Aren't we so cool?
Every neighbourhood/suburb/street has them you know the type trendier than cool with their perfect 20/20 eyes encased by thick black frame glasses a la Buddy Holly, weird facial hair, sometimes hatted, skinny jeans,organic coffee/mobile device in one hand, novel in the other, vintage boots/ pointy curled shoes pounding the pavement. Ah yes, folks it's the much-maligned hipster, the single one thing that has bugged the shit out of me since I've been in Melbourne. You don't have to search long and hard to find them (it's no game of Where's Wally).
Insiderguides.com.au hits the nail on the head with its description of a Melbourne hipster - 'It’s a sunny autumn afternoon and you’re walking down, say, Brunswick St in Melbourne. A tram stops nearby and a couple people disembark – two guys and a girl, all aged in their twenties. The two guys are dressed very similarly: both wear very tight black jeans; long, slightly curled shoes; and shirts buttoned up to their throats. The girl is wearing a vintage-looking dress, very red lipstick and her hair is cut short with a severe fringe (bangs).'
We've all been there double glancing to see if you can figure out if the men are wearing women's pants.
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Today, hipsters are famous for embracing all things independent and alternative while shunning mainstream culture. The natural habitat of the contemporary hipster is an inner-city organic cafe, a vintage second-hand store or an indie music venue.
Now I can't put truly my finger on what about these people annoys me so much, you could say it's irrational hatred for something I don't understand, maybe it's the early onset of my grumpy old man days. These people bug me big time. Now I've no problem with someone trying to stand out as a true individual (a task that is nigh on impossible in a world of 7 Billion people), but people being cool just for the sake of it is fucking annoying.
To me these people are trying too hard, just who are they trying to please themselves? their peers?. I've often being served by a bartender who seems more concerned on how their looking/being perceived at that very moment than actually concentrating on the procedure that is serving a pleb like me drink.
How to spot your local hipster -
A quick browse of the interweb shows me I'm not alone in my dislike of these people, it seems the get their fair share of abuse on the other side of the pond. In a Huffington Post article entitled ''Who's Hipster?", the journalist Julia Previn argues the 'definition of hipster' remains opaque to anyone outside this self-proclaiming, highly selective circle. She claims that the "whole point of hipsters is that they avoid labels and being labelled. However, they all dress the same and act the same in their non-conformity to an iconic carefully created look."
Dan Fletcher Time magazine - "Hipsters manage to attract a loathing unique in its intensity. Critics have described the loosely defined group as smug, full of contradictions and, ultimately the dead end of western civilization."
To me they seem like pretentious snobs, stuck in their own self-absorbed world. Just because they wear expensive 'alternative' clothing, go to the latest coolest underground (alleyway in Melbourne's case) bar, listen to the coolest hippest bands, go to the cool fringe festivals before they became mainstream, doesn't make them better than the average Joe. My girlfriend tells me not to pay attention to them, but it's hard. By acknowledging them and ranting about them, I'm feeding them power. They want to be noticed, they want to be the coolest, damn this modern self-absorbed world. I think I'll take a stroll down Brunswick to calm myself down.
PS: Re an earlier rant it's still fucking weird seeing grown men (40+) playing role playing games in the library
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