“That bar’s a total hipster enclave.”
“Look at that poseur over there. What a hipster fag.”
“I don’t know much about them. They’re just another hipster band, as far as I know.”
“Portland/North Portland/This restaurant/This bar/This trivia night/This strip of Mississippi/etc. used to be cool, until all these hipsters took over.”
Chances are if you’re reading this newspaper, you’ve heard somebody utter a sentiment very close to the above. And there’s an even greater chance that the person who said it was a bona fide “hipster” as well. (Far be it from me to point fingers, but by extension, the odds are that you’re one, too.)
Count us in, too. Our presumably hipster-free readership here at the Mercury calls us hipsters all the time. And indeed, our I, Anonymous column—a forum for people to vent their frustrations—is dominated by people slinging the word around with astonishing vitriol. Here’s but a small sampling:
• “This should be obvious, but you hipster people with faux-nerd clothing are still totally dumb. There are two people staying at my house right now, both are hipsters, and both have faux-nerd clothing.”
• “You fucking retarded, hipster Joan Jett-lookin’ bitch: Bringing your snake to my favorite bar isn’t cool.”
• “Stop dropping $30 at overpriced hipster pubs every night and you might be able to afford a deodorant stick once in a while.”
• “Now it seems the white, overeducated hipster/yuppie fucks deem it necessary to build (how many?) coffee shops, condos, and overpriced food markets.”
• “This is to you ignorant hipster scumfucks who walked out on Little Richard during his first song at the Bite of Oregon.”
As my shrink would say: I can tell you’re angry. But let’s look at what’s really going on here.
In each of these cases, the perceived offense doesn’t actually have to do with anybody being a hipster, but something else entirely.
(1) Wearing faux-nerd clothing: This is just an annoying fashion move, no matter who commits it. If my physician walked in wearing faux-nerd clothing, I’d automatically hate him, too—but I wouldn’t call him a hipster. (What’s the difference between nerd clothing and faux-nerd clothing, anyway?)
(2) Bringing a snake into a bar: When I think of every possible hipster stereotype, not a single one involves somebody bringing a snake into a bar. In fact, I think that doing so would get you kicked off the hipster roll call altogether.
(3) Stinking: Not to perpetuate stereotypes, but the last two god-awful stinky people I smelt at “hipster” shows (Spankrock, Girl Talk) were dyed-in-the-patchouli-wool hippies who looked like they wandered into the wrong club. Though similarly named, the hipster/hippie communities have very little cultural overlap, aside from an affection for the herb.
(4) Gentrification is a complex issue that affects many socio-economic groups, of which hipsters are but a tiny slice. Few deep-pocketed developers fall under the hipster rubric.
(5) The last complainer is furious that “hipsters” walked out on a Little Richard concert during the Bite of Oregon. To this, I will concede that Little Richard’s Bite of Oregon concert was indeed most likely a hipster-free zone.
The ubiquity of the word “hipster” as a pejorative in this city, as seen in the previous examples, illustrates that people are playing fast and loose with the term, using it to mean anybody annoying who’s not a total square. (And nobody loves to use the term more than hipsters themselves.)
HIPSTER OR ASSHOLE?
The truth is, it’s all too easy to conjure a mental image of what people mean when they use the word “hipster” derisively. We likely imagine someone overly concerned with fashion, possessive of a condescendingly dismissive attitude toward everything outside their insular realm, a sheep-like trend follower, and an infuriatingly non-individualized personality who likes whatever band Pitchfork tells them to and whose shoes cost more than a day’s wages. When I think of the worst end of the hipster sliding scale, my mind goes straight to the too-cool-for-me guy at my video store, who’s always too involved in watching the collected music videos of Hall & Oates on the overhead TV to make eye contact while I rent my movie. He’s always wearing lame ironic T-shirts, and his attitude reeks of smug… hipsterness. There’s no other word for it. And if I perceived the city to be overrun with hipsters like him, I’d be an angry, I, Anonymous-writing citizen, too.
