Where Have All The Hipsters Gone?

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Why do hipsters drink their coffee scalding hot?
They want to drink it before it’s cool.

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Until about a year ago you couldn't walk ten steps in any direction in the Twin Cities without seeing a hipster. You know, those twenty-to-thirty year olds with an entrepreneurial penchant who looked like a cross between a bicycle messenger, a 1950’s greaser, and Jesus. Arms covered in tattoos, with a passion for sick whisker fades on their cuffed selvedge Cone Mills denim, meticulously groomed and oiled beards, a pimped out fixie, and Redwing boots. Female hipsters shared the exact same attributes, minus the beard of course. Lately hipster sightings are getting far less frequent in these parts.

Whisker fades

How Did It All Begin?

Although the word “hip” was coined in the early twentieth century, the true origins of the hipster subculture can be traced back to the 1930’s and 1940’s. This first hipster movement hit the mainstream as many white jazz musicians introduced middle-class white America to jazz culture that originated decades earlier in the African-American community. These early hipsters listened to jazz music, wore Zoot suits, and spoke a special kind of slang called, “jive talk.” After the 1950’s this hipster subculture went into hibernation for a few decades.

Zoot suit

According to what I can find on Wikipedia, what we know as the modern hipster movement originated in early 2000 in Williamsburg neighborhood of the New York City’s burrough of Brooklyn. Young creative types sparked a Pabst Blue Ribbon fueled sub culture that spread beards across the world like wildfire.

What Killed the Modern Day Hipster Movement?

The hipster was another innocent victim of its own popularity. Mainstream culture killed the hipster. As the movement became more and more irrelevant gradually those flowing hipster beards were sheared worldwide. I still see the occasional echo of the hipster movement in Mid-western suburbs, who are typically a few years behind the times.

I’m not going to lie, I enjoyed some of the hipster accoutrements but I wouldn’t consider a full-fledged hipster. For one I prefer Surly Furious IPA to Pabst Blue Ribbon beer any day. According to my thirty year old stepson I did rock a mild hipster vibe about a year ago. I liked the prohibition haircut, usually wear a light beard (since I was 15), own a few pairs of selvedge jeans, love my Redwing Beckman boots, and even got my first tattoo this past summer. The thing is I never went all in and fully committed to being a hipster. For one thing I was too old to care that much about any “movement” beyond the morning constitutional.

Redwing boots

Although I plan on continuing to wear what I like, I hope I don’t end up like those forty year old greasers I remember from my childhood. In the 1970’s you would occasionally see these guys who were stuck in a cultural time warp. They still slicked back their hair, wore their Levis jeans cuffed, black motorcycle boots, and the trademark tight white t-shirt (a’la The Fonze) with their cigarette pack folded up in the sleeve.

Just last night my wife and we're in World Market buying a few last minute Christmas gifts and satisfying our stroopwafel addiction that began in Amsterdam at SteemFest (thanks a lot @rolelandp). I saw something there in the store that didn’t quite compute. The cashier had a magnificent hipster beard, only partially completed tattoo sleeves (the design of which appeared to have been taken directly from an adult coloring book), and tiny little man bun the size of a Tic Tac perched high atop his head.

This got me thinking, was this guy a few years too late and just now transforming himself into a hipster? Was he leaving hipsterdom, getting these tattoos lasered off, and just emotionally attached to the beard? Or was this cashier some kind of ingenious hipster trendsetter and turning himself into some kind of hybrid, man bun wearing hipster? I guess I’ll never know for sure but it will haunt me.

What’s Next?

If history is any indication one thing is for certain, like some rare astrological event, the hipster subculture will again re-emerge at some point in the future. The details will be different, the players will change, but they will be filled with good ideas, angst, and will be hell bent on rebelling against the mainstream. They’ll get to define their own lives. They’ll live a few years of their lives in their own way with an air of amazing coolness until the rest of society catches up and ruins absolutely everything.

(gif sourced from giphy.com, images sourced from Wikipedia.)

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I am an American novelist, poet, traveler, and Steemit loyalist. To follow my unfolding story please visit my website here to sign up for my author newsletter.

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