on the subject of lush and velocity girl, how bout that dog???

 

 

one of my favs

 

 

 

and i saw the Deals the other week in chicago at an in store appearance for record store day and they were sweet

I forgot about That Dog. 

 

There were a variety of those all-girl bands except they had some dude playing drums.  It always seemed like that guy was somebody's brother or was otherwise friend-zoned out from the action. 

 

I saw these girls (with a dude drummer) open for somebody back in 1997 or 1998 at Sudsy's on Short Vine:

 

...turns out one of the girls was the voice of Jem, yes this Jem:

 

 

Among the very best of the all girls with a guy drummer bands was Kenickie from the UK.  If CDs wore out, mine would have in the summer of '97.

 

 

I believe the drummer was Lauren Laverne's brother.  She was the lead singer, and is now a common TV presenter in the UK.  The blonde guitarist ended up in the Corhshed Sisters, a traditional folk singing group.

 

Indeed, I considered them the shark of their subgenre. It wasn't evolving any further than them.

At my high school you would have got your ass kicked for listening to that stuff.

This thread hasn't been about hipsters for a long time.

Those '90s alt-rock chicks were definitely pre-hipsters though.

Those '90s alt-rock chicks were definitely pre-hipsters though.

 

Young people now probably can't realize the extent to which the people raised in the post-Vietnam era were constantly told about the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, Woodstock, space race, etc.  If you were a kid in the 80s or 90s you looked around and there was nothing like that going on.  I think a lot of people with curious minds (vs. jocks whose only thoughts were to side with whichever side of an issue they predicted would win) were at once nostalgic and jealous of the highs and lows of the previous generation.  That anxiety that their time was "boring" is part of what motivated the neo-beatnik stuff you saw in the 90s which devolved in the 2000s into the full-blown hipster phenomenon. 

 

I always wanted to have a band where i (male) sang lead and ladies played the instruments.  I can't think of any bands with that setup other than the robert palmer videos.

 

I think late 90s teens like myself who stayed up or taped 120 minutes (especially pre-matt pinfield days) constitute hipsters. Also, the Wedge on MuchMusic (canada's music channel, carried in Wickliffe at the time) had killer tunes and was easier to catch (weekdays, 5 o'clock hour pm)

on the subject of lush and velocity girl, how bout that dog???

 

Um, so who would win in a fight...between That Dog and That 70s Show?

Those '90s alt-rock chicks were definitely pre-hipsters though.

 

Except for the wild hair, Kennedy looked the part about 20 years early. Likewise Lisa Loeb, who was ahead of her time in another way as "Stay" went viral before she had a record deal.

This video is amusingly cliche for the first four minutes.  Then it heads in weird directions, with an extended riff on the mediocrity of Janet Jackson, then boomerangs into a tearful plea for "the people" to come to his festival and "be festive", then "just go off".  Prepare to be entertained:

 

 

Music since 2000, and more like 1995, has been so boring because we're not seeing guys like this rise to prominence.  People in the pop/indie/hipsters realm today just plain aren't entertainers.  Nobody under 30 right now has a peer who is a born entertainer. 

 

 

Nobody under 30 right now has a peer who is a born entertainer.

 

Come to the Hipster thread for the great 90's throwback youtube clips, stay for the hyperbolic generalizations about kids today.

  Nobody under 30 right now has a peer who is a born entertainer. 

 

I'd give Bruno Mars some props.   

 

The problem today is the internet.  Most musicians spend less times in clubs these days, and more time worrying about their Youtube views.  They should have 10,000 hours on stage and in the woodshed.  Not 10,000,000 views.

Nobody under 30 right now has a peer who is a born entertainer.

 

Come to the Hipster thread for the great 90's throwback youtube clips, stay for the hyperbolic generalizations about kids today.

 

We're getting old here, clearly.

This video is amusingly cliche for the first four minutes.  Then it heads in weird directions, with an extended riff on the mediocrity of Janet Jackson, then boomerangs into a tearful plea for "the people" to come to his festival and "be festive", then "just go off".  Prepare to be entertained:

 

 

Music since 2000, and more like 1995, has been so boring because we're not seeing guys like this rise to prominence.  People in the pop/indie/hipsters realm today just plain aren't entertainers.  Nobody under 30 right now has a peer who is a born entertainer. 

