Stuff Hipsters Hate (16 page)
Read Stuff Hipsters Hate Online
Authors: Brenna Ehrlich,Andrea Bartz
Everyone wants a pillow-top king, right? Wrong. Although the majority of hipsters probably grew up lolling around on a canopy bed in a sea of stuffed bears and turtles (desperately asking God why, at 16 years old, they still have not had their first kiss), when they strike out on their own the lack of a “real” bed becomes a rite of passage. Be it someone else’s couch, an air mattress or a frame-free twin haunted by spirits from the great beyond, a fucked-up bed is far preferable to anything Sleepy’s can offer.
Bonus:
If you have a shitty enough sleeping arrangement (i.e., your “wall” is a sheet and your “room” can only be accessed by a ladder) your current lover will either A) beat a hasty retreat and thereby avoid the dreaded awkward brunch, or B) invite you back to her place and feed you. Score.
Bonus:
If you have a shitty enough sleeping arrangement (i.e., your “wall” is a sheet and your “room” can only be accessed by a ladder) your current lover will either A) beat a hasty retreat and thereby avoid the dreaded awkward brunch, or B) invite you back to her place and feed you. Score.
CHAPTER 7
MONEY AND WORK
[CASE STUDY]Milo K. grew up in a small town just outside of Chicago, Illinois, and from ages six to ten he harbored a serious desire to become a Boxcar Child, i.e., to rough it with his brothers and sisters, cooking potatoes over an open fire and then seasoning them with salt and butter. By age 12, Milo realized that this was not a feasible desire (not for lack of abandoned boxcars, but for lack of siblings), and decided that he wanted to be a bassist in a rock band, much like his idol du jour, John Taylor of Duran Duran. Milo’s parents, an environmental lawyer and a cardiologist, told him to “follow his dreams” (since they could not, having been reared by first-generation Russian-Americans who fought in WWII, subsisted on cabbage and never properly learned to speak English). Consequently, they provided him with the requisite lessons, garage in which to practice and ’76 Gibson Grabber.“Following his dreams” resulted in Milo dropping out of art school at the halfway point because the student body comprised “a bunch of fucking preening bullshitters who don’t get music.” He moved to a loft in Bushwick where his room consists of a broken, sagging futon, got a job at a brunch spot on the Upper East Side where he begrudgingly serves mimosas to ladies in Chanel, and now saves up his tips to pay for studio space. His band is currently unsigned, but his boss at the restaurant keeps telling him he’s got serious potential to someday manage the joint. Milo currently subsists on Cup Noodles and feeds his growing alcoholism by befriending bartenders. He shuns “nine-to-fivers” and summarily dismisses any friends who return to school in order to gain the training required to have a “real career.” “Fuck careers,” he says. “I’m way fucking smarter than any of those assholes. I’ve read
Ulysses
.”
When encountering Brooklyn’s service industry, it is important to note that none of those hardworking hipsters are actually baristas, bartenders or waitresses. No. They are artists. Serving you whiskey/ lattes/eggs is just a boring task they deign to perform until their music/painting/writing career takes off. They will follow their paint-splattered dreams by any means necessary, even if that means holding down a job that requires no education whatsoever.
While the denizens of Wall Street and the like aspire to a secure future complete with a loving spouse, romping children and HDTVs with 3D functionality adorning their walls (testaments to their burgeoning wealth), a hipster merely aspires to be “fulfilled.” And if that means working at a hipster-douche bar filled with cracked-out NYU students until 6 a.m. every night, then so be it.
Indeed, hipsters are not content to “live and let live”—to accept that we are all on different paths and that some paths culminate in a 401K. Instead, they openly disdain anyone who reeks of being “financially secure” or of “wearing suits.” While hipsters secretly envy those with a steady paycheck (“Hey, I guess if I had the choice, I’d rather not hide from my rent-grubbing landlord while walking my lady out in the a.m. after spending the evening blasting Motown and watching YouTube videos”), they would sooner sell their tortured souls than join those rank ranks. In fact, if you were to tell a hipster that you work at a hedge fund or are on the fast track at a women’s fitness mag, his response would most likely be: “Pfft. Drag, dude.” [See
Figure 8
.]
Figure 8
.]
But reigning supreme over the urge to avoid sell-out-dom is the need to live a romantic, storied existence—an existence that provides ample anecdotes with which to impress other hipsters and with which to feather their artistic nests.
20
(NB: A good portion of hipsters are not, in fact, destitute. They are often assisted by their parents, who unwittingly send weekly checks that keep their children stocked with beer and narcotics. Still, these hipsters often feign poverty, all the while downloading huge numbers of jams from iTunes and buying countless shirts at Beacon’s Closet.)
20
(NB: A good portion of hipsters are not, in fact, destitute. They are often assisted by their parents, who unwittingly send weekly checks that keep their children stocked with beer and narcotics. Still, these hipsters often feign poverty, all the while downloading huge numbers of jams from iTunes and buying countless shirts at Beacon’s Closet.)
Figure 8
: Poverty as It Relates to Sexiness
: Poverty as It Relates to Sexiness
A. Not Sexy:
Dude is 26 years old and still lives at home. He is basically a nonentity.
Dude is 26 years old and still lives at home. He is basically a nonentity.
B. Kind of Sexy:
Dude is currently living on unemployment, sleeping on an air mattress in his semiplatonic best female friend’s bedroom. He keeps all of his clothing in a suitcase under said girl’s bed and spends his days perched in a tree in McCarren Park, taking photos of the nannies that assemble there daily. He lives on Apple Jacks and gets sick frequently.
Dude is currently living on unemployment, sleeping on an air mattress in his semiplatonic best female friend’s bedroom. He keeps all of his clothing in a suitcase under said girl’s bed and spends his days perched in a tree in McCarren Park, taking photos of the nannies that assemble there daily. He lives on Apple Jacks and gets sick frequently.
