Hipsters: Go Behind the Beard!

Hipsters: Go Behind the Beard!

Way back in the pre-internet fog of recent history people would naturally gravitate to their favorite subcultural tribe the one One that stood for what they believed in or had the best fashions. You could be a mod, a rocker, a punk, a club kid, a b-boy or a goth. Street culture was like an exotic fruit punch. But somewhere along the way did the fruit punch get blended into one homogenous green smoothie? And is that green smoothie now better known as the hipster? My name is Samuel Johnson and I want to find out. Dude,
hipster is so over. Yeah,
you’re about four years too late. Why are you still here then? Come with me as I investigate why and how hipster has become the defining style of the last decade and spread to all corners of the globe. We’ll travel to Asia, Europe and America on a subcultural safari… It’s so hot! in fashion, transport, food, art and music. And along the way, we’ll discover how ideas, products, language and fashion transform from being niche subcultural movements into global mega trends. Join me as I search for answers to such burning questions as why will no hipster ever admit to being one? What is the magical appeal of drinking out of a vintage jar? And what is quinoa anyway? Hey, it’s pronounced quinoa. Thanks. When did craft markets become cool? What are hipsters writing about on those typewriters? Where do you even get a bloody typewriter? Single origin artisanal fair trade. Powerful stuff. I needed to become one with the hipster, and what better way than to study them in their natural habitat? Shit,
sorry, I was going for your tail. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Who cares about hipsters anyway? Aren’t they just a bunch of narcissistic douchebags and haven’t we already heard enough about them already? Hashtag done to death. See? That may well be true, but if the first decade of the 2000s is going to be remembered as a time of the hipster, then I want to know what they stand for. Maybe they don’t stand for anything and they’re only in it for the craft beers, but if there is a deeper reason why fixed gear bikes, beards and artisanal yogurts have become so popular, then I want to discover what it is. Ah, fuck.
Like, all fighters I didn’t know I knew about. The word hipster is poxy. Big stupid beards. I’m not really sure whether I’m a hipster or not. If you say you’re a hipster, you’re not a hipster. Have you ever heard of any negative connotations? Yeah,
fucking hipsters. Douche. Latte fuckin’ drinkin’ ass dudes. I ain’t gonna hang out with them, just sit at the fuckin’ Starbucks. They think they’re cooler than everyone. Maybe too cool for school sometimes. Uh, probably, yeah,
just the way he described me. No one really wants to be a hipster, no one really recognizes him. And if they are. Are you a hipster? No. Kale and like all these fancy things. Hipsters are driving Kale extinct. Quinoa. You know all the bands before everyone else knows the bands. A guy who has a comb made out of a vinyl record to comb his beard with. Take photos on film cameras. Big scare bikes. Drink craft beer. Maybe use a typewriter instead of a laptop. Get a wife. If you’re super rich, why are you pretending like you’re broke? Hipsters are the ones that get cool from the internet. Hipster is a fallacy. You know, labels are fallacies. Today, hipsterism, it’s a total media invention that has nothing to do with what really being a hipster was about. So am I part of the problem by trying to label all this stuff? Well,
without pointing fingers, yes. Yeah. How can I fix it? By trying to find out what is really going on, not what the media says is going on. Anyone with access to Wikipedia will be able to tell you that the word hipster has actually been around for nearly a century. Normally at this point I should probably go and interview an academic in a book lined office about the etymological origins of the word hipster. But I thought it would be much easier just to get a bunch of hipsters to read out the definition on cue cards. Besides, it’s totes more ironic, right? The Oxford English Dictionary defines a hipster as a person who is… Unusually aware of and interested in… in new and unconventional patterns. As in jazz or fashion. The word came to common use in the 1940s as a variant of the terms… Hepster. Hepster. Or hepcat. That’s a cool… I like that one. Those terms themselves probably refer to drug use. Heroin users, often jazz musicians, frequently caught… Hepatitis. Hepatitis. Hence, hepcat. Ew.
Ew. Mr. Simon Reynolds would like to talk to you from his book-lined office. Hello,
Sam. If it’s the origins of the hipster you’re looking for, think about this. Originally, it was white bohemians who were looking to black culture, to jazz and blues, and it’s related to a… There’s a general feeling amongst the middle class that you’re a bit hollow inside, you’re not grounded in anything that’s meaningful. And so you look to people who you feel are living more urgent real lives, based around real struggle, as opposed to this sort of bland suburban life working for corporations and shopping in shopping malls. So that’s where the roots of the idea of hipsters come from. That’s a T-shirt, fuck it! Okay, so if hipsters are anti-cool, why do they put so much effort into what they wear? Give me a look at your bag. That’s pretty cool. Where’d you get that? Vintage shop. Vintage shop? Do you like vintage? Yeah.
I’ve come to meet Jeremy Valentine. Vintage fashion guru, shop owner, stylist and survivor of innumerable fads. He’s agreed to help me understand hipsters by giving me a crash course in hipster fashion. Jeremy. Oh,
Sam. Hi, lovely to meet you. Yeah,
how you doing? The first time I ever heard of the term hipster, it was sort of used to define people that kind of lived around Fitzroy that went to the right cafes and dressed in the right sort of way. And that was probably early 2000s. But it seems like they’re trying to stand out as individuals. That’s exactly what they’re… trying to do, I think, initially, but they end up all looking the same. It could be a beard or a skinny jean or something, and you get a few of those together and you start to have something that looks quite ordinary. I think it is actually very hard work being a hipster. and they don’t even know it. I think there’s a lot of pressure to wear the right thing. You know, it’s just this ongoing process that I think is quite draining. Out of every 10 people that come through the door, I reckon five are hipsters. So much about being a hipster is feeling it yourself. I’m feeling a little underdressed. Are you? Right, okay. Are you gonna be able to help unlock my inner hipster? Okay, all right. Zhoosh me up a bit. I’m not sure, Jeremy. Oh,
come on. I’m just not sure. Oh,
that’s good. Honestly? Yeah,
come on. What’s your honest thoughts? I don’t think I could wear this in public. Really? I’d feel silly. Right,
okay. You reckon if I walked down Chapel Street right now… I don’t think people would bat an eye. People wouldn’t even bat an eye. They wouldn’t. They’d just think, Oh, he looks cool. He likes a bit of colour. Yeah,
can we just focus on hipstifying this outfit, Pat?
Yeah, we could potentially do that. Just with a few little tweaks. I’m yours. OK. Maybe tuck the shirt in. A bit more hipsterish. Straight away. We’ll put on some braces. Almost there. So dangerous being a hipster, isn’t it? We’ll do a bit of a cuff roll up, which is very hip. I feel like a colorful skinhead. Maybe no sock. Before, it was quite conventional, and now you’ve got a little bit more sort of. Attitude. Pizazz. A little bit more pizazz and panache. I could get used to it. You could? Yeah. I can’t help but notice that nearly all of the hipster men I’m meeting seem to have a lot going on in the facial hair department. Hi, lovely to meet you. Yeah, how you doing? How are you? Sam. How long have you been wearing your beard? A couple of years now. I just looked like a child without it. It just grew one day and I just started to keep it. Non-desire to shave. Lazy. Yeah, that’s what they all say, man.
It’s a fashion thing, isn’t it? It’s laziness, really. It’s not a particular style. So it’s not a fashion decision. You know the arrival of your beard coincides with the hipster movement. This is true. To me it’s a dad stash, it’s not like a hipster stash. I think at this point I’m doing the beard to fit in. Goto look. keep a beard so I’m like cool keep a beard. Beards are part of the hipster movement it seems these days but yeah yeah I don’t know. Face pubes. That’s how you feel about beards? Yeah. I’ve actually suggested that we go around ripping people’s beards off. I thought we could make it into a sport. Yeah I’m dreaming if I think I can grow that in a year. Mate you can honestly. I can’t I’ve tried. Honestly you can’t leave. I tried no I tried. Um yeah sort of beefs them up a little bit. Yeah yeah. What’s so cool about the beards? I don’t know it’s manly. Yeah it’s very cool. Very manly. Uh more girls have been like oh that’s nice nice beard you have there ever since I’ve grown it. I’m trying to get my boyfriend to grow one but he won’t do it. My girlfriend likes it, she won’t let me cut it off. The ladies love the beard. All the ladies love facial hair. No. Sometimes. No.
It depends on the face. Fuck no. I do like beards on men. Love beards. The bigger the better. I love men with facial hair. Give me a good chiseled beard. I like beards, but…
Well, thanks. Oh,
I got a moustache tattoo. Love them. But why did the beard become an essential badge of honour for the hipster male? you I’ve come here to London to meet the man who can answer that very question Echo Ashun, award-winning broadcaster, cultural commentator and among many other achievements former editor of Stylebibles The Face and Arena Echo, hi lovely to meet you. Very good to meet you. In such salubrious surrounds. Echo, when would you say that the beard trend started? If you want to talk about where the beard comes from, you have to think back to the time when the idea of wearing beards for men was… Incredible, ridiculous, crazy. It was a thing for old men. But actually around 2005, in fact, you started seeing the first stirrings of a beard revival. What does the beard say about masculinity or the modern man? The beard says that modern man is looking for a way to be a bit more real, a bit more authentic. If it feels like it makes you more authentic, then… I…
Yeah… I think feeling’s important. You know,
in a way, beards are fairly easy things. Like,
most men can grow a beard. Not for me. Like,
most men, anyway, can grow a beard. So,
as a symbol of saying, that’s truth, that’s reality, that’s a real me… It’s a fairly easy, not necessarily that deep one. But, you know,
maybe that’s enough. Is it a reaction to metrosexuality? Modern men are faced with a choice about how they look. You can look all kind of buffed up and smooth and moisturised. You can look like a member of One Direction. LAUGHTER In a way, I think that provoked a bit of a crisis for lots of men. And the beard, I think, came up. There’s this idea about, well,
OK, look,
Okay, look,
I can find now a way of being… a way of being stylish, a way of being progressive, that actually kids can’t do, because they can’t grow a beard. Also,
we’re allowed to care a lot more about our appearance now, I think, as men. Well,
also, the fantastic paradox of the beard is that, although it looks unkempt and I just wake up like this, beards actually take quite a lot of care. So it’s not that men have given up on their appearance by growing a beard, it’s actually they care more than ever. Shall I pop your head, Bo? Will there be a beard backlash? idiot backlash. There’s already some academic research that says we’ve reached peak beard. When we come to look back at the 2010s and we see the beard trend there, it’s the same as looking back at the 1890s and seeing the mutton chop as a massive thing amongst men. Yeah, so facial hair trends signal certain periods in time. The 20 trends is all about the beard. Does it have anything to do with the fact that it’s something women can’t do? LAUGHTER You see a few women with some hair. Look, it’s… You know, the beard certainly is one thing women can’t do. It’s a very masculine look. It’s never been a more difficult time to be masculine without being accused of sexism. Feminism is part of society where men’s wages and incomes are actually declining in relation to women in lots of parts of the Western world. It’s quite hard to say what it means to be a man right now. I think the beard does a lot of that. does a lot of that. But what happens when… when everybody starts wearing a beard and you stop being individual. So the paradox of any trend is that the people who start it, start it as an individual. The people who follow it want to be individuals also. In the end of that, everyone is individual and similar at the same time. Everyone’s on trend. That’s actually when trends start to die. Sorry,
what was your name, sir? My name’s Aaron. I think you look dashing. Oh,
thank you very much. Yeah,
I would definitely replicate that if I could. Definitely a lot of looking after, but luckily I work in a barber shop. It’s a mandatory to sport a beard here? Not really, no. Thank you very much. Pleasure,
mate. Thank you so much. And thank you, Sam.
