I was tempted to destroy my stereo with a sledgehammer probably two minutes into Deborah Harry's ironically titled October 2007 release Necessary Evil. It's an excruciating CD, full of random, cheesy musical styles (smooth jazz? hair metal?) and embarrassingly inappropriate lewdness (the 60-year-old woman sings about the devil's d--- and her curlies, for God's sake).
But whether it was professionalism or, more likely, morbid fascination, I stuck it out. Sure, I gave the album no stars (and got plenty of hate mail for trashing the icon), but I felt the ex-Blondie singer's star power warranted a review, good or horrid. If the artist had been a nobody, I would have simply ignored it.
Meanwhile, in Australia, Lisa Pryor at The Sydney Morning Herald weighs in with a screed titled "How to be a bona fide hipster -- try to be different by being the same." Here are a few excerpts from the article:
Hipsters are hard to describe because they are so full of contradictions. But like a toupee or AIDS-related wasting, you know it when you see it. Hipsters hate fashion but take meticulous care achieving exactly the right degree of rumpledness. They value originality while looking the same as one another.
Thanks to these contradictions, hipsters find themselves always hurtling, psychically, towards a black hole of self-hatred, denial and irony, both intended and unintended. Ever seen someone walk into a cool bar and say "Oh my God. Look at all these try-hard wankers" not realising they look exactly the same? Classic hipster.
This week I am writing to you from the world headquarters of hipsterdom, the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Williamsburg. This slice of New York is the Haight-Ashbury of ironic self-loathing. In Verb Cafe on Bedford Avenue, a sign reads "Missing: brown felt fedora". Only four guys in the cafe are not wearing fedoras. Young men with messy hair, forearm tattoos and full beards abound. Around the corner at egg, an uncapitalised cafe, the beardage rate tops 50 per cent.
Whether they live in New York or Sydney, hipsters share many of the same qualities, particularly in the love-hate relationships they have to the hot topics of gentrification, fashion and queueing.
First, gentrification, a topic on which hipsters have passionate, confused views. They hate watching property prices rise in cool neighbourhoods partly because they do not want to see the earthy, quaint, ethnic working class displaced by white professionals with modular sofas who love painting their front doors red, but mostly because they realise they can no longer make a killing by buying cheap terraces and later flogging them off. And despite hating gentrification, they refuse to move anywhere that has not been gentrified.
Another East Village institution is shuttering: Two Boots Pioneer Theater, which specializes in indie, underground, and cult fare, will most likely close at the end of the month. “I’m still hoping for a reprieve,” says Two Boots owner Phil Hartman, who’s seeking a partner or new owner. “But it was always a labor of love and never commercially viable.” Hartman and his wife founded the cozy 99-seat cinema in 2000, but the venue seemed older: It attempted to resurrect the lost atmosphere of old, offbeat downtown movie houses. Now it’ll share their fate, done in by a looming rent increase and tough times in the exhibition business.
Second Avenue near Sixth Street.
On Second Avenue (a cross street wasn't given).
At the Christodora on Avenue B before it was refurbished.
“What you see going on now is a de- Starbuckification, if you will,” said Suzanne Wasserman, a food historian who is director of the Gotham Center for New York City History. “People are yearning for authenticity.”
It will probably be a while before specialty coffee shops are as prevalent in the city as wine stores. Most New Yorkers must still travel several miles to find the perfect espresso, and price is often a deterrent to patronizing these places.
Nancy Ralph, the director of the New York Food Museum, describes paying more than a dollar for a cup of coffee as extortion. She also doubts whether $4 mochas will be enough to cover ever-rising rentals in the city. “You’ll have your answer in a year,” she said.
