COLEGIUL NAIONAL BARBU TIRBEI, CLRAI

Lucrare de atestat

Elev: Necula Andreea-Diana

clasa: a XII-a G

Profesor coordonator: Adela Barz

Mai 2015

Hipsters` style

Table of Contents

Argument4

Introduction5

I. History6

1.1 Origins in the 1940s..61.2 1990s till today..71.3 The Hipster artist9II. New York subgroups10II.1 Top 5 Best Hipster Bars in New York10 Union Hall.10 Pacha NYC10169 Bar.11 The Skinny11Union Pool11

III. The Hipsterfication of America12

III.1 The Ironic Hipster12

III.2 Revenge Of the Hipster..13

III.3 A New Hipsterdom..14

Conclusion

Bibliography

Argument:

I have chosen this theme because I have been fascinated to see how teenagers react nowadays at this subculture. I was surprised to notice that this style was well embraced by teenagers. The term hipster is a slang term which stands for a young man or a girl who adheres to non-mainstream fashion and created their own culture. It is not difficult to recognize a hipster in the crowd of people because the representatives of this group are usually dressed according to their dressing code and aesthetic norms. Hipsters usually wear "skinny jeans and big eyeglasses".

It is known that this term hipster appeared in 1940th and initially stood for a representative of a special subculture and the admirers of jazz music. Nowadays the meaning of this word has slightly altered. It describes the young well-to-do people who usually live in big cities and who are interested in fashion, culture, modern music, indie rock, popular magazines such as Vice and Clash, arthouse films and modern literature and so on.

Regarding my paper, I have organized it into three main sections (History, New York subgroups, The Hipsterfication of America), one of which has some sub-sections. In the introduction I presented the definition of hipsters and also the subculture characteristics. The first section covers aspects related to the history of hipsters, since their origin in the 40s up to now. Moreover, I have mentioned some artists who are highly representative for this subculture like Dave Eggers and Wes Anderson. The second section of my paper brings into light reviews of top 5 hipsters bar in New York City, like Union Hall Pacha NYC, a dance music institution, 169 Bar where people listen to live music, The Skinny called in this way for a reason: it is skinny, reminiscent of a railroad style apartment. and Union Pool as I considered aspects like location and atmosphere relevant for a complete understanding of this cultural movement. In the third section of my paper, I spotlight facts regarding the hipsterfication of America. In conclusion, I summarized the main points of hipsters` life and demonstrated that the entire idea of being a hipster is relative to the person who states someone else is a hipster.

Introduction

The term in its current usage first appeared in the 1990s and became particularly prominent in the 2010s, being derived from the term used to describe earliermovements in the 1940s.Members of the subculture typically do not self-identify as hipsters, and the wordhipsteris often used as apejorativeto describe someone who ispretentious, overly trendy or effete.Some analysts contend that the notion of the contemporary hipster is actually a myth created by marketing

Thehipstersubculturetypically consists of whitemillennialliving in urban areas.The subculture has been described as a "mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior and is broadly associated withindieand alternative music, a variednon-mainstream fashion sensibilityincludingvintageandthrift store-bought clothes, generally progressivepolitical views,organicand artisanal foods, andalternative lifestyles. Hipsters are typically described as affluent ormiddle classyoungBohemianswho reside ingentrifying neighborhoods.

In aHuffington Postarticle entitled "Who's a Hipster?", Julia Plevin argues that the "definition of 'hipster' remains opaque to anyone outside this self-proclaiming, highly-selective circle."In Rob Horning's April 2009 article "The Death of the Hipster" inPop Matters, he states that the hipster might be the "embodiment of postmodernism as a spent force, revealing what happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics." In aNew York Timeseditorial, Mark Greif states that the much-cited difficulty in analyzing the term stems from the fact that any attempt to do so provokes universal anxiety, since it "calls everyone's bluff".

I. History

I.1 Origins in the 1940s

The term was coined during thejazz age, when "hip" emerged as an adjective to describe aficionados of the growing scene. Although the adjective's exact origins are disputed, some say it was a derivative of "hop", a slang term foropium, while others believe it comes from the West African wordhipi, meaning "to open one's eyes".Another argument suggests the term derives from the practice of lying on one's hip while smoking opium.The ultimate meaning of "hip", attested as early as 1902, is "aware" or "in the know". Conversely, the antonymunhipconnotes those who are unaware of their surroundings, also including those who are opposed to hipness.