C. Sexy:
Dude is a barista at your local coffee joint by day. By night, he attends college, where he is going for his Ph.D. in postmodern American literature. He lives in a loft in Bushwick in a “room” that he built out of plywood, and wears the same filthy plaid shirt on an almost daily basis. He subsists on hot and sour soup and whatever beer his pitying friends are willing to supply him with.
Dude is a barista at your local coffee joint by day. By night, he attends college, where he is going for his Ph.D. in postmodern American literature. He lives in a loft in Bushwick in a “room” that he built out of plywood, and wears the same filthy plaid shirt on an almost daily basis. He subsists on hot and sour soup and whatever beer his pitying friends are willing to supply him with.
D. Extremely Sexy:
Dude tends bar by night while laboring over massive installation pieces constructed out of animal fur and glass shards by day. He lives in an 8x10 room in which all he has is a mattress and a bookshelf. His limited wardrobe is hung up on the walls like art, and he only has enough coin for one real meal a day (and a steady supply of PBR).
Dude tends bar by night while laboring over massive installation pieces constructed out of animal fur and glass shards by day. He lives in an 8x10 room in which all he has is a mattress and a bookshelf. His limited wardrobe is hung up on the walls like art, and he only has enough coin for one real meal a day (and a steady supply of PBR).
E. Sexy:
Dude works full-time as a freelance graphic designer. He lives in a loft with three roommates and has a rather sizable wardrobe that consists of carefully chosen accessories (hats, waistcoats, various and sundry scarves). He subsists solely on takeout and whiskey.
Dude works full-time as a freelance graphic designer. He lives in a loft with three roommates and has a rather sizable wardrobe that consists of carefully chosen accessories (hats, waistcoats, various and sundry scarves). He subsists solely on takeout and whiskey.
F. Kind of Sexy:
Dude owns his own video production company that he launched at age 26. He lives by himself in a one-bedroom, fully decorated apartment, complete with an entertainment system and cat. He regularly cooks for himself and strives to eat only organic and local foods. Wine is his beverage of choice.
Dude owns his own video production company that he launched at age 26. He lives by himself in a one-bedroom, fully decorated apartment, complete with an entertainment system and cat. He regularly cooks for himself and strives to eat only organic and local foods. Wine is his beverage of choice.
G. Not Sexy:
Dude works as a day trader in Midtown. He lives in a new high-rise glass condo all by his lonesome and orders all of his clothing from stores like Neiman Marcus.
Dude works as a day trader in Midtown. He lives in a new high-rise glass condo all by his lonesome and orders all of his clothing from stores like Neiman Marcus.
He has his jackets tailored and always appears immaculately groomed. His food arrives via Peapod, and he regularly stocks his fridge with ice-cold bottled beer, which he swills while watching football on his wall-sized flatscreen.
How did that state of affairs come to be? We define the urge to live below one’s means as “The Bukowski Syndrome.”
21
Charles Bukowski is a veritable hipster hero: a man who struggled under the yoke of laborious oppression, only to emerge years later with a brilliant body of anguished work (ever read
Post Office
? It’s a hard road, friends). To stray from these artistic, freewheeling ideals, to loosen oneself from the bounds of the service industry and cast off one’s artistic dreams in favor of a desk job and health benefits is to completely forsake oneself, to give up, to sell out. And there’s nothing a hipster hates more than a sell-out.
21
Charles Bukowski is a veritable hipster hero: a man who struggled under the yoke of laborious oppression, only to emerge years later with a brilliant body of anguished work (ever read
Post Office
? It’s a hard road, friends). To stray from these artistic, freewheeling ideals, to loosen oneself from the bounds of the service industry and cast off one’s artistic dreams in favor of a desk job and health benefits is to completely forsake oneself, to give up, to sell out. And there’s nothing a hipster hates more than a sell-out.
“What do I do? Well, Tuesdays and Thursdays I bartend over at a place on Bedford, Mondays and Wednesdays I work as a real estate broker, Fridays I design websites with my freelance graphic design company, and, when I have time, I pursue my true passion: recording my first album with my indie electronic screamo band, We’re All Going To Die Someday. I also write epic poetry and make collages for a ’zine that we hand out in McCarren during adult kickball games.”
—Anthony C., 25, unemployed
“Jesus, Lord, God, Almighty (whom I totally don’t fucking believe in), don’t let me see my balance. I’m just gonna blindly punch in my code and wait for the sweet whooshing of those two twenties coming down the chute. Fuck, fuck, fuck—just tell me when it’s over. I’m gonna push some buttons. Is the screen clear? Am I good? Fuck, I’m hyper ventilating. All clear? Sweet. Let’s get wasted.”
—Alonna Z., 20, communications student
“Fuck, every time I talk to my mom on the phone she devotes, like, nine minutes to updating me on who’s going to medical school where and how their year’s going and shit. I’m sorry, Mom—I know you didn’t picture me barbacking and working for that sketchy moving company at age 27. But med school? Christ.
Beyond my general disdain for health care professionals (who just, like, poke you and charge you a lot of money and tell you to stop drinking so much and shit), med students are annoying as fuck. They’re the high-functioning duders and sorostitutes from college on the one sure path to a fucking three-car garage, under the good-guy guise of wanting to
help humanity
. (‘For a while I thought it was my calling to go into Christian education, but then I realized I could witness in a way that’s better suited to my gifts by becoming a highly paid surgeon,’ blah blah blaahhh.)
help humanity
. (‘For a while I thought it was my calling to go into Christian education, but then I realized I could witness in a way that’s better suited to my gifts by becoming a highly paid surgeon,’ blah blah blaahhh.)
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