I think it is largely about media attention and the journalistic/pop-sociologist desire to create a grand unified theory called generations and come up with common markers.
This has been going on since the 1920s if not earlier.
It doesn't matter how many people participate but what the purchasing or eventual purchasing power of said cohort is. Madison Ave eventually learned to co-opt the Hippies and every counter-culture movement since.
Hipsters might be small in numbers but they are creating the bands, the tech innovations like Spotify and Pandora, the new shows and movies. Lena Dunham's show only has an audience of around 900,000-1,000,000,000 but she gets a damn lot of media attention and is being proclaimed the voice of her generation. She is considered the pulse, the zeitgeist.
I think this goes beyond memes. There are intellectual symposium on hipsters:
Why does everyone think about the 1960s and remember the Hippies? Most people were probably not true hippies during the 1960s. I had an English teacher in high school who was in his 20s during the 1960s but said he did not hear about Woodstock except for an announcement on the radio during a family dinner. My parents graduated undergrad in 1968 and went straight to work. They liked the music but did not have time to dress or act like a hippie.
Every generation has its archtype and hipster seems to be the one for the current generation. I would say more people can be hipsters than true hippies because the hipster's landscape is generally urban, there is no contradiction to capitalism, urban farming has replaced the commune, and politics is fought via facebook meme instead of protest.
Plus I suspect people feel that current hipsters will be like the Baby Boomers and dominate the political landscape. My generation (late Gen X) seems more like we will be the Silent Generation politically. We will have Senators and Congress people but no Presidents. No real stars. Lena Dunham's gang seem to have more media pull and attention. I can't think of anyone born during 1978-1982 to really command that kind of media attention.
I think Hipsters can roughly be anyone who graduated college between 2002-now or possibly is still in college. Largely it seems to refer to people between the ages of 22-27. They are largely university educated and living in cool urban neighborhoods.
Gentrification seems to be the problem that no one knows what to do anything about. People either think it is a natural good or can't come up with any suggestions. One friend did go so radical as to declare that perhaps those who are born in the suburbs should stay in the suburbs but that will never happen.
I've noticed gentrifcation happen and it is a bit interesting. What is remarkable about the story you posted is that it provides a basic blueprint for gentrification everywhere. Hamilton might as well be Oakland (California).
Though I am surprised that anyone thought Buffalo could gentrify.
The problem with the Creative Class notion is that they generally all want to flock to the same few metro areas. Hamilton seems close enough to Toronto to be a commuting town. Buffalo is too far away from NYC.
Tornado is okay. A bit too small. My least favorite Bar in San Francisco is Buckshot. Largely for the reasons mentioned in the post.
Generally though, I am tired of loud bars that blast their music so it makes you strain to talk. I went a place where the music is good but played at a reasonable volume and with a wide selection of beers. The Page is okay. I like La Trappe in North Beach. There is a
a bar in the Mission near the Roxie that I like. I like Alembic, Magnolia, and Local Edition. I like Place Pigalle
Zeitgeist is my second to least favorite bar in SF. They have a good beer selection but I hate the music and decor.
I supposed I first noticed hipsters during my junior year of college which was 2000-2001. Though at the time, I thought of them as just stereotypical art type majors. In 2002, after I graduated I hung out in Williamsburg for the first time and saw Hipster central and got my first taste of the archtype. Williamsburg has gotten more developed and they have fancy condos (my brother lives in one) but it is still Hipster central.
The music is indeed very sincere and I do enjoy it. Many people find it too twee though.
Considering your observations on Generation X and my general idea that hipsters are merely a continuation of Generation X, this does raise a question:
How much of this "irony" is a product of economic anxiety in the face of being young during a bad economy?
The prime Gen Xers graduated college during the recession of the early 1990s, when I graduated college 10 years later it was during the recession caused by the tech boom, now young people are graduating college during or in the shadow of The Great Recession and the loop-sided recovery of the Great Recession.
I remember during the early 1990s that there was a lot of talk in the media about how Gen X "would be the first generation of Americans to be worse of than their parents" The same was said when I graduated college and the same is being said now. This is combined with the general dread of perpetual student loan debt for many people. Obviously some to many Generation Xers are doing okay to good compared to the recession they graduated into but others bemoan how things happened later for them.
