Are New Yorkers snobbier than the midwestern hipsters moving in? (Holland: sublease, neighborhoods)

[Indi9]

I have no problem with out-of-towners or transplants. Twelve years ago I was a transplant--but with roots in NYC. But I do find the hipster attitudes annoying. Most seem to be very judgmental and self-centered. I think they are trying too hard to be cool or to prove themselves. Thankfully, they have calmed down a lot up here on Sugar Hill. They used to be so irritating that they inspired me to write and publish poetry about their invasion of our neighborhood and about my desire to reach past that collective mask they wear to get to the real story. As in "Hey Mister Hipster Dude/ With your uber cool hipster-tude/ Welcome to the neighborhood..." Now they just seem tired, lonely, and sad. The economic down-turn is affecting them, too, I think. I seriously wish we could all just get along--cliche, cliche...

[clevedark]

When I lived in Greenpoint in the late 80s the area was just getting started with the hipsters. I was the same age, but working in an office and commuting so I was a loser in their eyes. I'm also from NJ, and have a Polish background. I felt like they were looking at me and thinking I was more like the Polish people from the neighborhood than one of them--and I guess I was! (Although we probably shared the same suburban origins and elite private college educations--just different clothes and schedules.)

[Indi9]

I never quite understood where they got off being so judgmental. Like what made them think they had the right to look down their noses at anyone. Then the light went back on, and I remembered that people who are the most judgmental are usually the mose insecure. This doesn't excuse them. It just helps me to understand them. I have had a few in my college classrooms, and I have found that they usually want so badly to be accepted, to be "in," so they've created this elitist social clique in which they claim the right to now look down on other people who seem to not be as "cool" or "hip." It's a mask. I hope it passes--and soon.

[clevedark]

Oh no, it's permanent. I'm in my mid 40s now and raising a family and still encounter "it" in various forms. And we live in Boston now, and OMG, you haven't seen smug and snobbish until you've been here.

[Indi9]

Omg... I fear you might be right. I had my first encounter with a hipster (a self-proclaimed "reformed nerd") in Boston. The incongruous snobbishness and smugness with the interesting haircuts and calculatedly "cool," "countercultural" clothing style; the endless opinions about music, etc. Not pretty... lol Maybe on a larger cultural level it will always be with us, but as a college professor I have had the privilege of witnessing individual hipster students take off their masks and the judgmental attitudes, and become human.

[holden125]

Originally Posted by clevedark

And we live in Boston now, and OMG, you haven't seen smug and snobbish until you've been here.

Ouch

[BergenCountyJohnny]

I think it all boils down to attitudes - the offensive attitudes of posers and the defensive attitudes of native New Yorkers.

My experience, being "B&T" (bridge & tunnel) and a Jerseyan, is that most native New Yorkers don't care for pretense or attitude, not even from each other, and especially not from outsiders. For the most part, New Yorkers don't care where someone's from. If they like you, they like you, and where you're from doesn't matter. But when faced with someone who has an attitude, New Yorkers will often, but not always, fall back on superficial attacks, the main one being that they are the "real New Yorkers" and those from elsewhere are the invading, obnoxious, annoying, in-the-way, pretentious jerks. But I want to make it clear that, in my experience, this attitude is almost always taken as a defense.

As for the term "real New Yorker", it has been coopted by the transplants. I have lots of family and friends who are real, native New Yorkers, being born and raised in every borough but the Bronx; none of them have ever really thrown around the "real New Yorker" phrase. In fact, what we've noticed in the last 10 years or so, with the influx of transplants (mostly midwestern kids who probably watched either "Rent" or "Sex in the City" and moved to NY to "live the life") is that these transplants, after living in NY City and becoming familiar with life there, have come to consider themselves the "real New Yorkers" and THEY are the ones who throw that term around the most, by far. They probably learned it from some actual native New Yorkers who used it against them early in their transition to NYC, and retained it for their own use later, against others.

The irony (and hipsters just LOVE irony, but I think this one is lost on them) is that these transplant hipsters will call anyone who isn't from Manhattan (or certain acceptable parts of Brooklyn like "Billyburg", Park Slope, Cobble Hill, etc., but even they're not exempt) either "B&T" or not "real New Yorkers", like them. So because some dufus grew up in Iowa and moved to the big city to "live the life" and brag to his hayseed friends back home, and because he has a shaggy bed-head pseudo-70's 'do, and an ironic t-shirt and a fedora or porkpie hat, he is now a "real New Yorker" and is above dealing with all the fake New Yorkers, like the ones who were born there.

