Time to answer some of your questions. What I have done is read everything I got from you, and then swiftly erase it so as to make only the most striking and fundamental questions rise to the top of my memory. As you might guess, many of these questions revolve around a central theme: How do I define myself? It's a fair question to ask, after all, here I am bagging on hipsters, a 'naysayer', but where the hell do I get off, right?

Simply put: Every situation I have encountered with hipsters, every conversation I have ever entered, has been a complete disappointment, a repulsive disgrace. Why you ask? Because hipsters don't know how to speak, they only know how to mimic. Every syllable is as hollow as a chocolate bunny, and what's more, instead of keeping their miserable mouths shut until they DO have something to say, they twist and tangle genuine expression into an embarrassingly ill-concocted 'ironic' sludge. I suppose I first noticed this trend five or six years ago when upon striking up a little chit-chat with a roundly tattooed and chain-walleted fellow at a coffeeshop (Eugene), every communication hinged upon some matter of taste: This band, that 'film,' what type of beer I drank ('dude, you should really try Black Label') and on and on and on and on and on he dragged me around this barometric tether of trivia. I shook my head, and finally (against my good instincts) I agreed to attend a gathering of his friends. It would be nice to say: 'Little did I know ...' but of course Eugene made it abundantly clear that I was (by this lucky fluke) about to enter at the very top of the hipster food chain, on the very cutting edge of cool, on the precipice of pragmatism: I was invited to his Guided By Voices listening party. This was an affair I shall never forget: the Pollard story, the Pollard pose, the Pollard shirt, the Pollard drink, the Pollard sing-along, the endless stream of homoerotic jokes (rendered all the more pathetic by the near absence of women). There was one other woman there: 'Ophelia,' a tweedy, frumpy, spectacled, couch-bound little wench who thumbed ferociously through a copy of Art Forum the whole time. An affair to remember, indeed. One especially contemptuous pug of a man who smelled of moth balls and wore a tucked-in western-cut polyester button-down (yee-haw) and a pair of thick, black-framed specs set himself to the task of 'documenting this party,' with his Polaroid (how very quaint) and as I left he endowed me with a pile of shots (most taken at reverse arm's length with his throbbing little face squashed against another stoically posed hipster) and said in shocking earnestness, hushed whisper: "hang on to these Aimee, someday they'll be worth something."

These are, of course, the self-styled artists of our time. And I left that party with the one giant question about hipsters, one that I still have not been able to answer, the one that drives me to cringe at their very presence: How in God's name could a group of people so fanatically guided with being critically tasteful, possess such a profound retardation of taste? When it comes down to things as basic as conversational skills and genuine interaction these people rely on quoting Sixteen Candles and Evil Dead II. So you ask: How do I identify myself? I believe we define ourselves primarily in opposition to others, and since I don't readily identify myself positively with any group, my only instinct is to ally myself in the way that comes naturally: I am an Anti-Hipster. I don't know any other way to put it. This is to say that I struggle to find a mode of expression that does not rely on bending the mental refuse of popular culture (song lyrics, movie lines, advertising jingles) into some kind of ironic code that can only be interpreted by those who 'speak the language,' because I find those who speak the language absurd, and I find the language itself absurd.

And like the hipster lingua franca, the hipster environ (think Disney's Mainstreet U.S.A) is replicated in the Mission Districts and Williamsburgs of America, its residents (think giant plush Mickeys and Minnies, and Plutos and Snow Whites) staggering along the vapid streets around bartime chanting Ted Nugent songs and dangling copies of Paper and Shout and the Village Voice and the Weekly from their little purses Sunday afternoon, cackling their way to mimosa brunches to argue the finer points of the post-punk scene. I have slowly grown to despise them.