The only non-ironic cohort seems to be those of Tech Bubbles 1.0 and 2.0 respectively. 2.0 is going on strong. The arrival of twitter and other companies in SF is causing rents to be jacked up considerably.
So middle to upper-middle class young people are very anxious about whether they will experience that kind of lifestyle ever again. Could this produce a mocking (and wrong) but pre-emptive embrace of blue collar culture with irony in air quotes? Could these very educated young people wonder about whether they will be part of a new economic landscape and never leave their underemployed status?
Another thing I've noticed about hipster irony is how much distress it causes the non-ironic and is also terribly hard to explain.
This happened on another internet community. We were talking about hipster irony especially the resurgence of cupcakes and 1950s style cakes and how part of the appeal is "ironic". Another member came in very concerned and said "But what if you just like cupcakes and whopee pies? They are convenient handheld snacks!"
Hey, I lived in Carroll Gardens and consider that one of the best places I have ever lived. I still miss it and would move back in a heartbeat if possible.
Specifically I lived on Degraw between Smith and Hoyt. This was in 2006-2008 when the neighborhood was already really gentrified. It is even more developed now with a Barneys Co-Op on Atlantic Avenue and some fancier supermarkets.
I think the Internet has created the inverse of Tip O'Neill's famous observation that all politics are local. All politics are now national and this causes game changers.
There are plenty examples from the 2012 election. Akin's idiotic remarks would not have gained traction but for the immediacy of the Internet and blogs. There were also some really local Republicans (like state representatives) who lost elections because their stupid comments became national. In a pre-Internet era, their comments might not have even made the local news. The same can be said for the racism of the GOP guy from Maine or the local county Texas GOP treasurer who wants to leave the United States.
This seems to be the universal problem. Everyone can identify a hipster by sight but no one can define it.
There have been whole articles and symposiums to address this issue. N plus One had a symposium several years ago on this vexing problem. Or non-problem possibly.
This definition from the article is as good as any:
"The hipster haunts every city street and university town. Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone). He harvests awkwardness and self-consciousness. Before he makes any choice, he has proceeded through several stages of self-scrutiny. The hipster is a scholar of social forms, a student of cool. He studies relentlessly, foraging for what has yet to be found by the mainstream. He is a walking citation; his clothes refer to much more than themselves. He tries to negotiate the age-old problem of individuality, not with concepts, but with material things."
However, I have met people who do think that there is some kind of moral imperative for all people to shop local over big supermarket. They don't realize that if everyone shopped local, most people would not be able to afford the jams and chocolates, and other little luxuries.
What I think the Internet does it get rid of a lot of local flavor.
The goals of the hipster seem universal and each city might have their own individual companies but the product is largely the same.
I've heard people refer to this process as Brooklynization. All young areas resemble Brooklyn now. The general aesthetics are the same in terms of coffee, beer, design (steal, wood, and edison bulb), etc.
Fair points and this probably does happen. You probably do have 25 year old MBAs with Goldman offers moving into Williamsburg.
However, I still think there are plenty of young people just out of college who move to the city for jobs with low and moderate salaries who get lumped in with the people above. Where are these people supposed to move to?
Plus a five pound book allows for impromptu bicep curls!
More seriously, this is why I said above that I think hipsters are just a continuing of Generation X. I was 12 in 1992 but remember 20-somethings saying the same things back then that 20-somethings are saying today.
I think it depends on when people move in, you can probably chart it in waves and there is a bit of both.
The first wave of people in gentrification seems to be real artists looking for spaces that are cheap and large, so they can live and create without too many big day jobs. In Williamsburg, this happened in the mid to late 1990s.
Then you have the young people right out of college or middle-class professional types with an artistic streak who say "Hey this looks like a cool neighborhood" and they move in. Eventually businesses open up to cater to this crowd.
