Why We Need Hipsters

Hipsters, ya?

You see them everywhere these days. Except for Glasgow, where real people do real things. Even vegans in Glasgow aren't hipsters in any way, something that I am very proud of in my home city.

Sitting here with facial hair and a peru hat, plugging away my apple mac, in Hipster central Buffalo 'sweetness 7 cafe' on the west side (which sells British pies for $6 a pop) I can understand the irony of this statement. But i'm far too genuinely obnoxious to be a real hipster.

I'm always reading and hearing about how the hipster factor is great for gentrification though. These home brewing, lesbian literature reading wastes of space who never admit to being hipsters have money (from bank of mum and dad/trust fund) and are key in transforming neighbourhoods from being rough old redneck joe style places to being rebranded as 'edgy' and are an essential oil in laying the foundations for normal middle class twats to feel ok about moving into erstwhile rough areas.

In Hackney, i'd buy council houses from Nigerian families that had so many cockroaches we would go in with masks and fill bin bags with them, before fumigating the house, painting it, and renting it to Nathan Barleys and finally selling it for double or triple the price to normal middle class people, happy in the fact that Japanese teenagers and twats called Nigel lived in the neighbourhood. (Japanese teenagers have the same affect as hipsters on the neighbourhoods - a great bit of gentrifaction decoration for a council estate !)

Here in Buffalo its no different. Sweetness 7 is pack full of white anglo saxon protestant Portlandia style do-gooders, hatching crackpot non profit (i.e. so stupid they can never make profit) plans for urban vegetable picking collectives and skateboarding parks for Burmese pensioners. But the great news is they are flooding the West side, pushing prices up and pushing poor people out (I mean they don't really want to live beside poor people anyway, because they plan to settle down and have families one day) It's good for the area - beautiful big old houses here with original wood panelling, and stain glass that have tenants that don't appreciate them are moving to cheaper pastures as the '99%' move in and talk about veganism and helping poor people and banning guns, so the poor people can come back and rob them at gun point, of course - part of Gods restribution plan.

Hipsters are actually good for those 'between the gap' business though - lifestyle businesses that can never make money, but sometimes do actually provide a service to the city, like 'free hugs' collectives and of course the hipster trend towards voluntary slavery - anyone want to be my intern for 6 years?

So all in all - Hipsters -

- Useful for slumlords interested in the gentrification process.
- Handy for free stuff.
- Do not in any way add to a city economically apart from that beyond fluff and voluntarism (the latter of which is a saving grace, I concede)
- Put barbers shops and razor sellers into bankruptcy

Anyway i'm glad to be intergrating my latest Ayahuasca journey with my usual love for all mankind. Strangely enough, i'm pretty sure I met God in the amazon jungle and he was quite cool with me being discretionary. I mean, lets face it, he was - just read the old testament....

Shoreditch Twats- As Predictable as an Estonian Girl Choosing an Inappropriate Boyfriend

So, im back in twat central - Shoreditch, Hackney, London. (Thanks to Oli, Mia and Marino for putting me up)

A Shoreditch Twat, yesterday

I had a great time mind you, went to 'kick' where you can pick up French girls while playing table football (if you want to), ending up in a bar called Spread-Eagle - Last time I was there it was ten years ago, it was a girly bar, on a Saturday Afternoon and they had for some reason Aussie Backpacker girls stripping to the sounds of AC/DC. Actually it was much better then, but now at least its open until 4am.

What gets me though about the Hackney 'centre of the universe' vibe is that its strangling itself on its own narcissism. The moustache count was high, (because it's just been movember but i'm more looking forward to early next year when the ladies repost with fanuary. I'll try to research as much as I can personally, although as i'm sure you fellas well know the ladies of Japan (and probably Pakistan for that matter) have been active here for years.)