It's time again for my New York City Hipster snapshot of the week:

Roughing It — A Loft Somewhere in East Williamsburg (via telephone), Oct. 23, 2001

So I was looking for a new apartment and I was getting pretty fucking sick of tearing the little tabs from the posters rendered in the wonky, bubbly hand of hipsters holed-up all along Bedford Ave. And I was getting so desperate that when I saw one that looked promising (i.e. no digital pictures of the room, no need to be 'cool' or 'laid back' or a 'quiet non-smoker,' no exclamation marks!!!) I tore the whole goddamned thing down and stuffed it into my bag — I didn't need anymore competition. I paid three bucks for a cup of coffee. They didn't leave room in the top for milk, they only had the little individual sugar packets (fair-trade my ass), and I couldn't find a fucking bench to sit down on. All the seats inside the cafι were occupied, all aglow with the undisturbed throbbing luminescence of the Apple I-Books. Goddamned hipsters.

Jennie, I'm told by a mutual friend, has a room available in her "beautiful loft" somewhere in Williamsburg. I've heard this name before, Jennie. This is Jennie with whom I would "get along well," who has "great taste," who is "really really cool."
So I call — Jennie.

"Hello?"
"Hi, I'm trying to reach Jennie, is she around?"
"Hold on okay?"
(drilling sounds, falling planks, Strokes)
"Hello?"
"Yeah, hi! I'm trying to reach Jennie about the room for rent?"
"Oh, I didn't know they had a room for rent."
"Oh, well, I'm not sure …"
"But that doesn't mean they don't have a room for rent," (British man's voice, panting, seething.)
"Okay, um. Is Jennie around?"
"No I think she went to pick up some gesso."
"Okay … I'll just try back,"
"Hold on, She might be here," he says. "Uri! Hey Uri! Is Jennie here?"
"James! Jaaaaames! Is Jennie here?"
"Manuel! Have you seen Jennie around?"
"Esmerelda! Esmerelda! You haven't seen Jennie around have you?"
"Kevin! Keeeviiiin!! Did you happen to see Jennie around?"
"Sorry, doesn't look like she's here. I'll have her call you though, what's your name?"
"Would you tell her Aimee called, Anna's friend Aimee. Okay?"
"Will do, I'll tell her. Does she have your number?"
"Yeah, she should."
"Okay, Cheers."

LATER

"Hi, I'm looking for Aimee?"
(A note on Jennie's voice: Everything she says ends with a question mark, a Californian I suspect. And her voice is deep, and it sounds like she's chewing on something rubbery.)
"This is she. Is this Jennie?"
"Yes," she said. "Hey, sorry about earlier, Jimbo was trying to put up some sheet rock and he was like totally into it."
"It's okay. Thanks for calling back; it's good to finally talk to you. I've heard a lot about you from Anna."
"Yeah totally, can you hold on a sec?"
(clinking glasses, laughing)
"Okay sorry. It's Aimee right?"
"Yes," I said
"Okay good. Sorry, I'm like totally at a bar and it's totally loud. So you want to move in or something right?"
"Well, yeah, maybe. I'm looking for a room and Anna recommended you, she said you have a great place somewhere in Williamsburg."
"Yeah, it's totally cool," Jennie said.
"So, can you tell me a little bit about it?"
"It's a beautiful 2,000 square foot loft in East Williamsburg. We just moved in a few months ago. Umm, we'd have to figure out something for you because the rooms aren't exactly all ironed out yet. But when are you looking for a place?"
"By the end of the month."
"Oh, okay. Hmm, we'll have to figure some stuff out because I have a friend coming in from San Fran next week and he might be here for a while, and Esmerelda has her boyfriend here, but he's never even there because he plays in a band and I think they might be going on tour for a while or something. She might be going with them so I dunno what's up with that. You could, if you wanted to, sleep on the couch until we get it all figured out …"
"So," I asked. "How many rooms are there?"
"Well, like I said it’s not exactly ironed out yet. We're still putting up sheet rock and stuff and … but the place is awesome, you'd love it probably."
"But there is a room available right?"
"Well, it's like kinda complicated right now. It's like I have to give Jimbo something for building all the walls and stuff and I don't get to pick up my check until the first of the month and he kinda needed it for his rent money and so then I'll have to get another check for rent and his rent will be late, so I was kinda thinking of just asking him to move in until I can get enough for him to cover his rent, but then the room would kinda be taken up, but like I said we're still kinda building rooms and stuff …"
"What's the neighborhood like out there?"
"Oh, it's very cool. It's a mixed bag, there's a hasidic community and a growing Colombian population, there's the old Polish neighborhoods and the Cubans too. It's completely safe if that's what you're wondering about."
"Okay, what about nightlife?"
"Nightlife … well we aren't really into the whole 'bar scene' thing."
"But are there bars around?"
"There's some stuff, but it's pretty isolated out here. We're kind of roughing it. There's no stupid yuppie crap, if that's what you're wondering about."
"Okay. Umm, and how much is rent?"
"It's probably around like seven or eight hundred."
"Okay. So what do you do?"
"I'm a freelance graphic designer and a writer/musician/playwright. I also do digital editing and run a website. I actually also run this zine called 'Focus Impact,' you probably haven't seen it, it gets distributed on the West Coast. I'm also a musician, I play covers of seventies sitcom themes, but, like, electronic versions, kind of like Cowboy Bebop, ya know?"
"Oh, sounds interesting."
"Totally. I kinda gotta go, so like how long are you needing a place for?"
"Well, probably no less than a year."
"Oh, hmm, that sucks. Really?"
"Yeah. Why?" I ask.
"We only need somebody for like two months, max."

