So I got this email yesterday and it raises a question that I want to address. Basically it asks me why I'm such a fucking cunt. Or to be a little more elaborate: How can I obviously be among hipsters and yet so loathe them.

This is a question that in a very poignant way makes me face my hatred of hipsters. Oh, incidentally, I take that back, the part about hatred. I've noticed that a lot of readers who plug me on their sites bill me as a 'hipster hater' or some such phrase. But if you'll kindly refer to my first post you'll see that I do not hate hipsters, I just think they're silly and stupid. Nazis hate, the NY Post hates, I do not hate. Upon reading this I'm sure some of the pussy little hipsters out there will give a loud 'harrummph!' and point to the now volumous (and ever expanding) body of work here, which does indicate, at the very mildest, a kind of hatred directed toward hipsters. But I view my relationship with the needle-nosed bony-shouldered little fucks a different way. I view my relationship with hipsters as a child might view a cockroach waddling across her bedroom floor. She'd take a very close look at it: poking, prodding, pushing, pulling, wondering what makes it so weird looking, before finally crushing it and then looking at its brittle little corpse for a while longer. I think vindictive wonder about covers my relationship with them. Hatred notwithstanding, to everybody who reads this forum and plugs it, I thank you from the very, very bottom of my wretched, cast-iron little heart. Call me a misanthrope if you must, but please (if you can avoid it) don't call me a hater, even though I know the alliteration is tempting. Anyway, back to the question at hand: Why am I such a fucking cunt?

This question makes me face a few facts about myself. As you might guess, I have significant dealings with some pretty stinky hipsters; this is of course how I know about their likes and dislikes; their habits and manner of speech; their bedmanner (I'll get to that later) and the way they set their little espresso kettle just so on the stovetop before they leave the apartment. But when you get right down to it, down to the very nitty gritty, down to the to the toe jam and the tile grout, I do not know hipsters. I am not one of them. Being a hipster — I've determined — requires a certain obliviousness: Moral, physical, mental, social, a certain kind of dog-like unawareness; I suppose you could call it a kind of fancy-freedom, one that I lost long ago, or perhaps one that I never had. I suppose it's the same tragedy of human nature that's echoed through the endless halls of history — I mean — after all, if a cockroach could write a novel, would Kafka have ever needed to? And fuck Douglas Coupland. I know, I know, it's all very snotty of me to say, and I don't even like Kafka, it just went well with the cockroach thing, but bear with me. The point is: I have this burden that hipsters do not have. I cannot throw on a pair of horn-rimmed specs and roll up my husky Wranglers and get a tattoo of a pair of dice and wear cherry-red lipstick and still keep a straight face. I used to think this was simply because I was not bold enough, not cheeky enough: But I realized finally that it's because I have this burden of ultra-awareness that prevents me from (among other things) ever really being a hipster. I am merely an observer. Yes, and perhaps you could read some latent note of longing in this admission: You know how when people talk about their dreams, often they describe seeing themselves? As if they were floating above their body and observing the situation both from afar and through their own eyes? That's what I mean by ultra-awareness. I'm not chalking this shit up like I've got some extraordinary vision quest or anything like that, it's not that at all, it's really just that I'm acutely critical: critical of other people (duh) critical of myself, and this other me, the one that's floating above all the time, always looking around, she just won't shut up and let me act like an idiot hipster, she keeps tapping me on the shoulder and pointing out how stupid it all really is, how insignificant, how comically absurd, she keeps saying: 'Don't you read the fucking papers? We're in trouble and all you can do is talk about your goddamned haircut!' And then this cold-handed other me twists my head around to have a good long look at all the other hipsters in whatever bar or shit factory I happen to be in, and I see everybody else, and she whispers: 'God help us.'

I can't unplug this other me, so, I can't be a hipster.

I guess the next logical question you could ask is why the fuck I would, having apparently been stricken with this pang of universal consciousness, decide to spend a whole shit load of time writing negative things about stupid people rather than — say — doing something constructive. My only answer so far is I don't know.