But the truth is, what rubs me the wrong way about this guy has nothing to do with his relative level of hipsterdom. The fact is, the guy is a self-absorbed narcissist who’s overly vain about his wardrobe and hairstyle, and is generally unfriendly. As evidenced by sororities, law firms, sports teams, country clubs, sewing circles, and virtually every other social group the world over, this is by no means an exclusively hipster phenomenon. The fact remains that every demographic is composed of roughly 10 percent assholes. Buddhists, DJs, gourmet chefs, Freemasons, and ceramicists—all groups of humans are littered with pretentious twits. But intelligent, non-bigoted people generally refrain from decrying rock climbers, for instance, based on the shitty attitudes of a few. When we speak condescendingly of hipsters in reference to people like my video store clerk, the chances are that what we hate about them is that they’re annoying little fucks. That they’re a so-called “hipster” is entirely beside the point.
However, all the aforementioned subcultures are a relatively clearly defined lot. When you label someone a windsurfer, a lesbian, or a jock, there’s usually little ambiguity there. But I have yet to meet one person who defines themselves as a hipster, which begs the question: What is a hipster, anyway?
HIPSTER DEFINED
The Hipster Handbook, a gently satirical book that only hipsters would (discreetly) chuckle at, vaguely defines hipsters as “One who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool… The Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. A Hipster ideally possesses no more than two percent body fat.” Besides being unfunny, this definition doesn’t tell us nearly as much as does their personality test, “Clues You Are a Hipster.” Among the clues are:
“You graduated from a liberal arts school whose football team hasn’t won a game since the Reagan administration.”
“You have one Republican friend who you always describe as being your ‘one Republican friend.'”
“You own records put out by Matador, DFA, Definitive Jux, Dischord, Warp, Thrill Jockey, Smells Like Records, and Drag City.”
What confuses me here is how any one of these qualifiers would be deemed a putdown. The first indicates to me that you’re interested in learning—presumably about the arts or social sciences—and didn’t choose to go to a party/jock/frat school. The second one tells me that you typically don’t associate with peers who support the ongoing invasion in Iraq, the Patriot Act, or anti-abortion measures. And finally, you listen to bands like Cat Power, Aphex Twin, and the Sea and Cake. Based on all this, I only have one question for you: Do you want to get together for coffee sometime?
By and large, the term “hipster” is used to point to somebody who enjoys art, good films, and music that you won’t hear on most Clear Channel stations. They are generally uninterested in climbing corporate ladders and would instead rather work somewhere that allowed them the freedom to pursue creative endeavors, like their band/crafts/activism/MP3 blog/whatever. They’re probably down with recreational drug use, prefer bikes to cars (at least ideologically) and have more interesting homes than decidedly suburban non-hipsters. As it stands right now, we have no term to designate this group of individuals, except for the word “hipster.”If I ask somebody what a bar is like, and they tell me it’s a hipster bar, instead of recoiling, I figure there will be good music, as well as a lot of people who share my interests. I won’t expect it to be full of BMW-driving fatcats with McMansions in the West Hills, or guys who want to chug beers and yell at the football game on TV. If I’m crashing on a friend-of-a-friend’s couch out of town, and I’m told in advance that my host is a hipster, I’ll breathe a sigh of relief that they’ll probably have a good record collection, a lot of books, and a healthy hatred for George W. Bush. If it turns out he has a serious attitude problem and acts like he’s the king of Williamsburg, then the problem isn’t that he’s a hipster, but simply that he’s another generic fuckface.
DON’T CALL ME HIPSTER, HIPSTER!