Nevertheless, "hip" eventually acquired the common English suffix-steras in spinsterandgangster, and "hipster" entered the language. The first dictionary to list the word is the short glossary "For Characters Who Don't Dig Jive Talk", which was included withHarry Gibson's 1944 album,Boogie Woogie In Blue. The entry for "hipsters" defined them as "characters who like hot jazz".It was not a complete glossary of jive, however, as it included only jive expressions that were found in the lyrics to his songs.

The same year,Cab CallowaypublishedThe New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary of Jive, which had no listing for Hipster, and because there was also a 1939 edition of Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary, it appears that "hepster" pre-dates "hipster". Initially, hipsters were usually middle-class white youths seeking to emulate the lifestyle of the largely black jazz musicians they followed.InThe Jazz Scene(1959), authorEric Hobsbawm, originally writing under the pen name Francis Newton, described hipster languagei.e., "jive-talk or hipster-talk"as "anargotorcantdesigned to set the group apart from outsiders".

However, the subculture rapidly expanded, and afterWorld War II, a burgeoning literary scene grew up around it.Jack Kerouacdescribed 1940shipstersas "rising and roaming America, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere characters of a special spirituality".Toward the beginning of his poemHowl,Allen Ginsbergmentioned "angel headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night". In his essay "The White Negro", Norman Mailercharacterized hipsters as Americanexistentialists, living a life surrounded by deathannihilated by atomic war or strangled by social conformityand electing instead to "divorce from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self".

I.2 1990s till today

Talking about the contemporary hipster, were talking about a subcultural figure who emerged by 1999, enjoyed a narrow but robust first phase until 2003, and then seemed about to dissipate into the primordial subcultural soup, only to undergo a reorganization and creeping spread from 2004 to the present.

In early 2000, both theNew York TimesandTime Out New York ran profiles of Williamsburg, Brooklynwithout using the termhipster. TheTimesreferred to "bohemians"andTONYto "arty East Village types".By 2003, whenThe Hipster Handbookwas published by Williamsburg residentRobert Lanham, the term had come into widespread use in relation to Williamsburg and similar neighborhoods.The Hipster Handbookdescribed hipsters as young people with "mop-top haircuts, swinging retropocketbooks, talking oncell phones, smoking Europeancigarettes, strutting inplatform shoeswith abiographyofChe Guevarasticking out of their bags". Lanham further describes hipsters: "You graduated from a liberal arts school whose football team hasn't won a game since theReagan administration" and "you have oneRepublicanfriend who you always describe as being your 'one Republican friend.'One author dates the initial phase of the revival of the term from 1999 to 2003.

A similar phenomenon occurred in the United Kingdom, with young workers in the media and digital industries moving into traditional working class areas of London such asHoxton,Spitalfields, and, particularly,Shoreditch. The subculture was parodied in the magazineShoreditch Twat(1999) and the television sitcomNathan Barley (2005). The series, about a self-described "self-facilitating media node",led to the term "Nathan Barleys" being used pejoratively to describe the culture it parodied.

A 2009Timemagazine article described hipsters thus: "take your grandmother's sweater andBob Dylan'sWayfarers, add jean shorts,Converse All-Starsand a can ofPabstand bam hipster."Slatewriter Brandon Stosuy noted that "Heavy metalhas recently conquered a new frontier, making an unexpected crossover into the realm of hipsterdom". He argues that the "current revival seems to be a natural mutation from the hipster fascination with post-punk, noise, and no wave", which allowed even the "nerdiest indie kids to dip their toes into jagged, autistic sounds". He argues that a "byproduct" of this development was an "investigation of a musical culture that many had previously feared or fetishized from afar".