Thank you, it’s a pleasure. Aaron, what an experience. Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure, mate. Cheers. The other style accessory that has come to define the hipster is the tattoo. But you can’t shave your tattoos off when they go out of fashion. To the airport thanks mate. Okay mate. Ah wow. Awesome! Are they pretty new? This last one is pretty new, but this one I’ve got one ear. I’ve got a cross and an anchor, feather. I’ve noticed that the feathers are quite common in the hipster world. What about when it stops being fashionable? Hey,
don’t take me the wrong way, but I do feel like ripping your shirt open and seeing what’s underneath. Holy moly, man! I kind of dedicate my mind to science and my body to art, yeah? It’s just made in Australia! I’ve never actually been to Australia, but I was… I was conceived there. All right. Wow. Only mom can judge me. It’s like a shape for eternity. Does she know that the triangle is the ultimate hipster shape? I know. She did. I know.
She was like, oh,
it’s not so. much earlier before the triangle is a very popular shape amongst hipsters okay I actually didn’t really realize that it was so I very love elephant yeah you can say I’m very small and I love elephant because it’s very huge and I would like to take the energy tell me about your tattoos what do they mean to you Not one of them means anything. I have so many shit ideas that I can never commit to one. Why don’t you opt for a triangle? I’m so desperate to be part of that tattoo crowd. Just give me anything you’ve got. This is a cover up of another tattoo. What was under there? There was a little bird. You know flowers and birds are considered like hot hipster items as far as tats go. I need to unclose a little bit. This one is just for me and maybe the girls who skate with me sometimes. I really want to get into the mindset of the hipster but I can’t grow a full beard so that only leaves me with one choice. Do you get many hipsters coming to the store? I guess I need you to show me the area that you want to get tattooed. Wherever you think. It’s gonna be less painful here than it would be. Pain doesn’t concern me. Two of the prerequisites for being a hipster are a beard and a tattoo. So you’re kind of like, are you wearing skinners? I can fit in them. Yeah. Is this gonna make me more of a hipster? You know? I don’t know, man. It’s… Probably not. I don’t know. I kind of can’t grow a full beard, so I figured I’d get a tat. Well,
most of them can’t either, so… Have they been good for business? I definitely am busier, you know, and I tattoo a lot of young people. Does that annoy any of the purists that were into it when it was a subculture? Oh,
definitely. So many more people getting tattooed, but also so many more tattooers who… who really don’t have the kind of foundations that most veteran tattooers expect or require. Does it piss you off slightly? Of course. I think at some point the bubble will burst and it’s going to become too mainstream to the point where children are going to reject it. tattoos because their mom and dads are covered and fuck mom and dad you know what i mean so what do you have to say to hipsters watching our prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed until about age 25 make sure you’re committed to what you’re doing and understand it’s permanence you know what do you have to say to like stupid australian white boys who get girls tattooed on their uh you know on their hip i’ll be here to cover it up when i when you get Divorced. Well,
good luck, please. It’s a little red, but you can take a look at that if you like. I’m really happy with it. Good deal. Yeah, absolutely. I’m going to get a bandage for you real quick. Thank you. Fashion that borrows heavily from the past, full beards and tattoos, all of these things are saying I’m an individual, I’m a nonconformist, taking a strong stand against your suit wearing, clean shaven, non inked world. But if it really is about being an individual, why do hipsters pick the same way of showing it? The world of the hipster is full of contradictions. You’re doing it to defy the mainstream, but before you’ve even finished Instagramming it, it’s been sucked up by the mainstream because they think it’s cool too. Fuck out of the highway, boy!
Fuck you! Perhaps that’s why everyone seems to be riding fixies these days. We’ll discuss that further next week. Stay with us, you’re not on Nat Geo by mistake. I’m just gonna lay a metaphor on you before we start. Imagine the world of hip as a kind of huge cultural iceberg, or Koolberg, if you will, floating on the ocean of mainstream society. The pointy bit up the top is the stuff we see every day. The beards, the weird pants. But underneath, there’s two-thirds of the Koolberg that we don’t even notice. That bit is the origins, the real reasons these trends start. And that’s the part I want to look at. What the fuck’s happened Seth? Mate, I did tell you that we don’t have budget for archival footage. Oh for fuck. It’s a nice metaphor though. It’s a great metaphor, I’m really happy with it. Good metaphor. Okay, so let’s just do it better. I’ll show you metaphor. Thank you. Over the last few years we’ve seen the fixed gear bike or fixie become a global trend that has become synonymous with hipster culture but also become popular with the mass market. They’re everywhere. But what’s their appeal? Why is it good to have no gears? What about going uphill? And where did fixed gear start? Jeff,
tell me, what is a fixie? What do I think a fixie is? Yeah. I blame the internet. I used to have a rule in my shop where you weren’t allowed to say the word fixie. Oh really? It annoyed me. Because it’s a made-up hipster word. Right. Fixed gear. Yeah. I have people come in and they go, I want a fixed gear, I want a fixie. I’m like,
do you want to continuously pedal without stopping? They’re like,
oh no, no,
no, no.
And I’m like, well, that’s what a fixie is. Why are they so popular now? I have no idea. Really? I mean, messenger culture. And I remember reading these articles, it was talk about these crazed messengers who are destroying New York City, and they’re terrorizing pedestrians. by riding through the streets on bicycles that don’t even have brakes. So you have this, like,
messenger mystique. And,
you know, so then you can see how somebody is like, oh,
I could ride on a bike with no brakes and pretend to be a badass. I mean, I’ve seen hipsters that just walk around with… trying to talk to girls, I swear to God. You know,
at first I was like, oh,
man, what the…
And I’m like, damn,
that guy’s smart. Like,
I see him every day with, like,
a different girl walking around. I’m like, look, like,
I can’t even hate on that dude. He’s,
like, the smartest hipster I’ve seen all week. Jeff, is there anyone you might sell a fixie to? I won’t sell a fixie without brakes. Right. To just anyone. If you’re one of these hipster dudes and you got your cool track bike and you got to put a brake on that, the aesthetic, of course, of it is no brakes. So,
you know, people are like, that’s where it’s at. words Like,
they want to be like those dudes, you know? Yeah,
it’s uncool to wear a helmet. Like,
keep that up. Let me find out how that works for you guys. People,
like, think their hair’s gonna get messed up. Like,
your hair’s already messed up. When I first started building bikes, I was taking old road bikes and converting them to fixed gear. Hipsters were buying this from me. I was doing this, and I watched bigger companies follow this. Internet came on, Bikes Direct. People started buying bikes online like crazy. You come from like somewhere in the suburbs, you don’t have your own identity, so you gotta like make one, and the best way to do that is to like buy one or co-op somebody else’s. Old style, nice substance. Kinda, yeah. Like what has the internet done to our culture? It just, it makes everything accessible to anybody. Information overload. Information is knowledge that you haven’t incorporated yet. We live in the information age, the age of ignorance. I like your thinking. Yeah, thank you. Probably wasn’t original. You’ve written a picture, right? No. OK. OK. And now you’ve got to focus on getting your foot back in, flipping over the pedal, almost. I’ve got to keep that perpetual motion going, don’t I? Yep. Ah, shit. It takes a few minutes. Wiggle it in. All right. There you go. Yeah, that’s kind of smooth. Yeah. Now when you want to slow down, you can, like,
let your legs slow you down. The key is not to stop. Right. The key is to avoid. Right. So what if I want to stop suddenly? I can show you. This is a stem, right? Yeah. You throw your dick in the stem. So it’s easy. You’re gonna fall. You… There you go! You did it! Jeez,
that takes a lot of strength. Yes,
it does. Yes! Oh, God! It’s not elegant, but I got there. Yeah,
it’s alright. On your right. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say these are way much more fun. It’s how you do a face plant, right? Yeah,
exactly. Jeff and Mike took me for a ride through the New York streets. It took some getting used to, but I began to understand the simple pleasures of the fixie. Whoa! Oh shit man, fuck these are hard to slow down man. Oh my god, holy fuck! You want to show me that, mate? Yeah.
Well, I actually made it through the ride unscathed, although three cabbies did flip me the bird. But that is the traditional greeting here in New York. Hipsters seem to be obsessed with custom and vintage fixies. I wanted to investigate how this obsession has trickled down into the mainstream. So I headed to Detroit where 4,000 people gather each week for the largest organized bike ride in the world The slow roll and as you might expect it’s thick with hipsters You’re the man, right?
I’m in front, yeah. Yeah,
right. So you lead the pack? I do lead the pack, yeah.
It’s pretty amazing how people have come together for this. Yeah, absolutely, man. I mean, this looks like the coolest thing to do in town. I think this is pretty much the coolest thing to do anywhere. It’s contagious, because you want to be here for it, and you want to be a part of it. Do you know people who ride fixies just for fashion? your bike just does look a lot cooler. There’s a lot less parts. It’s a lot more streamlined. It gives you a sexier feel. So I could see definitely people riding for a fashion sense. I’m wondering whether you can help me, man.
I’m looking for hipsters. Oh,
no, they’re all over the place. What am I looking for? What am I looking for? Help me out, man. What would help me? You would not, right?
I guess look for me somewhere else. Look for a beard and tattoos. You look like hipsters, are you?
Uh, I mean… I feel like the number one thing most hipsters do is deny that they’re a hipster. Totally, right? Um, but I mean, it’s kinda hard to… Are you gonna be the first hipster I’ve ever met to admit it? I mean, I… I mean,
I kind of have to. Yeah,
I mean. Thank you, man.
Thank you. You probably will see a few hipsters in this crowd, I’m assuming. Yeah.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? No,
it’s good. Without that, you know, maybe it wouldn’t be cool at some point. So, yeah,
you got to give it credit. Are you a hipster? No. No, I’m not.
We don’t charge anybody for this ride. We put the ownership on the people. This is our ride. It’s not me or these guys in the yellow. It’s Detroit, man.
This is a genuine fixed wheel bike, right? Yeah. Got a lot of rust bills. Yeah. Well,
that’s genuine cool. I try to be radical. A lot of people I know do it just for the coolness of it. A lot of people I know do it just for the coolness of it. It’s keeping me in shape so I can just keep on pedaling, you know?
Everybody loves them. They’re like the new thing. I’m scared. Because brakes. They’re harder to ride, right? No brakes, no gears. You made it yourself? Oh yeah. Do you have a name for it? No,
not yet. What do you think? I think it’s fucking cool. Yeah? Maybe I’ll write that on their fucking tool. It’s a lot of fun. It sucks when you fall. Yeah,
I’m about to pour my sack. I used to try to get up like that. Oh yeah, yeah.
It doesn’t work. I don’t want you to tear your sack, man.
That’s no good. You want to try it? Yeah. Seriously? Yeah. Go! Amazing! You got it! Go ahead! Man, it’s so hard! You can get up. There you go. Yeah! You did wonderful, man.
Thank you! Thank you so much, man!
That was great! Yeah!
Wow! It all got fucking cool, right?
Yeah, totally! It’s gotta be there! Alright,
man. I’ll be right back. Man,
that made me feel so… cool!
