Analysis of Pittsburgh (York: live, moving to, dental)

[VASpaceMan]

Yeah, different people have different ideas of what a hipster is. On one end of the spectrum it can be kind of positive - someone who is kind of counter culture as JimboPGH said, someone who is creative, maybe a musician or artist. On the other side of the spectrum the more negative connotation - someone who is a poser, basically trying to seem cool and hip, someone who dresses like a musician or artist, someone who is extremely cliquish, someone who is snobbish about being "cooler-than-thou"

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by VASpaceMan

On the other side of the spectrum the more negative connotation - someone who is a poser, basically trying to seem cool and hip, someone who dresses like a musician or artist, someone who is extremely cliquish, someone who is snobbish about being "cooler-than-thou"

I think my own disdain for "hipsters" is because many of the ones I encounter in Lawrenceville, Polish Hill, and Bloomfield are of this particular subset. They're the "wannabes" who have access to a lot of discretionary income that is either directly or indirectly provided by their families. If we're going to categorize everyone I will gladly accept the "yuppie" label, I suppose, since I dress preppy, am a workaholic, and like fancy fruity mixed drinks.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Tiger Beer

Hipsters aren't generally coke users...those sound more like yuppies...a lot of yuppies these days try to masquerade as hipsters or something more counterculture...well, some of them do anyways.

Trust me, I had a bunch of friends who moved to NYC and lived in Williamsburg back around 2000. It was all about (at that time) getting drunk, doing blow, and listening to electroclash or other highly 80s influenced music.

No one would have confused an indie kid for a hipster. Indie kids were still wearing trucker hats and going to Bright Eyes shows. And a lot of them were too young to go to bars. Totally different scene.

[Tiger Beer]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Trust me, I had a bunch of friends who moved to NYC and lived in Williamsburg back around 2000. It was all about (at that time) getting drunk, doing blow, and listening to electroclash or other highly 80s influenced music.

I absolutely hate the Williamsburg Hipster.

I used to live in Portland in the mid-1990s, and New York City in the late 1990s. Definitely saw a ton of hipsters in both cities.

The ones in Portland, were basically everywhere, but very normal for Portland, to such a degree, they weren't conforming to anything in particular. They were just cool people, in general. I liked being around them, even though I never considered myself one. But I liked their general interests out there. Out there, if they were into hard drugs, it would most likely be heroin, but that wasn't typical, by any means. Most were just 'cool' young guys who read a lot of books, and were into interesting music scenes.

Williamsburg, I couldn't even stand to be on the train with them. Maybe that element did exist there with coke. The ones I saw in Williamsburg just looked like major conformists to images. Mack Truck hats, and kind of generally annoying all the way around. I couldn't even say what they were like, I just noticed they really had no clue about Manhattan or NYC, they just lived in such their own little world there in Williamsburg, completely cutting themselves off to conform to some image, that I couldn't relate to.

[aw_now_what]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

I think my own disdain for "hipsters" is because many of the ones I encounter in Lawrenceville, Polish Hill, and Bloomfield are of this particular subset. They're the "wannabes" who have access to a lot of discretionary income that is either directly or indirectly provided by their families. If we're going to categorize everyone I will gladly accept the "yuppie" label, I suppose, since I dress preppy, am a workaholic, and like fancy fruity mixed drinks.

Hipsters on Polish Hill? It looks like the younger new people living up there are punks not hipsters. There's a big difference and it has nothing to do with poodles, naked yoga, clown cars and that other stuff you agglomerate into "East End residents."

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by aw_now_what

Hipsters on Polish Hill? It looks like the younger new people living up there are punks not hipsters. There's a big difference and it has nothing to do with poodles, naked yoga, clown cars and that other stuff you agglomerate into "East End residents."

I was going to say that. The Bloomfield "scene" too seems dominated by punks. Basically the same sort of people you'd see in South Side 10 years ago.

For that matter, Lawrenceville passed "peak Hipster" like 2-3 years ago. More of the people I see going around the neighborhood these days are just straight-up yuppies. Yuppies with beards, perhaps, but yuppies nonetheless.

[steindle]

(1) The entire East End in general is way too over to be hip.
(2) I attended college just north of NYC during the exact same period of Williamsburg described by eschaton -- lots of electroclash, white belts, and disaffection. I remember taking the subway over there one day to see what all the hype was about, seeing a guy clearly wearing an eyepatch as fashion, and turning it around.
(3) Twelve or thirteen years later, my wife and I got off at the Bedford subway stop and sat on a bench after a long day of walking. Despite being incredibly tired and having a lot of foot pain, we were prompted to get back up almost immediately by how mind-blowingly vapid the conversations and people surrounding us were. IMHO: Williamsburg suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks, and is far beyond gentrification, into the realm of aristocratization.

[_Buster]

Most of the hipsters in DC hang out aroung H street NE and Logan circle, and are in the restaurant/bar industry. There are some artistic types but not as many as other cities.

[UKWildcat1981]

I hate hipsters lol

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by steindle

(3) Twelve or thirteen years later, my wife and I got off at the Bedford subway stop and sat on a bench after a long day of walking. Despite being incredibly tired and having a lot of foot pain, we were prompted to get back up almost immediately by how mind-blowingly vapid the conversations and people surrounding us were. IMHO: Williamsburg suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks, and is far beyond gentrification, into the realm of aristocratization.

The now husband of a college friend of mine worked as an ornamental plasterer in NYC, and lived in Williamsburg. For awhile he hurt his back, and was out on disability. He said one day he realized that all of the younger people he saw in the neighborhood, as far as he could tell, never seemed to work. They hung out in coffeeshops all day, despite it being a high-cost area. He then realized he was basically surrounded by idle rich "slumming it" and was so sickened he had to GTFO of the neighborhood.