 

 

 

What was going on in LA was always different from the rest of America. It's still different today, if only due to the extreme diversity and obsessions with sex appeal and well, entertainment. That study by Richard Florida proved that LA contributes more to music than pretty much the rest of America combined:

 

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2013/05/geography-americas-pop-musicentertainment-complex/5219/

 

It looks like no city has been close for quite some time (except in one or two genres). I think it's because LA has a whole hell of a lot more than hipsters, and the hipsters they do have are nowhere near as douchey/elitist as their San Francisco and New York counterparts. Kudos to LA for not being a bunch of hipster conformists. They're a small part of the cultural scene there, not dominant culture like in some other West Coast cities (cough, cough San Francisco, Portland). I work there some, and it's clear it has little in common with the rest of California or the United States for that matter. That's kind of why I love it. Some of the last glimmers of pre-1% San Francisco still survive in Los Angeles. Its scene is wholly unique and it's big in practically every single art form that exists. It extends well beyond Hollywood. The music scene is massive. You can find world class hip-hop, world class rock, world class jazz, world class pop, world class symphony, and even world class country. It's like taking the top music scenes in all American cities and combining them together.

 

It is the creative hub of the world and the gap between other first tier cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. seems to have been growing since hipsters became mainstream. To its credit, Detroit still has an amazing music scene, but only in a few genres. LA literally has it all.

 

There are still born entertainers today. Most of them live in Los Angeles. ;)

 

We still have good bands today that can perform live, but it seems like they're increasingly only coming from a few cities long known for music (LA, NY, Detroit, Seattle, Atlanta, Nashville, etc.). I think in terms of mainstream music, Kings of Leon have more than proved Gen Y has some talent:

 

 

The problem is there aren't other cities with the breadth of Los Angeles, and I do think it's at least partially due to the crushing social standards hipsters place on each other. They don't really do that in LA since Hollywood already did it for them. ;) My brother, who is a professional musician, described what happened to Chicago's scene best- "It quickly became turn hipster or die. Clubs were only booking bands with a hipster following since it got hot. Other forms of music were considered old hat."

 

I think three are basically three types of cities in America today- hipster dominant, hipster balanced, and hipster recessive. Lately, LA looks like it's leaning more towards hipster recessive since sex appeal still matters there and seems to be making a strong comeback that slaps NorCal in the face (and LA always had the West Side, Santa Monica, Hollywood, Orange County culture, etc.). Even the hipsters in Silver Lake dress better than their counterparts in Mission District. Most middle American cities are hipster balanced or hipster recessive, with Austin and Salt Lake being two of the biggest exceptions. Salt Lake might be the most hipster dominant of all cities. Don't let those Mormons fool you! They're closet hipsters! In my opinion, it's quite a bit worse than San Francisco since the have no strong, urban counter-cultural areas like Marina, North Beach, Russian Hill, Pacific Heights, or Nob Hill to balance it out. It's crazy to think we've lived to see the day when North Beach and Nob Hill are counter-culture. They used to be as mainstream as you'd get back when well-dressed yuppies without tattoos were popular.

 

San Francisco and Portland are hipster dominant cities (though vastly different levels of wealth and different signifiers of status). Most Ohio cities except maybe Columbus are hipster recessive. There are certainly parts of this country where hipster fashions and trends are on the downswing. Western Michigan, which actually was early to the Midwestern scene in Grand Rapids seems to be pulling back (a trend I've noticed in most nice parts of Michigan, Detroit excepting). There are other areas (my own) where it's more popular than ever and heading to even worse territory. If San Francisco is any indicator (it's probably not since it's in a bubble), the post-hipster world is much worse and more socially inept than the one it's replacing...

 

Pray these assholes don't leave the Bay. I'm actually longing for some old school hipsters and scenesters now. They were much better and more social than the new tech-obsessed hipsters who base their lives on cell phone app metrics. I guess you don't know a good thing until it's gone. Some of those original hipsters could at least converse and still knew how to party.

Nobody under 30 right now has a peer who is a born entertainer.

 

Come to the Hipster thread for the great 90's throwback youtube clips, stay for the hyperbolic generalizations about kids today.

 

We're getting old here, clearly.

