumbling attempts at butchering their language; I never lacked for finding my way to a snack when hungry (or the loo, later on). Middle Easterners, too, are tarred with the brush of hostility; and yet it's hard to walk through a village and not be insistently invited for chai, food, goat's milk...

A policy (not a "rule"), shared with my children since early on: "Ask nicely. It works all over the world."

Cheers,

Jack

 

[ButteMT61]

Hear, hear!The two cities I grew up thinking would be hostile to outsiders were Paris and NYC; I've found both to be delightful places to travel, do business, and make new discoveries. The French, in particular, were very receptive to my fumbling attempts at butchering their language; I never lacked for finding my way to a snack when hungry (or the loo, later on). Middle Easterners, too, are tarred with the brush of hostility; and yet it's hard to walk through a village and not be insistently invited for chai, food, goat's milk...A policy (not a "rule"), shared with my children since early on: "Ask nicely. It works all over the world."Cheers,Jack

In the 70's/80's, NYC was less than friendly. It's so different now - and clean too. I really love it there.Paris - talk about being brainwashed into thinking something...it was one of the best places I've ever been. The people from Paris to Normandy were all amazing there. It's kinda like movie "reviews" - take 'em with a big bag of NaCl. Find out for yourself - it's the only way to go

 

[Jaxworx]

It's kinda like movie "reviews" - take 'em with a big bag of NaCl. Find out for yourself - it's the only way to go

Yes... that!

The useful old cliches seem increasingly wise to me. "You get out of it what you put into it;" and "no matter where you go, there you are."

Or, as we've often asked our teenage son when he's complaining about yet another fellow human being with whom he doesn't get along, "What's the linking factor here?"



Cheers,

Jack (the winking factor)

 

[jamespowers]

I spent a good part of my extra time when I was young volunteering around the institutionalized mentally ill and I was never attacked. I listened to quite a few rants about all sorts of things, but I made it out ok.

You are luckier than you think. My wife did the same thing and got attacked. That was the end of that........ She has a degree in Psychology so it was not as if they were something new either.

 

[sheeplady]

You are luckier than you think. My wife did the same thing and got attacked. That was the end of that........ She has a degree in Psychology so it was not as if they were something new either.

That is part of what you have to put up with if you want to make a career out of that. When you're a volunteer, and people start throwing chairs or a fistfight with another person who lives there, the staff take over. My parents collectively spent over 70 years working with the mentally ill and mentally retarded (my father spent 40, my mother spent 30). Most of their work was one-on-one with the patients as aids: bathing, feeding, dressing, giving medications, etc. on locked wards. My mother was attacked once (a severely mentally retarded patient grabbed her hair and pulled her onto the bed and tried to suffocate her with a pillow) and my father was attacked twice (once with a knife and once with a chair, both attackers were mentally ill). The vast majority of "almost attacks" patients were talked out of. Of course, when you're trying to put a patient in a tie down you occasionally got hit in the face, but those weren't an attack, those were accidents.

 

[Fletch]

In the 70's/80's, NYC was less than friendly. It's so different now - and clean too.

And real NYers...some of them anyway...are now nostalgic for the 70s.

 

[John in Covina]

http://articles.businessinsider.com...4883_1_crime-surprising-results-grand-larceny

 

[jamespowers]

That is part of what you have to put up with if you want to make a career out of that. When you're a volunteer, and people start throwing chairs or a fistfight with another person who lives there, the staff take over. My parents collectively spent over 70 years working with the mentally ill and mentally retarded (my father spent 40, my mother spent 30). Most of their work was one-on-one with the patients as aids: bathing, feeding, dressing, giving medications, etc. on locked wards. My mother was attacked once (a severely mentally retarded patient grabbed her hair and pulled her onto the bed and tried to suffocate her with a pillow) and my father was attacked twice (once with a knife and once with a chair, both attackers were mentally ill). The vast majority of "almost attacks" patients were talked out of. Of course, when you're trying to put a patient in a tie down you occasionally got hit in the face, but those weren't an attack, those were accidents.