But what next for a place thats so achingly trendy that no one is actually imaginative or original any more? Well, it hit me when I walked past the The Breakfast Club off Hoxton Square on Saturday morning. People were actually queueing up to pay and extra £3 so they could have fresh coriander on their bacon and eggs, instead of just walking (its about a mile though) to a real greasy spoon like i did. Actually probably they don't even give you coriander, but i do recommend it, it tastes great.

Anyway, if a place has gone like that, the only way can be down, surely? I didn't meet or see anyone or anything remotely inspirational in the whole area, seemed it was at that terminal phase, where Starbucks is about to move in (there's already one on Commercial Road nearby, watch out!) and the only people you meet are whining Dickheads from the home counties who have as much creativity as a bin-man (the only answer for these guys is of course to take coke, then you convince yourself that you're interesting and creative to everyone, voila!) 

Which I suppose describes the Shoreditch/Hackney phenomenon perfectly. Hackney is that pretty average looking guy you see out of his head on coke, totally convinced that he is an original, interesting and unique genius, but of course to everyone else he's just a boring, unimaginative loser with too much of his parents money, in a terminally downwards spiral.

Anyway, now i'll go and watch 'Another Earth' and leave you with this summary....

What is a Shoreditch Twat

1. Usually a new media, fashion student, photographer-type person with a privileged digital or old school arts background who lives/works/socialises in London's East End area of Shoreditch. A Shoreditch twat has at some point also worked/lived/socialised in the near-by Brick Lane. A Shoreditch twat is defined by their Hoxton Finn haircut, 80s retro 90s fusion clothes (usually a suit jacket, blue ripped jeans, and white trainers/shoes), an ability to talk about pseudo-intellectual artistic bullshit with no relevance to the real world, completely up their own backsides, and a failure to comprehend that they are the laughing stock of the rest of the normal local (ethnic) population.

2. 20-something dressed in over-priced torn clothing and numerous 80s retro fashion items, sometimes including pink legwarmers. Ridiculous haircuts also de-rigeur. Comonly found in Shoreditch/Hoxton area, usually making bad art in an overpriced warehouse apartment while living on seemingly limitless parental funds. Shoreditch twats where once refered to more politely by the BBC as 'Hoxton trendies'.

3. The Shoreditch Twat fanzine was published and edited by club promoter Neil Boorman on behalf of 333 from 1999-2004. Starting life as a listings magazine for the club, it quickly grew to become an irreverent, satirical fanzine at the centre of the creative boom in East London. Producing 25,000 copies every six weeks with funding from BAT, Anheuser-Busch and Diesel, Shoreditch Twat attracted writers from The Guardian, The Face, Arena, Loaded, ID and Sleazenation, and illustrators James Jarvis, Bump, Airside, Will Sweeney and Elliot Thoburn. In 2001, the term Shoreditch Twat became popular vernacular for an overdressed East London 'trendy' and the fanzine went on to produce an installation for the Barbican Gallery's UK culture exhibition 'Jam', which later toured to Japan. In 2003, Channel 4 Television and Talkback commissioned Shoreditch Twat to produce a one off comedy show. This show went on to win a specila mention at the 2004 Montreux Comedy Award. After four years and 31 issues, Shoreditch Twat ran into legal difficulties and was forced to close down. The publisher went on to edit Sleazenation Magazine.

HACKNEY, LONDON. AND MOUSTACHE RELATED INVESTING

When i bought my first ever flat in London Fields, back in 1999, the only guys with Moustaches in Hackney were hairy Turkish guys selling kebabs on Kingsland Road. I’d moved up from the then seedy Ironmonger Row in Shoreditch (of the famous Turkish baths), much to all my City Boy Colleagues shock and horror to what was a the time the ghetto front line. (they now all live here) Broadway Market E8 was a typical East End high Street, with the Cat and Mutton, a pretty dodgy boozer with a pool table and a bunch of kebab shops, greasy spoons, and vacant boarded up shopfronts. There was one art gallery there, owned by a cantankerous but very proud old guy who hated me for some reason and ruined one of my paintings.