 

True, but honestly at 29, I am square in the hipster age group of my city. The kids in college today seem less hipster to me, which is clearly an encouraging trend. I just have far more life experience (no sheltering, bad childhood, exposed to violence, rags to middle class, etc.) than the average coastal hipster so I can already see the regrets some of these "kids" are going to have by worrying so much about their image long after they've graduated from college. They're going to regret holding onto their adolescence for too long and fighting growing up. I have the opposite attitude. The faster you can build some stability in your life, the better. I think that's a result of coming from an unstable place. The elite hipsters in insanely expensive SF apartments rarely understand this (at least partially because they've taken stability for granted). They're too damn old to still be trying to fit into a social scene! Where's the independence? Let's be real, most hipsters are long past the age where they're considered "cool," but they fail to understand that. If anything, it's a collective group that refuses to accept their aging despite the thinning hair, wrinkling skin from years of bad habits, fading tattoos, increasingly questionable piercings, etc. Gen Y is not aging gracefully to say the least...

 

I occasionally "date" 20-year-old girls (though of course there is no date involved haha), and the stuff they say about older hipsters they see is downright hilarious. The next generation can see through this crap. They're equally crazy and certainly addicted to technology too, but they at least have better fashion and sexual sense! Actually, now that i think about it, the reason I usually only hook up with girls at least five years younger than me is because they're not hipsters. I'd be open to leaning in with someone my own age (there are hot 29-year-old girls too, especially in California), but I have no tolerance for hipster games. Most people my age in San Francisco are hipsters. It's the younger ones who are bucking these trends.

 

To be honest, in my city, it's normal to see hipsters pushing 40...this is like a lost generation similar to Japan's herbivore men. Here's hoping the backlash in the next generation is huge...lamestream Gen Y culture (which is all hipsterdom is in some cities) is probably going to be ridiculed for the next couple of generations, similar to how people ridiculed Baby Boomer hippies. I think there is going to be a collective, "What the hell was I thinking?" And sadly, given the rapidly declining birth rate among white people, most hipsters aren't even going to get the chance to tell their kids about their mistakes...

 

At least Boomers got to tell us, "Yeah I had a hippie phase. Huge mistake. I decided to quit doing drugs, get a good job, buy a house, and live a better life." That narrative won't exist for most of the Gen Y hipsters, especially the unfortunate hipsters who aren't in economic hotbeds like San Francisco and Austin...

 

I think a lot of the refusal of this trend to die is rooted in the economic conditions of the United States today. People are getting stuck in their personal lives, and that is carrying over into getting stuck in their fashion and lifestyle choices.

Yeah Calvin when I was a kid I was very conscious that older people could see straight through whatever games people my age were playing with each other.  I was also very conscious that photographs could out you as having been a nerd or something other than what you presented yourself at the present.  That's why I to some extent shied away from being in photographs and to this day get tense when I see people lining up for a phony group photo. 

 

I agree that despite all the cliches LA really does have the energy and the incredible mix of people that is unique in the United States.  New York had this but it wasn't so laid back, and it wasn't open to everyone to the same extent.  Despite being where TV and movies come from, in LA there's an expectation that you go outside and pursue interesting stuff.  It can be doing custom cars or motorcycles, extreme sports, art or music or whatever.  It just seems like there doing something that would be considered odd in Ohio is respected.  Maybe you are only respected at a distance, but you don't have sit there and defend why you want to ride a bicycle down the coast or why you like to go take photos in the mountains. 

In most of Ohio you're supposed to work a lot, get married, have kids and watch a lot of TV. Hobbies are considered unstable activities that distract from the prime directives in the previous sentence until your kids hit 16 or so. People in California don't let the Ohio things grind them to a halt. They're better at multitasking. It's like in Ohio people think kids aren't allowed to see you have fun.

Nobody under 30 right now has a peer who is a born entertainer.

 

Come to the Hipster thread for the great 90's throwback youtube clips, stay for the hyperbolic generalizations about kids today.

 

We're getting old here, clearly.

 

True, but honestly at 29, I am square in the hipster age group of my city. The kids in college today seem less hipster to me, which is clearly an encouraging trend. I just have far more life experience (no sheltering, bad childhood, exposed to violence, rags to middle class, etc.) than the average coastal hipster so I can already see the regrets some of these "kids" are going to have by worrying so much about their image long after they've graduated from college. They're going to regret holding onto their adolescence for too long and fighting growing up. I have the opposite attitude. The faster you can build some stability in your life, the better. I think that's a result of coming from an unstable place. The elite hipsters in insanely expensive SF apartments rarely understand this (at least partially because they've taken stability for granted). They're too damn old to still be trying to fit into a social scene! Where's the independence? Let's be real, most hipsters are long past the age where they're considered "cool," but they fail to understand that. If anything, it's a collective group that refuses to accept their aging despite the thinning hair, wrinkling skin from years of bad habits, fading tattoos, increasingly questionable piercings, etc. Gen Y is not aging gracefully to say the least...

