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Posted by Robert Lanham at 07:40 PM | Permalink

Just what the world needs: another snarky/tired/redundant article about Williamsburg and hipsters:

Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They're the people who wear T-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you've never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don't care.

Annoying, yes, but harmless, right? Not to hear their critics tell it. Hipsters manage to attract a loathing unique in its intensity. Critics have described the loosely defined group as smug, full of contradictions and, ultimately, the dead end of Western civilization.

Though the subculture is met with derision in wider society, hipsters have been able to eke out enclaves across the country, chief among them the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Williamsburg. But now even that is threatened. The hip have been hit with a double whammy of economic reality (more are struggling to pay rent as parental support dries up) and population changes (the carefully gentrified neighborhood is gradually being infiltrated by squatters inhabiting Williamsburg's stalled building projects). Hipsterdom's largest natural habitat, it seems, is under threat.

Such cultural mishmash is ripe for parodying. In 2003, author Robert Lanham wrote The Hipster Handbook, trying to codify the rules to hipsterdom, like "You graduated from a liberal arts school whose football team hasn't won a game since the Reagan administration" and "You have one Republican friend who you always describe as being your 'one Republican friend.' "

Posted by Robert Lanham at 04:43 PM | Permalink