What is a Hipster?

This is a question that has been coming up a lot in emails. This is a question, alas, that I knew would become more relevant as I proceeded along this anti-hipster path. The answer to this question is not simple, indeed, it is largely a rhetorical question. Considering that through thousands of years of written record we humans have still not been able to pound out exactly what it means to be human, to be conscious, to be male and female, to be alive and dead, it should not come as a surprise to anybody that I cannot pin-down precisely what is means to be a hipster. I can say that the aim of this site, in part, is to help give shape to this insidious creature — the New York City Hipster. I have a friend from back home, a registered Republican, a conservative, who always said the same thing to perceived 'liberals' during an argument, and it always seemed to shed some light on the conversation. He said: "You Liberals! The problem with you Liberals is that you always know what you're against, but you never know what you're for!" The thing that he always overlooked is that by railing against something, you end up finding out a whole shitload about it. So, in a sense, this site is not only about how stupid hipsters are, it's also for learning more about hipsters, so we can learn to understand hipsters, to walk in their Chelsea Boots and their 'Jack Purcell's' in order that we may more precisely locate their weaknesses and exploit them, so we can make more jokes about them and pick them out for ridicule more easily.

To this end, I have begun gathering a collection of Hipster websites, that I am calling 'The Stinkiest Hipsters,' so please feel free to add your suggestions for appropriate sites.

Off the top of my head I have come up with a Top Ten Most Deplorable Hipster Attributes (this is not confined to one area of identification, but rather spans everything from what they wear to what views they hold and where they reside, and this is by no means set in stone): Here we go!

10. Hails from the Midwest, lives somewhere in Brooklyn.

9. Owns at least two Guided By Voices albums.

8. Firmly believes that Ralph Nader should have won the 2000 presidential election.

7. General arts over-education (i.e. has either designs to attend graduate school, is in graduate school or has gone to graduate school)

6. Parents shoulder some of his/her financial burden.

5. Owns at least three too tight T-shirts adorned with dated symbols (usually fuzzy or shiny/decal) with which he/she has absolutely no knowledge or connection.

4. Can readily and willfully recall the theme song from at least one television sitcom that was cancelled before his/her birth.

3. Will consciously muss and/or neglect to wash hair in order to achieve a 'look.' (male only)

2. Is of the opinion that 'Pet Sounds' is the greatest Beach Boys album (a comment generally follow by this statement): 'rivaling the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.'

1. Insists on calling movies 'film,' insists on calling concerts 'shows.'