 

I occasionally "date" 20-year-old girls (though of course there is no date involved haha), and the stuff they say about older hipsters they see is downright hilarious. The next generation can see through this crap. They're equally crazy and certainly addicted to technology too, but they at least have better fashion and sexual sense! Actually, now that i think about it, the reason I usually only hook up with girls at least five years younger than me is because they're not hipsters. I'd be open to leaning in with someone my own age (there are hot 29-year-old girls too, especially in California), but I have no tolerance for hipster games. Most people my age in San Francisco are hipsters. It's the younger ones who are bucking these trends.

 

To be honest, in my city, it's normal to see hipsters pushing 40...this is like a lost generation similar to Japan's herbivore men. Here's hoping the backlash in the next generation is huge...lamestream Gen Y culture (which is all hipsterdom is in some cities) is probably going to be ridiculed for the next couple of generations, similar to how people ridiculed Baby Boomer hippies. I think there is going to be a collective, "What the hell was I thinking?" And sadly, given the rapidly declining birth rate among white people, most hipsters aren't even going to get the chance to tell their kids about their mistakes...

 

At least Boomers got to tell us, "Yeah I had a hippie phase. Huge mistake. I decided to quit doing drugs, get a good job, buy a house, and live a better life." That narrative won't exist for most of the Gen Y hipsters, especially the unfortunate hipsters who aren't in economic hotbeds like San Francisco and Austin...

 

I think a lot of the refusal of this trend to die is rooted in the economic conditions of the United States today. People are getting stuck in their personal lives, and that is carrying over into getting stuck in their fashion and lifestyle choices.

 

As I joke about having “spent three decades in my twenties”, I’m kind of the opposite.  But I’ve also more or less kept up, and have even been ahead of certain trends (especially texting instead of talking). I also cheated in a major way once I hit my late 30s, due to the job I have.

 

A few people can get away with it without looking dumb.  It’s an order of magnitude harder if you’ve been a full grownup for a few years.  The worst thing you can do, like the old hipsters are doing, is act/dress/do things like you did at the age you are trying to be.

 

P.J. O’Rourke used to make fun of neo-hippies at 80s era antiwar protests on the same grounds.

 

So, when you enter "The Breeders" into youtube, you get a bunch of horse mating videos. 

 

 

thats hilarious. i'm working on two band names right now. and it's all about seo - search engine optimization lol. also, i read an onion article proving that all good band names are officially taken.

 

Wouldn't the old tactic of intentional misspelling work for search engines?

 

Perhaps, but a new fan, say someone just hearing the name after listening on the radio wouldn't be aware of that. And they could type in "the beetles" or "birds" rather than "the beatles" or "byrds."

Was hanging with a good friend all day yesterday. We went to the Root Cafe in Lakewood. He's a hopelessly dated old man from Parma whose sense of style peaked around the John Cougar era. This friend was extremely leery of getting "hipster coffee." So he told the barista to get him a coffee that was the most like Folgers. You shoulda saw the look on this poor kids face, and mine for that matter. Who says this?

 

Anyhow my Parma friend proceeds to tell me that Lakewood is being overrun by hipsters. I think to him, everyone that doesn't have super loose fitting acid washed jeans is a hipster.

 

I told him that Lakewood was a pretty good cross section of Every person, and that it was unlikely that any one class of persons could "take over" the city. Maybe there was a goth epidemic in the 90's but I think that was everywhere.

 

Well the barista heard us talking about hipsters, and he said he also thought Lakewood was being overrun by hipsters. Now of course, he was what most people probably would consider to be an encyclopedic example under the term "hipster."

 

His evidence for this hipster takeover was that every place in Lakewood was turning toward the trend in craft beer; and to further this point he said there was a new "Beer Dungeon" that had just opened a few doors down. Only the problem for me was that I thought he kept saying "Beard Dungeon." I told him "I just had a beard." And the conversation went on like this Three's Company style...for about five minutes.  I was so entranced in this idea of a subterranean bar where you needed a beard just to get inside the place.

 

If your town boasts a beard dungeon, there's no way around it; you are the next Williamsburg.