The final wave seems to be that a neighborhood etches itself into the conscious of a generation and just become's the place you move to because that is where young people move to. Examples include Williamsburg (or Brooklyn in general), The Mission in San Francisco, Silver Lake in Los Angeles, The Pearl District in Portland, etc.
There is a second-type of gentrification though as is done in neighborhoods like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. Artists were not the first people to move in but families who were outpriced of Manhattan but unwilling to move to the suburbs. These families discovered that while they could not afford a house in Manhattan, they could buy and renovate a classic Brooklyn brownstone in Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene, etc. Now such things are probably out of my price range for a while if not forever.
I picked my current apartment because it was a 12-minute walk to my law school. It just happened to also be centrally located in the city and in a gentrifying neighborhood.
Gentrification is a tricky issue. I think every neighborhood except one that I have lived in post-college was gentrified.
Here is where the trick comes in though: Where are young people supposed to live when they get out of college?
Imagine you are a 22 year old college graduate who was born and raised somewhere far away from a major city. You land a job in a major city at 45,000 USD a year. This is a decent but not great income. These 22-year olds can't afford to live in the already upper-middle class parts of the city so they head to said neighborhoods that you described above.
Do you think that kids who are born into the suburbs have a moral imperative to remain in suburbs as to not displace anyone? Should they live at home with mom and dad until they can afford an upper-middle class district of the city on their own?
I don't doubt it but this whole DIY/Artisnal culture makes me wonder:
What does it mean for a country to have a vast middle class?
The Industrial Revolution of the Victorian Era turned luxury goods like Chocolate and Soap and Tea and made them products available to everyone. When I was in middle and high school, the GAP was considered a great equalizer because most students seemed to get their clothing at the GAP.
The Mast Brothers seems to be indicative of a return to taking a product available to everyone and wanting it to be a luxury good again because big corporations make a bad product for whatever.
Politics creates strange bedfellows sometimes. I am not opposed to the Mast Brother existing or fancy hipster coffee places but I would like them to acknowledge that a 9 dollar chocolate bar is a luxury product.
I don't know where I fit in on the Hipster milleau. I was born at the tail-end of Generation X in 1980. This probably makes me part of the first wave of hipsterdom. I graduated from one of those elite liberal arts colleges that are a hot bed of liberalism. Most of my cultural likes are firmly in the Brooklyn-San Francisco liberal category but I'd like to think this is out of sincerity and education over irony. And I can't wear skinny jeans! But I do have an MFA.
My thoughts are largely along the Thomas Frank line and that Hipsters are largely a continuing of the early-90s grunge and Generation X culture. In San Francisco and Brooklyn, you see some prime Generation Xers (people born between 1968-1973) who easily transformed from grunge into Hipster. And they can still listen to Wilco! Sometimes these prime Gen Xers have children and families and sometimes they do not. I think that Gen X is a bit different from the Baby Boomers in that there is a resistance against being seen as uncool. They don't want to become square like their parents and drop the Stones and Hendrix for Kenny G and Michael Bolton. Hence, Madison Avenue and the "rebel consumer". So you are right that this is partially status seeking, becoming a parent no longer means needing to drop out of the cool scene. The ultimate eptiome of this was a birthday party for a child I saw at the Brooklyn Brewery. The kids got to run around and the parents did not have to be anywhere uncool like a Chucky Cheese or something else more kid-appropriate.
I think there is a social status thing in the DIY-small batch economy but it is also born of economic privilege. A lot of these products are sold at premium prices: 9 dollars for a chocolate bar, 12 dollars for a jar of jam, 14 dollars for a four-pack of Dogfish Head beer, 95 dollars for a tie made of chambray, etc. It takes money to afford these products and the people buying them are wither white-collar professionals like me or people with independent sources of income. I am not sure where to put Community Supported Agriculture on this social status list.
I know a lot of people who qualify as hipsters. Some people might think I qualify as one (even though my body type rebels against skinny jeans and I dislike facial hair on myself), they are largely sweet and good people but some of them seem to be pre-empting their burnout (by announcing that they know it will come.) Only time will tell if these people stay hipster and rebel consumers as they get older (and as parents) or switch to being square suburban parents.
Only time will tell.
