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Re: “What We Talk About When We Talk About Hipsters”
I dunno. As an old person who grew up in the EV, I'd have to say the biggest flaw in the argument is that at the long-ago time you're referencing by your examples and in your slideshow (1950s through 1980s), you could actually move to Manhattan with virtually nothing, hook up with any number of subculture groups doing whatever crazy projects, do tons of drugs, drink and have lots of sex for very small amounts of money, depending on your tastes and appetites and really experiment with how you wanted to live. You didn't need a real job or a trust fund. How many mid-20th century hipsters worked as bartenders, cab drivers, movers, clerks at Cinemabilia, movie theater projectionists and dominatrixes or just picked up odd jobs to scrape together the few hundred dollars they needed every month?
Then AIDS killed off a huge number of those people, allowing their apartments to be filled with ever-rotating crowds of NYU students, spiralling rents upward; the sex and drug party crashed to a queasy halt; art spaces shut down as more commercial retailers started to take over; and today there's a bank on every other corner of the neighborhood that really was once the coolest place on earth.
These days even space in Bushwick costs something, and that's why people resent hipsters today and the so-called hipster lifestyle. How long can you survive in this town now without either straightening up quick or being supported?