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

What Do You Do? — Galapagos, Williamsburg, Oct. 21, 2002

"So, Ben, Aimee tells me you live in Phoenix?"
"Yep."
"That's so cool."
"It's alright."
"Hmm, yeah, I have a cousin there I think. In Tucson? He's in college there I think?"
"Oh yeah. That's sounds about right."
"Really? I bet it's really nice there, I mean, with all the mountains and stuff."
"Yeah, definitely. It's pretty rad."
Ben is a high school friend of mine from Phoenix. He's out visiting the city for a week for the first time and I took him to Galapagos so he could get his hipster fix out of the way in one night. He's more of a — shall we say — unassuming heartland type of guy (leather jacket, earrings) so any grumbling about hipsters doesn't really register with him. There, amid the sticky floors and skull-rattling speakers we ran into Genessee. She's from Long Island; she was drinking a Mohito and complaining that the mint wasn't fresh. A friend of mine, Laura, once stayed with Genessee in some shithole apartment in Greenpoint for three months and when a bunch of Genessee's underwear went missing she rifled through Laura's phone list and called me because she "didn't want to point fingers." When I asked her what made her think I knew anything about the missing underwear she said: "You're so honest. That's so awesome."
So that's how I know Genessee.
"That's such a great expression — rad — isn't it?" said Genessee.
"I guess so," said Ben.
"I think I'll have to start using that one again. Oh, wait! What about 'gnarly'? That’s a good one too! Oh, Shit! What about 'wicked,' I looooved 'wicked'!" she said. "You're so funny!"
Ben looked at me, questioning. I shrugged.
"Goddamn this fucking Mohito!" she said, now holding the glass up to Ben's face and gesturing toward the bar. "Did it come out of a fucking can or something? Jee-sus!"
"It looks okay to me," said Ben.
"Well, you don't drink Mohitos every single day either," she said, taking a drink. "Look, I'm sorry guys. It's just so frustrating sometimes, you know? It's just so fucking frustrating. Christ! I must sound like such an idiot to you, I mean do they even have Mohitos in Santa Fe?"
"Actually it's Phoenix," Ben said.
"Oh, fuck! Well you should move there then, because Mohitos are sooo fucking good — especially when they have fresh mint — instead of this fucking syrup."
"Yeah?" said Ben.
"Oh, completely. So, Ben," she said, slinking toward him, lightly clutching the lapel of his leather jacket. "What is it that you do out in Colorado?"
"It's Arizona,"
"Whatever."
"I work at CVS."
"Oh, wow," she said, visibly taken aback. "That must be really interesting."
"Not really. I basically book orders all day."
"But on that kind of scale … I mean, it's one of the oldest and most well-respected networks in the world."
"Oh, I dunno. I never even read the employee handbook. I just started there a few months ago."
"That's just great. So, what's the latest news in New Mexico?"
"Umm, well. Not much really. We're giving a lot of allergy advice right now."
"Oh totally. I was just watching something, I think it was on CNN — sorry — it was all about prescription drug prices and how the president doesn't care about them and how all the old people can't afford to buy their arthritis medication. It's really horrible."
"Oh yeah? That sucks. Last week I had to call the cops because a junky tried to get some Oxy-Contin with a bogus prescription. That was some crazy shit. They fuckin' arrested his ass right there on the floor. We had to close early."
"Well, you know what they say: If it bleeds, it leads, right? No really though, it sounds like you guys are like really progressive and working in the community and everything?"
"We basically just keep everybody nice and medicated so they won't rip each other's heads off."
"Yeah, totally. I took this — well actually I dropped out after one lecture because the fucking professor was totally groping me — but I started to take this class at NYU last year all about how the media is like totally a medication these days."
"Yeah. We don't sell TVs yet. But I think we're supposed to expand and get an electronics section pretty soon. We sell camera film and shit though."
"Totally. Did you know Orson Welles started out there?"
"No shit?"
"Yeah, totally."
"Rad," Ben said.
"You are sooo fuckin' funny!" she said again, throwing her arm around Ben.
"Thanks," he said.
"So you must totally know everything about what's going on with the War On Terror and shit," she said elbowing him jokingly. "Gimme the scoop Mac!"
"Actually I try to never watch the news, I think it's total bullshit," he said.
"I know exactly what you mean. I used to work at this restaurant and I totally could not eat there. It wasn't like the food was all nasty and shit or anything. I don't know why, but I just could not eat it. It's weird huh?"
"Yeah, I guess," Ben said.
"You know, I could totally see you on the news. You've got that face, you know, kinda like Dan Brokaw."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah. What's your full name?"
"Ben Jensen," he said.
"Oh totally!" she said holding her Mohito up like a microphone. "Ben Jensen reporting. Now back to you Tom!' So are you a reporter, or what?"
"What?" Ben said.
"You, know 'breaking Evening News' and all that."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, like do you work with Hugh Rather on 20/20 or with that Rooney guy, or something?"
"What?"
"Sorry," she said. "I know you're on vacation. You probably don't want to talk about work, but what's your job title?"
"OOOOOH, shit!" Ben said. "You completely got the wrong idea. I work at SEE-VEE-ESS — the Pharmacy — I stalk shelves."
"What?" she said.
"Yeah. C-V-S, not C-B-S"
"OOOOOH! shit!" she said, dragging her heavy arm from off Ben's leather-clad shoulder. "I totally thought you worked at SEE-BEE-ESS, the news station," she said. "Sorry."
"No, no, no," said Ben. "I fucking wish."
"Well, hum," she said. "It must be, like, really interesting to work for C-V-S too."
"Not really," Ben said.
"Oh, shit!" she said. "I just totally saw my friend over there. I gotta go say hey, but it was really nice meeting you Jim! Byeee!"
"It's Ben."
"Whatever."