In 2008,Utne Readermagazine writer Jake Mohan described "hipster rap" as "consisting of the most recent crop of MCs and DJs who flout conventional hip-hop fashions, eschewing baggy clothes and gold chains for tight jeans, big sunglasses, the occasionalkeffiyeh, and other trappings of the hipster lifestyle". He notes that the "old-school hip-hop website Unkut, andJersey Cityrapper Mazzi" have criticized mainstream rappers whom they deem to be posers or "fags for copping the metrosexual appearances of hipster fashion".Prefix Magwriter Ethan Stanislawski argues that there are racial elements to the rise of hipster rap. He claims that there "have been a slew of angry retorts to the rise of hipster rap", which he says can be summed up as "white kids want the funky otherness of hip-hop ... without all the scary black people".

In his 2011 bookHipsterMattic, authorMatt Granfieldsummed up hipster culture this way:

"While mainstream society of the 2000s (decade) had been busying itself with reality television, dance music, and locating the whereabouts of Britney Spears's underpants, an uprising was quietly and conscientiously taking place behind the scenes. Long-forgotten styles of clothing, beer, cigarettes and music were becoming popular again. Retrowas cool, the environment was precious and old was the new 'new'. Kids wanted to wearSylvia Plath's cardigans andBuddy Holly's glasses they revelled in the irony of making something sonerdyso cool. They wanted to live sustainably and eat organic gluten-free grains. Above all, they wanted to be recognised for being different to diverge from the mainstream and carve a cultural niche all for themselves. For this new generation, style wasn't something you could buy in a department store, it became something you found in a thrift shop, or, ideally, made yourself. The way to be cool wasn't to look like a television star: it was to look like as though you'd never seen television."

Fixed gear bikesare associated with the hipster subculture.Slatecalls the bikes an "increasingly common hipster accessory".

Other hipster trends in the 2010s have includedknitting,veganism,urban beekeeping, andtaxidermy.

I.3 The Hipster artist

The most exemplary hipster artists are probably the early Dave Eggers, ofA Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius(2000) and his journalMcSweeneys(1998), and Wes Anderson, director of Rushmore(1998) andThe Royal Tenenbaums(2001). These and other artists who were referred to as hipster produced a body of work that was otherwise classed more precisely as precious or twee. The older Scottish band Belle & Sebastian, not a part of this system at their own genesis, stood at the head of a new soft-spoken, often anti-homophobic aesthetic in music.

The tensions of this art revolved around the very old dyad of adulthood and a child-centered world, but landed heavily on the side of the child. Formally, there was an aestheticization of the mode of pastiche, which Fredric Jameson identified in the early eighties as a characteristic mode of postmodern narrative. Blank parody gave way to a reconstruction of past techniques more perfect than the originals, in an irony without sarcasm, bitterness, or critique. Reflexivity was used as a means to get back to sentimental emotion.

II. New York subgroups

As hipsters, "young creatives", priced out of Bohemian urban neighborhoods in Brooklyn such asWilliamsburg,Park Slope, andGreenpointmoved intosuburbsnear New York City such asHastings-on-HudsonThe New York Timescoined theneologism"Hipsturbia" to describe the hip lifestyle as lived in suburbia.Dobbs Ferry,IrvingtonandTarrytownwere also cited.

A minor trend of cross acculturation of Chabad Hasidism and Hipster subculture appeared within the New York Jewish community, beginning in the late 2000s. A significant number of members of theChabadHasidiccommunity, mostly residingCrown Heights, Brooklyn, appear to now have adopted various cultural affinities as the local hipster subculture. These cross-acculturated Hasidim have been dubbed "Chabad hipsters" or "Hasidic hipsters." TheSoho Synagogue, established by Chabad emissaries inSoHo, Manhattan, have branded themselves as a "hipster synagogue." The trend of Chabad Hasidic hipsters stands in contrast to the tensions experienced between theSatmar Hasidic communityin Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the local hipster population

II.1 Top 5 Best Hipster Bars in New York

Union Hall. Union Hall is a 5,000 square foot bar, restaurant and live music venue in the heart of Park Slope, Brooklyn. Painstakingly converted from a warehouse, it offers cozy firesides, a stately library, two indoor bocce courts, outdoor garden seating, and a downstairs bar and music venue. Union Hall is equidistant from its siblings, FloydandThe Bell House, and perfectly balances being both a bar and a live music venue.