This Bud's for him!

As time goes on, it's less and less clear to me what people even mean when they say the word "hipster."

 

And which hipster stereotype are we going with -- hipsters drink PBR or hipsters drink craft beer?

As time goes on, it's less and less clear to me what people even mean when they say the word "hipster."

 

And which hipster stereotype are we going with -- hipsters drink PBR or hipsters drink craft beer?

 

Exactly. People just use the word to describe people with several traits they don't like. That is why everyone hates hipsters. They know they're supposed to hate them, but an actual definition is elusive, so they just select from a grab-bag of things they don't like and that's a hipster.

 

Hipster is dead and the continued use of the term says more about the people who hate them than people who were part of the movement when it was actually a thing some 10 years ago. It's just replaced the word "alternative" which was a catch-all in the '80s/'90s that never really meant anything in particular (unlike "punk" or "grunge" which were distinct). But with the added "I know I'm supposed to hate 'em" bit.

As time goes on, it's less and less clear to me what people even mean when they say the word "hipster."

 

And which hipster stereotype are we going with -- hipsters drink PBR or hipsters drink craft beer?

 

As long as it's not those who drink 4 or 5 craft beers, and then switch to PBR as a cost savings measure once their palette becomes satiated, because I fall into that category.

"Hipster coffee" is certainly real. In San Francisco, it's any status-oriented coffee (Blue Bottle, Sight Glass, etc.). Hipster coffee is about the people inside the coffee shop, not the coffee itself. Those places have damn good coffee though- I go there with clients despite the fact I'm the only middle class person in there some days. I like one of the girls at Blue Bottle and she hooks me up. I'll support any business with good service or good quality. But like most rational people, I have price limits.

 

Starbucks, Seattle's Best, and Peet's are the antichrists of hipster coffee. I go there most of the time and hipsters aren't caught dead in there. I sometimes hang out there just to be around normal people and tourists. In San Francisco, putting "hipster" on anything just means it's expensive and image-oriented (designed for social media bragging). What the hipster spots in SF do is good social media branding.

 

In San Francisco, $4 toast is called hipster toast:

 

http://www.chow.com/food-news/145243/san-franciscos-4-toast-goes-soft/

http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/21/4-toast-why-the-tech-industry-is-ruining-san-francisco/

 

This hipster stuff is of course old hat, but it all basically comes down to the fact that hipsters are refusing to evolve in San Francisco and the prices they pay for housing and all other goods are beyond insane. It is pushing out minorities and natives (let's be real, hipster culture is white culture). Few cities are more "us versus them" due to the insane prices of the place.

 

Valencia Street has always been the heart and soul of hipster San Francisco:

 

http://sfist.com/2014/02/04/shake_your_fist_at_this_2br_apartme.php

http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/

 

Hipsters districts in my town fall under the "playgrounds for the very rich" or "Elysiums." San Francisco is unique in that so much of its wealth is in the hands of young people. Our hipsters have nothing in common with Ohio hipsters other than the similar fashion and style. Many of the Ohio hipsters are dead broke. It's not Elysium like San Francisco. Ohio is the area back down on earth.

 

Anyone saying hipsters are dead doesn't live and work in San Francisco and New York. Hipsters are practically dead in some places (Toledo, Buffalo, Rochester), and they're dying in others (Seattle, Los Angeles), but they still dominate culture in a lot of cities (San Francisco, Portland, Austin, Salt Lake City, etc.). In those cities, they're bigger than ever and they refuse to adapt to new trends and styles. It's totally stuck in the last decade. It's dated, but not even close to dead. There is something frustrating about seeing people dress the exact same way for 20 years, but not in a classic style. When I see hipsters now, my first reaction is, "That 20-year-old model I was hooking up with was right- you guys are aging terribly. Grow up."

 

We should have been done with this hipster crap a long time ago in America, but this is one fad with endless legs. I don't think there have ever been any trends that lasted this long (at least in my lifetime). The hipster trends are old and dated, and they are wholly unsexy. Hippies died quick. Grunge died quick. Tech vests died quick. Goths died quick. Boy bands died quick. Nu metal died quick. Baggy jeans died quick. Overalls died quick. Jorts died quick. Popped collars died quick. Short sorority skirts died quick (bring those back!). Cleavage died quick. High heels died quick (in San Francisco, but bring those back!). Outkast died quick (bring that back!). Muscle shirts died quick. Ed Hardy died quick. Etc., etc., 

 

Hipsters in coastal Elysiums just aren't changing at all. I ran into an old hipster friend I hadn't seen in San Francisco for three years. She was dressed exactly the same. She clearly was showing signs of aging, but her style was rooted in mid-2000's hipster college grad. She is going to be 32, single, and living with five roommates in San Francisco's Mission District. It got me thinking. Screw that!