Though I do think straight, white, male is a bit wrong. I think straight and white is a better co-opter.
One thing I can't tell is how many hipsters come from working-class families and then escaped to the elite schools or big cities as compared to how many are children of the upper-middle suburban/urban class. The co-opting of blue collar culture is one of the most problematic aspects of hipster culture to me. A place like this is the ultimate hipster bar and one of my least favorite bars in SF:
http://buckshot-sf.blogspot.com/
The whole rural, working class hunting lounge in San Francisco seems odd to me. Plus they play their music too loud* What I can't tell is whether the appeal is because people come from these communities and miss it or they are just upper-middle class suburban kids co-opting working class culture. A bunch of the hipsters I know of do seem to come from rural and working class roots. I think the Mast Brothers (creators of ten dollar chocolate bars in Brooklyn) are from rural working class routes but can't remember where I got this information from. The creator of Dogfish Head is a farm kid.
One thing that is interesting about hipsters is that they seem to be marrying a lot earlier than their Baby Boomer parents and Generation Xers. A lot of Generation Xers I know did not get married until their mid-30s or later. Many are still unmarried in their early 40s. I seem to know many hipsters who married their college sweethearts right after college. This is intriguing to me for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. When I was 25, very few of my friends and cohort were married. Now I see a lot of people who are 25 and married and they come from the same upper-middle class/education and career first background as me.
Okay this is not completely true. I have seen some regional differences in the price of things but not by much. A 2-liter bottle of coke costs a 1.69 in San Francisco and maybe 1.39 somewhere else expensive.
On “The Specific Problem of Hipster Irony”
I think it is largely about media attention and the journalistic/pop-sociologist desire to create a grand unified theory called generations and come up with common markers.
This has been going on since the 1920s if not earlier.
It doesn't matter how many people participate but what the purchasing or eventual purchasing power of said cohort is. Madison Ave eventually learned to co-opt the Hippies and every counter-culture movement since.
Hipsters might be small in numbers but they are creating the bands, the tech innovations like Spotify and Pandora, the new shows and movies. Lena Dunham's show only has an audience of around 900,000-1,000,000,000 but she gets a damn lot of media attention and is being proclaimed the voice of her generation. She is considered the pulse, the zeitgeist.
I think this goes beyond memes. There are intellectual symposium on hipsters:
http://nplusonemag.com/what-was-hipster
"
That sounds good
"
Why does everyone think about the 1960s and remember the Hippies? Most people were probably not true hippies during the 1960s. I had an English teacher in high school who was in his 20s during the 1960s but said he did not hear about Woodstock except for an announcement on the radio during a family dinner. My parents graduated undergrad in 1968 and went straight to work. They liked the music but did not have time to dress or act like a hippie.
Every generation has its archtype and hipster seems to be the one for the current generation. I would say more people can be hipsters than true hippies because the hipster's landscape is generally urban, there is no contradiction to capitalism, urban farming has replaced the commune, and politics is fought via facebook meme instead of protest.
Plus I suspect people feel that current hipsters will be like the Baby Boomers and dominate the political landscape. My generation (late Gen X) seems more like we will be the Silent Generation politically. We will have Senators and Congress people but no Presidents. No real stars. Lena Dunham's gang seem to have more media pull and attention. I can't think of anyone born during 1978-1982 to really command that kind of media attention.
"
I think Hipsters can roughly be anyone who graduated college between 2002-now or possibly is still in college. Largely it seems to refer to people between the ages of 22-27. They are largely university educated and living in cool urban neighborhoods.
On “Meditating on Hipsters, Irony, and the Role of Status”
Gentrification seems to be the problem that no one knows what to do anything about. People either think it is a natural good or can't come up with any suggestions. One friend did go so radical as to declare that perhaps those who are born in the suburbs should stay in the suburbs but that will never happen.
I've noticed gentrifcation happen and it is a bit interesting. What is remarkable about the story you posted is that it provides a basic blueprint for gentrification everywhere. Hamilton might as well be Oakland (California).
Though I am surprised that anyone thought Buffalo could gentrify.