Pacha NYC. Pacha New York, Ibiza-based Pacha's only North American branch, sits all alone on West 46th Street in midtown Manhattan, far from its large club kin in nearby Chelsea. Despite its apparent remoteness, Pacha's status as a global club destination ensures big glamorous crowds. Flanked by the scenic Hudson River to the West, and New Yorks thriving Hells Kitchen district to the East, the 30,000-square-foot venue is split into four levels, each with its own character and customized decor, and each accessible and operable individually. The powerful sound of a German-imported Dynacord alpha concept speaker system fills the entire space: while intelligent, LED and conventional lighting brings each room to vibrant life. Pacha also boasts a fully integrated video system with moveable screens, and LED walls. Since it's opening in 2005, Pacha New York has become a dance music institution, and one of the foremost destinations in the world.

169 Bar. Cool and trendy, one of Chinatown's original watering holes; in fact, a mainstay of the neighborhood for over 50 years. Listen to live music, or just chill out, play pool and enjoy the DJ.

The Skinny. This dive bar in the Lower East Side calls itself The Skinny for a reason: it is skinny, reminiscent of a railroad style apartment. That said you can drink budget beers all night, watch t.v., or squeeze in a game of pool or two in its tiny billiards room. Great place to go if your money situation is tight but you want to hang out in the scene anyway.

Union Pool. Both a characterization and a caricature of the Williamsburg music scene, this well-designed music venue also serves as a bar and as a training ground for the hip-to-be. The quarters are a bit close, but it is a welcome trade-off for the comfortable booths. Besides, with a backyard for the smokers, Union Pool seems to keep the pint-glass swimmers from overcrowding.

III. The Hipsterfication of America

The hotel lobby in Franklin, Tenn., has an ultra-urban loft-esque feel exposed air ducts, austere furniture and fixtures, music videos projected onto a flat panel. Everywhere there is lava-lampish aqua and amber lighting. Sale racks near the front desk display chargers for iPods and BlackBerrys and a variety of snacks, including Cocoa Puffs and Red Bulls. Every room features a media box for digital video and music.

There is Aloft, a hipster hotel on the outskirts of Nashville. Nearby arePlato's Closet, a recycled-clothing store where hipsters shop, andWhich Wich, a sandwich shop touting its "edgy, magnetic environment" where hipsters eat.

On the streets of Franklin and Nashville and almost every town throughout America now, hipsters scuttle by on scooters, zip around inZipcarsorSmart cars, roll by onfixed-gear bikesor walk about in snazzy high-top sneakers and longboard shorts. They snapInstagramphotos of each other in black skinny jeans and T-shirts with funky epigrams like "If You Deny It, You Are A Hipster" and turn the pix into iPhone cases. They buy cool-cat snuggle clothes atAmerican Eagleand down-market monkey boots atUrban Outfitters. Hipsters drink cheap beer, listen to music on vinyl records and decorate their lairs with upcycled furniture. They work as programmers and shop clerks, baristas and bartenders. Hipster people are gamers and volunteers, savvy entrepreneurs and out-of-work basement dwellers.

III.1 The Ironic Hipster

"Hipster culture is omnipresent," says Peter Furia, a founder of Seedwell Digital Creative Studioin San Francisco. "It dominates fashion, music and lifestyle. It crosses borders of ethnicity, socio-economic status and sexual preference something that we haven't seen since the boom of hip-hop culture."

Furia's studio is producing a documentary-style Web series, American Hipster for its nascent YouTube channel that will debut in April 2012. "What is funny is that people who aren't hipsters generally express distaste for them and those who appear to be hipsters hate to be identified as such. Everybody hates hipsters, especially hipsters. And the ironic part is that hipsters' opposition to pop culture has become pop culture."

You might think that as hipsterism ripples out, in concentric and eccentric circles farther and farther from its big-city epicenters, the ultra-coolitude would lose its authenticity, Furia says, "but the opposite may be true. Cities are known for setting trends; hipsterism is about anti-trends. It sounds funny, but hipsters in Omaha may actually be cooler than hipsters in New York City everyone knows about New York City."

American society, from Furia writing, often thinks of hipsters as "posers who appropriate an image of cool individuality but lack authenticity, but we think there may be real substance beneath it all." He points to social waves such as urban farming, the Do It Yourself initiatives and the Occupy movement. "There are lots of hipsters in all of these movements," he says, "who are authentic in their passions."

