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Chris - 2008-07-14 18:26:28
Exclusive social groups are annoying enough, but when part of what they believe they believe in is open mindedness then its even more maddening. As anthropologist have pointed out about culture groups; odd fashion = high barrier to entry. Or pork pie hats = we are tight little club.
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MacGregor - 2008-07-14 18:32:26
I think you're onto something there, Chris... As my ex-wife said once many years ago when someone was telling her who was and wasn't punk, "If I'd wanted rules and a uniform I'd have joined the army or the cops." My feelings on this topic are pretty involved and some of them even contradictory. I guess I'm still trying to work some of them out, but Paula, like you, I start into feeling squirrelly when amidst a bunch of people who all look identical.
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Erich K - 2008-07-14 18:41:29
Aye, the Williamsburg hipster look is troubling because it is so hermetically sealed way over there in little Wmsburg, really like "college dorm 2" - but that's not much different than, say, the Irish bars in Hoboken where I lived when I came to NYC in 1992, and it was all frat boys and girls still wearing their "colors" i.e. Greek-lettered sweats, backwards white baseball caps, etc., Ever since the hippy look was mass marketed in the 1970s, youth rebellion's never had a fighting chance.
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Paula - 2008-07-14 18:42:37
odd fashion = high barrier to entry
That's very true, and well said, but the weirdest aspect of that tenet is that the classic hipster-circa-2008 look isn't that difficult to achieve. It can be purchased in one stop at Forever 21 or Urban Outfitters. It is a uniform in an almost literal sense. With a little more effort, I guess, you can invest in a tattoo, so you can be one of 2 million people in NYC with a tattoo.
So it's not as if anyone is truly being excluded, or some admirable sartorial artistry is being demonstrated there, just a bunch of folks who all bought their clothes in the same place. Maybe that is the part of it that makes it all especially poignant to me--the idea that no one is unique, so efforts to distinguish oneself via clothing seems kind of heartbreakingly futile.
This all must sound obnoxiously judgmental, but I am thinking out loud here, and trying to understand my own feelings.
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Paula - 2008-07-14 18:44:51
Ever since the hippy look was mass marketed in the 1970s, youth rebellion's never had a fighting chance.
Ha! Yes.
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MacGregor - 2008-07-14 18:51:44
I think there is a bit of a class thing that annoys me also... something about young middle class and upper middle class kids dressing down... I do realize that I'm hyper-sensitive to class though. And there is an exclusivity vibe despite a lot of egalitarian rhetoric and Che Guevara shirts... and as this group ages they seem to turning into the Park Slope Stroller Mafia. And now I should stop.
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chris - 2008-07-14 18:53:24
Paula: its not that its hard to achieve, its that its hard to get a conventional job looking that way. So in that sense it is high barrier to entry
I dont mean to focus simply on the style; that is just to point out they are a tight little club.I am more frustrated with the hypocrasy of the view. They are no different in that sense then the frat bars in Hoboken.
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chris - 2008-07-14 19:33:15
Williamsburg is an odd neighborhood. Its got three dominate social groups, and all of them tight in unique ways. You got the Hasidics defined by religion, Latinos by ethnicity, and Hipsters by cultural taste.
An Yugolslavia like meltdown of Williamsburg would make a great novel; Complete with ethnic cleansing, Political triangulation, and UN peacekeepers.
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MacGregor - 2008-07-14 19:37:56
For a while the hipsters seemed to be trying to out-beard the Jews. Now I see that they were just trying to blend in and hide for the upcoming conflict.
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amatt - 2008-07-14 19:45:29
...Hipsters, tripsters, real cool chicks...
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Paula - 2008-07-14 19:47:50
...Yugolslavia-like meltdown of Williamsburg would make a great novel
Brilliant! Anyone?
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Dana - 2008-07-14 23:52:31
May you all be run down by a phalanx of Bugaboo Frogs, baby-haters.
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grigorss - 2008-07-15 02:24:26
This all must sound obnoxiously judgmental
That's okay -- I always thought that was one of your best qualities, anyway...