All that being said, I still get my panties in a twist when somebody slaps the H-word on me, and I instinctively list myriad reasons I’m not a hipster. I haven’t had a drink or done drugs since the Twin Towers were still standing; as such, you never catch me hanging out at bars, unless I’m seeing a show. I buy most of my clothes from the Gap outlet store. I go to church (yep). I have a small circle of friends, and when we get together, it’s usually to go to art shows or have dinner at somebody’s house. My Reeboks are the cheapest, comfiest shoes I could find at GI Joes. And I have never worn a trucker’s hat in my life. Not once. Clearly, I am no hipster.On the other hand… I moved to Portland in 2002 and work for the unofficial hipster newspaper here. I was present at Sleater-Kinney’s last concert. I check Pitchfork every day—but don’t think it’s as good as it used to be. I read Haruki Murakami and McSweeney’s. I’ve got no patience for manual labor, religious zealots, or Steven Spielberg movies. Holocene and the Doug Fir are my two favorite venues, and you’re damn right I can tell the difference between Stumptown and Starbucks. If this makes me a hipster, fuck it: I’m a hipster and I wouldn’t have it any other way. That tightening you feel in your chest when somebody drops the H-bomb on you has nothing to do with your taste in music or fashion. It’s that you’ve been stripped of your individuality and reduced to a stereotype, which is patently demeaning, no matter what the classification (walk up to someone who’s independently wealthy and call them “rich guy”). The word “hipster” has been so abused—by hipsters, mind you—that it fails to designate anything specific anymore, if it ever did at all. Trust fund boys who dress like Interpol and do coke in overpriced lofts could be called hipsters as easily as the dreadlocked chick in PBR flip flops buying organic spelt for her kid’s birthday cupcakes. How can both of these people fall under the same stereotype? It’s a pretty simple equation if you boil it down: Neither one (happily) works in a cubicle in the ‘burbs; they’re united by a general distaste for mainstream popular culture (though each has their guilty pleasures [hello, Top Model!]) and a vehement hatred for George Walker Bush; and though their individual tastes may differ, they wholeheartedly concur that there’s nothing good on the radio.Remember the last scene in Revenge of the Nerds? (I know you do, hipster.) The one where they reclaim the word “nerd” and vow not to be bullied by the term anymore? If this ridiculous hipster-on-hipster name-calling is ever going to end, we need to have one of those moments now. I’m sure this essay will prompt plenty of emails calling me a hipster (or the charming variation “hipster fag”). So preemptively, I say to you finger-pointers: “Sure, I’m a hipster. Call me that all you want. In the meantime, enjoy your Olive Garden, your Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway, the Tim McGraw and Faith Hill show coming at the Rose Quarter, the Da Vinci Code, Rachael Ray, bloomin’ onions, your middle management job that you’ll probably die with, the new Rod Stewart box set, and Renée Zellweger’s upcoming movie with Hugh Grant. I’ll be back here in the middle of the city with my hipster friends talking about art and books, going to see live bands, searching for new experiences, and drinking better coffee than you. Signed, Your Hipster Friend, Chas Bowie”.
+1
Thank you! I’m a student at our lovely Portland State University, a liberal arts school whose football team probably didn’t even win games during the Reagan Administration and certainly doesn’t win them now. I once slung the H-word around like it was my duty as a citizen. This is, in fact, because (unbeknownst to me at the time, or at least vehemently denied by myself) I’m a hipster. Last year I decided to do a research paper on hipster culture to try to put a final definition to this nebulous, far-reaching, and self-denying subculture. The most illuminating product of this was the realization that there is nothing wrong with being a hipster, or at least falling into many of its stereotypes. I now use it as a complement for the most part, and I hoist my hipster banner high above my head. Thank you again for finding the truth that I found and having the voice to let Portland know that it can embrace itself as the hipster mecca that it is.
