"what is a hipster?"

on saturday night i was in atlanta regaling my friend christy (my best friend from middle and high school) with my story about being bitchslapped (see "hipster cat fight") but when i got to the part about the dumb hipster insulting me by calling me a hipster christy looked confused. in fact, everyone at the table looked confused. none of them had ever heard the word hipster before. in fact, they imagined a hipster to be some sort of hippie complete with bell bottoms, dreadlocks and hemp necklaces and listening to the now defunct phish. now that's pretty damn funny.

for the sake of review here are some hippies:

(note the unrestrained excitement and partial state of undress- not very hipster)

and some hipsters:

(cool and detached and usually fully clothed, unlike hippies. also, hipsters are way hotter than hippies*. check out the cutie in the middle. no, not the one in the red shirt, the other one. hellloo mr. hipster hottie.*)

*disclaimer #1- just kidding, hippies rule!

*disclaimer #2- but totally not as hot as eli. hi honey.

even our waiter had never heard the word hipster before. i was shocked and thought to myself "where have these people been?" then i got to thinking that maybe the word hipster is prevalent only among hipsters themselves or their peripheral hipster consorts. maybe the word and the image it invokes of the perpetually detached, cool, scruffy music lover isn't as universal as i though.

hipsters be proud, you have not yet followed in the footsteps of your predecessors (the flappers, beatniks, hippies, punks, and grunge kids of the past) and become totally mainstream and recognizable. yet. but yet is the key word. i can see it coming and hiding behind your guitars and designer jeans and "unwashed"-clean hair is not an option, my friends. its too late for that. its already hip to be hipster (as long as you refuse to admit it)- people are catching on quick and even i have taken it upon myself to enlighten a few more among the dwindling ranks of the hipster-ignorant. perhaps that makes me a traitor but when it comes down to it, it was pretty funny trying to fit almost everyone i know (including possibly myself) into a neat little stereotypical description of a hipster.

i'm not sure that my description totally clarified things for my friends, but they were definitely catching on by the end of the night. i'm not going to bother going into a long description of what i think a hipster is for you here. if you're really unsure and interested in finding out more about hipsters try a google search- there's enough funny shit out there to keep you entertained without me trying to rehash it all here. or just go to your local hipster hangouts. all cities have them, trust me. well, the hip ones do anyway. but remember to take it all with a grain of salt. certainly hipsters are a diverse group of people that cannot really be categorized by simple stereotypes. *

*disclaimer #3- i think all of my friends are awesome and unique and i would never try to assign any of them to a narrow-minded category. not even the hipsters. or the hippies. oops.

now that i have covered my ass with that little disclaimer, i would like to post this image in honor of christy who has officially declared herself to be a non-hipster now that she knows what a hipster is:

a little out-of-date but still fairly accurate. i would personally get rid of cabbie hat and purse with skull (that is so, like, two years ago at least) and replace them with, say, a scarf and some designer jeans. plus, the white-boy afro is so out and unwashed hair is so in. and about that ski jacket...ok, i'm going to stop now before i give myself away.