Suffice to say nobody self identifies as a hipster anyway.

I’ve noticed this.  “I hate hipsters!” says the weed-smoking, peyote-chewing, Man-Burning, gauged-eared, craft-beer swilling dude on a fixy.

This VICE mini doco set in Williamsburg could have come straight from Portlandia. Amazing

Is your solution ridicule and foot stomping?

‘From my window, I can see the George Washington Bridge, but there’s a deer in my front yard.’

I am Tyler’s complete lack of surprise.

“The article appeared in today’s Times, and although we were not hippies [sic] by any definition, still we moved to Hastings for the reasons mentioned, including children and schools.  At the time it wasn’t as cute as it is now; in fact the downtown was run down, the VFW was active in their own building there and lots of elderly veterans on the benches, and the waterfront was derelict.  Still there was Hillside park, second rate but improving schools, and a house with a fireplace.  Which I miss.  But we also missed the city and came in often – baby sitters were only 50 cents an hour then.

And I was working lots of hours.

A different era with similar intent.”

Interesting that he read “hipsters” as “hippies”, I guess they were the big bugaboo of the era. I wonder if hippies were always complaining about hippies too.

Clearly, you do not live in Portland.

And people on a particular income can end up in expensive houses if they managed to be catapulted by the real estate boom – which tripled the value of our crappy little condo in a few years, allowing us to buy a decent house in a cheaper market.  Pure unadulterated luck, but I’ll take it and many others have also.

But all the hipster hate – what’s the point?  People are into stuff, they must be posers!  Boo hiss don’t do anything unique or you are only seeking status.  It’s just boring.

It’s because what many people haven’t worked out yet is that ‘hipster’ is really just a modern synonym for ‘young and on-trend’, except used incorrectly as in insult for an extreme stereotype – it’s not widely excepted, like many modern sub-cultures, by name (how many chavs refer to themselves as chavs?). The term is also used very flippantly – a Hipster could be anything from an ironic trust-fund kid to an artisan bike-seat stitcher who makes his living tending a bar (whilst wearing a full beard). I’d even describe Cory as a Hipster. Last he mentioned he even lives in a Hipster part of town.

It’s really no different to people a few decades back pointing and laughing at Beatniks or Mods or Hippies – except that lines are getting a lot blurrier in the youth culture world and we likely only label the extremities.

So sure, we don’t all have handle-bar moustaches and wear Christmas jumpers in June – but then there probably aren’t many people that do that anyway – like there weren’t many hippies in the 70′s that wore head-to-toe tie-die and flowers round their neck. Sure the hipster extremes exist, but they’re not the only people buying fixed-gear bikes and leather satchels.

On the most part the comments surrounding ours just remind me that I’m likely at least 10 years younger than a lot of people around here. Of all the subcultures that could inhabit my town I can’t think of a more harmless one to be honest. It’s like getting annoyed about Hare Krishnas – except ones that open interesting shops and comfy looking eateries.

Incidentally I’m not cool enough to be a hipster – but even if I was I probably wouldn’t know it.

Place was a shit-hole before they arrived.

It’s all relative.