Sorry in advance, but hipster apologies like this nauseate me just as much as hipster bashing. Yes, it is hard to define what a hipster is, at least in the way people try. It’s too abstract of a thing to define in sociological terms. Between myself and my friends, we understand what sort of people they refer to, can generally agree on who is and who is not a hipster, and generally do not use the term pejoratively. It’s useless to try to get into nitty gritty details about which band they love or hate, whether they do blow or not, or whether or not they ride a fixie, because the real essence is this: a hipster is not a sociological clique as the Hipster Handbook makes it out to be. That book is an intentional farce. Rather, I would say that a hipster defined psychologically, being a person who is typically insecure (perhaps to the point of dysfunction), believes they are creative (whether they are or not), and has a distinct tendency to avoid any sort of externally imposed sociological schema. These features account for most of the externally observed features that people try to pin on hipsters. For instance, they tend to flock together, because they are too insecure to be challenged by radically different ideas. This is why you get people complaining about hipsters ‘taking over’. They also account for why most hipsters will vehemently deny being a hipster or act like they don’t know what you’re talking about; they are trying to avoid being compartmentalized. Of course, they do so by isolating themselves within their own circles of friends and try to spontaneously generate some sort of culture from within. This then leads them to be labelled as hipsters, which is the real irony of hipsterdom. I think my theory is further evidenced by people that have a lot of ‘hipster’ traits, as in the music they listen to, or the clothes that they wear, but I would not call a hipster because they don’t care if the Columbia jacket they wear is not hip since it keeps them warm, or they like to watch basketball because they enjoy doing so (and not for the irony). These people tend to be secure enough in their own way of being that they aren’t afraid to embrace tradition or mainstream culture when it genuinely pleases them, and thus they comprise a fringe of people that the average person would call a hipster who collectively muddy the idea of what a hipster is and further the notion that hipster defines people just like mod or punk or what have you. These terms are meaningless when you try to apply them to hipsters. Anyway, that’s my take.
I think it’s interesting that though the H-word has been punched about quite a bit the last few years, while “Scenester” has fallen out of style …….
Ah wait! Before I rant, first, self disclosure; I am a 40 year old Grunge-Punk-Nerd, who as lived all of his life either in, or somewhere in between, Seattle and Portland. I have lived the last twelve years in Portland, having moved from Seattle, along with many other friends who believed that Seattle had a gotten a little too smug, and big for its britches. I have fond memories of the Portland of the 80’s, when you only went to Sand & Burnside for a punk show at the then Pine Street Theater, or for hookers and heroin. A Portland where there was only one brewery in town, Henry’s, and feral Skinheads ran wild.
Over the past decades each counter culture group has had the 1% component that lead, created, and contributed to the “scene”, while the other 99% simply followed, copied, and consumed. This was true of the Hippies, Punks, and its true now. Only this time the passive consumer portion of the counter culture has been singled out, in the form of the Hipster.
To me, you’re a “Scenester” if you’re an active participant of a Scene, by being a hands on leader, organizer, contributer, and/or creator. If you make art, you’re an Artist, in the Art Scene. If you make music, you’re a musician. And the same is true whether you’re a Derby Girl, Art Bike Freak, Burner, and etc.
The Hipsters, are those people essentially who do nothing for any of these said Scenes, except show up and enjoy consuming the creative work of other people. They contribute nothing, except their physical presence and maybe a cover fee. Hipsters are merely Poser Philistines, with “hip” taste. With all that being said, it should be clear then that Hipsters are an essential part of an ecosystem like Portland. Alberta artists need hipsters, because that’s who buys their wares, and etc.
So I don’t think its ironic or hypocritical for someone who clearly looks like a hipster, claiming to be no such thing, because that person may have some other word that fits more appropriately based off what they “do”, i.e. artist, musician, bar owner, and etc. If they “do” nothing, then they’re are a slacker/hipster. The “Unique Portland Scene” has evolved into a somewhat cookie cutter kind of atmosphere that seems to cater more to the “me too” Hipsters. This I think illustrated very well, by Bishop’s Barbershops and The Chesterfield(which have common ownership), which are complete, shameless, detail for detail, carbon copies of establishments in Seattle.(I am amazed there hasn’t been more discussion of this fact, btw)
Having lived in Seattle from 87-94(I was THERE, Man!) and seeing Seattle’s precarious rise in coolness, and final settlement into status of “cool, nice, big city”, I was worried about what path Portland would take. Over the last ten years or so, Portland was becoming a mecca for many Pre-Hipsters, due to being a cool city where slackers could gingerly survive, if not thrive, unlike places like Seattle, San Fran, Austin, and NYC, due to the higher cost of living.
