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hey john, why are you scoffing at me cause i'm a hipster. just dye your hair purple, wear a very tight pair of jeans, have a nose ring, wear a yellow tie, carry an overstuffed backpack, two pieces of luggage on wheels, and a map pointing to a yet to be gentrified neighborhood and you're on.
Rent increases are an issue. Still, the main point of this thread is the negative attitudes and posturing of many of the hipsters here in Harlem. Maybe there is a connection. It could be that the rudeness and, as one cd member has written, the colonialist attitude are a reaction to the resentment they might have experienced here. I think it works both ways. I have lived in neighborhoods where I was not initially accepted, but I did not walk around with a chip on my shoulder. I was respectful to the people in the neighborhood and patient with their reactions against the integration of their neighborhoods. I set clear boundaries with people who were rude to me, but always in a way that preserved the bonds of community--i.e. respect. For example, I once told a shopkeeper in Inwood that we are in each other's lives and that I am not going anywhere. I asked him if he could stop being so rude. We became neighbors from that point on. Our differences were set aside, and our interactions became very playful. In time I became a part of the neighborhood--the shops, library, parties, community meetings and events, etc.
I still don't quite understand why some of the hipsters act this way. I still think they are afraid and defensive. They are young, for the most part. Maybe we all just need to be patient with them and let our neighborhoods go through this process of change. Change is never easy. It is encouraging to me that this rudeness and colonialist posturing is not true of all the hipsters. A few have been or are becoming really sweet. I think it's just going to take some time.
Well Indi, a hipster is someone who thinks of himself/herself as being real cool and tries real hard to project this image. There's a lot of insecurity for many as living up to an image perpetuated by others on the hipster train is not always easy.
See not all hipsters are born hipsters - some attain that status via association with others carrying the label and thus bow to peer pressure and hang the label on themselves also. Others are mistakenly called hipsters by natives because they are outsiders moving in to neghborhoods with backpacks, nose rings, ipods, cells, faded jeans and outdated skirts, and affected accents simulating Valley girls when many are from Midwestern or New England towns and this is their first foray away from the home turf.
I daresay that it's not just our uptown hipsters who appear misguided, sometimes obnoxious and misplaced geographically and mentally. These are universal trademarks of a hipster. Perhaps the ones you see in Harlem and on the A train have just narrowly been able to retain the much coveted status of Manhattan hipster thus qualifying to look down on hipsters from other boroughs They might be putting everyone else down as an artificial means of elevating themselves - but probably succeed in doing so only among themselves. For as you quite accurately surmised, most folks just ignore them.
Unfortunately, unlike with other creatures who are ignored, these just won't go away.
If I were living in the "hood," hipsters would be the least of my worries. A rude hipster is not going to mug me. I've never heard of a hipster home invasion or a hipster hooker or a hipster hitman.
You've never heard of a hipster hooker, apparently you've never been to Union Square at 2:30 am.
I'm more worried of being verbally abused by hipsters than I am of some small time crackhead trying to get money for a fix. Hipsters are utterly disgusting and they've infested the city.
Let's not forget that uptown hipsters have a longer commute to get to the hip conference rooms, a la the coffee houses downtown and in Brooklyn, so they are crabby because of longer commutes. Add to that the time taken to stay up to watch reality programming and popular television programs, all in the interest of research, so that they can disdain the right topic the next day, and not appear to be day-old in their pseudo-dislike of anything mainstream, while ignoring the fact that by conforming to an organized subculture they are in a sense a subset mainstream culture. And, some secretly like popular programming, since they doth protest too much in their disdain, I find.
The psychological turmoil of conformity to a group that seeks to separate itself from "Middle America" while adhering to the rules of said subculture is just mind-boggling. That's why in the case of the uptown hipster there's a time lapse, since it can take them an hour or more to get home to their 'hood and thus someone who lives around the corner from the gallery in Williamsburg would know the new rules before they do, and what is to be disdained since they did not have to TiVo it and watched it live. The time lapse that is caused by the subway, where they can contemplate being behind the curve for yet another hour, is just so torturous to the hipster soul, such that they might forget where they are and emerge below 96th Street and head to Brooks Brothers and buy something!
Hipsters just disdain cultural elements, not people, since I have encountered hipsters of varied ethnicities and persuasions, so it doesn't seem to be a movement based upon anything other than forging a "counterculture" that has its own rules. The irony is just too rich!
Last edited by Green Irish Eyes; 11-18-2008 at 10:46 PM..
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