Recently I was standing in line to get into
DC Brau with a bunch of hipsters. A friend of mine, who is slightly older than Your Esteemed Author (and Gen-Xer), asked just what is a hipster - and wondered if I was one (no, I'm not). I gave it some thought. My reply:
A sub-species of the Americano, the hipster is an urban creature, the city-living, bicycle riding Millennial offspring of Baby Boomers. While there are hipsters of every color, they are predominantly white. And they aren't particularly religious. They've been brought up to see the world as possibility, and so they tend to see the glass as three-quarters full, though what separates them from their Boomer parents is a noted lack of materialism and self-absorption that their parents learned growing up in the years o' plenty after World War II.
How can you identify the hipster among all the other Americanos? He is young, having barely passed his third decade in this world. He may have quirky facial hair and clunky, big-framed nerd glasses. She has tattoos - plural (one just isn't enough, as there are so many life occasions to celebrate with ink, starting with the third grade graduation ceremony where everyone got a blue ribbon just for showing up). The hipster wears his pants low, giving him an unattractive flat ass (it's the only bad thing I have to say about the generation, and it's rather superficial. But please! Young men of America! Please pull your flat-assed pants up. They really, truly look terrible. I'm not saying that to be mean - I'm saying that because we all want to appreciate your best asset).
You can never tell if a hipster is gay or straight. You just have to ask. Don't be surprised if the answer is: both.
The hipster has a finely tuned sense of irony. With his quirky beard, the male of the species will sometimes dress like a lumberjack, even though he lives in a tiny apartment or group house and has no wheels to get out of the urban forest. His gardening tool of choice is an iPad. The hipster drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) for the sheer irony: she knows it's terrible beer, but this is about making a self-aware statement among hipster peers ("Hey look at me! I'm drinking shitty beer and I know it! I'm being ironic!"). Some even say that hipsters have obliterated the meaning of irony.
The hipster is a global citizen. Chances are he or she studied abroad in junior year of college, already has a passport stamped full of entries and visas, and has hiked the four-day Inca Trail.
The hipster is comfortable in any urban setting, and the noisier the better - that's just the buzz of popularity and goodness. When a new restaurant opens up, they swarm like bees, herded by Facebook and texts and Twitter. Hipsters make places hip.
Hipsters flat out do not pay for content. They grew up on the Internet, happily downloading songs for free and getting their news from blogs, Stephen Colbert and John Stewart. If there's an author talk, they'll come but leave empty-handed: why would they buy a book when content is universally expected to be free? (Nevermind that they pay $100 a month for an iPhone.) On the other hand, have you seen the size of their student loan payments? The kiddos will be hobbled with debt for years, decades even. Frugality is a trait that they share with Generation X, but not with their parents.
The hipster rarely owns a car, as he's unconcerned with this basic American status symbol. Instead he often rides a bike to work - not the fancy racing kind (he can't afford those), but the clunky red Capital Bikeshares. They're conscious about race and racial justice, and feel kinda bad about moving into Columbia Heights and Shaw (did you know that the historically black DC neighborhood of Shaw is now majority white, thanks to all the twenty-somethings moving in?), but the rent is so much cheaper than Dupont and Logan Circle, so...uh, yeah, sorry about that. But hey, what neighborhood isn't sorely in need of more yoga studios and frozen yoghurt?
Hipsters have the hubris to believe they really can change the world - and the confidence that they just might (again, they are children of the Baby Boom). They lean left politically and mean well. They have a strong libertarian streak: they're for gay marriage and legalization of pot. The hipster vote will go to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The kids are alright. More than alright. Now please, wear your pants just a little bit higher.
Garrett Peck