Oh, whoa! So the Fixie is a brilliant example of how something from the underground scene, something from the lower portion of the Koolberg, has been adopted. First by the hipsters, then by the mainstream. The Fixie has become a badge of Kool that can be bought or sold. I’m actually quite hungry. This looks artisanal. Artisanal, locally sourced, foraged. I just wanted a sandwich, not something that’s been hand carved on a mountain top or found in the undergrowth. Why has ordering lunch become so complicated? And what’s with all the light bulbs? Hello Sam, this is Simon Reynolds. Food increasingly is a big zone of hipsterdom. Not being mere consumers and being a kind of expression of identity and of being different from, you know, ordinary people basically. And as it’s developed, hipsters have looked, increasingly to the past, you know, locating this sort of lost authenticity in old ways of doing things, old ways of preparing food, different from eating, you know, processed food. What do you think of Locavore? Have you heard of it? Oh, what a buzzword. I’ve never heard of Locavore. What is it? Locavore? I don’t even know if that’s how you say it. What are these words? No idea what Locavore is in the country. I don’t believe in buying food in big stores. supermarket shine is very sustainable and also you support local economy. I think it’s good. Yeah. Yeah I think locavore is, it makes sense. Yeah, why not support locally? It’s the cost of shipping things. I think you know the philosophy behind it is great, we should be trying to reduce our carbon miles. But how can a restaurant use local ingredients when it’s in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world? There’s only one way. Grow your own. What’s going on here, man?
What are you doing? Green stuff. What for? Why are you growing all this stuff? Well,
because we couldn’t grow weed. True that. What’s a hipster? I don’t know. What makes you unique and different? Well,
I think the garden itself and the way that we source our food. So does that mean that the food that you grow here goes onto your pizzas in the restaurant? Yes. And what we can’t get from here, we locally source. And there’s a number of local farms that we use to try to keep with the locavore ideas. I’m seeing words like everywhere, like artisanal. and foraged and, you know, local. I’m trying to pin down exactly why people really give a stuff about what they eat, where they used not to. Food becomes someone’s identity. They want to be identified as somebody who knows about their food, who is within this new food culture. There’s so many things that you can’t even pronounce that are in our food. I think we’re, like,
pushing toward less processed food. And I think people want to understand what it is they’re eating. Do you think hipsters like urban farming because most of them wouldn’t actually survive five minutes in the bush it may be because of a disconnect and if you grow up in a urban area you can be very disconnected to that and i think people grow food in the city they kind of want the best of both worlds do you have many hipsters come into the restaurant yeah but it’s you know they rock up here on their fixie bikes generally you know they might rock a few taps and sport a beard and kind of and dress funky Yes, we get people who fit your definition of that. I think there’s a very ignorant and lame kid that comes out of that that knows nothing, that’s just here partying and doing whatever. And I think there’s also a level of sophistication and intelligence. We want an experience, an all-around experience here for somebody who they can just have fun. Girls just want to have fun. And if the girls are having fun, then the boys are always having fun. Well I tried vegetarianism but I like meat too much. I wish I could have a paleo diet. I’m a vegan and I constantly get told about how being paleo is the way to go. You know, we ought to be cavemen and eating so much meat and I can’t stand it. It’s really expensive as well, not to eat bread and not to, for a quick option, to give up the grains. Paleo diet? Never fucking heard of that. Paleo is a fad that needs to die out. Music Unless you’ve actually been living in a cave, you would have come across another hipster food trend, paleo. There’s been a lot of talk about the paleo diet or primal diet, but what does this actually mean? Are there hipsters sitting around the fire eating slabs of dinosaur meat? Or is it just a cool way of saying low carb? Is this food very popular with hipsters? Um,
yes. What is Paleo? It’s a lifestyle. A revival of old ways of eating. It’s the way nature intended us to eat. Do we know that this is actually how cave people ate? You would eat something that you could pluck out of a tree or from an eat. Yes, nothing that involves too much grinding and cooking and processing. Is it a fad or a trend? I really do believe it’s a revolution. Would you say a large part of your clientele are hipsters? This is Berlin, I mean… It’s full of hipsters. Everyone is. Why do hipsters love paleo food? I really do think it’s because they’re vain people. They want to look good. and feel good. We have a lot of young people who’s looking for a healthy alternative to that is not vegetarianism, for example. I’m wondering if the hipster trend fades, whether the paleo will continue. Well,
the paleo concept is going on already for a while. Actually, it started in the 30s. Right. But yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe the hipsters are helping to popularise the idea. Oh,
I think so. Um, I want to eat some paleo. Can you help me? Yeah,
of course. Yeah? MUSIC Ooh, wow.
What have we got here? With the nose to tail. Did you hear that? MUSIC Well,
you only live once, right? YOLO. So this is like brain nuggets. Okay. From lamb. They are delicious. Don’t be afraid. I think from all awful meats, this is like the easiest to eat. Really? I’ve never had brain before. No? Psychologically, I’m struggling but taste-wise it’s good. Yeah. Mmm. To get through the psychological… Come by here, Barriere, it’s actually really nice. Do you have a drink? Yes. Chicken heart? Chicken heart. This is bone marrow, it’s also really nice. Really? Yes. I don’t know how I’m gonna get through the marrow or the chicken heart. Better than the brain? That’s great. Now the whole marrow. The marrow. This is not the brain. Have just a little bit first. Yeah. When people try this for the first time, do they struggle like me? Most people like it. It’s the texture that got me, I think. Do the testicles, do they taste similar to the heart? The texture is a bit like scallops, surprisingly. It’s very soft and delicate. We know it’s delicate, right? Yeah, yeah. Brain anyone? I’ve proven that I am certainly no culinary sophisticate, and I’ll admit, I found parts of this quite challenging. The brain in particular did my head in. Having said that though, I do see why the paleo movement is taking off. The flavours are amazing and it’s great to know where my food’s coming from. I am,
however, looking forward to exploring the lower end of hipster food, the food truck. Join me next time as I investigate the allure of mobile dining and meet some of the people who have driven the food truck revival to a street corner near you. Like other hipster trends, the food truck has working-class roots, but has been reimagined and grown from a niche idea to a mainstream market force. Behind this growth are business people sometimes called hipsterpreneurs. I’d like to find out if hipsterpreneur means savvy exploiter of trends or cool guy got lucky. Got a feeling it’s a bit of both. You think I’m hard yet? I’m teasing you. You can’t hurt me like I’m sorry. Robin McClendon GameWow The Freak The Hedgehog The Orange The Cod The Space Game The I’m about to meet Natasha Case, co-founder of Cool House, a business that started off selling homemade ice creams out of a beaten up mail truck at the Coachella Music Festival and now boasts a fleet of 11 and this store here in Culver City, LA.
I’m hoping… I’m hoping to find out two things. Why do hipsters seem to love food trucks so much? And does Natasha consider herself a hipsterpreneur? And I want to try the ice cream. Do Americans have a more sophisticated palate now that you’re in the world? Um,
maybe. You’ve updated the classic ice cream van with tremendous success. Do you think that hipsters respond to the kind of the reimagining of old things? Absolutely. I think there’s a big response to reimagining of old things. So you take the best of the old. You’re creating something new as well. I think the sweet and savory is super in this boozy, spicy desserts. People don’t want just sweet on sweet. They want something that’s gonna give more layers and more complexity to what they’re eating as far as dessert. I’m excited about trying something. It’s like just biting into a mango. Oh,
that’s so good. Oh,
that lime is insane. I thought the dirty mint was good, but the lime has won my heart. May I please have an extra big scoop of the banana, please? Oh! Now I see what the fuss is about. Bacon. I don’t think the bacon’s for me. Yeah, the chicken and the bacon for me. The meat in the ice cream doesn’t quite do it for me. Would you consider yourself to be a hipsterpreneur? Sure,
why not? I mean, Kool-Aid is a really fun, creative place where people are kind of expressing themselves through what they order, putting it on their social media. We have fun music here, we have fun people. Whatever that is, I definitely. I think there is something maybe about the hipster lifestyle and the adventure, but also wanting to display the cool factor. That’s the social media connection. People don’t want to just come to Kool House and have a sandwich. They want to put it on their Instagram and they want to show people that they’ve had this cool thing. Yeah. Sorry. That’s alright. This show set out to define what cool really is. And I think I’ve finally found it. In this balsamic fig and mascarpone ice cream. Oh,
brain freeze. Hungry for more knowledge, I rode my sugar high to LA hipster haven Silver Lake. I was seeking the nomadic Kogi truck. Famous for its collision of Korean Mexican flavors and regarded as a spearhead of the the food truck revival. Korean barbecue in a taco, it does sound like something that you might fantasize about after what we say in Australia is a night on the turps. What is a night on the turps? It’s like if you’ve had a little bit of alcohol maybe. Oh,
yeah. How did you come up with it? Kogi first came up when we were out on the turf, I guess, in K-town. And we got tacos at a regular taco truck. And it’s just like, it just seemed to make sense for. Korean barbecue and tacos to come together. You know, it’s very different, it’s very bold, it doesn’t shy away from flavor, but it’s also very LA. And people are happy to wait quite a while just to get close. Like,
it feels like it’s a very deliberate decision that they’re making. and they don’t mind how long it takes because they want it so badly. People are willing to wait 20, 45 minutes in line. Look at the queue behind you. I know.
It’s massive. I don’t know. Could Kogi be what it is without social media? So like we kind of took it to Twitter and started asking like, hey,
where do you want us to roll? And like people show up in droves, you know,
and they showed us a lot of love and we showed them a lot of love back. What percentage of your market is filled by, you know,
the hipster type? say if we were to move our truck to Silver Lake? Yeah, 90 to 100. So 100% of the people in line are going to be hipsters. I’ve learned a lot from my travels in hipster gastronomy. But are hipsters just as concerned about what they drink? The answer, like so many that I’ve found, lay in the bottom of a bottle. Or, to be more precise, a can. A can that says a lot about the way Australia adopts international trends. I’m talking about Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer, or PBR. Too many bad memories of college drinking PBR. Good old-fashioned American beer. From the salt of the earth. I spent six months in New York and drunk PBRs in the dive bars. Over there it’s $2 and here it’s like $8 for a… The same thing. You know,
it has a hipster vibe to it now, but it’s shit beer. It’s the shittest beer ever. I love past Blue Ribbon. I fucking love PBR. I drink PBR all the time and I can get it. Do you think they’re just drinking Image? Yeah. So there’s enough hipsters in the area to clear you out of PBR on a regular basis? Yes. Wow.
It literally only costs me 50 cents a can. The people in Australia pay up to $10 for one can. Are you kidding me? That used to be my number one selling beer. Wow,
and when did that peak? 2009. So that might have been the peak of the hipster movement then. So what’s hot now? Craft beers. I didn’t know that a craft beer existed. We used to not sell craft beer, we do now. What is a craft beer? I still don’t know. I don’t either. I couldn’t help but think it would be kind of more ironic if Aussie hipsters drank Fosters. I mean, is the cool, crisp, refreshing taste of imported irony really that much more appealing than what comes from here? And are there really this many factors to consider when you’re a hipster with a hard-earned thirst? The answer is of course yes. Hipster beer needs to meet several key criteria. Mass-produced crap beer can only be drunk ironically. You don’t think anyone actually drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon for the taste, do you? Otherwise, it’s strictly artisanal ale, thank you very much. The hipsters, it seems, like it hoppy. Just like a girl be a… Yeah, yeah,
maybe, maybe later. Like, what makes a craft beer a craft beer? Like,
it makes it sound like the bottles need to be made from, like, freshly blown glass or something. How is this process any different to kind of mainstream beers, or is it the same, only on a smaller scale? Well,
it’s probably more that we will use different ingredients for the… specifically for the different beers, rather than sort of change it all post-fermentation. Right, right. And,
you know, add bits of colouring and bits of flavouring. We’re actually specifically making a beer at that time. Right. Using different grains, using different hops. And that’s where the kind of better quality comes in. Craft beer is organic, locally produced. Do you have to have a rustic label on it? Marketing obviously plays a part. And the big brewers have started doing their craft labels and such. I know this is kind of… Can I have a beer? Yeah, it’s not quite ready yet. OK. Is craft beer better or do hipsters just like it because it’s cool to know about obscure products made by artisans? No,
I think it’s better. It comes back to people wanting to be connected. to what they’re putting into their bodies. Is that a reaction to mass marketing? I believe so. And mass production? People want to know who’s behind it. They want to know something about the ingredients that are going into it. We try and use, like, Australian malt as much as possible. It tastes all right, hey?