The problem with the Creative Class notion is that they generally all want to flock to the same few metro areas. Hamilton seems close enough to Toronto to be a commuting town. Buffalo is too far away from NYC.
On “The Specific Problem of Hipster Irony”
I like Bon Iver
Tornado is okay. A bit too small. My least favorite Bar in San Francisco is Buckshot. Largely for the reasons mentioned in the post.
Generally though, I am tired of loud bars that blast their music so it makes you strain to talk. I went a place where the music is good but played at a reasonable volume and with a wide selection of beers. The Page is okay. I like La Trappe in North Beach. There is a
a bar in the Mission near the Roxie that I like. I like Alembic, Magnolia, and Local Edition. I like Place Pigalle
"
Zeitgeist is my second to least favorite bar in SF. They have a good beer selection but I hate the music and decor.
I supposed I first noticed hipsters during my junior year of college which was 2000-2001. Though at the time, I thought of them as just stereotypical art type majors. In 2002, after I graduated I hung out in Williamsburg for the first time and saw Hipster central and got my first taste of the archtype. Williamsburg has gotten more developed and they have fancy condos (my brother lives in one) but it is still Hipster central.
The music is indeed very sincere and I do enjoy it. Many people find it too twee though.
"
Considering your observations on Generation X and my general idea that hipsters are merely a continuation of Generation X, this does raise a question:
How much of this "irony" is a product of economic anxiety in the face of being young during a bad economy?
The prime Gen Xers graduated college during the recession of the early 1990s, when I graduated college 10 years later it was during the recession caused by the tech boom, now young people are graduating college during or in the shadow of The Great Recession and the loop-sided recovery of the Great Recession.
I remember during the early 1990s that there was a lot of talk in the media about how Gen X "would be the first generation of Americans to be worse of than their parents" The same was said when I graduated college and the same is being said now. This is combined with the general dread of perpetual student loan debt for many people. Obviously some to many Generation Xers are doing okay to good compared to the recession they graduated into but others bemoan how things happened later for them.
The only non-ironic cohort seems to be those of Tech Bubbles 1.0 and 2.0 respectively. 2.0 is going on strong. The arrival of twitter and other companies in SF is causing rents to be jacked up considerably.
So middle to upper-middle class young people are very anxious about whether they will experience that kind of lifestyle ever again. Could this produce a mocking (and wrong) but pre-emptive embrace of blue collar culture with irony in air quotes? Could these very educated young people wonder about whether they will be part of a new economic landscape and never leave their underemployed status?
On “Meditating on Hipsters, Irony, and the Role of Status”
No doubt. It was pretty gentrified during my time there.
But there is gentrification and then there is gentrification via the opening of a Barneys.
"
Another thing I've noticed about hipster irony is how much distress it causes the non-ironic and is also terribly hard to explain.
This happened on another internet community. We were talking about hipster irony especially the resurgence of cupcakes and 1950s style cakes and how part of the appeal is "ironic". Another member came in very concerned and said "But what if you just like cupcakes and whopee pies? They are convenient handheld snacks!"
"
Hey, I lived in Carroll Gardens and consider that one of the best places I have ever lived. I still miss it and would move back in a heartbeat if possible.
Specifically I lived on Degraw between Smith and Hoyt. This was in 2006-2008 when the neighborhood was already really gentrified. It is even more developed now with a Barneys Co-Op on Atlantic Avenue and some fancier supermarkets.
"
Yes and no.
I think the Internet has created the inverse of Tip O'Neill's famous observation that all politics are local. All politics are now national and this causes game changers.
There are plenty examples from the 2012 election. Akin's idiotic remarks would not have gained traction but for the immediacy of the Internet and blogs. There were also some really local Republicans (like state representatives) who lost elections because their stupid comments became national. In a pre-Internet era, their comments might not have even made the local news. The same can be said for the racism of the GOP guy from Maine or the local county Texas GOP treasurer who wants to leave the United States.
"
This seems to be the universal problem. Everyone can identify a hipster by sight but no one can define it.
There have been whole articles and symposiums to address this issue. N plus One had a symposium several years ago on this vexing problem. Or non-problem possibly.
