Just how hipster is Nashville becoming? (Knoxville, Chattanooga: how much, university, living in)
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If hipsters stayed in East Nashville, I would say the more the merrier. There are times when I might want to hear hipster music or eat hipster food and if I know I can find that in East Nashville, great.
Here in Memphis, the few hipsters we have stay in Midtown or Cooper Young.
But I don't want to see hipsters all over town. Was at Bobbie's Dairy Dip the other week and there were a bunch of hipsters getting ice cream. There was something disturbing about seeing so many in the 5300 block of Charlotte.
The parents of many hipsters are increasingly unable to subsidize rent in Silver Lake or Brooklyn, so I see a continued hipster influx to Nashville. It's more street-cred worthy to say "I'm moving to Nashville for a more authentic vibe" than to say "Dad told me I needed to get another waiter job and my blog doesn't count."
Also, we have some local colleges that are great at turning out unemployable graduates. Belmont, Watkins, and MTSU are really on the ball with this. So this really contributes to the overall scene as well. Compared to Portland, this is our secret weapon. It's our "universities." (snicker)
I think Portland and Nashville could have a hipster exchange program. So if a 28 year old hipster musician from Nashville is looking to "retire from the scene" (read: he got his girlfriend pregnant), he could relocate to Portland with some assistance (skinny jeans, pack of American spirits, Subaru wagon), or vice versa.
I'm curious about the universities statement...isn't Belmont a prestigous private college?
Cafe Rakka is the center for hipsterdom in Hendersonville.
This is quite true. I really didn't notice this until after the Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives segment aired, ironically enough. Maybe Guy Fieri is a secret hipster?!?
Quote:
Originally Posted by to570717
I for one am happy to see them.....they usually do listen to good music, force bars to carry good beer and interesting fare and are generally intellectual in some capacity......better than certain alternatives....
I agree on all the positives. Maybe that makes me a bit of a hipster too. But when I think "hipster" I think mostly of the arrogance that goes along with it. As you said, the condescension of "you've probably never heard of them". That part I could do without. Eh...maybe I'm becoming a grumpy old man.
Quote:
Originally Posted by airen123
I'm curious about the universities statement...isn't Belmont a prestigous private college?
It is a very good school. (Which pains me to say as a Lipscomb grad ) I think what mcredux was alluding to is the large amount of art/music related graduates that come out of Belmont. There is a disproportionate number of graduates in those areas to jobs available. But certainly, Belmont is a very good school.
I don't think the hipsters have the plague. We don't have to quarantine them to East Nashville. I'm fine with people looking and acting however they please as long as they are helping make Nashville the best darn Nashville it can be. If more hipsters means more quality restaurants, bars and shops, then I say let them come.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ariesjow
I don't think the hipsters have the plague. We don't have to quarantine them to East Nashville. I'm fine with people looking and acting however they please as long as they are helping make Nashville the best darn Nashville it can be. If more hipsters means more quality restaurants, bars and shops, then I say let them come.
The interest in quality food, beer, music (sometimes), and local business are the positives....but you don't have to be a hipster to have good taste.
My problem with hipsters is the big wannabe following. They are often the d-bags that are vocally anti-mainstream...so once something they like becomes mainstream, they no longer like it. They're the ones that begin a sentence with "well, you've probably never heard of them/it" that annoys the living hell out of me. And they like to pass themselves off as unique, although they share a collective thought process.
Living in Knoxville during college, I got my first exposure to what hipsters were. It was about 5 years ago, and the "hipster" sensation hadn't gone mainstream (at least not so much in K-town). At first I started noticing guys in broad pattern plaid shirts and tight jeans...only to find out later they were wearing girls jeans...and many times the jeans didn't even reach their ankles. Bizarre.
Well, then at work (I worked in a college apartment's leasing office), we had this new guy come in. He was a skater...we all knew that. It was only later that we put the pieces together and figured out he was super hipster.
The first evidence came with the musical choice. We had a CD player and in the evenings, we could choose to listen to (pretty much) whatever we wanted. Being that most of the staff was made up of college students, we had a wide variety of tastes and I would say as a whole we knew a lot about music. New guy decides he wants to play something. Sure...go right ahead. What is it? "Well, you've probably never heard of them...." "Try me." "The Flaming Lips?" "Dude...they've been around for more than 20 years. They played at Bonnaroo. I saw them." *Dumbfounded look on his face* (He never played them again during his couple month long tenure at the job -- always insisting on something that we definitely hadn't heard of -- because most of the time it was awful)
Then there were the subtle debates or discussions, where he would ask you your opinion on something, then always take a contrarian position. A coworker and I came to this conclusion after he asked both her and I the same question on different occasions (what era of Beatles music do you like)...we gave different answers, and so did he...both times taking nearly the opposite of whatever we said.
Then there were politics. He was a Ron Paul supporter...until more and more people around campus started supporting him. Then he dropped Ron Paul (too mainstream) in favor of an obscure candidate that none of us had ever heard of.
I'm not suggesting that all hipsters are like this enormous d-bag, but I've met more than enough that are. People like this try to be unique (at least to us outsiders) to the point of aggravation. Some of the holier-than-thou attitudes that come out of this clan are reprehensible.
If hipsters want to go take somewhere over....maybe they should go to La Vergne...where they could actually make improvements.
Was at Bobbie's Dairy Dip the other week and there were a bunch of hipsters getting ice cream. There was something disturbing about seeing so many in the 5300 block of Charlotte.
Not sure what's so strange about this. There are plenty of "them" living in Sylvan Park (and even The Nations) and drinking at Betty's.
I'm curious about the universities statement...isn't Belmont a prestigous private college?
Nope.
In the 2012 payscale survey, it had the dubious honor of providing a negative estimated return to graduates -- that is, students were financially worse off for attending. It's mainly for local ne'er-do-wells who don't stray from the nest and transplant ne'er-do-wells who get suckered into its "music business" program. Few reputable employers (reputable, as in, they actually pay you) take it seriously enough to recruit undergrads from there.
I don't know much about Sylvan Park, so I didn't know that hipsters were living there.
Again, I enjoy some of the hipster restaurants in East Nashvillle and think Grimey's is one of the truly great record stores. Hipsters are helping to make Nashville truly Music City USA and not just country/singer songwriter/religious music. Those are all positive things for the city.
At the same time, I don't want to see Nashville lose what makes it special. Places like Portland, Austin and San Francisco are not as interesting as they would have been 30 or 40 years ago.
The 3 really special larger cities of the South are New Orleans, Memphis and Nashville. Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston and Miami have in many ways lost their culture although not because of hipsters.
Memphis and New Orleans have issues that make it harder for them to lose their culture but I'm a little concerned about Nashville.
Rapid growth and lots of Yankees can turn you into Atlanta and too many hipsters can turn you into Austin. Nashville has a little of both going on right now and so far the changes have been positive but let's hope they don't go too far.
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) I think what mcredux was alluding to is the large amount of art/music related graduates that come out of Belmont. There is a disproportionate number of graduates in those areas to jobs available. But certainly, Belmont is a very good school.
