Hipsters

[DaveP]

Last night I started watching "The Punisher" on Netflix.  The main character was called a Hipster in one episode so having heard the term before, but not really understood, I thought I'd better look up what it actually meant.

A quick Google search found this:-

Lots of other images too, but it struck me as Amish crossed with ZZ Top, am I on the right track here?

Then I realised that when I was a kid, there were lots of Beatniks around who looked very similar

If you wait long enough, everything comes around, in this case sixty years!

Do horn-rimmed glasses really make you look educated?

This is a tribal issue I guess. :

DaveP

 

[MagnetoSound]

Lot of working-class resentment towards people like this in areas such as Shoreditch in East London, where they have established themselves as a rather privileged class of youngsters, able to take advantage of the gentrification programme by opening 'stylish' coffee shops and restaurants, supported by trust-fund incomes and the parental safety net.

The stereotypical establishment is the kind of place where you might find your meal served on a piece of wood, or slate, maybe adorned with a dribble of truffle sauce and some hay. Nouveau cuisine taken to ridiculous lengths for trendy USP value.

Many of the long standing pubs and cafes in these areas are closing due to skyrocketing property values. Community is suffering, libraries and smaller businesses are disappearing permanently.

No chip on my shoulder, but I've seen it first hand, and it is rather sad.

 

[JW]

My wife and I got called hipsters when we arrived at a friends party the other day. I was like, "don't you see the nasty ass dread threatening to form in my hair? Can't you see my not-skinny jeans. The correct term for me is dirty hippie you fool, not hipster. I'm not nearly fake ironic enough."

 

[shabtek]

Is it a reverence and persuit of ironic or fake-ironic that is a desirable attribute?

 

[shabtek]

I think the term is losing meaning and is used as a catch all to describe a disdain
For  perceived  attempt at self-expression or style...
They only sell skinny jeans now, so if I avoid replacing my natty jeans what will that make me.

Not sure if bongos matter afaik.

 

[living sounds]

Pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, narcissistic, mostly younger, (upper) middle-class city dwellers.

As far as I know bongos are not a thing, beards definitely are though, preferably with a basecap. Since there is no authoritarian older generation to rebel against and no unterlying political or social goals or even culture uniting them, it is really mostly attention seeking and smugness. Superficial or nonsensical sophistication displayed in the realms of foods, art etc. are an attempt to hide the shallowness behind the entire act IMHO. There also is nothing productive or creative to hipster "culture", just tons and tons of eclecticism, self-absorbtion and lazy materialism.

The worst are the older ones, dads approaching 50 looking like cartoon figures pushing a stroller while visibly basking in their feelings of perceived coolness, showing off how exceptionally modern and progressive they think they are.

I don't have a working class background, but I resent the entire thing. Will stop rambling now.

 

[DaveP]

So you have them in Germany too?

DaveP

 

[sahib]

You guys are jealous.  ;D

 

[MagnetoSound]

Yes, that's definitely what it is ...

You guys are jealous.  ;D

 

[JohnRoberts]

The cat playing his bongos is a beatnik not a hipster...

Hipsters are low rise pants... while they don't all look this good...

Not sure what it is about modern culture that works so hard to divide us up into neat categories.. (actually I think I know, but I'll leave it for you guys to speculate).

JR

 

[Phrazemaster]

I always wanted to know JR what is up with your avatar? It looks like a sad guy in a prison cell.

Not very hipster.

 

[living sounds]

So you have them in Germany too?

DaveP

Berlin may have the highest percentage of hipsters of any city on earth these days.

I frequently visited Berlin up until a few years ago. There were a lot of pretentious people before, but there was also a vibrant, creative scene, a countercultural underground working against an authentic backdrop of old, run-down buildings, covered in grafitti. Really special and unique. Improvised parties, art happenings, crazy stuff.

Now it has become a go-to-destination for the world's upper-class youth, it's mostly a painted-over, well-organized, gentrified, glorified theme park for lifestyle-minded people. Hipsters.

It's a sad (but probably inevitable) development. Nothing to be jealous about.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I always wanted to know JR what is up with your avatar? It looks like a sad guy in a prison cell.

Not very hipster.

I've told the story before but back in the 1960s between dropping out of college, and getting a job I had some time on my hands, so helped my older brother (the smart one) work on his PhD experiments (at MIT).