 

I think this is morphing into, "why are hipsters refusing to grow up?" What is all this fear of adulthood? If anything, these are the people who really do have the money to buy a house. They're choosing to pay more money in rent because they like the lifestyle. These aren't spring chickens. These are people in their late 20's and early 30's still drinking and smoking weed like they're in college. Their lifestyle essentially hasn't changed in a decade. While some people still look great in their 30's, most aren't going to pass as someone in their early 20's...

I refuse to accept the premise that anyone who likes better beer or coffee is automatically a "hipster" because of it.

^They're not. What would make one a hipster is snap chatting pictures of the coffee or posting to social media, haha. "I'm at Blue Bottle, bitch! Had to wait 30 minutes. #onepercenterproblems." It's the attitude behind the coffee drinker, not the coffee itself. :wink:

 

I drink Tecate (the hipster beer of San Francisco), but I'm not a hipster. I'm not about to have that stuff in my Tinder profile or brag about it on Twitter. "In the Mission and just got a Tecate tallboy!!! OMG, San Francisco!! #hipsterfresh."

 

*My favorite is a girl on social media who does tech start-up marketing. She's a hot sorority girl with no idea how to code, but she's lethal. She's one of the most successful people I've met. She tried to hook up with me once, but was too sloppy for my tastes (and smokes like a chimney). Though in retrospect, I should have gone for it! I think she became a hipster for business reasons. "Just got some neon wayfarers and pounding tallboys in the Mish." I suspect it's all an act to land clients! Her entire social media feed reads like a dictionary of all mainstream tech and hipster terms.

 

#disrupttecate, #innovatebottomlessmimosas, #makersbrunch, #skinnyjeanshackathon, #onepercenterproblems

To further hammer home the point that LA hipsters have contributed more to the arts than other hipsters in America, we go back to the glorious mid-2000's when Silver Lake's rock scene was starting to explode. I remember being with some hipsterish friends from OU when this band came out, and we all had the same reaction, "Holy Franzia bag, these guys kick ass!" Unlike hipster district bands in many other cities, Silversun Pickups are still doing the damn thing. The Mission District, Temescal, and Williamsburg haven't produced a single band this good, nor one as good as Best Coast or Dum Dum Girls. LA > NY > SF. The thing about LA bands is that they're good live. You don't make it in Los Angeles unless you have talent (alright, I'm going overboard there, but if you don't have the chops, you do have to have the connections and be easy to work with). That's what's really missing from other cities right now. We've lost a lot of our arts. People hoped hipster districts would revive this, but they didn't. In the Bay Area, hipsters even had the opposite effect, crushing/evicting artists. Somehow, Los Angeles largely avoided this and still is a hub for musicians, filmmakers, painters, sculptors, fine art photographers, fashion designers, etc. That article Moby wrote about his move to LA had some truth to it.

 

 

*But I'm also giving credit to some acts coming out of Seattle and Detroit (Danny Brown alone). I think those are the second best hipster scenes after the one in Los Angeles. Detroit is clearly the place to be watching (and always has been). They've always had an excellent DIY hip-hop scene (Dilla, Black Milk, Guilty Simpson, Slum Village, etc.), and they've scored a lot of mainstream hits too.

 

I was talking with a veteran film producer and writer in Los Angeles recently, and he had the best quote I've heard in a while:

 

"If I were your age, Detroit is the only place to be. I'm amazed your generation isn't bum rushing that city. The culture, diversity, and energy there is real and it's going to recover someday. I went there for the first time, and felt something big is about to happen in Detroit. I grew up in San Francisco and that feeling is gone now. No normal person can live there, which is why I left. Los Angeles still has some of it, but the next big cultural movement will come out of Detroit."

 

This dude had lived in California his whole life, and had zero connection to the Rust Belt...

Maybe hipsters around the world will start ironically buying empty lots in Detroit.  Then debate who has the better lot. 

