Indianapolis One of the Least Hipster cities? (house, restaurants)

[GraniteStater]

What is hipster culture? You will find plenty of varieties of it in Madison, WI.

[dewthedru]

Originally Posted by wh15395

snipped

You pointed at the supposed narrowmindedness and religious zeal of IN as the reasons we have all the problems. Any problems we have pale in comparison to other states, most notably our neighbors to the northwest and CA, neither of which could be called particularly religious or conservative.

While I don't doubt you went through crap in school, I don't see a correlation between the religious nature of our state and budget issues a few cities have.

[Toxic Toast]

Originally Posted by key4lp

Why hipster chose it as the
beer of choice I have no idea. The old timers drink it still.

PBR was so uncool in the late 90s, some "hipsters" starting drinking it because no one else was. PBR saw the opportunity, and used slick marketing to grab the niche market.

[Dayton Sux]

I've been to a few of the cities on the list, including Indy.

Of the ones I've been to (Indy, San Antonio, El Paso, OKC) Indy is actually one of the more hipster places on that list.....esp compared to OKC, which is pretty awful for a big city.

[key4lp]

Originally Posted by Toxic Toast

PBR was so uncool in the late 90s, some "hipsters" starting drinking it because no one else was. PBR saw the opportunity, and used slick marketing to grab the niche market.

Well, there's always Old Style.

[domergurl]

I drank PBR in the 90's BECAUSE I WAS POOR and the local bar would sell it for a buck a glass and a 50 cent cheeseburger ...

[wh15395]

Look, as much as I'd love to respond to your post that has both good and terrible points, I'm not going to bother. They are just going to get deleted.

[domergurl]

you betcha

[Toxic Toast]

Originally Posted by gabaghoul

Thank god. The last thing this city needs is hipsters/hippies. (No offense to hippies)

No, the last thing we need is frightened suburbanites telling us what we need.

[bertrandandjules]

I'm down with hipsters, despite their obvious pretensions.

The only thing worse than a place glutted with hipsters is a place that has none of them.

Somebody on one of these forums called them "yuppies with training wheels"--a slick catchphrase, but not entirely accurate. The biggest distinction is that yuppies nearly always have money, while hipsters don't--and they may very well continue to moderate income well into the future.

Look at all the other differences between the two groups. Note, I'm not claiming for a minute that these aren't stereotypes, but they offer some very broad-based truths:

- Hipsters are associated with irony, whether it be Victorian-era facial hair or ugly faded clothes from the 1950s. Yuppies still have to look and dress professionally, which means pricey clothes. Stylish, possibly edgy, but too grown-up for irony.

- Hipsters, if they have a college education (many are perpetual undergrads), have liberal arts degrees that will never pay that well. Yuppies typically pursue degrees in business, science, law, or engineering. Money.

- Hipsters tend to move in the same circle as blue-collar culture, an environment they simultaneously distrust and empathize with, mainly because their politics are usually different. Yuppies are virtually indistinguishable from gay culture, with the difference being that the neighborhoods are usually gay first, then become yuppie. Hipsters, though nearly always heterosexual, are okay with the gays, but since the gays typically have more money, there's always still a big cultural gap between them.

- Hipsters often come from fairly dysfunctional or struggling families. Yuppies often come from high-powered affluent families.

- Hipsters often smoke cigarettes. Yuppies usually despise smoking and tend to be the biggest proponents of anti-smoking laws. Both groups are fairly fond of marijuana.

- Hipsters are effective no-budget entrepreneurs, with lots of loyalty to anti-establishment stuff but very little capital. Not all hipster establishments are high quality but they always have a mark of individual personality. Yuppies will support local businesses only if they're good, but they're perfectly happy supporting national chains if they're eclectic enough, which often means the chains are pricey. Whole Foods is yuppie but definitely NOT hipster. Goose the Market is yuppie. Pogue's Run Grocery is hipster. Heck, Bud's in Fountain Square is kinda hipster too.

- Since both yuppies and hipsters tend lean left of center politically, they probably have more in common than they are willing to admit. Frankly, the commonalities between the two probably result in a shared animosity--they both need one another more than they are willing to admit, and in many ways they complement one another like a yin and yang. Hipsters stimulate urban gentrification; yuppies perpetuate it. Both yuppies and hipsters widely support artistic movements, though their tastes in art diverge by the same lines as their taste in food and clothes. Republican suburbanites find both yuppies and hipsters to be pretentious.

Seems to me like Indy has plenty of hipsters these days, with lots of fixed gear bikes but coming up short in vegan restaurants. (At least the vegan restaurants tend to come and go regularly.) Clearly not as many as Portland, but no doubt more than, say, most of the other cities on that top ten list. Ten years ago, I did not notice very many hipsters in Indy during my visits, but "hipster" was still a pretty emergent social class back then.

Right now, the quintessential hipster neighborhood in Indy is Fountain Square. The quintessential yuppie neighborhood is Chatham Arch (north of Mass Ave). In 10 years, my suspicion is that this will change.