This definition from the article is as good as any:
"The hipster haunts every city street and university town. Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone). He harvests awkwardness and self-consciousness. Before he makes any choice, he has proceeded through several stages of self-scrutiny. The hipster is a scholar of social forms, a student of cool. He studies relentlessly, foraging for what has yet to be found by the mainstream. He is a walking citation; his clothes refer to much more than themselves. He tries to negotiate the age-old problem of individuality, not with concepts, but with material things."
"
The other major complaint I hear about the Internet is that it is destroying local music and local sounds.
I.e. every rock band now sounds like the are an indie band from Brooklyn even if they live in Lexington, Kentucky.
"
Implicitly yes.
However, I have met people who do think that there is some kind of moral imperative for all people to shop local over big supermarket. They don't realize that if everyone shopped local, most people would not be able to afford the jams and chocolates, and other little luxuries.
"
What I think the Internet does it get rid of a lot of local flavor.
The goals of the hipster seem universal and each city might have their own individual companies but the product is largely the same.
I've heard people refer to this process as Brooklynization. All young areas resemble Brooklyn now. The general aesthetics are the same in terms of coffee, beer, design (steal, wood, and edison bulb), etc.
"
Fair points and this probably does happen. You probably do have 25 year old MBAs with Goldman offers moving into Williamsburg.
However, I still think there are plenty of young people just out of college who move to the city for jobs with low and moderate salaries who get lumped in with the people above. Where are these people supposed to move to?
"
Plus a five pound book allows for impromptu bicep curls!
More seriously, this is why I said above that I think hipsters are just a continuing of Generation X. I was 12 in 1992 but remember 20-somethings saying the same things back then that 20-somethings are saying today.
"
I think it depends on when people move in, you can probably chart it in waves and there is a bit of both.
The first wave of people in gentrification seems to be real artists looking for spaces that are cheap and large, so they can live and create without too many big day jobs. In Williamsburg, this happened in the mid to late 1990s.
Then you have the young people right out of college or middle-class professional types with an artistic streak who say "Hey this looks like a cool neighborhood" and they move in. Eventually businesses open up to cater to this crowd.
The final wave seems to be that a neighborhood etches itself into the conscious of a generation and just become's the place you move to because that is where young people move to. Examples include Williamsburg (or Brooklyn in general), The Mission in San Francisco, Silver Lake in Los Angeles, The Pearl District in Portland, etc.
There is a second-type of gentrification though as is done in neighborhoods like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. Artists were not the first people to move in but families who were outpriced of Manhattan but unwilling to move to the suburbs. These families discovered that while they could not afford a house in Manhattan, they could buy and renovate a classic Brooklyn brownstone in Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene, etc. Now such things are probably out of my price range for a while if not forever.
I picked my current apartment because it was a 12-minute walk to my law school. It just happened to also be centrally located in the city and in a gentrifying neighborhood.
"
Gentrification is a tricky issue. I think every neighborhood except one that I have lived in post-college was gentrified.
Here is where the trick comes in though: Where are young people supposed to live when they get out of college?
Imagine you are a 22 year old college graduate who was born and raised somewhere far away from a major city. You land a job in a major city at 45,000 USD a year. This is a decent but not great income. These 22-year olds can't afford to live in the already upper-middle class parts of the city so they head to said neighborhoods that you described above.
Do you think that kids who are born into the suburbs have a moral imperative to remain in suburbs as to not displace anyone? Should they live at home with mom and dad until they can afford an upper-middle class district of the city on their own?
These are serious questions.
"
I don't doubt it but this whole DIY/Artisnal culture makes me wonder:
What does it mean for a country to have a vast middle class?
The Industrial Revolution of the Victorian Era turned luxury goods like Chocolate and Soap and Tea and made them products available to everyone. When I was in middle and high school, the GAP was considered a great equalizer because most students seemed to get their clothing at the GAP.
The Mast Brothers seems to be indicative of a return to taking a product available to everyone and wanting it to be a luxury good again because big corporations make a bad product for whatever.
