What was the Hipster?


Book Description




The Hipster Handbook


Book Description

A hilarious book that will teach you everything you need to know to be too cool for school: "Your official guide to the language, culture and style of hipsters young and old." —Los Angeles Times hip•ster - \hip-stur (s)\ n. One who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool. (Note: it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; a Hipster would instead say "deck.") The Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. A Hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat. Clues You Are a Hipster 1. You graduated from a liberal arts school whose football team hasn't won a game since the Reagan administration. 2. You frequently use the term "postmodern" (or its commonly used variation"PoMo") as an adjective, noun, and verb. 3. You carry a shoulder-strap messenger bag and have at one time or another worn a pair of horn-rimmed or Elvis Costello-style glasses. 4. You have refined taste and consider yourself exceptionally cultured, but have one pop vice (ElimiDATE, Quiet Riot, and Entertainment Weekly are popular ones) that helps to define you as well-rounded. 5. You have kissed someone of the same gender and often bring this up in casual conversation. 6. You spend much of your leisure time in bars and restaurants with monosyllabic names like Plant, Bound, and Shine. 7. You bought your dishes and a checkered tablecloth at a thrift shop to be kitschy, and often throw vegetarian dinner parties. 8. You have one Republican friend whom you always describe as being your "one Republican friend." 9. You enjoy complaining about gentrification even though you are responsible for it yourself. 10. Your hair looks best unwashed and you position your head on your pillow at night in a way that will really maximize your cowlicks. 11. You own records put out by Matador, DFA, Definitive Jux, Dischord, Warp, Thrill Jockey, Smells Like Records, and Drag City.




What Was the Hipster?


Book Description

Who was the turn-of-the-century hipster? Who is free enough of the hipster taint to write this history without contempt or nostalgia? Why are we tempted to declare the neo-hipster moment over, when the hipster's "global brand" has just reached its apotheosis? A panel of n+1 writers, including Mark Greif, Christian Lorentzen, and Jace Clayton (aka dj/rupture) invited the public to join an investigation into the rise and fall of the contemporary hipster. Their debate took place at the New School University in New York City, and was followed by articles, responses, and essays, all printed here for the first time. "The hipster is that person, overlapping with declassing or disaffiliating groupings—the starving artist, the starving graduate student, the neo-bohemian, the vegan or bicyclist or skatepunk, the would-be blue-collar or post-racial individual—who in fact aligns himself both with rebel subculture and with the dominant class, and opens up a poisonous conduit between the two." "Isn't hipsterism, like, the best thing that's happened at the end of the Bush years?" "The truth was that there was no culture worth speaking of, and the people called hipsters just happened to be young, and more often than not, funny looking."




Hipster Christianity


Book Description

Insider twentysomething Christian journalist Brett McCracken has grown up in the evangelical Christian subculture and observed the recent shift away from the "stained glass and steeples" old guard of traditional Christianity to a more unorthodox, stylized 21st-century church. This change raises a big issue for the church in our postmodern world: the question of cool. The question is whether or not Christianity can be, should be, or is, in fact, cool. This probing book is about an emerging category of Christians McCracken calls "Christian hipsters"--the unlikely fusion of the American obsessions with worldly "cool" and otherworldly religion--an analysis of what they're about, why they exist, and what it all means for Christianity and the church's relevancy and hipness in today's youth-oriented culture.




White Negroes


Book Description

Exposes the new generation of whiteness thriving at the expense and borrowed ingenuity of black people—and explores how this intensifies racial inequality. American culture loves blackness. From music and fashion to activism and language, black culture constantly achieves worldwide influence. Yet, when it comes to who is allowed to thrive from black hipness, the pioneers are usually left behind as black aesthetics are converted into mainstream success—and white profit. Weaving together narrative, scholarship, and critique, Lauren Michele Jackson reveals why cultural appropriation—something that’s become embedded in our daily lives—deserves serious attention. It is a blueprint for taking wealth and power, and ultimately exacerbates the economic, political, and social inequity that persists in America. She unravels the racial contradictions lurking behind American culture as we know it—from shapeshifting celebrities and memes gone viral to brazen poets, loveable potheads, and faulty political leaders. An audacious debut, White Negroes brilliantly summons a re-interrogation of Norman Mailer’s infamous 1957 essay of a similar name. It also introduces a bold new voice in Jackson. Piercing, curious, and bursting with pop cultural touchstones, White Negroes is a dispatch in awe of black creativity everywhere and an urgent call for our thoughtful consumption.