Yeah. We use all Australian hops. Oh, fuck. Yeah,
it’s not a really grassy, bit piney. Smells a bit like pipe. I love it. It’s the best beer. So I prefer the small breweries. And I really like craft beer for that reason. It’s about definitely the ingredients and the passion and that makes something different. Don’t drink beer. I’m crafty, though. They’re making flavours that the big guys aren’t and they’re tailoring to their individual taste and their audience’s taste. Hipsters are a huge part of the craft beer market, right? Yeah. What happens when they move on to organic, free-trade water? Like,
in a bottle that’s biodegradable but still lasts 65,000 years. Yeah. You know,
it makes you feel like more of a better person and more of a man because having a BB doesn’t cut it now. doesn’t cut it now. you’re a hipster. Like there’s one at Little Creatures Brewery where they’re putting it with fruit and things like that for Christmas. I mean that stuff tastes gross. I do like craft beer but to be honest I just like looking more sophisticated at the bar. You know, look at me I’m not ordering a 4x, I’m ordering a craft beer. I must know my stuff. I’ve been drinking ale as we call it in this country for years, proper beer. An Ovi, it’s been again re-labelled as craft beer recently and then everything’s got hipster labels. Why is small bad? The great thing about beer is you can really turn it around in two weeks. So we can do some wacky stuff in that period. So our current limited release is Wake Me Up Before You Cocoa, where we’ve put chocolate and smoked chipotle in there. Would you do that as a regular line? Probably not. That would keep your staff enthused, right? Absolutely. So,
you know, we get everybody’s ideas for beers and put them on a list and say, hey,
what do we feel like making now? I’ve got some ideas for beers. You do? What about a pint of thatched rooster henhouse ale? Like we would put Put the whole chook in there or something? At least on the label. OK,
right. What about a blue rustic tortoise? How do you get the tortoise blue? Well, you tell them sad stories. Right. And eventually, when they’re weeping, tortoise tears.
Get their tears into the beer? Is that the idea? Yes. That’s the secret ingredient. Right.
Greasy Mechanics overalls amber ale. Mm. It doesn’t have to be an ale. Probably only need maybe three Greasy Mechanics to make a whole batch. No. No,
I don’t think that’s going to be possible. Right. Um, you know, my kingdom for a beer. Well,
you probably should rock up to Mary’s. I’m sure they’d be happy to have you for a beer. Great.
All right. Well, thanks. Is this a hipster beer? It’s a hipster beer. That’s about as hipster as it gets. The young Henrys, Newtowner?
The young Henrys. But they’re lovely boys. What makes it a hipster beer? Because they care about what they do. And hipsters drink it. Craft beer is quite gross, quite bitter, quite barfy, quite strong. I don’t really like craft beer, I think you can tell. Why has craft beer become the beverage of choice for hipsters? I think it’s exclusivity. If you can talk about something no one knows about, it’s like that old joke about hipsters knowing about a band before they’re even formed. You know, it’s how wacky, how crazy can your beer be? You know, got like chocolate fucking… caviar flavoured beers and if you can talk about that and go I drank that the other day down at blah-de-blah Then you you you set yourself apart. I think this whole hipster culture. That’s all it’s about It’s about making yourself more special than everybody else because we’re just struggling for identity in a mass-produced globalized and information laden world arguably. Whilst I hate the term hipster it’s basically for me just a group of groups of young people trying to find their own identity and and sometimes by out wanking each other. Why is there this kind of keenness for hipsters to look to the past and towards the rustic? Karl Marx had his theory of alienation where people who used to make chairs, they’d take pieces of timber. And they would create a chair. All of a sudden we had these massive machines and all they would do is sand one leg. And that person became divorced from the product. And they had no ownership and they had… They couldn’t stand there and say, I built that. And that’s why hipster shit, artisan shit is more expensive. It’s because someone’s putting their… They’re putting a monetary value on something that actually means something to them. So this isn’t just a purchase, this is… I’m drinking a connection here. You are. You are connected to these boys. You know, they give such a shit. And you’ve seen it. You’ve been down there. And you can taste the passion rather than a whole range of machines and farmers who don’t care about their hops. You know, the nobility lies in the craftsmanship. There’s no nobility to sitting around wanking on about how exclusive the beer you are drinking is. Are the big guys just going to go buying up and appropriating all of these craft beer companies? Well they already are. They try to buy them out all the time. Is this genuine artisanal? Yeah, can’t you taste the sweat? It tastes great but I think it’s been bought by the big guns. No, you can literally smell the bath in it. It’s definitely craft beer. International Bath Units is high in this one, sir.
Are you new here? Yeah,
yeah I am. Yeah, Sam, how are you going? Good. There we go. Is that alright? Is that acceptable? That one’s got more head than that one, but that’s fine, I’ll take it. I didn’t give it enough head, did I? I’m gonna have one too, cheers. Is this a flock of hipsters? Quick, now is your moment to infiltrate. Buy them a few drinks, gain their trust. Yeah, they’ll spill the beans. I needed guidance but I was never gonna find it here. The only place I think I’m gonna find it is in the self-styled capital of coffee culture, Melbourne. Melbourne, right? They say coffee helps. And I hope so. Passion to make, not a coffee drinker. Great. Hipsters love their ethically sourced coffee. I think there’s like a progression towards understanding things in that hipster environment. Trying to disassemble it all and check it all out. The whole idea is to really show people what we do. by being fairly transparent with just the layout of the cafe without smacking people over the head. So you’re not coffee snobs? I don’t think so. Yeah, but what about the flat white? I mean, the flat white, it was a perfectly acceptable coffee. Yeah,
it still is. Is it? Yes. I’d go to, I don’t know. I go to coffee places and they’ve got signs saying no fucking flat whites. Really? Yeah.
Oh. Totally.
I was at one yesterday. Really? There are cafes out there that are playing on the fact that we’re more educated now and are just kind of fancying up their chalkboards in an effort to kind of satisfy a new market. And really they’re just serving the same shit, you know? I think definitely. Like a lot of people are aping other people. You know,
going and saying, oh look I better have a single orange in mine. Is it better? Ah, look,
it’s great to know about all that, and it is. Some of them are. And you see a lot of chalkboards where the naming is incorrect and you ask the barista about it and they don’t have any understanding of, you know, Ethiopia. You know,
you don’t buy from a farmer because you buy from a washing station and there’s like a thousand farmers who contribute to that washing station. A lot of people jump on the bandwagon. Single origin coffee, do you have any thoughts? I used to be a barista so I used to do a lot with single origin and I’m a bit of a coffee nut. I think it’s nice to know that your coffee comes from a local company. in the one place and to learn about where it comes from. Artisanal coffee is more about the whole process that goes behind it and the experience that you get from it. And why is that important? Because it’s not just about drinking coffee, it’s the whole atmosphere of going. Getting a coffee and being with other people, experiencing something and not just you know having another drink. Single origin coffee. No idea what that is. What coffee from just one place? I hate coffee I don’t drink it. Sometimes they put it in those brown jars. I don’t think it’s wanky. I used to work at Starbucks. In the end they don’t texture the milk right. Artisanal coffee is the way to go I mean who wants a boring old coffee? We actually do a public cupping and we usually get people into that scenario where they can actually… Sounds a bit kinky. It does. It does. Do you have to privately cut first? No,
it’s public, mate. All the way straight into it, man.
Straight into the cauldron. Am I gonna get… You’re gonna get cupped. You’re gonna get cupped. Indeed you are. What’s cupping? Cupping is basically just the way we actually taste coffee and actually evaluate it. Oh cool. I thought we were gonna, I didn’t know what it was. A little bit like spooning or something. Not quite,
not quite. I mean I’m a hugger, you know. Yeah,
well, we all are. So what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to… ..just have a little bit on the spoon and you want to suck it in. And the whole idea is to actually aerate it a little bit. So you’ve got to suck it hard? Well,
no, you’ve just got to aerate it. That’s what you call it. Aerating. Have a go. This is like mainlining coffee or something isn’t it? It is,
yeah. Just fucking rip it back. There we go, see? So it spreads it around. Wow, that’s a much more intense kind of sensorial experience. It is, yeah. I actually quite like it. You think so? Yeah. Let’s do a simultaneous suck off. Great. Yeah, sweet. Good work. You’re a professional, aren’t you? I feel like we’re on second base now. Yeah,
exactly. You could easily say that what hipsters choose to eat or drink comes down to simple elitism. I’m different or better because I eat this food, drink this beer or take my coffee this way. And it is easy to brand people who do that as wankers or snobs. Often they deserve it. But at the end of the day, how much can you really hate on organic vegetables or fair trade coffee? Roasted using traditional ingredients, designed using traditional typefaces. Next week, I’ll look at why all hipster products have labels that look like this. I’m thinking maybe we could just hipster-fy this outfit. Before it was quite conventional and now you’ve got more attitude. Pizazz and panache. Is this going to make me more of a hipster? I don’t know man, probably not. Oh brain freeze. We use all Australian hops. Smells a bit like pipe. Let’s do hipster beer. No on fire! I’m too sick! Am I gonna get cupped? You’re gonna get cupped. I’ve never had brain before. No. You’ve run a fish here, right? No. Easy. So, we are three episodes in and I have met a lot of hipsters. I’ve drunk their beer, I’ve ridden their bikes, I’ve even broken gluten-free bread with them. And I’ve noticed that whether you’re selling a jar of jam or a beer, if you want hipsters to buy your product, you’d better make sure that it tastes fresh and looks old. Move. Conscious. Think hard. Autism. But you cannot. What goes around, ends around. I’ve been moved on to K1, K2,
Original Card, SuperSkate, K2, SuperSkate, Kale. I’ve come to New York to meet someone who can explain the appeal of rustic branding. Can you tell me what kind of work Muka does? We are a branding design firm. We create brand identity, websites and so on. There’s a definite trend in terms of the branding of food products that evokes an almost kind of rustic feel that’s happening lately. Why do you think that that style has been so popular? There is a little bit of a nostalgic need for the past times in which everything was a little bit simpler. Food is a very personal thing. It’s generally more and more about the authenticity of the product, the origin of the product, more artisanal. So something that is a little… What is this? You’ve mentioned the word artisanal. Artisanal. How important is that now? People look for things that are artisanal, smaller batch, you know, locally produced, artisanally produced. You have always to think about, you know,
the target audience and definitely, you know, target the visual language towards the demographic. A certain kind of design that is a little bit more evocative of the past works really well for certain products. We recently worked for a big brand that had a location in Brooklyn, and it’s actually Whole Foods. And part of the visual language we created was inspired by being Brooklyn, and Brooklyn became sort of a global brand. And a lot of people associate Brooklyn with being hipster-ish. So I think what Whole Foods wanted to do… is to infuse this location with this heritage. And that was clever because Brooklyn is seen as authentic and real. Exactly. I think branding, for instance, has a sort of a responsibility to be very, very honest in that. So are you telling me there’s truth in marketing? Come on. You feel that there is a lot of BS, right? The use of some kind of old-looking typeface to make you feel, oh,
this is like your grandmother’s soap. You know, as a consumer, I’m actually very often attract to the nostalgic look. They’re trying to lure me. I get sucked into the whole retrospective branding and design. You like it, you go for it. Totally. My grandmother. Yeah exactly it works really well on me. So we’ve looked at branding that has a kind of earthy, rustic feel, but the same style can also be seen in hipster fashion. It’s a look that’s been dubbed the urban woodsman. So why has fashion that evokes the past become so popular? Don’t hipsters like the future? I’m at Pickings and Parry, a menswear emporium and barbershop in the heart of Melbourne’s Fitzroy. Now taking a look around you, you could be Given for thinking you’d entered a time warp and come out the other side in 1910, these products may well look like Dr. Sloan’s patented Miracle Wart Balm, but on closer inspection you’ll see they are in fact high-end lotions for the contemporary gentleman. So when it comes to clothes, what is the appeal of the old? I’m hoping the shopkeep will help. Should I call it a store? Shop,