Someone could be the new Johnny Appleseed and roam Detroit planting apple trees. 

trustfund shaker heights hipster opens cowboy b&b in williamsburg:

 

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/05/urban-cowboy-williamsburg-hipster-bed-breakfast.html

 

he should come home and do that in midtown cle.

^How terribly boring. 

 

You know in Cincinnati we had the El Rancho Rankin, which was bulldozed in the late 90s for a strip mall, and of course the Wildwood Inn:

http://www.hojoflorenceky.com/photos.htm

 

Urban Cowboy?  Are Sissy and Bud on the staff?  If there is an attacjed retaraunt or bar, he should call it The Electric Horseman

I just finished watching this.

 

Really an outstanding short film, I sympathized with all of the riders and really clicked with their philosophical remarks about bicycling, especially the thought of being an "outlaw".  I remember as a kid emulating the biker gangs we saw, purposefully riding our bikes out in the busiest streets in our area and even biking onto the interstate in search of the maximum conflict with cars.  Also growing up in Cincinnati we got to climb and bomb huge hills.  I remember going down 15% grade hills with no hands on the handlebars, then pushing it a step further by purposely riding over the manhole covers, tempting a massive wipeout.  In this film you see NYC before any bicycle lanes and before the whole place was overrun by yuppies who refuse to bike outside a bike lane. 

 

So since the early 2000s we've seen the rise of the preposterous bicycle hipster, who in his endless spare time took most of his bicycle and style cues from these NYC bike messengers (perhaps only from this film and others like it, since the hipster might not have ever visited NYC).  As you can see in the film the messengers were eccentric and incredibly intense people.  They had no intention to create a fashion trend, they were happy to be separate.  Enter the hipster, who rode his bike less in a month than these guys did in a single hour, and turned it all around on you if you called him out on it.

 

 

 

 

Here is an impressive bombing of the Monastery St. hill at 9:30:

 

This guy blows through the Kilgour St. intersection and over a pretty nasty expansion joint without incident.  The crazy thing about the spandex road bikers (and of course the hipster bike guys) in Cincinnati is that many of them have *never* climbed or bombed any of the big hills.  They get all Lanced-up and then just stick to Eastern Ave., Spring Grove, and the bike trail. 

Young people now probably can't realize the extent to which the people raised in the post-Vietnam era were constantly told about the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, Woodstock, space race, etc.  If you were a kid in the 80s or 90s you looked around and there was nothing like that going on.  I think a lot of people with curious minds (vs. jocks whose only thoughts were to side with whichever side of an issue they predicted would win) were at once nostalgic and jealous of the highs and lows of the previous generation. That anxiety that their time was "boring" is part of what motivated the neo-beatnik stuff you saw in the 90s which devolved in the 2000s into the full-blown hipster phenomenon. 

 

This would also describe us 1970s people (the people who went to Jr hgh/middle school & high school in the 1970s).  The 1960s was the time that came before, more a childhood memory but then something that really informed the culture of the 1970s....the world of our older brothers and sisters or the world of the people who later became first-wave yuppies.  But 1960s afterglow to the point of becoming lamestream & tired, which begat Punk Rock  (AKA "death to hippies!").  Not so much neo-beatnik, not yet for my age group (tho we read the Beats). 

 

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=27586.560#ixzz32Ii3T3f0

So since the early 2000s we've seen the rise of the preposterous bicycle hipster, who in his endless spare time took most of his bicycle and style cues from these NYC bike messengers

 

Fixies, or fenders?  The messenger thing was the parent of the fixie fad, yeah, I can see that.....but I think this larger"urban cycling" trend is hipster-driven.  And this is bikes with fenders, etc.  Not so much fixies.  Stuff like retro Dutch bikes, Boda-Boda cargo bikes, "Momentum Magazine' (which is Etsy meets Cycle meets Hipster chic)etc.   

 

You really see this bigtime in Louisville, which has totally glommed onto urban (AKA hipster fad following) cycling (tho the city has cr@p cycling infrastructure)..why they even have a cyclovia event!  How cool is that!  (j/k)

 

Now here in pragmatic Dayton urban cycling is a bike you get at Don's pawn shop, usually some used hybrid or bmx, and sort of a ghetto/briar thing, whith a  few odd coots like me around who sort of fit between the hipster/briar thing (the old eccentric guy with the long white beard, basket in front, milk crate tied off in back, with a US flag wired on for good meaure...you get the picture). 