Politics creates strange bedfellows sometimes. I am not opposed to the Mast Brother existing or fancy hipster coffee places but I would like them to acknowledge that a 9 dollar chocolate bar is a luxury product.
"
This was a very good essay.
I don't know where I fit in on the Hipster milleau. I was born at the tail-end of Generation X in 1980. This probably makes me part of the first wave of hipsterdom. I graduated from one of those elite liberal arts colleges that are a hot bed of liberalism. Most of my cultural likes are firmly in the Brooklyn-San Francisco liberal category but I'd like to think this is out of sincerity and education over irony. And I can't wear skinny jeans! But I do have an MFA.
My thoughts are largely along the Thomas Frank line and that Hipsters are largely a continuing of the early-90s grunge and Generation X culture. In San Francisco and Brooklyn, you see some prime Generation Xers (people born between 1968-1973) who easily transformed from grunge into Hipster. And they can still listen to Wilco! Sometimes these prime Gen Xers have children and families and sometimes they do not. I think that Gen X is a bit different from the Baby Boomers in that there is a resistance against being seen as uncool. They don't want to become square like their parents and drop the Stones and Hendrix for Kenny G and Michael Bolton. Hence, Madison Avenue and the "rebel consumer". So you are right that this is partially status seeking, becoming a parent no longer means needing to drop out of the cool scene. The ultimate eptiome of this was a birthday party for a child I saw at the Brooklyn Brewery. The kids got to run around and the parents did not have to be anywhere uncool like a Chucky Cheese or something else more kid-appropriate.
I think there is a social status thing in the DIY-small batch economy but it is also born of economic privilege. A lot of these products are sold at premium prices: 9 dollars for a chocolate bar, 12 dollars for a jar of jam, 14 dollars for a four-pack of Dogfish Head beer, 95 dollars for a tie made of chambray, etc. It takes money to afford these products and the people buying them are wither white-collar professionals like me or people with independent sources of income. I am not sure where to put Community Supported Agriculture on this social status list.
I know a lot of people who qualify as hipsters. Some people might think I qualify as one (even though my body type rebels against skinny jeans and I dislike facial hair on myself), they are largely sweet and good people but some of them seem to be pre-empting their burnout (by announcing that they know it will come.) Only time will tell if these people stay hipster and rebel consumers as they get older (and as parents) or switch to being square suburban parents.
Only time will tell.
Though I do think straight, white, male is a bit wrong. I think straight and white is a better co-opter.
One thing I can't tell is how many hipsters come from working-class families and then escaped to the elite schools or big cities as compared to how many are children of the upper-middle suburban/urban class. The co-opting of blue collar culture is one of the most problematic aspects of hipster culture to me. A place like this is the ultimate hipster bar and one of my least favorite bars in SF:
http://buckshot-sf.blogspot.com/
The whole rural, working class hunting lounge in San Francisco seems odd to me. Plus they play their music too loud* What I can't tell is whether the appeal is because people come from these communities and miss it or they are just upper-middle class suburban kids co-opting working class culture. A bunch of the hipsters I know of do seem to come from rural and working class roots. I think the Mast Brothers (creators of ten dollar chocolate bars in Brooklyn) are from rural working class routes but can't remember where I got this information from. The creator of Dogfish Head is a farm kid.
One thing that is interesting about hipsters is that they seem to be marrying a lot earlier than their Baby Boomer parents and Generation Xers. A lot of Generation Xers I know did not get married until their mid-30s or later. Many are still unmarried in their early 40s. I seem to know many hipsters who married their college sweethearts right after college. This is intriguing to me for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. When I was 25, very few of my friends and cohort were married. Now I see a lot of people who are 25 and married and they come from the same upper-middle class/education and career first background as me.
On “Blinded Trials Bait: An Ethics Quandary”
Okay this is not completely true. I have seen some regional differences in the price of things but not by much. A 2-liter bottle of coke costs a 1.69 in San Francisco and maybe 1.39 somewhere else expensive.
"
It is still called a suggested retail price but have you ever seen a store not sell something at the suggested retail price?
Not including coupons and sales of course.
"
Did someone really do that?
That is amazingly obtuse.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.