I think the crash of the economy has brought a bit of a reprieve to the Portland Slacker/Hipster, who was well on his/her way to being priced out, and being forced to seek(avoid) their fortunes in places like Tacoma, Spokane, or Boise. But be at ease, since so many folks are loosing their jobs, there will be that many more people in coffee shops sprucing up their resumes, and then heading to the bars in the mid afternoon. Thus increasing the need for more Bartenders and Baristas.
I do think the “Hipster” effect has finally taken Portland to the point where it has “Jumped The Shark”, if you will. Because when you reach a critical mass of hipsters(double meaning pun!), it ceases to be a “Scene”. I do think Portland has this Touristy Colonial Williamsburg quality about it now. It’s as if there should be an entry in the Fodor’s Guide To Portland that reads, “…. at any time feel free to approach anyone you see wearing a black hoodie, if you need directions to the nearest bathroom. Don’t be put off by their passive aggressive aloof manner, because they are merely staying in character…”
“Keep Spokane Weird!”
The generations of people who generally fall in the age brackets affording hipsterdom all came of age at what some have called “the end of history” – things had perfected themselves, all artistic expressions had been achieved (i.e. ‘been done before’), all the criticisms had been voiced, judged and either rejected or accepted.
the earliest manifestations of the “hipster” culture began as what others have called “temporary autonomous zones,” brief and joyous respites from the dominating culture of the masses . these moments sometimes developed into more lasting collectives or ‘scenes’ – but by this time, Big Culture was always watching for the next thing and Big Culture always catches on sooner or later – – thats when the freshness fades, it becomes a part of that same stream of dead, self-replicating culture and we get bored.
really it was the apathy. why bother? the boredom lead us to other things, or maybe to despair. then this despair fueled its own culture, its own message and we felt something again but that too, co-opted. ‘commercialized’ as we became so keen to say.
and it happened/happens again and again
and so from out of this endless re-definition of finding those things that one can relate to, feel connected with, things that make you feel good or expressive in some other way, things that you deem worthwhile (or more simply put, things that are cool) — out of this impossible fight against the great commercialization of all cultures and subcultures (the assumption here being that when Big Culture takes, it replicates in a more or less soulless fashion) comes the hipster.
the tastes of the hipster can encompass a wide variety of disparate elements and are never fully defined. they are always subject to change without warning. maybe its a defense mechanism. criticisms will abound of course, but their is an underlying desire to have a malleable culture that is resistant (not fully) to the grubby hands of the mass culture. this is also where some of the defensive elements often attributed to hipsters come from.
the hipster comes out of a wider popular culture that eats anything that can be used to make a profit, it plays its role (we learned well enough that its no use to fight it – they will only sell your rebellion right back to you) so it plays along, it hasn’t the illusions that it’s a culture thats going to change anything, it just a game – finding things it likes along the way.
should it really be that reprehensible for people to be drawn to similar things?
we came out of the same disillusionment, boredom and frustration – and, thanks to technologies old and new we can always rebuild our sense of identity and culture but this time we won’t be as stupid to think we are the first or even the last.
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah… wtf is with all the long winded responses? You’d think we were asked to write our own articles… At any rate, all I have to say is ::clears throat:: hipster fag.
I’ve been called a hipster many times, so perhaps it’s time to take stock… art degree, black hoodie and Chuck Taylors, Weezer-ish glasses and Doug Fir, yes; cocaine, 2% body fat, extensive collection of vinyl and disdain for the h-word, no. So I guess this makes me a semi-hipster. I can live with that.
That makes you a remorseless tool, actually.
And I’m sure you can live with that too.