III.2 Revenge Of The Hipster

To many the American hipster represents more than ironic graphic T's and gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. "I like to believe there is something smarter lurking within our romance with hip, an idea of enlightenment and awareness," says John Leland, aNew York Timesreporter and author of the 2004 bookHip: The History.

America does have a long love affair with being hip not only up to date and aucourant, but ahead of the curve. The Urban Dictionary defines hipsters as "a subculture of men and women typically in their 20s and 30s who value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter."

The greatest concentrations of hipsters, the hiptionary definition continues, "can be found living in the Williamsburg, Wicker Park and Mission District neighborhoods of major cosmopolitan centers such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco respectively.

In 2009 was published an essay in Time magazinefocused on the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, noting that because of a lagging economy and neighborhood gentrification, "Hipsterdom is largest natural habitat, it seems, is under threat." In the past couple of years, Hipsterdom has entered and in some cases, dominated dominant culture. Hipsters, after all, know how to adapt: how to make the cheap chic, the disheveled dishy, the peripheral preferable. A shaky, shabby economy is the perfect breeding ground for hipsters.

III.3 A New Hipsterdom

Modern historians trace the term "hip" at least back to the Jazz Age. The word's origins are in dispute. Some people believe it came from "hop" a street word for opium; or the hip flask carried by clandestine drinkers, or "hepi," an African word meaning "open-eyed awareness."

The hipster's ancestry no doubt involves hepcats and beatniks and hippies. Today some hipsters are so hip they refuse to use the word self-referentially and believe that anyone who does so is, well, hip-o-critical. As long as hipsters were confined to cool urban corrals, they were easy to deride. Robert Lanham's 2003The Hipster Handbookpoked fun at them. A hipster, he wrote, is someone who has one Republican friend whom the hipster always describes as his "one Republican friend."

Eventually the hip sensibility was adopted by bigger and bigger circles until it boomeranged back to the small towns, Leland says. "Now there is no lag time. Those syntheses and exchanges take place not in physical spaces but metaphorical ones in cyberspace, in the marketplace, in the media. So stuff that looks like hip is everywhere."

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I believe that I have managed to present almost all the important facts concerning the Hipsters style, their history, the Hipstertification of America and also the best Hipsters Bars. I demonstrated that talking about the contemporary hipster, we are talking about a subcultural figure who emerged by 1999, enjoyed a narrow but robust first phase until 2003, and then seemed about to dissipate into the primordial subcultural soup, only to undergo a reorganization and creeping spread from 2004 to the present.

But with the hipsterfication of America, today's hipsters come in all stripes and all political persuasions.Rachel Maddow and S.E. Cupp to courtesy phones, please. And all ages: Not everyone who is hip is young, and not everyone who is young is hip. Hipsterishness is a state of mind. It is easily to see the dawn of a new hipsterdom. The subculture has become an omniculture and its denizens can be found outside Nashville and in Grinnell, Iowa, and in Omaha, Neb. Visit theLittle River Coffee Barin Spartanburg, S.C., theBusted Liftin Dubuque, Iowa, or the Bikini Loungein Phoenix.

And hipsterfication is happening at hyperspeed. "Hip used to have a lag time," theTimes' Leland explains. "Weirdos and creative people fled their intolerant small town for the city, where they could be anonymous and find other weirdos. Together they combined their knowledge of style or wisdom, of outsider lore, black and white to produce hip." The expression of hipness, Leland says, "had to be private to be distinct, understood only by the inner circle."

However, the entire idea of hipster is relative to the person whom says someone else is a hipster. It is a term very few people would like to be associated with. What makes it interesting is that no matter how you dress, or act, or what music you listen to, there is a person who will not like you based on your life style. There is no ultimate normal, so people should follow what makes them happy

Bibliography

Wikipedia-"The Online Encyclopedia": http://en.wikipedia.org

http://nymag.com/

http://www.npr.org

http://www.nyc.com

Lanham R., The Hipster Handbook, Random House 2003

Granfield M., HipsterMattic, Allen Unwin 2011

The New York Time

Time Out New York

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