The Definitive Essay on Hipsters or How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Embrace Being a Vintage-Head Who Likes Certain Yuppies

So for a long time I really liked the hipsters. I really did. The music they flock to is pretty much the bread and butter of this blog, and the girls are cute. But I've recently had to directly interact with a couple of them and it's not a pleasant experience. They are incapable of communicating. The notion of socializing seems to freak them out. And they are absolutely, as a rule, unfriendly, if only because they don't expect to have to communicate. An out of town pal of mine took his virginal daylight walk down Bedford Ave around N 7th this past June and he asked, "is this some kind of weird social experiment?" Another friend of mine - one who lives among them and the native Poles in Greenpoint - pointed out that these were the kids who were the freaks and losers in suburbia and that rather than make the effort to be better at communication and general socializing like us urbanite freaks and losers, they chose to crowd around each other, develop a needlessly overworked fashion style in order to stand out, and then devolve into vacuous ninnies.

What kills me is the years-long cool factor of eye glasses and vintage clothing. It made me think they're all a bunch of nerds. They're not! They're too stupid to be nerds! They just co-opted the look! The idea of a Utopian world of hot, smart people seemed to be at our grasps, only for us to find that it was a facade. Dumb, pretty people just figured out a way to look smart, not be smart.

But what's really triggered my contempt is the rise of the keffiyeh. I became really bothered by this fashion trend of Palestinian resistance scarves for two reasons: 1) the use of scarves in the summer time because it's "cool" and 2) either the blatant association with the imagery or the lack of information in regards to said imagery. It's not a question of whether one agrees with any or all of the dimensions of the Palestinian cause. It's a question of the motivation behind it. How many of these vapid morons have actually taken the time to understand the symbolism and how many of them have given deep thought to the merits and demerits of the cause (see the Che shirt phenomenon)? Though I am by no means an "Israel is right no matter what" kind of fool, I am heartened by the rise of Israeli Defense Force shirts in the scene as the Mideast conflict plays itself out in the hipsterverse. Of course, the fear is that some of these response-wearers are themselves uninformed. But someone had to start wearing it out of substance. They had to. Either way, the fashionistas seem to have broken down into civil war, which is in and of itself maddening as it is fascinating.

A month ago, the Times wrote a piece about the end of McCarren Park Pool as a venue and the fact that the writer could not avoid pointing out the little quirks about these strange people is hilarious. It is one of the best pieces on hipsters I have ever read. In a follow-up, the Times wrote yesterday on the Sonic Youth finale, and they hilariously wrote that a hipster asked to be off the record on how they are deliberate about their look (that's a no-no to admit) but the writer also erroneously described Craig Finn as a hipster (he's not, he's a regular guy with glasses who's too literary and too normal to be a full-on hipster)! So there are a couple of examples of the so-strange-one-can't-be-objective-about-it hipsterverse.

There are those out there who will defend the hipsters as those who keep the Indie and cutting edge music and art scenes alive with their money and their scenester-ism. This is a valid point. And for a long time I would even go so far as to champion the hipsters over the boring yuppies who gentrify everything to the point of excess, leaving New York too expensive for the rest of us. But the yuppies can communicate. The yuppies can have conversations. The yuppies don't like to hoard their culture, they like to sprinkle it around (though they do like to hoard the money, which can be a problem if you're into the whole progressive communal thing). And the yuppies can provide the very funds that the hipsters do. In fact, as the yuppies move into the hipster neighborhoods, they've come to adopt a lot of the hipster look - creating some disturbing test-tube-like hybrids known as the "Yipster".

I am working on a theory to delineate people like me from the hipsters. The working label is "vintage-head". I appreciate the elements behind some of the hipster look. Turning-back-the-fashion-clock is truly the way to go. But one can be a vintage-head without being an anti-social, cliquish, spoiled brat. It is simply an appreciation for the finer things in past lives, to make a new pastiche in the modern world.

At one McCarren show I attended this summer, I met who I thought was the First Nice Hipster. In fact, she turned out to be a yipster (I figured it out because she looked the part of the hipster but had only heard of bands like the Black Lips and the Hold Steady; if she was a true hipster she'd have been well-versed in such matters, and she wouldn't have been talking to random, friendly people in the first place). And because this girl was so nice, and friendly, and social, she smashed the stereotype of the arrogant yuppie for me. And frankly, I've been meeting some very nice yuppies this summer and over the year past. And I get along with them a lot better than I do with the hipsters. So in conclusion, the Love of the Hipsters is Dead. Long Live the Vintage-Heads and Their Friends in the Yuppie/Yipster Community. May we live together in harmony and may we even intermingle and have Vintage-Yuppie/Yipster babies. And may we take back the hot-nerd look. And above all, may we be able to carry on a nice conversation. Take that you lousy hipsters! Now get me my mocha latte! And do it on the quick before I blow my lid and throw my fedora at you, see?!

(Please note the possibility that the "vintage-head" theory may a distraction from the realization that this writer may just be a plain ol' yuppie who likes fedoras and bad 1940's movie talk, and has been rejected and dejected by hipsters, and doesn't want to own up to it. If this turns out to be the case, and the writer is called on it, please see the upcoming essay "Why All Yuppies, Hipsters, Yipsters, and Vintage-Heads Can Rally Together Against the Hated Hippies".)