They can have that. My wife does other things now that are far safer.

 

[jamespowers]

http://articles.businessinsider.com...4883_1_crime-surprising-results-grand-larceny

Hmmmmmm...... Almost as bad as San Franfreako here.

 

[Son_of_Atropos]

I see no difference in dressing in funny hats and spats versus skinny jeans and day-glo shirts. Either we're all dressing funny and screaming for attention or not. One cannot pick and choose.
Where we fail miserably is attempting to ascribe grand statements and interpret social messages of people we don't know. At least the hipsters are smart enough to keep their mouths shut and not pretend to know what vintage clothing enthusiasts are thinking..
That's why I raised my son in the city. None of that suburban/small town closed minded meanness.

Huh? I thought the whole hipster mantra was irony. They wear "lame" clothing in order mock the very people that like wearing that "lame" clothing. Example: they wear an 80s air brush wolf t-shirt not because they like it but because people they perceive as dorks wear the clothing. However, because they wear the t-shirt they are cool.

To me, hipsters are mocking people to their faces without uttering a word.

 

[jamespowers]

Huh? I thought the whole hipster mantra was irony. They wear "lame" clothing in order mock the very people that like wearing that "lame" clothing. Example: they wear an 80s air brush wolf t-shirt not because they like it but because people they perceive as dorks wear the clothing. However, because they wear the t-shirt they are cool.

To me, hipsters are mocking people to their faces without uttering a word.

Yes, the facetious little worms think they know everything living in their parent's basement.....

 

[sheeplady]

Huh? I thought the whole hipster mantra was irony. They wear "lame" clothing in order mock the very people that like wearing that "lame" clothing. Example: they wear an 80s air brush wolf t-shirt not because they like it but because people they perceive as dorks wear the clothing. However, because they wear the t-shirt they are cool.

To me, hipsters are mocking people to their faces without uttering a word.

So the way you tell the difference between a hipster and a non-hipster (the dork as you call them) from appearance alone is....?

 

[Son_of_Atropos]

So the way you tell the difference between a hipster and a non-hipster (the dork as you call them) from appearance alone is....?

The overpowering arrogance. Or the complete ensemble.

I never called them dorks.

 

[sheeplady]

The overpowering arrogance. Or the complete ensemble.

I never called them dorks.

But arrogance is not an appearance. It's an attitude. Likely you'd have to observe more than dress to judge someone as arrogant.

And my apologies, it should have been "called perceived as dorks."

 

[Feraud]

Huh? I thought the whole hipster mantra was irony. They wear "lame" clothing in order mock the very people that like wearing that "lame" clothing. Example: they wear an 80s air brush wolf t-shirt not because they like it but because people they perceive as dorks wear the clothing. However, because they wear the t-shirt they are cool.

To me, hipsters are mocking people to their faces without uttering a word.

So you claim..

 

[AtomicEraTom]

That's how I feel about it. I mean, of course you can't tell a hipster just by appearance, oftentimes you can, I guess.

Just the whole point of being a hipster, mocking peoples' way of life, in the name of some sort of twisted ironic enjoyment just makes me sick. To me, it's no better than a person walking around in blackface, behaving in offensive stereotypes. Making fun of what people are is just not right.

To me, hipsters are mocking people to their faces without uttering a word.

 

[Jaxworx]

Adult RDA for irony

Just the whole point of being a hipster, mocking peoples' way of life, in the name of some sort of twisted ironic enjoyment just makes me sick. <...snip...> Making fun of what people are is just not right.

You intended the irony of that juxtaposition, right?

It seems to me that transgressive clothing has been a staple of every generation young enough to be looking for a leg up. When you don't have real power (money, influence, earned respect), you start tapping on all the levers to see what you can come up with. That's how we get entertainers like Gaga and before her Madonna and before her Cher and all the way back past Nina Simone to I dunno... maybe Mata Hari?