Stuff Hipsters Hate


Book Description

A humor book based on the “depressingly astute” blog satirizing the fashionably unconventional yet always on trend. (The New Yorker) From the dive bars of Brooklyn's Williamsburg to the dirty alleys of San Francisco's Mission, the urban hipster has redefined American cool with a sighing disdain for everything mainstream. Hipsters are easily identified by their worn-out shoes, fixies and PBR tallboys, but until now no one had investigated beyond the hipster look to the even more hilarious hipster psyche. With personally researched articles, revealing illustrations and helpful charts and graphs, Stuff Hipsters Hate exposes the bottomless well of impassioned scorn that motivates the ever-apathetic hipster, including: lMATING AND SOCIAL HATES ♠ buying you a drink ♠ monogamy ♠ texting back in a timely fashion APPAREL AND GROOMING HATES ♠ high heels ♠ muscles ♠ being asked about their tattoos WORK AND LIFE HATES ♠ full-time jobs ♠ knowing their bank balance ♠ enthusiasm “Wickedly Funny” –The Frisky




Dads Are the Original Hipsters


Book Description

"They listened to vinyl. They had mustaches. They raged all night and didn't take sh*t from anyone. Admit it - dads were hipsters first and they've been killing it since back in the day."--Back cover.




The Ladybird Book of the Hipster


Book Description

The Ladybird book of the Hipster is your guide to the terminally cool. _________________________________________________ This is a hipster. He is childless, unaccountably wealthy, and always well turned out. He likes art, porridge,s carves, and anything reclaimed from French factories . . . _________________________________________________ Hipsters like to collect old things that are unfashionable, because that makes them fashionable. Vintage washing-up bowls are highly prized, because they look neither retro nor valuable, and therefore both. _________________________________________________ This delightful book is part of a Ladybird series specially planned to help grown-ups with the world about them. The large clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. Featuring original Ladybird artwork alongside brilliantly funny, brand new text. Also available: How it Works: The Husband How it Works: The Wife How it Works: The Mum The Ladybird Book of the Mid-Life Crisis The Ladybird Book of the Hangover The Ladybird Book of Mindfulness The Ladybird Book of the Shed The Ladybird Book of Dating The Ladybird Book of the Hipster




So You Think You're a Hipster?


Book Description

50 musings on the self-appointed cool kids taking over your towns. 50 musings on the self-appointed cool kids taking over your towns. Skinny jeans? Check. Thrift-store clothing? Check. Non-essential prescription glasses? Check. Beanie hat balanced artfully on the back of your skull? Check. These items have become the uniform for a new breed of young people—hipsters—determined to take over cities with their “alternative” ways while overloading on irony and striving to be original and creative. So You Think You’re a Hipster? examines what it takes to become one of this ever-growing tribe of young urbanites, just as desperate to be accepted by their peers as they are to receive the next rent check from mom and dad. A series of hilarious case studies will identify typical examples of the subculture, helping you to avoid any future encounters with them. Take the vintage store worker who, at 35, still works selling worn sneakers and threadbare t-shirts for extortionate amounts and still dreams of one day getting his latest album reviewed on Pitchfork. Or the aspiring author who lugs around an old-fashioned typewriter to write down her inspirational musings at a moment’s notice. Then there’s the bearded urban hunter dressed head to toe in workwear and outdoor gear despite the fact it's the middle of summer. Basically there are nearly as many hipsters featured here as you would find at an LCD Soundsystem concert.




Hipster Fashion


Book Description

Is your style... • quirky and clever but relaxed? • a combo of flowy and structured pieces? • an unconventional mix of patterns, accessories, cuts, and textures? Then you've got that hipster vibe! Good thing you have lots of style experts to look up to. Stars like Miley Cyrus and Emma Watson are always pushing hipster fashion to the next level. With a few hip style staples and a splash of originality, you can create your own super trendy hipster fashion. Find out about the clothes, accessories, and hairstyles that radiate hipster fashion—and discover how you can use them to create your own eclectic style!