 

The hipster "fixie or fender" urban cycling thing hasnt really caught on in the Miami Valley (like lattes and cappuccions havn't really caught on)....yeah there are a few....but you do see a heckalota roadies and recreational riders out on the bike trails....and occasionally on the roads, too.  I play in that pool as well, as a Sunday Driver cyclist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was in Chicago this weekend and saw a 26~ year-old hipster riding one of those cargo bikes with a big scoop on the front like a wheel barrow, but instead of groceries or maybe a potted plant he was hauling around a 1960's vintage drill press.  Like a real drill press you'd see in a machining shop...WAY bigger than something even your high school shop had. 

 

I don't see much stuff that ridiculous going on in Cincinnati, but my sense is that the bandwagon bicycle stuff will never reach the same level here because of the hills.  Neither the fixie or antique fender bikes are particularly practical here. 

 

Young people now probably can't realize the extent to which the people raised in the post-Vietnam era were constantly told about the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, Woodstock, space race, etc.  If you were a kid in the 80s or 90s you looked around and there was nothing like that going on.  I think a lot of people with curious minds (vs. jocks whose only thoughts were to side with whichever side of an issue they predicted would win) were at once nostalgic and jealous of the highs and lows of the previous generation. That anxiety that their time was "boring" is part of what motivated the neo-beatnik stuff you saw in the 90s which devolved in the 2000s into the full-blown hipster phenomenon. 

 

This would also describe us 1970s people (the people who went to Jr hgh/middle school & high school in the 1970s).  The 1960s was the time that came before, more a childhood memory but then something that really informed the culture of the 1970s....the world of our older brothers and sisters or the world of the people who later became first-wave yuppies.  But 1960s afterglow to the point of becoming lamestream & tired, which begat Punk Rock  (AKA "death to hippies!").  Not so much neo-beatnik, not yet for my age group (tho we read the Beats). 

 

I would maintain that most generations take their political cues from the activists among them, and for those of us born during the sixties, we came of age during a time when big-government “liberalism “was falling on its face and this was clear to those of us paying attention and seeing stagflation at home and an ascendant Soviet Union abroad. In this area,  even our elders were getting really uncomfortable with the latter due to their ethnic roots.  Our first defining event was more Watergate than Vietnam, and this was a tactical victory and a massive strategic defeat for the moderate left.  It was government that was mistrusted, not the Republicans.  This, plus an ineffectual Democratic President perceived as honest to a fault, set the stage for Reagan. 

 

The effectiveness of his policies and actions sealed it, and at least as far ahead as 2000 we were easily the most Republican voting demographic, especially our white voters (not just males).  Plus, those jocks weren’t just following the winner this time.  They (we, sort of) were even more aware of traditional male role models than today.  Carter didn’t fit the bill at all.  Reagan most certainly did.

 

Culturally, yes we read the Beats.  We also read Heinlein and Rand.  We didn’t see a contradiction between them, especially if you include Thompson and doubly especially if you let O’Rourke’s take on one of his close friends (which Hunter increasingly allowed to stick) have an impact.  This was influencing the influential, not the masses, but that always happens and it influenced the culture.  The only counter-influence potentially strong enough was the government, and Reagan emphatically blocked that.  So the American (and hence the global) culture became a lot crasser and a lot less pro-left during the 80s.  The actual “cultural elite”, still largely left leaning, wasn’t able to counter than until the early to mid 90s and it required that they jettison a lot of their pre-existing respect for freedom of speech and conscience.  It also dictated a much less individualistic culture, hence the “hipsters”.

 

^ You forgot about Scott Greenberg.

 

What was so individualistic about metal heads or any other GenX subculture?

 

^ You forgot about Scott Greenberg.

 

What was so individualistic about metal heads or any other GenX subculture?

 

That was pretty damn funny. 

Hipsters, eat your heart out...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6l0Co3EE6k

 

Part 2 of this film is pretty amazing.  At 3:05 completely unironically playing a live gig in a boxing ring.  Take that, Brooklyn Bowl. 

During War Pigs Ozzy just got to sing whatever since the record wasn't out yet and people were feeling it, mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. Those aren't the demo lyrics either.

 

I bet hipsters like this though:

 

Whoa.

I just watched it a second time but still don't have it fully processed.

That lady is way scarier than Ozzy ever was.

I just watched it a second time but still don't have it fully processed.

 

It does take quite a few views. That's one of the first things I ever saw on Youtube. It made me realize the site's potential.

White people, dogs....hipsters...