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The article about Pasticceria Natalina shows nothing more than poor business sense - and also how going very high end is a really dumb move right now. Most of the successful chefs in Chicago have spent the last couple years opening places that serve very high quality food at prices much lower than you'd expect. Just look at Xoco, Big Star, Urban Belly, marcBurger, etc... Maybe there will be a market for $9 cannolis at some point in the future, but there certainly isn't one now. Oh - and I don't think it has anything to do with Chicago specifically. I know plenty of places in NYC and Boston where you can get the same quality canolli as Pasticceria Natalina for 5 or 6 bucks. The place would fail in pretty any city with those prices.
Try one of the 11.4 million results (http://tinyurl.com/d83xym - broken link) on Google, 2000+ articles in the New York Times just this year (despite an official directive to avoid the word), or 5000+ articles in the Tribune archives.
As for hipster/yuppies, here's a book about how to spot one.
100+ craft beers are now available at Maria's, at 31st & Morgan.
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Originally Posted by chet everett
seems to be the embodiment of "hipster hate" that makes me wanna avoid Bucktown and Wicker Park.
Despite the flippant service that you ascribe to hipster-infested Wicker Park, Bucktown, and Logan Square, the area still managed to get many more (four) Michelin stars -- which are usually said to reward fussy service more than great food -- than Lakeview, Uptown, and Andersonville (zero!).
The most disdainful and arrogant service experiences I remember in Chicago were at a shop in the Gold Coast, a restaurant in Lincoln Park, and a bar in Lakeview -- none of which were even remotely hipster.
I've lived in this area for 10 years and been hanging out here since the 80's, and I have no clue what you're talking about. I find the hipsters are pretty normal people who are like anyone else, not filled with any vitriol (like the woman in the article) or hate. No doubt *some* of them have this quality, but I wouldn't attempt to lump the label on them as a generality at all. They're like anyone, some are cool, some are *******s, etc, etc.
I don't understand what 'hipster hate' is. If anything - it should be all the people who absolutely love to hate the hipsters. It's very chic to hate hipsters, everyone does it, join in.
For the record I'm not a hipster, but I like them mostly.
Yeah, I just don't get it myself. There are many other demographics much more deserving of people's ire and disdain. I get along with hipsters, I get along with yuppies. They're not the ones running property values down and wrecking their own neighborhoods with graffiti, litter and violence. I hope more hipsters move to Humboldt Park, it can only be a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
I mostly like Andersonville. The shop keepers mostly are friendly, and even the crowded places with eccentric owners (like Great Lakes Pizza) are generally not hostile to "normal " customer services practices.
The lil' pastry gal, despite having been born in pedestrian Palos Heights , seems to be the embodiment of "hipster hate" that makes me wanna avoid Bucktown and Wicker Park. So much self rightousness from someone spyoung is not warranted.
Yes, I get it, you sleep on a yoga mat so you can make bread at dawn and make love in the bathroom while customers are waiting to pick up a cake. yippee for you. Grow up.
Maybe when she and hubby get tired of Lebanon, (last name sounds more Palestinian to me, not that it matters...) they'll realize that breaking even is still pretty good and find a new space to run the place more as a business and less as a place where she is "on the side of truth and just aren't seeing... Or not. No great loss.
If you're going to avoid Bucktown and Wicker Park, you might consider avoiding commenting on them, too.
While the bad attitudes makes me wanna avoid 'em...
...my duty to inform the loyal city-data readers forces me to solider on despite it all.
And, despite the unwarranted air of superiority, often the eats served by the hipsters are pretty good ( though NEVER the over used " amazing"... ).
I try to turn my attention to that.
It is not just the "attitude" it's the whole shtick -- "suffering for art's sake" , "rejecting mainstream morès", fashions from the heroin addict / concentration camp / American Apparel soft core porn range, uniformity in their "non-conformity" (visually, politically, etc), a sort of "passive-aggressive" tendency to claim not to care what others think yet still go out their way to defend / rationalize their behaviors then get all "sour grapes" on anyone that doesn't agree with their world view...
And sure, it beats having gang bangers and other even less desirable types living in Bucktown and Wicker Park, but in the big picture sense the sort of industrial jobs that once was dominate in those areas would result in higher wages / more economic activity than bars and restaurants. It is funny too, because the "density" that those who claim to love urban living tends to by fairly low by global urban stsndards -- heck if the density was higher maybe these restaurants would actually be profitable. Instead they scratch out just enough to underpay their staff and not get too far behind on their bills while mainstream restaurants occupy big enough spaces to actually get enough people seated for lunch or dinner without a ridiculous wait.
It's funny too when I think of what sort of long term impact these sorts of people will have on urban living. I know quite a few a people that grew up in Chicago. When they think back of pick-up games of stick ball or other fun kid things it often involved hordes of kids from big working class families. If hipsters have kids at all they are generally limiting their pregnancies to one or two. While the kids are not spoiled in the same way that the generation of China's "one child" policy brats are, they are certainly 'indulged' in a way foriegn to kids growing up with a horde of siblings. Will these "hipster families" sneer their way through elementary school and high school, wryly dismissing the traditional mastery of school subjects for "the experience" of hanging out and skate boarding with their mom and dad until they have a child out of wedlock and then emulating the multiple-generational economic struggle of other urban outsiders OR will the kids see the foolishness of their parent's slacker ways and, like Alex Keaton, embrace economic drive that rewards hard work?
