Of course I chose to live in Europe, wherein they celebrate the weirdest of holidays. Berlin, May 1: National Kreuzberg Car Burning Anarchy Day and Molotov Cocktail Olympics. The night before that they burn witches in parks. Hard to imagine there are any witches left. The rest of the time they are celebrating some person or event nobody has cared about for 500 years. Once it's on the calendar, it can't be taken off without burning more cars/witches and/or throwing more Molotovs.
I'm a pacifist. Make donuts, not war. Sure, the sugar of 3 or 4 juicy Berliner jelly donuts makes me as giddy as a schoolgirl, but I am a 6 foot 5 inch tall man (ubergrossenmensch for y'all Deutschers) and that would be funny to see.
Yes, I considered reaching for my pistol, but they took it at the airport.
The only thing left to do (other than inserting bullets manually into my head) is to beg. That's right, I'm on my hands and knees ovah heah. Gimme donuts. There's this button on the top right that says DONATE! Buy Me a Donut!
If you do that I will love you. Long time. And hurry, please. My knees can't take kneeling much longer.
If you send me a donut donation, I will take a picture of myself stuffing donuts in my face holding a sign with your name and/or website on it. Think of the power you could wield with one click! If you DON'T help me out with a donut, a not-so-young man may wind up committing crimes for his fix. And that's just ugly.
“Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in
their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture,
progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity,
intelligence, and witty banter.”
- urbandictionary.com
“Hipsters are a pretentious group of tiny little waiflike
creatures (male and female) who dress the same, look the same and act the
same—much like any other group of fashion victims.Upper middle class white kid + liberal arts education + thrift store chic =
DOUCHEBAG.”
- Dunkin’ Berliner
O hipster: shall I compare thee to a lump of shit?Thine large glasses offend me; rip them off
and stomp them!Thou art dressed in
skinny jeans which sag at the back!Contradiction?Juxtaposition?Room to carry a
load of dung when startled suddenly, timid creature?
I kept hearing the term ‘hipster’ bandied about in Berlin.It took me a while to give a shit, since all
I care about is Berliner jelly donuts and Berliner spaetis.But then I heard that they are arriving in
droves and driving up Berlin
rents with their trust funds and ‘lofty’ real estate aesthetic.So, looking for a new scapegoat for
gentrification other than yuppies (who have lawyers, thus making it harder to
perpetrate hate crimes with impunity), I decided to research and investigate
this neo-nuisance with all the voracity of one who can devour 6 Berliner jelly
donuts in one sitting and never even THINK of fitting into skinny jeans.
Classification of the creature Hipsteris Urbanitis is easy when beginning from the top down:
- Cap:the hipster
usually wears heavy wool winter caps that are two sizes too large.When the temperatures surpass 80 F, the
hipster’s movements slow to a crawl.They often sit in parks with dull smirks on their faces as the burning
sun and the thick wool slowly turn their lazy brains to mush.
- Eyewear:the
larger, thicker and blacker the glasses, the better; most of the time the
glasses aren’t even prescription.To a
hipster, looking dorky is part of the fashion irony.Perhaps they think that nobody will hit them
if they wear glasses.Heh.
- Beards:often a
hipster grows a beard to differentiate themselves from the gays and the
metrosexuals, who merely have skinny bodies and perhaps only a thin Freddy
Mercury moustache.Hipster beards fall
into one of two categories: Category one: scraggly,
unkempt and sparse.The youngest,
skinniest white kids aren’t often able to grow beards and therefore get an A
for effort in this category. Category two: heavy, dense and long.The jury is out on the reasons for this
heinous hair growth on such a skinny creature.Some say it is an ironic attempt at mimicking the hillbilly look.Perhaps it is a throwback to the Ginsberg
days.Personally, I simply believe they
are members of Al Qaeda.
- Smirk:they think
they are smarter, hipper and cooler than everyone else, so they generally are
seen with the tiniest of smiles while walking down the street.To the casual viewer, they may appear to be
slightly mentally retarded.
- Torso:hipsters are
all about obscurity in the bands they worship (so I’ve read), so a common
hipster t-shirt is adorned with crude artwork and band names like ‘Sonic Death
Monkey,’ ‘Squirrel Bucket,’ ‘Trench Coat Weasels’ or ‘Temple of Pooh.’Many of the band names on their ubiquitous
iPods were formed by combining electric guitars, small, furry animals and
common home and garden implements.
- Pants:skinny
jeans.These tight jeans look spray
painted onto the hipster’s scrawny frame—except for the ass end, which appears to
sag way out of proportion with the rest of the ensemble.Either they are wearing colostomy bags or
they collectively suffer from Diminished Gluteal Syndrome.
- Shoes: don’t get me started. BRIGHT FUCKING ORANGE???
REALLY???
I once sat in a pub in Prague
in the late 90s discussing how to tell the hookers from the ordinary Czech
women.The fad at the time was knee high
leather boots, high heeled. The jury agreed that the hookers had stiletto heels
on their boots; the ordinary Czech girls had blocky high heels.
I once sat in Mauerpark with a group of Germans and one
Irish friend.The German gushed guttural
and nonsensical to me, but the word ‘hipster’ kept popping out of the mish
mash.They were pointing out the
hipsters.I was new to this game.At that time EVERYONE who hung around
Mauerpark was a feckless douche.My damn
self included.
Recently I saw an old acquaintance of mine at the Carnival
of Cultures.His previously-braided
goatee had burst from its tether and bloomed into a wild and wooly spectacle of
chin bush.I cornered him and said ‘ARE
YOU A FUCKING HIPSTER?’ pointing at his wild goat and horn rimmed glasses.He countered with ‘No! You are!’ while
pointing at my sparse, salt-and-pepper gray/black goat.We took turns accusing each other of being
hipsters and heaping bags of douche (in a friendly sort of way).
The word around the campfire is that hipsters don’t know
they are hipsters (or won’t admit it), much in the way that serial killers and
politicians tell themselves they are answering a ‘higher calling.’ As my psych
prof called it, ‘sailing down that famous river in Egypt,
Denial.’
Yes, I have black rimmed glasses.They are not huge.They are normal sized.Yes, I have a goatee, but not a beard. And
there is no fucking way I can fit my Vegas Elvis ass into skinny jeans.My head sweats in winter if I wear a
standard, garden variety skull cap.Plus
I’m twice the age of the average hipster.Innocent, Yer Honor.
I still don’t know what the hipsters are up to.They are probably just the most recent
harmless manifestation of pretentious fashion victims who believe that they are
iconoclastic when in fact they are doing the same damn thing everyone else born
in their circumstances is doing.They
are rather skinny, timid and silent when I spot them.No need to tear them apart, physically at
least.
Unless I find out they are responsible for the rising rents
in Berlin and/or gentrification
in general.Then I’m a goin’ huntin’.
The only thing left to do (other than inserting bullets manually into my head) is to beg. That's right, I'm on my hands and knees ovah heah. Gimme donuts. There's this button on the top right that says DONATE! Buy Me a Donut!
