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....
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....
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