A couple examples:
- One of my best friends was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island and still lives in SI. We have heard him called "B&T" many times by hipsters, intimating that he is not a "real New Yorker". He asked one such person where he was born and he said, "Ohio", to which my friend replies, "oh yeah, I see you're a real New Yorker". The hipster then replied, "It doesn't matter where I was born, because I've lived in MANHATTAN for 3 years and know my way around and know where everything is, so I'm more of a real New Yorker than you."
- Another of my best friends who was born in Staten Island, grew up in Manhattan and then NJ and then moved to Brooklyn after college, was called a B&T by a hipster and told "you're not a New Yorker, you're from JERRRR-seey". He was then quizzed on what subway lines ran where and was told that the F train (which he takes every day) did NOT stop at Delancey but stopped at Spring St. (which is wrong). This friend also fell back on his status as a native New Yorker and asked the hipster, "Well where were you born?" to which the answer was "Massachusetts". Yeah, a "real New Yorker"...

There are too many of these stories for me to list here but it happens all the time. These transplants come to NY, they try to live the life of Sarah Jessica Parker from Sex in the City or they try to be one of the cast from "Rent", and they end up wearing the same uniform - thick-rimmed glasses, porkpie or fedora, ironic T or checked camp shirt, skinny jeans, scruff or a full beard, bed-head/shag/pseud-70's hairdo, tattoos - and they end up living off their mommy and daddy, and playing bicycle polo and going to the Piano Bar or the Cake Shop, driving up prices by paying any price for rents, meals, drinks, etc. (with the exception of the PBR's, which they usually just buy one of and force it down for looks).

I'm not totally against "gentrification", but to see what the LES and East Village once were and what they've become it's a particular type of gentrification that is artificial in nature. When these hipsters tire of it, the hipster-driven businesses in those neighborhoods will collapse. No more crepes, no more PBR's, no more $6 Stellas, no more hipster baby and pet shops, no more upscale wine shops. But that day is long off from how it looks right now.

Basically, it's not the "real New Yorkers" who generally use that term to belittle others; it's more often the hipster transplants who use the term because they are self-loathing. They can't ridicule others for not being "NATIVE New Yorkers", because they themselves are not; so they use the term "REAL" New Yorker, because in their minds, living there for 3 years makes them REAL New Yorkers with the full rights to belittle others on that basis alone.

Hipsters are a blight on the city of New York. I look forward to the day they leave. Maybe if there's a crime spike in NY they'll all flock back to their farms on the great plains, or wherever they're from.

[Americanboy]

Originally Posted by Megadell

I've been wondering. Sometimes I get the feeling that people who call themselves "true" New Yorkers don't want you to enjoy the city. That, if you get excited about things they take for granted, that they look at your like a an annoying tourist in the bahamas with socks and sandals, whose just spending an extended vacation.

That people who come in are just posers and fakes and that true new yorkers are so cool and tough and streetwise and, well New Yorkers.

I dunno how to really put it. But anyone else get that vibe sometimes? That people who make an effort to announce that they are home grown and have a negative view on people who want to come in and experience that city that has inspired every form of media you can imagine?

I dunno. But I do. And it's annoying. I can't stand hipsters, but man, I'd rather hang out with them.

I've always thought the same thing.

[Brooklyn's Finest]

Originally Posted by Megadell

...people who come in are just posers and fakes and that true new yorkers are so cool and tough and streetwise and, well New Yorkers.

This is fact.

But anyone else get that vibe sometimes? That people who make an effort to announce that they are home grown and have a negative view on people who want to come in and experience that city that has inspired every form of media you can imagine?

I embrace such feelings.

[anders]

Originally Posted by BergenCountyJohnny

As for the term "real New Yorker", it has been coopted by the transplants. I have lots of family and friends who are real, native New Yorkers, being born and raised in every borough but the Bronx; none of them have ever really thrown around the "real New Yorker" phrase.
...
Basically, it's not the "real New Yorkers" who generally use that term to belittle others; it's more often the hipster transplants who use the term because they are self-loathing.

I'm a native NYer, from a long line of native NYers, and with a ton of native-NYer friends -- and none of us has ever used the term "real New Yorker," or jealousy guarded our New Yorkiness, or viewed this as some kind of status-competition.
I mean: Who CARES? That whole attitude is so high-school (or less).

The only time I notice, or get irritated by, non-NYers is when tourists either (a) stop dead in mid-sidewalk or clog subway stairs, or
(b) talk INSANELY LOUDLY to each other on trains, buses, or other close quarters - yammering personal info; what they bought, what it cost, and how much moneythey have left; over-candid views about some neighborhood, or issue, or a NY friend's job or love life; and any unfettered opinion/info that comes to mind, full of details and names.
It's as if they're the only people on the planet. They also fail to notice that this loud chat usually makes everyone else on the train/bus fall into total silence.

That loudness is almost a normative tourist trait. Maybe they think that it's "NYC-acceptable," but it's not. NYers (adults, at least) know when to shut up, and how to chat coherently without creating a circus -- because we _know_ that we're surrounded by people at all times, and that we never know who's listening, who knows who, how the info might be used, who might take major offense (for real or imagined reasons), or whether we're setting ourselves up.
At the very least, we know that we're not Special Cases, and that we're irritating the bejeezus out of other people - who want to talk, think, or nap, and not be held hostage to our yammering.