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She ain't hipster, she's my sister
Not long ago I was visiting L.A. and met up with a Vegas friend who visits L.A. a great deal more than I do. I've never really liked the we're-fake-but-pretend-to-be-real vibe of L.A. anyway (give me the Vegas we're-fake-and-we-love-it attitude any day -- at least it's an "honest" fake), but I occasionally make the trip for certain bands who play there and don't play Vegas, or sometimes just to chill for a couple of days with one of my best friends who has recently relocated there. But this friend of mine -- the one I met up with -- she loves L.A. like a long lost child. She embraces a certain scene that, while I find it contrived, I still participate in because my other options are even less appealing. I told her -- "show me your L.A. tonight baby. I'm following you." And follow I did -- right into $10 valet parking which she generously paid for. Good thing too or the story would have ended right here. The first place we went was a restaurant-cum-bar and hotspot at night, and on this particular Friday, it was packed to the gills. The line outside didn't daunt my friend however. Running up to the doorman and hugging him, he ushered us inside where she proceeded to hug even more revelers. The place was slammin', but this was definitely not my scene. Don't get me wrong - I liked almost everything about it: the space was cool, the music was rockin', and the drinks were strong. There was only one thing that really, really turned me off: the crowd. It was a pulsating throng of uber-stylish indie-rock and thrift store shoppers. It's like The Killers and The White Stripes teamed up for a house party and everyone raided Meg White and Brandon Flowers' closets. Now these people are not much different looking than many of my friends, or even me at times. But the thing that was so glaringly absent from this crowd as opposed to my friends and myself was clear -- what was missing, was the soul. These people were dressed up and acting like the hipster handbook told them to. They dutifully had their Fader and Filter magazines stacked neatly on their Target dressers at home not because they truly loved this style of living, music, and pop culture from the bottom of their soul -- but because it's what's hot now. These people were posers. Just as terrible as the hordes of baby mamas and gang banger wannabes at clubs like those on the Las Vegas strip which play nothing but terribly tired and uninteresting hip-hop and R&B -- these kids were embracing the new "it" thing, as they are prone to do when all the authenticity has been squeezed out of something and scenes that once had life become shells for the soulless. When I worked in the music business, my associates and I were known as "tastemakers." We got everything before everyone else so I never really paid attention to when a scene went mainstream because by then I was already on to the "next big thing," and I enjoyed the constant refreshing of my pop cultural senses. So I never really noticed when hipster went mainstream. I just looked around that night and there it was, bumping into me, playing back to back strings of irreverent melodies sung by dudes in pinstripe suits and wearing a "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt. Yes, hipster has gone mainstream folks. It's even giving good 'ol hip-hop style a run for it's money. The days of waxing poetic about some indie B-flick at the local coffee shop while listening to Velvet underground are long gone. Not that I ever did that -- but I knew plenty who did back when I lived in Brooklyn. Most lived in Williamsburg, which could be likened to the Haight Asbury of it's day -- a renaissance of young, broke, and stylish twenty-something's creating art and music, forming a new, thriving community in what was once a polish and
Latino ghetto. Artists renting cheap live/work studios to escape the high
Manhattan rents showed their work in bars and restaurants their friends owned or rented for the same reason. The Yeah Yeah Yeah's played little bars and loft parties until they were swooped up by the machine and credited with creating the entire "electroclash" scene. Bohemia existed -- if only briefly -- in this place, as it had so many times before in now-gentrified neighborhoods in cities across America and the world. It's progress. It's capitalism. It's just the way it goes and none of us have ever stopped or will ever stop it. Williamsburg had it's day -- and it's day was about five years ago, a day when I attended a surreal rave in a warehouse on the river...a day when a friend of a friend shot a short, silent film and I played a prostitute, hitting my friend Georgie over the head
repeatedly with my handbag...a day when I drank smoothies and read poetry at a quaint little cafe just 5 minutes away from the stress of
Manhattan. That was five years ago -- which is just far enough in the past for it's copycats to have taken over, and for those original hipsters to have assimilated into the life that adults are "supposed" to have. The copycats have stolen the look and the sound of the scene, just like they always do. This stolen scene runs rampant all over L.A. -- it started in Silver Lake (a second-rate Williamsburg) and has now extended to all walks of pop culture and the media. In fact it's so mainstream now it's even made it's way to Vegas. The word hipster has lost it's intended meaning and is now just a bad word for a lot of cool, intelligent people who appreciate the edgier segments of pop culture. These new hipsters aren't really hipsters at all -- just like the club kids aren't club kids in the Limelight, Richie Rich sense of the word, and the hip-hop kids aren't really concerned with the finer points of true, intelligent, meaningful hip-hop. These people are posers, plain and simple. It's the girl wearing an AC/DC T-shirt that can't name a song off "Powerage."
It happens to the best of scenes and it's happening to
this one. But the scary part is: they're posers, and
they look like me. It's enough to send me running to the
Star Trek convention just so I can still claim
"outsider" status. I do so hate going along with the
crowd... Live long and prosper, posers. You'll find your
soul one day... I hope!
PS: Check out the Beauty Bar on 517 Fremont Street in fabulous downtown Las Vegas. Sure they call us hipster but you'll call us just plain cool. I betcha my Spock ears.
-Ms.
Korby
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