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Sharon - 2008-07-15 02:46:34
Paula, it might be interesting for your international readers and commenters to see a picture of what you consider to be the quintessential Williamsburg hipster. ///maybe now as our country ages, (some people call this a new guilded age) the badges and costumes of class are more obvious?// I had another thought that in the early 60s Brooklyn was shorthand for the ultimate lack of sophistication - case in point, "The Patty Duke Show". It was her doppelganger Cathy decidedly not from Brooklyn, who was the sophisticate. "There's Cathy who's lived most everywhere, from Zanzibar to 'Barkely' Square....duh-duh, duh-duh,duh-duh, the sights, a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights, what a crazy pair? (What a wild duet?!) But they're cousins, identical cousins...."
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Paula - 2008-07-15 12:25:09
"Patty's only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights..."
I'm pretty sure the Wmsbrg style is global, but in case anyone's confused, here's a brief guide.
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Baby Party - 2008-07-15 14:47:47
being in any homogeneous group of people feels dehumanizing to me.
Paula, I'm curious/confused: would you feel that way if you were walking amongst a large crowd of, say, Hasidic Jews? In other words, is it your similarity to the hipsters or baby stroller people that makes you antsy, or your difference from them?
When I'm in Wmsburg now (where I lived from 99-05), I mostly feel old, and dowdy. It's been a while, but while I'm familiar with all the things in that linked bingo card, I can't say I found them overwhelmingly ubiquitous. Mostly I think: damn, I wish I still had the time and patience to hunt through thrift stores to find the really cool stuff.
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Paula - 2008-07-15 15:42:16
BP, it�s multilayered, but I�d lean towards �because of the similarity.� Read on, if you dare.
I work with, and am friends with, people who, en masse, could be considered hipsters, but one-on-one are just individual characters to me. So there is something about the mob aspect of it that creates anxiety--that freaky and unsettling feeling of being in a uncontrollable mob, which my lizard brain equates with chaos/violence.
Another part of it is the breakdown of a clear social hierarchy--when everyone�s the same, where does anyone fit in?
Another aspect is being confronted with the idea that no one is really that special or unique--which is always true, but usually not in the foreground of our daily lives.
So, for the most part, there is some aspect of "identity" involved--if I were amongst Hasidic Jews, I would probably just feel set apart--there's no identification confusion. But if I were amongst a bunch of, say, elderly people from my general social demographic, some part of my consciousness would want to identity with them, and, finding no purchase, would feel adrift and at sea.
I hope that makes sense to someone, because it was helpful for me.
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Erich K - 2008-07-15 15:50:51
It's helpful to me! That alienation really got me when I lived in Seattle in the early 1990s, and was "a hippy apart" because they considered me an "east coast transplant" and they were trying to keep the emerald city pure. I rejoiced when Microsoft and grunge flung the doors open wide and let all the tramps come flowing in (I had left by then)
The thing at the root of it, is clickiness and insecurity. No one is friendly because they're all too busy trying to look like they "know"
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chris - 2008-07-15 16:10:51
To me its about ideas; Homogenous groups tend to think alike, creating a world view that is often xenophobic, exclusive, and frozen. Of course people migrate to those who share their world view; its comforting. That�s what I have found most annoying about Hipsters: an outwardly curious group who have set up a social network that often minimizes exposure to different views. That and I hate tattoos.
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chris - 2008-07-15 16:16:53
Or to say it another way. The tendancy to judge an idea by the clothes of the person expressing the view.
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MacGregor - 2008-07-15 16:50:13
Chris, I think you're being charitable.
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Paula - 2008-07-15 17:01:10
Chris & MacG: I wouldn't go that far--you can't really know what people are thinking.
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MacGregor - 2008-07-15 17:18:06
Paula... of course you can't really go that far and I am engaging in some generational bias admittedly. I certainly don't believe that a whole group of people share the same brain... but there is a certain generational zeitgeist amongst many people of a certain age in New York City... and it is very prevalent in Brooklyn. The majority of people in the majority of social castes are quite different one on one and away from their milieu and that's how I prefer people in general--and when I'm most at ease with myself also. But I also don't think it's unfair to say that many people choose their clothing by how they want to present themselves as part of... something. There's nothing new about that. People don certain outfits because they want to be associated with certain basic tenets... regardless of how much they actually adhere to them. Narcissism. And I don't necessarily mean this in a critical sense either, even if I really don't relate (and I don't) to that scene.
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