And every generation since forever has decried the following generation's "lack of respect." Your parents and grandparents did the same.

In the 50s it was considered aggressively antisocial to repurpose a leather flying jacket for motorcycling or general wear. Now it's a yuppie cliche (actually, the term "yuppie" itself has become a catch-all meta-cliche, but that's a bit far afield). Since around the turn of the century in Seattle, Cretins M.C. members have sported industrial short blue mechanic's jackets, eschewing both biker leathers and the armored ballistic nylon of "serious" riders.

Warehouse districts become hollowed out wastelands, then artists and garage bands move in, and within a few years they've advanced the coolness of the district to the point where new young talent has to find some other undiscovered hellhole and move it up the food chain.

My high school U.S. history teacher, a small man with big perspective, gleaned no end of amusement from the 80s resurgence of skinny and "rooster" ties. "All I had to do was wait," he would cackle. "Everything comes around again."

Up until then, he was the only man I knew to wear a porkpie hat regularly.

As an occasional browser of Goodwill stores (my wife dragged me into it, G-D bless her), I find this little spurt of pop culture amusing (don't watch at the office; strong language):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK8mJJJvaes

There are no unmixed blessings. Increasingly, rockin' a nice fedora gets more compliments than funny looks... and that's why the prices are rising.

Cheers,

Jack

 

[AtomicEraTom]

No, I meant what I said. Hipsters aren't really anything. A hipster is a man without a country. He is a person who can't come up with a style to make his own, whether it be from indecisiveness, or lack of self-confidence, I don't know. They just find it easier to not commit to anything and mock what others are.

You intended the irony of that juxtaposition, right?

 

[Jaxworx]

No, I meant what I said. Hipsters aren't really anything. A hipster is a man without a country. He is a person who can't come up with a style to make his own, whether it be from indecisiveness, or lack of self-confidence, I don't know. They just find it easier to not commit to anything and mock what others are.

Hunh. How did they manage to acquire an identity label? [huh] Rootlessness, confusion, and rebellion ain't hardly unique to hipsters (or hippies, or beatniks, or Wobbly trade unionists, et al back to forever ago).

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint." --attributed to Hesiod, 8th century BC

Buncha little wiseacres, just like they always were. Fortunate enough to undergo a corporate crash in the late 90s, I ended up working with and around a fair number of young Seattleites you might reasonably characterize as "post-hipsters" (i.e. they were so cool and detached that they mocked the kids trying to buy the "right" t-shirts).

They showed me a lot of heart, those hipster kids. I watched them work -- and work HARD -- at transforming the world into a milder, sweeter, more sustainable place. They tried boiling up biodiesel in the basement, invented bicycle cargo trailers, protested various injustices and indignities (real or perceived). It's not my style, but I can't help respecting their intent.

Preemptively stereotyping people whom one imagines may be mocking others doesn't strike me as a winnable game. That approach eats its own tail pretty quickly.

Respectfully,

Jack

 

[AtomicEraTom]

I'm sure they did, I'm not saying that every single person of any group is inherently good or bad. Nobody wins that battle. I can only speak of the hipsters I have had dealings with and they behave in a manor such as what I have described and I find that offensive.
I don't have any respect for punk kids, regardless of what clique they pal around with. If I would have behaved disrespectful to my elders, heck even now as a grown man, my parents would whoop me one for it, whether it be via being rude, mean, or mocking them.

They showed me a lot of heart, those hipster kids. I watched them work -- and work HARD -- at transforming the world into a milder, sweeter, more sustainable place. They tried boiling up biodiesel in the basement, invented bicycle cargo trailers, protested various injustices and indignities (real or perceived). It's not my style, but I can't help respecting their intent.

Preemptively stereotyping people whom one imagines may be mocking others doesn't strike me as a winnable game. That approach eats its own tail pretty quickly.

Respectfully,

Jack