store, emporium. What inspired you to start picking some parry? A lack of availability of products that I wanted to buy in Melbourne. I wasn’t able to buy what I wanted to buy and how to buy it online. And for me, retail isn’t about buying off a computer screen, it’s about touching things and seeing and sort of learning about the product. before you buy it. Authenticity, I suppose, is one word that we use a lot. It’s about the connection to the thing, I suppose. The real thing’s, in my opinion, always the best thing. Authenticity can come in many forms. It could be the pattern that’s used, it could be the machinery that’s used to make it, or the person that makes it, or the family, or the place. There’s a company in Germany, Mezge Schwanen, that make in a factory that’s 110 years old with machines that are from the 50s, and their authenticity is, like, paramount. If it’s not exactly correct, then they don’t make it at all. How is the way back the way forward? If you forget the past too much, then you move forward too quickly and everything falls apart. With modern consumerism, I think people tend to just sort of want the next thing, next thing, next thing,
next thing, next thing, and it’s so available that it means nothing anymore. For us it’s about sort of making things mean something and if it’s not going to be usable in 10 years or wearable then why are you spending the money doing it in the first place? It all seems to encapsulate a lot of what the hipster movement stands for. What you buy reflects who you are and if you just buy everything because it’s cheap and it’s affordable and it’s everywhere then what does it say about you? Well, according to that rationale I’m a fairly cheap bastard. So we’ve met a demographic that loves products that evoke the old or authentic and the cafes and emporiums that sell these products seem to spring up from areas that are themselves old or authentic. But where does that leave the old and authentic people that lived there in the first place? Is that what they call gentrification? You know,
I still don’t know the meaning of that word. I’ve come to New York to meet someone who can fix that. Has the influx of hipsters into Brooklyn had any tangible benefits? So how would you define gentrification? Gentrification is the purposeful efforts by people in the real estate community to identify property that was there and occupied by long-time residents and say, okay,
now we’re going to turn this into a profitable… community with no regard for the history of that community. Williamsburg used to be a Latino community, you know, and a Jewish community and now you have all what we call hipsters who’ve come in there. There’s just like it’s a training place to be not realizing they’re stepping on the culture of people who’ve been there. But it’s also how the schools are taken over by new residents, and as if the old residents weren’t there. It’s how all of a sudden these new stores come into the community, these new restaurants that people can’t even afford to go into, how people in the community who lived there for a long time are not even given jobs in the new businesses that come into the community. All of that is gentrification. Safe to say that you’re against it. I am absolutely opposed to gentrification. What’s the most significant way that Brooklyn has changed over the last decade? There was a time when people did not want to come to Brooklyn. Folks who were not from New York City at all were told, don’t go to Brooklyn, it’s dangerous. Even cab drivers would refuse to go to Brooklyn. Williamsburg is the main area where the hipsters live now. It used to be very grunge and used to be really industrial. When I got here, it was just starting to gentrify over in this area and it was still relatively cheap to live here. The people that used to live there were mostly black and Latino people, but they’ve been pushed out, and so this neighborhood completely changed. There are artists and musicians, and I think that has a lot to do… I mean,
I went to art school, so that’s part of being a hipster. And that’s actually the reason why people really don’t like this idea of hipster, because hipster means gentrification. It’s become commercialized. You have to be wealthy to live here. You know, I just lucked out and got an apartment that was cheap 15 years ago. The thing about Shoreditch, fucking 40 years ago, nobody wanted to come here, nobody wanted to live here. There was only a couple of boozers, not a shot. Not a restaurant, not fuck all. And then all of a sudden all the artists and designers started to move in because it was cheap, big spaces, it cost nothing. Becomes fucking fashionable, becomes trendy. You know the area was going down, the hipsters come in and they bring the value back up again. Look at this, I mean this 15 years ago this was like a Turkish village. All the Turkish people who lived here they cannot pay the rent and so they have to go away. I’m not a big fan of gentrification. I mean it’s a derogatory term, like it’s getting a bad term, but it can be positive. You can move out bad influences of a neighbourhood and bring in better ones. But that squeezes out the poorer kind of people that were in the area in the first place. I guess the poorer people just gotta work a bit harder then. Remember, change is change. Yeah. If you don’t fucking like it, fuck off, alright? So one day, maybe we’ll fuck off. One American city is actively encouraging gentrification, but its communities are at the heart of the process. Detroit, Michigan. Former spiritual and material home of the USA’s car industry. Birthplace of Motown. For many years, Detroit was the engine room of the American dream. But the good times are sadly a long way behind today’s Detroit. Detroit’s population has declined steadily, resulting in millions of empty houses. Some parts of Detroit are so sparsely populated that it’s not worth the price of the power to switch on the street lights. On July 18, 2013, Detroit became the largest US city to file for bankruptcy, with $18.5 billion in debt. Detroit’s cut-price real estate has attracted hipsters from all over America. This is Pony Ride, a buzz with hipsters who assure me they are committed to revitalizing this city. Let’s find out. You must feel good about what you do. I love what I do. Pony Ride was purchased about three years ago by Philip Cooley. who owns a very popular barbecue restaurant here. And his idea was, what if we took a building and showed what you can do during the foreclosure crisis and actually do something positive? So we have 30,000 square feet. He bought the building for $100,000, tore it out, thousands of volunteer hours to get the space to look like it currently does. And instead of offering space, right now market rent is $1 a square foot. he’s able to offer the space at 25 cents a square foot. And so what it does is it opens up the opportunity for people to come, open up a business, increase their business in a very low risk atmosphere. It’s definitely a privilege to be at Pony Ride for sure. Yeah. I wanted to meet Pony Ride’s tenants, And find out if it was more than simply an incubator for niche hipster enterprise. I’ve come here today to discuss with you beards, tattoos and coffee. What’s your favorite? Yeah,
I guess we can get started on coffee and go from there. Well,
I started drinking coffee when I was like a kid so… Tell me about this coffee place. Each… Each coffee is phenomenal. We do nothing but single origin coffees, the best of the best. The average person would look at you and say, look,
he’s sporting a nice beard, he’s got a sleeve, and he’s working coffee, and he’s got his Instagram tag on his arm. I mean, in Australia, that is the definition of what a hipster looks like. Would you agree? I would agree, yeah. Come here,
babe. Come here, Caleb. Thank you so much. You’re welcome. You’ve got to teach me this single origin artisanal barista shit. Look,
it looks very scientific. Grab a filter. Yeah.
You’re going to fold it. Yeah. Take it and spread it out. Okay. And soak the filter. What’s this called? A glass thingy. Wow. Weigh out 22 grams. That’s very precise. It should be the proper amount. Should be the proper amount. Dumpling? Yeah. Do you end up with a stray bean? That’s not super important. Just kind of pound it a little bit and smell it. There’s no rhyme or reason. Coat around the rim. Oh, I’m clunky. Just keep it consistent. Yeah,
that’s really hot. Do you want me to pour it for you? You seem like such a pussy. You did good, man. That was really good. I was very impressed. That was a good first suit. Thanks,
man. Hey.
Hey. Is it safe for me to assume that you’re the beard-bomb guy? It’s good to meet you. I’m John. Hi, John.
It’s all natural. It’s all good stuff. It’s organic. We supply the entire world with beard balm. But like, there’s a real lack of capacity to generate this product, which is like essential for men. This product didn’t exist for 150 years for some unknown reason. For all the snake oil. oils and everything else that got invented. No one thought that like, hey,
maybe we should put together some beard balm for people. I’m pretty sure you could grow a nice beard. I tried before I came. Yeah.
Because I wanted to, I actually wanted to be sporting one doing this. Yeah. It was so pathetic that the producers told me to shave it. They told you to cut it out. See,
that’s hard, man.
But it was fucked. It was a terrible beard. So here’s what I’ll say to that. Because I’ve seen some truly amazing beards that people are pushing out with like four hairs. Literally four hairs. You just got to stop shaving. When the producer tells you to shave, tell them to go fuck themselves. No one who has followed this advice has been unable to grow a beard in six months. This is a hipster product. Hipsters are buying this bomb. Yeah. because it’s awesome shit. You know,
people would be like, oh,
trendy this, trendy that. No, why wouldn’t you have a beard? It’s a no-brainer to have a beard. They’re awesome. They look sweet. The only thing they’re doing is putting some beard balm in their beard. So you attribute the popularity of beards to the fact that balm has been invented? That’s it. That’s it. Wow, that’s a bit cool. Every man owes it to themselves and to their ancestors who, frankly, figured this out. I mean,
this is, like,
natural selection. This is what my ancestors gave me, and fuck you. We’ve got beard balm here. We’ve got, which I’ve smelt and… Oh man, it’s a fabulous product. We’ve got letterpress printing. We’ve got handmade denim jeans. Is Pony Ride more than a hipster haven? Blee! drew a lot of college-educated, you know, 25-year-olds back to Detroit in 10 years. That’s huge for us. You have people here that are here making a huge difference in the community, particularly here in Pony Ride. And, you know, businesses are coming back. They’re being attracted. They see what’s happening here. And,
you know, the 18 women that Veronica Scott has been able to hire out of a homeless shelter, you know, that’s really the story, right? Well, that’s why I’m traveling around the world, to find out what’s underneath the beards, the tats, and the cool looks, you know? And what I’m finding underneath it all is community. Yes. Intelligence. Yes. You know, innovation. Right. It’s incredibly exciting what’s underneath. the image of a hipster. I’m starting to feel like the term hipsterpreneur is a little loaded, as if it implies taking advantage of fads for some kind of commercial gain. But the people I’ve met here in Detroit seem genuinely committed to reinvigorating this city, either on a small scale or large. There’s an old saying in America, you don’t know shit from Shinola. Well, I’m about to meet the people that do. Hey.
Hi. Welcome to Shinola. Thank you so much. Yeah,
cheers. Great place. Bikes, watches, hand-stitched footballs. I was keen to find out more about why a city that prospered making products for everyday Americans became so attractive to businesses crafting products targeted specifically at hipsters. Um, Shinola. This is going well, isn’t it? Shinola was a brand of shoe polish from the 1940s. Can you explain the connection for me? Shinola was a brand that actually was started in 1907, and the brand went away. We wanted to start a watch company, and in a moment of frustration, somebody said, you don’t know. From Shinola and they said you know what that’s our name. Why was it important that you base your operations in Detroit? we kept looking around and Came to Detroit and really was a combination of the people and the Meg the legacy of manufacturing that brought us here We opened the the watch factory in 2011 and here we are today almost 300 people so we are lucky. Bicycles, watches, leather journals, these are all hipster items. Would you say that your products are aimed at a hipster demographic? Where we weren’t trying to appeal to hipsters they’re definitely embracing the product. Shainola has a commitment to employing locals. Why is community important to you? The majority of people that we do employ are from Detroit, many of which have not worked on watches before or worked on leather goods. We are committed to contributing to the training or retraining. So you cut all the straps yourself? Yes,
I do. I set goal of 425 watches a day. It’s a complicated process. Yes,
it is. It’s not just a bit of leather, is it?
