The street profiled in this NY Times article is Grand Street, which is about 5 minutes from my apartment. The writer writes that "those looking to find what made this neighborhood [Williamsburg] cool a decade ago need to venture a little farther these days, to Grand Street — where a good-looking mix of old and new restaurants, experimental galleries and girlie boutiques have carved out a more relaxed way to burn through a Saturday."
She then proceeds to take a little tour down Grand, enumerating the best of the street's shops. There's Pop, "an adorable little shop that sells colorful dresses and graphic t-shirts," Armoire, which "serves cold mimosas to members of the local fashion set as they paw at exquisitely crafted silk dresses," and Chopin Chemists, which "looks like an old apothecary shop, but ... sells designer candles like Paddywax ($16.99) and Voluspa ($21.99)."
Adorable ... paw ... fashion set ... designer candles ... (elsewhere in the article) pretty ... popular with laptop users ... storybook ... arty ... splurge ... and so on and so forth.
Just let me ask: when did hipsters completely transform into yuppies? Maybe it's been happening all along, and I haven't just been paying attention, but the smug, self-satisfied consumerism with which this article is shot through makes me SICK TO MY STOMACH. You do not need a goddamn twenty-two-dollar candle. You do not need to burn through your Saturdays. You do not need cold mimosas. To hell with storybook, pretty, arty, splurging and the rest of this nonsense. It's all escapism, it's all worthless and it won't make you happy.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Hipsters have always been yuppies, at least in the sense that "yuppie" = consumer. A Yuppie is simply a different kind of consumer with a different set of tastes (Passat instead of Vespa; Clarks instead of Chucks; the Slope instead of Wburg). People purchase their lifestyles (usually on credit), regardless of which one they choose to appropriate.
Might we call these people "yupsters?"
That's a good point, Jesse. And yes, Joe, we might call these people yupsters -- in fact, I think it's already been done.
Linguistically, "hippies" would also be an appropriate term.
2 Good Calls:
Hunter, for calling bullshit.
Scram, for calling them hippies.
Hunter, wise eyes. It's an endless cycle of capitalism's corporate hegemony eating up all--even the minds of the so-called "hip"; I often mourn the loss of the gorgeously trashed East Village as it "transformed" (and I mean that pejoratively!) throughout the '90s into the "poodlehood" it is today.
Jeffery
Post a Comment