Moustache Pioneer, Venezuala

However, I could see all the seeds in place for a textbook gentrification – At the time there lived a pretty messed up mixture of Blacks, Vietnemese, Turks and Hasidic Jews, none of whom liked each other particularly, along with a few cockneys, looney lefties and starving artists. Although it was dangerous enough, too dangerous for English people, the architecture in the area is great and the area was obviously posh 150 years ago. The most important seed was that there was an established community of artists and general crusties, living in squats and setting up some pretty crazy gigs and raves in abandoned buildings around. It’s also slap bang in the centre of London and while at the time the tube was a far off dream (opened this year), you could still walk from Shoreditch to the City in 15 mins.

Fast forward two years to 2002, and Shoreditch in particular really started to move. Despite being a total shithole. There was a whole bunch of crusty bars, the most famous being ‘333’ or ‘The mother bar’ which, along with the White Cube gallery opening on Hoxton Square were true catalysts that helped Hackney become the coolest part of London bar none. I’d bought as many flats as i could by then, then bought the then totally fucked ‘Bikes on Broadway’ shop at 73 Broadway Market, which i can now proudly say is the offices of Findlay Property Investment (website here if you want to rent a flat or invest or simply talk to nice Estonian girls in London) We kept the bike wheel, i cant remember why. Theres also some random neon bike sign upstairs, it was just too much hassle to take down, but i'd like to think it was our part in 'creating' the vibe there.

Broadway Market - Trustafarian Dickhead Central

The big turnaround in 2002 for Hackney, in my book, oddly enough – the defining moment if you like, was the opening of ‘dream-bags&jaguar-shoes' in 2002. They just got a shoeshop in Kingsland Road and threw in a bar and hey presto!! Every bar in the area was stowed out by that time with everyone thinking they were onto the coolest thing in town – you didn’t even get mugged in Hoxton Square anymore. There were bars everywhere, strangely enough mixed in with Strip Bars for the City Boys (where i used to have lunch i must confess) and thankfully houses prices were going through the roof thanks God.

Moustache HQ, Shoreditch, Hackney

However, if you walked up Kingsland road towards Dalston, a few hundred metres though thats where the real action was – there was a dodgy Russian bar called the Wolf and Rabbit, and a Black club which overnight turned into a Russian club (ahh Oksana from Lvov i’ll never forget you! ) You never knew what was going on in that dodgy looking warehouse where the noise was coming from – people would have punk gigs in their squats, striaght out of 'the young ones' and id usually end up in one underground all night bar (whos name i cant tell you) The owner i’m sure was a police informer, as every character under the sun was hanging out there looking shady. Every now again a big group of strange gangsters would come in, well dressed and looking like pro football players (they were big movers in the Heroin business ) would be well spoken and polite, and would all introduce themselves (all 6 of them) by the name of ‘Fletch’ Ive no idea why. The Turks run the heroin business in London, the would tell you and they were ‘in construction’ To add to the real life ‘snatch’ effect, they had some lovely illegal Ukranian girls working there, poor lambs.

Some parts of Hackney are yet to Gentrify (note lunchtime can of Carlsberg Special Brew)

Walking round today the place has totally changed. The tenants are much better for a start, and i don’t find guns in tenants wardrobes any more. Broadway market and London Fields are now THE destinations to be at in London. Its full of restaurants book shops and wanky galleries. There a bike shop cum cafe. There a guy on a monocycle cruises around. There are guys with stupid looking moustaches.

There’s good and bad to this gentrification – on the plus side, i’ve seen and met some great looking girls in Hackney, something you’d rarely see back in the day (except our staff of course but they were Estonian and Japanese imports) but on the negative side, it seems to now be full of twats. For example, here in Jaguar shoes, there are 3 guys with moustaches, including the waiter. The moustache count has reached 20% - which to me means time to sell up. Hackney has now peaked and become so cool its full of total tossers. So i’ve been to Foxtons and put all my places here up for sale. Buffalo i didn’t see a single moustache – a great buying signal if i ever saw one !