No. This leather here is being rejected. Usually, when I say it’s no good, it’s no good. We pay a lot of money for this, so we have to be fussy. So you’re Professor Fusspot? Yeah, exactly. I convinced Bridget to let me have a go at making watches on the Shinola factory floor. However, she insisted I use protection. You want to put the screws in there. You can squeeze this to get the screw. It is so precise. Look,
I’m shaking. I feel terrible at this. You’re shaking me. I am. I’m terrible. Don’t tell anyone. That’s our secret. Just push in the air. Now look and make sure it’s sticky. And we’re all up. Thank you so much. Do we have a special finger shake? Would a significant portion of your sales go to the hipster demographic? You have that younger hipster community that’s drawn to the brand because of the story and because of the aesthetic that is in line with what they’re looking for. If we can make a difference here in Detroit and if this can be a sustainable business, it can be a prototype to take to other cities that are in similar situations as Detroit. While Corktown might not feel like it’s part of a city in decline, here, only a few blocks away, there’s ample evidence of Detroit’s struggle. A struggle that will continue for many years to come. I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that whilst hipsters might not be able to claim to be saviours of this city, they can certainly claim to have helped the process along. Because as we know, where hipsters go, others will follow. Vinyl records, film cameras, typewriters. Do hipsters genuinely wish they were born in another decade? Or is their love of retro just an easy way to buy authenticity in a world that seems ever more artificial? Today, I ask the question, why do hipsters think the future is actually the past? Yeah. Kyle. So I googled that Simon Reynolds guy who’s been randomly Skyping me and it turns out he is a complete brainiac. Food increasingly is a big zone of hipsterdom. He even wrote a book on why people love retro. But it’s this chapter that’s got me really interested. Turning Japanese. The empire of retro and the hipster international. The writing’s really small. Is there an audiobook version? No. Can you read it to me on the plane then? No. Tokyo, Japan. The city where the ancient and modern collide. So, what makes Japan the empire of retro? My translator and tour guide Yuka has agreed to help me find out. Hello,
Yuka. Hi.
Yes, I’m Yuka. Hello,
nice to meet you. Welcome to Tokyo. Oh,
thank you. I wanted to find out how Japan’s intense retro fascination compares with hipsters in the West. Yuka had arranged an audience with Matumada-san, club owner and godfather of Japanese vintage style. If anyone can help me understand the Japanese love of retro, it’s him. I’ve noticed that the Japanese people seem very committed to their style choices. I don’t know because I’m with people. Each person has a really narrow niche. Loving one single thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Japanese people want to try… transform themselves into something. Hip hop style or like rockabilly style, they found that basic, basic, basic part of Japanese fashion comes from the envy feeling to those Western people. Because we are small, because we are we have bigger heads and we don’t have like double eyelids, all that. So we kept like longing for like Western culture and being like Western people. They’re more committed than Westerners are. Yeah,
we nailed it so well that now those like Western people are looking at us thinking, holy shit, they’re amazing. But it’s actually coming from you guys. Yeah,
right. How important is authenticity when it comes to Japanese style? Fake is a new kind of fake. If you nail it so well, it becomes originality. Yeah,
right, right,
right. But definitely they just want to show off. They just show off. Now, like,
Facebook and Instagram, you have online existence, right? So people are becoming more show-off, like,
even more show-off because you want to impress people and you now have a way to impress people. Are you a hipster? a hipster. I don’t know, but… He just wants to support those kids. He’s kind of like that figure. Ah,
right, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, cool.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Back on the streets, I started to notice all the different style niches in play. The Japanese sure know how to put an outfit together. I also started to feel a bit paranoid and underdressed. Would I end up like this guy? Arrested by the fashion police for not being niche enough. I needed to find a new style and fast. I’ve
always liked rock and roll. Maybe that could work for me. Come on! Hi!
Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I’m Sam.
Sam. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Yeah. When did you fall in love with American culture? in 1950s how did it happen? When I was little, my family…
Surprisingly he was born in Buddhist temple. His family owns a Buddhist temple. And then but like all his like family members… were super into 50s American music. And then one day, his mother bought him a Buddy Hori. Buddy Hori. Oh, yeah. And so that’s when he really got hooked. Yeah, right. Yeah. I would call Tomo vintage cool, man. What he sells now there is what he made out of those vintage stuff and made it into something new. One day, like,
this… Nobody was doing this kind of style. But the next day, somebody is so into it all of a sudden, and that becomes kind of semi-mainstream. And that’s the power of Harajuku, even if something that’s really niche and alternative stuff can be super mainstream tomorrow. Yeah, right, so it happens quickly. Yeah, he’s doing this because he likes it. Will you have this style for the rest of your life? One thing that would not, that will never change is his hairstyle. Yeah, I wouldn’t change it either. It’s perfect, yeah? Pretty hot, huh? Yeah,
right? Totally. Tell him that he makes me feel very uncool. He says he feels really uncool when he’s in front of Tomo. Tell him I’ve travelled the world talking to cool people and he’s most certainly the cooler. Wow,
that’s awesome. Yeah, very much,
man. very much man Love you. Rock. As well as 50s rock and roll, another major influence on Japanese street fashion is also a particularly American contribution to popular culture. Hip hop. How would you describe your style? Hip hop? Law. It’s a hip hop, but it’s not just like original hip hop. He adds like his personal taste and that and like make it very current and modern and in his way. Why do you love hip hop? I don’t know what to say. The first like… He listened to a lot of hip-hop music and he watched a lot of movies. Okay,
are these his b-boys? Are these his friends? Yes. How would you describe your style? Me. Yeah, right. Yeah.
Can I see your rings? Man.
Wow. Is it expensive to be so cool? Yeah,
of course it’s expensive. Yeah. As long as you’re cool, like,
everything is all right in hip-hop culture. So how does the mainstream treat them? If those, like,
mainstream people started thinking that they’re cool, they’re not cool anymore. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do people follow your trends? It’s just that. Really? Yeah.
Wow. I’m in trouble. I’m a girl. Oh,
really? Oh, it’s all for girls? Can you pick me up? Oh, okay. Can I get you to dress up? Oh yeah, yeah,
totally. Can I try… Okay, okay, okay. That looks ridiculous. I went to Tokyo to find out about retro. What I found was people who don’t care whether they’re mainstream or underground, they care about doing the one thing that they love. And they’re certainly not too ashamed to admit it. That kind of single-mindedness is not something I see a lot of in the hipsters back home. Are we perhaps too self-aware to commit? Music Maybe the man who literally wrote the book on retro will have the answers. Hi Simon, finally. Hello Sam. Can’t wait to chat face to face. Um, cue titles? I’ve just been in Japan. I met people who demonstrate authenticity by showing a complete commitment to their style. They don’t have that same hang-up about originality. They don’t have this belief that you have to innovate or come up with something. or come up with something very quirky and individual. It’s much more about doing it right. If you did that in the West, you’d be regarded as an obsessive freak. Is this a cultural difference? Really,
the original hipster was white bohemians who were looking to black culture. to jazz and to blues, living more urgent real lives. In the 90s, the problem was that you had hip hop culture and then you had this film of the wigger, the white guys trying to be down with hip hop and using the slang, and that became like a joke, like seemed embarrassing for these people to be pretending to be black. So the hipster became much more about retro and about, you know, in some ways looking to sort of working class culture or old white culture, you know, sort of redneck kind of things, drinking beers that were like blue collar beers, It’s absolutely ribbon. So that’s why hipsterism became much more vintage oriented, much more looking back through history. How does retro manifest in a musical sense? These cool objects, these machines, they’re in your room or your rehearsal space. Kind of analog synthesizers and all of that kind of stuff. They’re more hands-on. It’s more like an artisanal kind of way of making music. Looks great on stage. You’re grappling with a physical machine. It’s part of that whole culture of the revival of crafts and people doing things the slower way. difficult way. We live in a digital culture but this is about going back to manual, engaging your whole body and making things. Would you say there’s a defining musical style for the hipster generation? Hipsterism it needs new markers of cool and if you’re a band starting out you need something to differentiate yourself. If you can’t think of some new unheard of sound then you have to go to the archives of pop music. Why it’s escalated in the last 10-12 years is the internet really has kind of put all this music up here. Now you can You can become an expert on something incredibly quickly. Obstacles of cost and time and physically going to record stores, you can cut all that out. They’re covering the whole of history and the whole of the globe looking for things that no one else has rediscovered. Suddenly, making records that sounded like Hall & Oates, or like, you know, Yacht Rock, 80s, shiny, super-produced pop music, that became hip. In the early days of indie music, that was the enemy. Have we run out of ideas? Is that what it is? When you reach that point where, you know, Kristerberg and Hall & Oates are like touchstones for you, then it feels like the hipster project is done. There’s nowhere left to pillage, basically. Thinking about what Simon said, it occurred to me that even the names of hipster bands seem to be yearning for the past. Or the pastoral. While it might be easy to say that musically there’s nothing new under the sun, if you’re dancing, does that really matter? And as I was about to discover, the musicians themselves are certainly not shy of name-checking their influences. With music going back, it’s like being excited about what is being generated and returned and pushed on forward. You know, I see a resurgence of like old folk and blues because we were growing up on Nirvana and, you know, grunge and we wanted to find out who influenced that. And then you find Neil Young and you find, you know… and you find, you know, before that Howlin’ Wolf, and you find, you know, all of these people, you keep decking back, and you find the more you go, the more honest it feels like it was, you know, because there wasn’t a scene. It wasn’t questioned. It wasn’t questioned whether it was something to be, you know, what was fucking hot. Maybe there is more to this than just fashion. Things like irony and retro, they could be an escape route from a world where bad things happen. S11, the GFC, Gaza, Christopher Pyne. And why wouldn’t hipsters yearn for a simpler time? a time of craft, folk music, artisanal food, a time of the beard. But electronic music has always held a place in the hipster playlist. Because, let’s face it, they’ve never been backwards about, well, being backwards. Do you have any new stuff here? New things? This place, it’s a nod to the past in a way, isn’t it?
It is, very much. Love those speakers. Oh yeah. anything that’s new that we like the look of. Every few months, it seems, there’s an article about the revival of vinyl. Did it ever really go away? In my life, no. I’ve always bought records, had records, play records. Why? I like. having an object. If you’re traveling the world, kind of DJing, do you have to be very selective in order to avoid excess baggage fees? Yeah, really.