His major was mechanical engineering and thesis  was about something like "droplet formation of supersaturated steam, in a supersonic nozzle".  Apparently useful information for designing jet engine fuel systems*** (he went on to work at Pratt and Whitney designing land based turbines). His experimental apparatus made a lot of noise due to the supersonic nozzle. You will notice in picture I am wearing hearing protection like they use on airport runways. Because of the noise he had to run his experiments in the middle of the night  to not disrupt other students working in the same lab.

The picture is me standing in front of a bank of manometers, tubes with liquid inside used to measure pressure in and around his supersonic nozzle.  He also fired a laser (relatively exotic for the 60's) into the droplet stream and looked at the diffraction of the light beam caused by droplets to gauge the droplet size. I think I was wearing normal sunglasses (at night) but didn't mess with the laser.

The (polaroid) camera was set up to grab a snapshot reading of the sundry pressures during the experiment. I don't recall why I put my hands up, perhaps because the picture looked even lamer if I didn't.  Probably tried it with my arms down first.  ;D

Coincidentally my brother shared with me that MITIL (MIT Instrumentation Lab) had a job opening for an electro-mechanical technician . I applied and got the job... The electro-mechanical gig pretty quickly turned into pure electronics (first job was working on a DC-DC switching power supply) and got me started down this path 50 years ago.  While I had melted solder as kid messing with radio and hifi.

JR

**** droplet size affects efficiency and size of soot particles formed... Jet engine designers invest great effort into making jet exhaust appear transparent, even while pumping a bunch of carbon into the atmosphere. Smaller soot particles are not very visible.

 

[rock soderstrom]

Berlin may have the highest percentage of hipsters of any city on earth these days.

I frequently visited Berlin up until a few years ago. There were a lot of pretentious people before, but there was also a vibrant, creative scene, a countercultural underground working against an authentic backdrop of old, run-down buildings, covered in grafitti. Really special and unique. Improvised parties, art happenings, crazy stuff.

Now it has become a go-to-destination for the world's upper-class youth, it's mostly a painted-over, well-organized, gentrified, glorified theme park for lifestyle-minded people. Hipsters.

It's a sad (but probably inevitable) development. Nothing to be jealous about.

+1

 

[user 37518]

Im just praying for the fad to die out, it seems that it lasted long enough!

 

[Matador]

Hipsters are low rise pants... while they don't all look this good...

This may be the first post I've read from you in the Brewery that I 100% agree with.  8)

 

[Scodiddly]

There have always been annoying younger people.

Thinking back honestly, I was one too. Shitty and unmotivated and everything.

 

[dirtyhanfri]

Last night I started watching "The Punisher"

Great show. I loved the character in the comics since I was a child. And Netflix didn’t disappoint me, for me, the best Marvel series with Daredevil.

I don’t really enjoy blonde, strong and clean super heros. Punisher itself doesn’t have any other power than the angry forced by people f*cking his whole life.

Sorry for the off topic, I just loved the show and wanted to talk about it.

About hipsters, in Madrid we have tons of them, the messed up one of the most emblematic neiborhoods in Madrid downtown, where all cultural movement in the late 70’s-80’s was.

Where you could find a small and original clothing shop, or even a records shop, now it’s place for a Vegan Shushi restaurant, an Organic Cupcake store, a cereal serving restaurant, you name it.

It’s sad seeing how classic neighborhoods in the big cities turns to theme parks in a few years.

 

[Timjag]

Here's a great track about hipsters


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lVmmYMwFj1I

 

[sahib]

I am certainly not a hipster, if there is actually such a thing.  I don't think that any of these "stereotyped" guys/girls  classify themselves as one.  But, for a guy if we are talking about a one with long beard and sun glasses, let me tell you this. I have been seeing this this guy for taking his daughter to school every morning for a couple of years now, as I take my son to his school, and he is as cool as f***. Good on him. Credits should be given where due.

About hipsters, in Madrid we have tons of them, the messed up one of the most emblematic neiborhoods in Madrid downtown, where all cultural movement in the late 70’s-80’s was.

Where you could find a small and original clothing shop, or even a records shop, now it’s place for a Vegan Shushi restaurant, an Organic Cupcake store, a cereal serving restaurant, you name it.

The reality is that those today's "organic" shops are what the small clothes or record shops used to be , and I can't see how the extinction of '70s  shops can be blamed on the "hipsters" of today.  Obviously if people supported the second hand clothes and vinyl record shops with their business as much as the hipsters support their own organic shops  then we would be seeing them side by side today. However, I'd rather see vegan sushi restaurants and cupcake caffees than the banks and estate agents.