I think hipsters are in some sense a reaction to the declining economic strength of The United States. Many young educated people know there aren't enough jobs out there for them as they were educated and that they belong to a generation that will probably not be as well off as their parents and grandparents. So some people discard (in self defense perhaps) middle class notions of advancement.
I think many hipsters would've been happy in days past as blue collar workers but they've been educated to be white collar ones and many of the good blue collar jobs such as machinists and tool makers that would've appealed to these people are gone. Note the blue collar elements of hipster life; tatoos, hanging in taverns and a general disdain for bourgeois values. A tradesman can have those values AND make a damned good living. But I don't think it occurs to many hipsters to get into an apprenticeship in the building trades where I think many would be quite happy.
I think hipsters are in some sense a reaction to the declining economic strength of The United States. Many young educated people know there aren't enough jobs out there for them as they were educated and that they belong to a generation that will probably not be as well off as their parents and grandparents. So some people discard (in self defense perhaps) middle class notions of advancement.
I think many hipsters would've been happy in days past as blue collar workers but they've been educated to be white collar ones and many of the good blue collar jobs such as machinists and tool makers that would've appealed to these people are gone. Note the blue collar elements of hipster life; tatoos, hanging in taverns and a general disdain for bourgeois values. A tradesman can have those values AND make a damned good living. But I don't think it occurs to many hipsters to get into an apprenticeship in the building trades where I think many would be quite happy.
There are some areas that are technically demanding that do not require college. I know several high end auto mechancics that value precision but since basically every high school has gutted their auto shop classes kids don't get a chance to understand that the same high standards some foodie has toward imported butter or artisinal cheese is part of the manufacturing tradition for some fine automobiles. Being a finicky, gruff, perfectionist is practically a requirement for working on vintage Ferraris... There are more than a few warehouses and garages in all kinds of areas with no outside signs or other markings where skilled workers get paid well to work on mechanically complex equipment. The network of rich guys that keep these places busy does not need any retail presence. That is probably a better fit for such misfits instead of them trying to put on a happy face when some ungrateful toddler thinks the anise flavored cupcake is not as yummy as a ho-ho...
There are still a pretty fair number of machine shops in the region. As the supply of kids from local high schools dried up a lot of places are staffed by guys from former easten block countries. Knowing Russian is now basically a requirement to working with CNC shops these days...
If some of the once stellar vocational high schools in CPS were not overrun by kids with undiagnosed learning disabilities and terrible homelife I would say that was an avenue for people to get into careers that did not require college, but leave it to the "enlightened reformers" to screw that up too -- every CPS basically has the same pseudo- college prep curriculum. Kids that want to pursure a vocational path have to do so in community college. What a mismatch to ask kids geared toward instant gratification to spend MORE time in school!
Location: Shaw, St. Louis/West Ridge, Chicago/WuDaoKou, Beijing
292 posts, read 871,934 times
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haha hipsters...everyone knows I am a self proclaimed vigilante who's goal is to destroy hipsterism...I grew tired of the hipsters in Williamsburg driving up rents with their parents showing up paying entire year's rents upfront with a check...their faux poor attire when they are really trust fund babies...detached judgementalism, being utterly pretentious and arrogant, sucking in school (you usually see them get weeded out mid semester)...they screw up the food scene wherever they go, make rents outrageous, their body odor is enough to keep the roaches at bay, ugh...hipsters lol.
In Chicago, our hipster scene can be described as an imitation of New York's infamous scene. Those who believe they can qualify as "hipsters" here would be called "scenesters" by everybody else.
As a person who has lived here since day one and is in the prime hipster age demographic, it's interesting to see Logan Square, Ukranian Village, and many other parts of Chicago's north and NW side (or west Loop) with the token "hipster": plaid shirts, dated glasses, expensive vintage bicycles converted into fixed-gears, beards, riding vintage mopeds and low-cc motorcycles in bad weather, analog film cameras, and expensive MP3 players. Those would be who enjoy looking and acting like a "hipster," but prefer to remain as perpetual art students or freelance graphic designers, hiding their middle-class Midwestern origins.
The real hipsters to me are those young adults who aren't privileged, partake in things that are not mainstream, and and are against the whole fratboy/yuppie-in-training lifestyle. These people might enjoy restoring classic cars (a no-no to the "urban," car-free lifestyle of the scenester), soccer (scenesters only like the Cubs or some other oddball baseball team if they approve of sports), shun the "dive bar" and PBR scene (vs scenesters allowing certain bars that appear purposely dirty to define their personality), might work in blue collar jobs (vs a scenester slaving away in a coffee shop in Ukrainian Village), listen to a mixture of electronic, dance, mainstream and independent music (vs scenesters only can listen to indie bands before they "sell out"), like to read many things (but not quintessential scenester authors such as Vonnegut), might buy properties and restore them (vs scenesters living in an expensive apartment at a trendy address), and might enjoy different cultures and languages (vs scenesters viewing the few remaining foreigners in their neighborhood with perplexity and irony). They also might live in *gasp* Berwyn, McKinley Park or West Ridge (instead of scenester territory that everyone else lives in).
It's no hipster-hate, but an observation in Chicago of who is a real "hipster" and who isn't.
Last edited by Rewind4; 12-22-2010 at 09:39 AM..
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While the bad attitudes makes me wanna avoid 'em...