I used to be that I would carry a lot of records, but I would always carry them on the plane with me because I never wanted to risk losing them. And my back was just killing me after a while. But do you have any music up there in the in that cloud? Yeah,
yeah, yeah,
sure. I think the collection is bigger. The digital library is bigger, but it also has a lot lot more filler. So it’s not necessarily better. Yeah. Yeah. They might love vintage and retro, but hipsters have succumbed to the pull of social media along with everyone else. It’s inextricably woven into the vintage fabric of hipster existence. What’s the point of doing all this cool stuff if you can’t post it to Instagram and make your friends jealous? Instagram, Instagram. I’m addicted. I check it five times a day. although I wouldn’t tell anyone that. I do enjoy Instagram, yes. I like a good selfie. And letting other people know how good my life is. Yeah,
I’m a really big fan of Instagram. There’s a little bit too much food porn on there for me. You know, I’m just way over hashtags. Love Instagram. Hashtag Instagram. Boom. I’ve come to London to meet Baroness Susan Greenfield who as well as being an actual Baroness just happens to be a scientist and academic who specializes in the physiology of the brain and the impact of 21st century first century technology on the mind. I don’t know how to refer to you. Do I call you Baroness? Oh don’t be silly, it sounds like something out of Wonderland. I like it. It sounds like the Red Queen or something. So Susan’s fine? Yeah of course. I don’t have to care to see you. Well you can if you wish. Well I’d like to. It’s nice to meet you. I’d impress my mum if nothing else. Hipsterism is about the self. About the self, how you dress, what you look like, yeah? Well,
we all know about selfies, you know,
and how that’s… You know how children, because they have no choice… Look at me, Daddy, you know, I’ve just been to this, and then I did this, and my favourite colour, and I like doing this, and my hamster’s called Boo Boo. You know… Whatever. But,
you know, a child can only talk about themselves. Well,
they can’t comment on world affairs. What I fear is that’s what the digital people are doing. They’ve almost stayed in this infantilised state. I think I have an affliction. I can’t stop checking my Facebook page. Have I got a bad case of FOMO? Can you help me? Well I’d recommend you read my book because there’s three chapters devoted to this this very issue. Really? The whole point is as a neuroscientist is exploring what is it that Facebook gives you that a conversation like this doesn’t give you. Slight uncertainty of not quite knowing what’s coming yeah but knowing that something will come so it’s a bit like playing a fruit machine. Yeah. There’ll be an instant response of some sort, but it’s never quite enough. So you want to carry on playing the game, checking again, because it’s a tiny little bit of reinforcement that doesn’t quite satisfy. And we know that the basis for that in the brain is a chemical called dopamine. And what you’re seeking is some kind of approval or feeling that you’re connected. Because if your identity is defined and constructed externally in that way, By definition it will be rather fragile and it needs constant reassurance. Now what’s really interesting is as we’re talking, we haven’t met before, but we’re monitoring the body language, you’re leaning forward, so I lean forward. You’re at least politely pretending you’re interested in what I’m saying and you’re smiling in the right time. So you’re putting me at my ease, this is making me open up more to you. Would you tell me a secret if I was looking like this? Definitely not. No,
there we go. But would you if I’m looking like this? Absolutely. Yeah,
exactly. So, well… No,
I touched you already. Exactly. But you’re nailing me. It’s awkward. Yeah, yeah.
So, all these skills, voice tone, body language, eye contact, whether or not you touch someone, where you touch someone, so on, all that is vital for establishing interpersonal rapport and empathy. Now, those things are not available on Facebook. It makes you very vulnerable because you’re opening yourself and talking about things that are important to you, but to people who might come back and not understand you, you who might criticize you You might distort things a bit, that your social life is more interesting or crazy, that you always look like that ideal photo that you are like. All my thoughts are interesting. All those things, yeah. And of course, the real you. What happens to the real you? There’s no-one to confide in, no-one to talk to. You’re even lonelier. The whole essence of social media is you’re outreaching in an unprecedented way to huge numbers of people. If you’re constantly outputting and there’s this frenzied pace of input, output, input, output, When do you have time? to do the middle bit, which is be you, to think. So I can rob you of your identity? You can. Identity and privacy are very close things. If you give up your privacy, you’re also risking your identity. Facey.
Facey? Yeah,
what do you think of Facey? Facebook. Facebook is a wonderful way for people to share their ideas and the way that you should live your life. You know,
my mum’s friends with all my friends now, so it’s not as cool as it used to be. I really don’t know what I’d do on the weekend anymore. Yeah,
I love Facebook. It’s changing the world. I know everyone gives it a bad rap for all of its privacy issues. I just use Facebook for lurking. I find it funny. Lurking? Yeah.
What does that mean? Just stalking people, seeing what they’re up to. Did you know that Australians check their Facebook more regularly than any other nation? You’ve got some stiff competition, I thought, there.
In Britain, people spend more time online than asleep. Holy moly. Have you heard of the expression J-Mo? The cure for FOMO. Joy of missing it, yeah. If I find my Jomo, I might rediscover my mojo. Exactly, you need the mojo Jomo. What would happen if you just committed Facebook suicide? You’re making me want to walk away from it now before it does any further damage. Yeah,
so what would happen? Be able to focus on this 3D stuff. Yeah, it’s called the real world, yeah. Yeah. Do I need to go to digital detox camp? There was this wonderful experiment involving a kind of digital detox where they took pre-teens, and I know you don’t probably qualify. quite in that age group. Maybe mentally. And it was a five-day experiment and they took away all their digital devices and they went on a camp and they tested their interpersonal skills before and then afterwards they’d been hugely changed and improved. The fact that within five days there can be measurable changes in how people are behaving shows you just how adaptable the human brain is. I’ve been accused of saying computers rewire the brain. I said well living does that, every moment you’re alive does that. What shape do you want it to take? What do you want the pattern to look like? Oh,
wow. Camp is a safe place where you can be yourself and just have fun. It’s a digital detox. No cell phones, no computers. Oh,
it sounds great. It’s a pity it only happens once a year. Still,
I think I’m achieving the same effect by sitting here and watching it on YouTube. Guys, please. I can’t digital detox with the camera right in my… Piss off! I don’t consider myself a hipster. Why not? Oh. That’s a good question. How do you feel about hipsters? Not a big fan. Aw. You have to go fuck themselves. Why do people hate hipsters? Because they feel that a lot of things they do is done for show. You don’t really think that mustache is cool. You don’t really. like that weird music. It’s just a front. That’s why people react so badly against being called a hipster, because you’re basically pointing at someone who’s fake or a poser. Are you a hipster? Hell no, I’m not. I don’t associate myself with that. Are you a hipster? I hope not. Are you a hipster? Yeah. No,
no, not really. I wouldn’t say that, no.
No. No? Yeah,
I don’t like to be like that. Hipsters hate that. No. I think I am somewhat of a hipster, but it kind of pains me inside to say that. I think I look like a hipster, but I’m not a hipster. I don’t know. I prefer not to be called a hipster, but… Sorry. I know I have, I know I have tendencies, but…
I’m trying to get out of looking like one. I’m all for them, I just don’t want to be one. Why? I don’t want to be judged. Oh,
you’re a hipster. No,
I wasn’t even hip, though.
I’m not cool. I know I’m not cool. You are now, though. I’m not,
no. Fuck off. How dare you? What you talking about? I’m not a hit star. So,
think of origin. Artisanal. So,
think of origin. I’m a new part of the game. So,
think of origin. Artisanal. So,
think of origin. Artisanal. So,
think of origin. I’m here in Shanghai to investigate a new generation of Chinese youth who could be called hipsters. They’re known as Wenyi Qingyang which literally translates as the cultured youth. But while the hipsters have Williamsburg or Fitzroy might think they’re sticking it to the man with their kombucha drinks and top knots, I want to find out if the stakes are higher in a culture where those who shun convention can find themselves being shunned right back. The idea of the hipster exist in China? Yeah. Excuse my bad Chinese. We have. We need . Like literally it’s artistic youth, but yeah, you can say it’s like youth with culture. This group of people prefer like inner quality, so they are looking for more knowledge. They are reading, they are watching movies, so they are very knowledgeable. Especially after the 2000s, because you know that’s when the internet started to get booming in China. So we get more exposed to the Western values, Western TV series, just Western stuff, including all the advertisements around. I think that’s when Wen Yi Qing Lian culture starts to hit its peak. Right. I guess if you are a Chinese you kind of feel like you are quite small, you’re quite invisible in this big, big society because there’s too many people, right? Are the stakes higher in China for people who want to pursue an alternative lifestyle? Yeah. Fucking high. Yeah, yeah,
it’s very high. The society is really being dominated with a lot of the old values. You know,
like, get a job, you know, get married, buy a house. That’s the standard path. Young people living in big city, they are trying to break this, like, old stereotypical way of living your life. They want to seek some new meaning. Because they are the first generation, they are really going on this road to explore themselves, you know? They can’t really choose anyone from their father’s generation, You know, to reference… referred to, you know. Wei Xinyi is characterized by a lot of emotions, but this kind of attention to your own emotion, to focus on within, is completely lacking, for example, in my father’s generation. Because that was sort of like a totalitarian era. So everything is sort of like, you take order from top down, right? So people don’t really care what I want, what I feel. It’s more about what this group of people is feeling, is going through. So is it an age of individualism? Yeah, I would say that. So Wei Xinyi, I think it’s more about this, up uprising of this individuality. But nowadays, it’s more about consumption. icons. So they…
Consumption of a lifestyle. Yeah,
the consumption lifestyle. Back in the days, if a guy holds a book of Milan Kundra, the unbearable likeness of being, and he is perceived as a Wei Yiqin. So some guy would say, oh,
I want to look cool. I want to be this, like,
really cool guy with inner qualities. So I go buy this book. So there is a lot of these cultural icons out there that sort of, like,
is being perceived as relevant to Wei Yiqin. If you take a normal camera, Oh,
you wear a t-shirt like this, then you’re perceived like a Viennese. So no more inner quality at all. And that’s why people don’t want to be labelled like that. So it’s perceived as superficial. Or pretentious. You know, there is a similar negative connotation in the West. Hipster means a bunch of rich kids dressed up in a really shitty way. But every piece of their clothing is worth like £500. And they’re just lying around on the street being cool, doing nothing. That’s how I see it. I mean, like,
what are you doing, you know,
mate? That’s actually how Wei Yiqing is being perceived in China. They’re being perceived quite negatively, because they are just being superficial. They’re not doing things. You know,
they’re just traveling around, but they don’t really know what they’re traveling for. They’re having a camera, but they take shit. They don’t really take anything that has a deeper meaning. Chinese hipster glasses. Cheers. Even though Chin said that the hipster as we know it might not necessarily exist in China, to me the Wen Yi Chin Yen are basically the same. I wonder if they’re easier to find than they are to pronounce. When you see them wear glasses, wear what, wear converse or whatever, you will think, huh, need to read a lot. Right. Literature stuff. You like culture, you like arts. You think it’s been influenced by the West? From Japan, from Europe, from America. They drink coffee. They hang out in bookstores or cafes a lot instead of shopping more. Do they love vintage? Oh yes, they love vintage too. You know how to express yourself in a certain way. Instead of like a… people just talking nonsense. Is one of the things to travel as well? Yes, we have money now, we have visa is better and better. We can speak English. I think be ourself is very important. How does the mainstream treat you? They don’t understand me, like I don’t understand them. Are you Wen Ni Chin Yang? You think I am? I don’t know. Yeah, maybe. Oh yeah, I am. Do you enjoy being different? Yeah, probably.
I’m glad you’re different. I was keen to find out more about how the Wenyi Qin Yan consumed trends from the West. Is it safe for me to say that you guys were pioneers of the fixie scene here in Shanghai? We’d never say it ourselves, but sure. I’ve heard that there’s this kind of cultured youth or this creative youth that are here in Shanghai. Do you sell bikes to those kind of people? Yeah,
they’re 99% of what’s happening here. They’re looking for ways to express themselves that maybe they couldn’t do before. The thing about China is that it’s been changing a lot over the past decade. Commercialism is coming through. And so it’s very quickly exposed to great technology that didn’t exist for a while. And the internet’s getting fast. So, sure, go out and get a job and follow your father down that… But in many cases here, I think that there’s a lot of, don’t follow your father down that path. Let’s form the new country, as it were. Right,
there’s encouragement to kind of follow what you’re interested in and do what you enjoy. If you were to say that Fixies are cool, what would you say makes them cool? That movement was the urban cowboy, that you’re on a bike out there riding the wilds… The cowboy of the new generation. ..of all this mess. Actually,
the Chinese translation for fixed gear, surfei, has a negative connotation. Very negative. Very negative.
Fixed gear bikes can be break… In the mainstream, when you read about fixed-skier bikes, you’re actually hearing brakeless bikes. The media picks that up as, all these guys are riding on bikes which don’t have any brakes. And so then… That’s the cowboy connotation, right? Right. So it’s seen as reckless or irresponsible. So, yeah,
and then you get kind of cities announcing that all fixed-skier bikes are outlawed on the streets. No. If there was ever a negative connotation around the whole scene, it was this. We’ll get customers in here, they’ll come in where they’re wearing every piece, impeccable. They’ll have it all sorted out. all sorted out. I’m not walking in and saying, right,
I’m now ready to buy the bike. you know my first Wow.
You can go, you came through all of that process first, and then slot in the wheels. And it seems so backwards, but it’s a full embracement. They’ve sat down and gone, right,
I’m ready now. My journey begins now. In China, I don’t think that commitment lasts forever. I think it’ll be die hard. Until the moment it’s not cool anymore. And then it changes. How long will those kids actually ride those bikes and how long will they keep them for? I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be two years, maybe 10 years, maybe they’re already gone. Do you die when the trend dies, in terms of what you’ve built here? I hope not. Yeah. A number of people have bought a new bike and then stacked it around this corner. Yeah.
Yeah, I rode in two other countries, but not without brakes. This is my first time. You kind of have to just zen it out, really.
Yeah, right.
You know, there’s moments where people are all over the place, coming from all sides. Yeah. And the thing is, if you’re expecting it. Yeah. Oh wow, this is going to be interesting. I nearly did myself in just back there. Yeah,
I just simply can’t stop. The good news is the hospital bills are really cheap. Yeah. It gets pretty hectic down here, though. OK.
People try and explain it to you. They say,
well, the buses are precedent, because why would one person be more important than 50 that are on a bus? And they should have right-of-way constantly. Right. Alright,
it’s getting hairy now. Wow. This is four huge moors all connected on the ground. Jesus, amazing. Aim for someone. Alright, okay. Find a gap. Woohoo! Whoa. Ha ha ha. Oh! Man,
if I get home safely, I’m gonna feel quite lucky. Welcome to China. Yeah. Woo! Time for a beer, I think. Yeah,
I reckon. Like the Western hipster, the Wenyi Qinian are now perceived to have lost their way. But the key difference in my mind is that the cultured youth of China first emerged as a reaction to a repressive culture. But it begs the question… Was the Western hipster ever a genuine subculture? I think I need help from a smart person. What better place to discuss the rise and fall of the hipster than here in Detroit, a place that has seen its own rise and fall? And who better to discuss it with than Professor Bruce Conforth, lecturer in American popular culture at the University of Michigan? What’s the difference between, say,
the original hipster and the hipster of today? Hipster is a fallacy. You know, labels are fallacies. It’s a total media invention that has nothing to do with what really being a hipster was about. Can subcultures exist in the digital age? There’s a tendency for many of them to become much more short-lived than in the past, primarily because of the rapidity with which they are exploited. When you turn what begins as something honest and something with integrity into a marketing device, then it becomes relatively short order before a lot of the people who were originally involved say, hey,
you know, this is not me. I don’t want to have anything to do with that. I’m gonna move on to something else. Before we get to your tats, I kind of want to talk about how important is it that we throw away these labels that I keep chucking around. Okay,
sure. I’m going to let you fly. I don’t believe I need to prompt you. People are tired of being labeled, branded, constantly sold to. We don’t have an identity anymore because we’re constantly being branded by it. So, are you label-less then? You know, I mean, even if I call you free of labels, then I’m… labeling me, right? Well,
I’m an artist. Yeah. You can put that label on me. Yeah.
And I’m fine with that. I’m not a fucking iPhone. I don’t need a laptop like the new one that you’re trying to sell me based off of the branding because of what you think that I’m supposed to look like. In my travels, I think that I’ve discovered there is the truer kind of hipster and then the person that just wants to look like a hipster. And it’s always been that way. I mean, it was that way during the beat generation. You had true beats and you had beat nicks. Yeah. You had, you know, hippies, and then you had, you know,
your weekend warriors, the kids who on Friday night, you know, would put on their bell-bottoms and their tie-dye and go out and smoke some dope and go to a rock concert and feel like they were hippies. As technology has increased, as marketing has become more pervasive, you go to any mall, you can have somebody walk in looking, you know,
like a… High school preppy and they can walk out looking like a hipster, you know, the oversized glasses, you know, they will have got their hair cut into an asymmetrical thing, they may have some facial hair, you know, the incredibly tight jeans that are too short and they’ll walk out feeling as though they have assimilated that culture but of course, of course, they haven’t. The important question that I think we have to ask is why did they feel the need to appropriate something. that maybe not be their natural environment. With technology changing as rapidly as it does, and with the homogenization of popular music and popular culture, and music becoming auto-tuned and all these other things, that there’s a certain desire to search for something that strikes them as being a little bit more honest, a little bit more real. The only way they may have access to that is by buying those things. The cultural stereotype of the hipster came about from people going over the top with trying to find some way to be different, when in reality all they had to do was look within themselves. So, the hipster. Subcultural icon, triumph of marketing, or yesterday’s news? And if it is yesterday’s news, what’s next? Yeah,
hipster’s dead. I guess it’s not that cool to be a hipster anymore. What’s next? Hopefully, people not giving so much of a hoot about how they’re perceived. But that’s never going to happen. The hipsters are having kids, and they’re naming them weird things like Rainbow and Cloud, or what are those kids going to be like? If it goes by history, they’ll probably end up being lawyers and stuff and be like, Dad, get a job. There was a hipster bar in the Lower East Side of New York where people just listen to Classic rock. It was almost like everyone was done with being cool. They just wanted to have a beer. Well,
we’ve done emo, we’re in hipster. I think it’s got to go to somewhere really like sci-fi or something. Metal will be the next thing, and then they’ll ruin something else. If hipster has come full circle, then so have I. I’m back at Shag Vintage Clothing in Melbourne. Jeremy knew where hipster started. So I’m banking on him being able to tell me what’s next. I enlisted the help of a baroness in Cambridge to kind of help rid me of my FOMO. But it keeps coming back. Hipster’s done and I really need to know what’s next. Well, there’s the normcore. …praise at the moment. I have heard mention of the Normcore about the place, but nobody seems to really know what it is. You’re half hipster, half Normcore. Normcore? Have you heard of Normcore? No.
No. I don’t know what Normcore is. Normcore? No. Tell me more. Tell me.
What is it? Don’t need to know about it. Apparently it’s an anti-fashion fashion. Have you heard of Normcore? Yeah. I don’t know why though. Yeah,
well that’s the thing. I think it’s supposed to be a bit under the radar, but in reality, the people that are perfecting Normcore are probably spending an hour. Getting ready in their simple sort of under the radar outfit. So normcore is as the name suggests, it’s kind of softcore normal. I reckon it’s hardcore normal. Hardcore normal? Yeah, when you actually break it down there’s a lot of effort involved in looking so ordinary. Paint a picture for me. It’s supposed to look effortless and sort of like you’re not caring about labels and looking too fancy or trying too hard to look cool or so forth. But now there are sort of brands involved in creating this non-core experience for people. So it’s like a camouflage less is more brigade? Yeah,
a little bit. Normcore seems to me like it’s what you wear when you get older. So what are these kids gonna do once their passion for normcore fades? They’re gonna be all these flipped out, tripped out, like 50 and 60 year olds trying to find their identity because they were too normal when they were kids. But when you think about it, there really isn’t anything that new about it. We’re actually just repeating things that have already happened in the past. I’d rather have some vintage hipsters rocking the joint and at least kind of cutting a smooth figure as they walk down the street. Yeah. Help me out. You know, I mean, you’ve got everything here. Don’t tell me you want to be Normcore. Oh,
I want to feel what it’s like. It might be an ordinary feeling soon. These remind me of the 1990s. Probably 92. Can you do them up? Not as thin as I used to be. Oh,
don’t worry. Here,
you can pop that over the top. Bit of Nike. Disgraceful. Pop that on. Cyndi Lauper. Cyndi Lauper? Full Cyndi Lauper action, don’t you think? Okay. All right. So I’ve got to walk normally now too. You have to have a slight attitude, you know, an undercover attitude. An undercover attitude. Like you don’t care but you know. I think you need a few little alterations. There you go, what do you think? Um, oh, I feel like a goose. Pop those on. I feel like a total farquit. Can I get back into my civvies? Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s a good idea. Yeah. Excuse me, mate. Hey,
um, can you tell me what the word hipster means to you? Hipster? You’re about five years too late. Why did the hipster burn her mouth? Because she drank her coffee before it was cool. What do I have to do to be actually cool to you? You have to be not cool, right? I do have socks on, but they’re the shitty ballet socks that hipsters wear so it doesn’t look like they’re wearing socks. Oh man, what a girl. Can I try it? Yeah,
yeah, you have to. So you can have a hipster ride. Okay. Could I wear your glasses as well? Yeah,
sure. You want my moustache as well? How many hipsters does it take to change a light bulb? It’s a very obscure number, you probably wouldn’t have heard. I’ve heard of it. I keep three beehives in central London. And I take… You are a hipster dude. And I take the beeswax out of the hives and I make my own moustache wax. Like if I want YOLO tattooed on me or… Come on, come on. Okay,
I don’t think anyone in Australia. How much does a hipster weigh? An Instagram. There’s a hipster, he’s king of the hipsters. You can’t judge someone on what they’re wearing, mate.
There you go, the hipster. Fuck, skewered. Shave me beard off. In my quest to define the essence of the contemporary hipster, I’ve travelled to some of the most vibrant cities on the planet. But it’s here, in the unlikeliest of places, that I finally succeeded. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… The Hipster. An absurd, ridiculous, mass-produced confection. Saturated with media exposure, diluted with overuse, artificially sweetened by multinationals, packaged and sold for us to suck up greedily until the initial rush fades and we realise we’re just rotting from the inside. So… What do I take away from all of this? Apart from this drink, obviously. I meant that in a philosophical sense. What did it all mean? Well, to me, despite what it’s come to, hipster did mean something. Once. Briefly, it speaks to our need to stand out in a world where the sum total of human endeavour and creativity can be downloadable at 10.5 megabits per second. It was an attempt to unplug from all of that. that and remember what was pure, individual and authentic about what went before. Until it got gobbled up by the very machine that it was trying to escape from in the first place of course. Perhaps the legacy of the hipster is to remind us that today’s individualism is tomorrow’s door chain window display. If that’s true, what do we do next? Nothing? Occupy something? Go normcore? Whatever the case, I’ve learnt that it’s more important now than ever to not give a flying fuck about what anybody else might think. I’ve also learnt that this convenience store beverage poured, of course, into a plastic mason jar speaks more eloquently about the hipster trend than I ever could. Thanks for watching. Ew.

The six-part series embarks on a global quest to understand the origins, meaning and future of the cultural stereotype that has become known as the hipster. It looks at how artisan cheese, craft beer, tattoos and beards evolve from being niche trends to hipster clichés. And asks why no hipster will ever, ever admit to being one.
Director: Richard Kelly

00:00 What Is A Hipster
22:57 Fix Me A Snack
44:56 Here Come The Hipsterpreneurs
01:07:47 Future is Behind Us
01:29:38 Tokyo Retro Fomo
01:54:50 Next Big Thing