Neck deep in the Hollywood Farmer’s Market with my trendy reusable grocery bag filled with organic, overpriced local produce, drinking filtered tap water out of my reusable nalgine bottle, I began to feel a little guilty for carpooling with family and girlfriend instead of taking public transportation. Looking around my insecurities were rising; my bag was a generic black mesh instead of the fashionable “I heart my planet,” or the ironic Magritte throw back “I’m not a plastic bag,” 
I was wearing my organic bleach free converse made from recycled materials but they just didn’t seem as cool as the Toms slip-on’s (a company that donates a pare of shoes to a child in a third word country for every pair purchased) that everyone else was wearing. When did this happen? When did green become the new Yuppie? The cultural evolution of the hipster although seemingly convoluted, is essentially as predictable as a passive aggressive teenager home alone with a new a guitar amp and dime bag. Hippnes until lately has been comprised of a generalized disdain for authority and mainstream media while maintaining an ironic, slightly leftist moral matrix.God, how I have longed to be a hipster, even in the days when I was living in the breast of the beast touring the country in an independent hardcore band, desperately on the brink of obscurity. Like the Buddhist ideal of enlightenment, the struggle to be hip made me eternally not. It is not something you can study for or win. It is something that you are, and I am not There is hope however for those of us on the edge, recently things have begun to change for the hipster. Political awareness has swum its way up the main-sub-stream, faster than heroin in the 90’s. At any given time at least one article on the Vice magazine’s home page is about a global warming related topic. The Onion can be found sprawled across just as many coffee shop tables as Juxtapoz and Chuck Palahniuk. Most of the political information I used for this post in fact I found on pitchforkmedia.com. 
Most shockingly perhaps is that the hipster has a presidential candidate this year that isn’t Ralph Nader. Barack Obama has officially earned his white belt and Roy Orbison shades. In fact street artist Shepard Fairey of Obey fame has created a pro Obama poster that is selling for $2400 on eBay. Wilco, Superchunk, and The Arcade Fire have all played free shows promoting voter registration paid for by the Obama campaign. Barack even spoke at a Decemberists show in Portland Oregon.
I missed the age when my generation was strong with Beavis and Butthead logic and Kurt Cobain indifference, but it looks as though I may get a second chance just as I was getting the hang of pretending that I didn’t read the newspaper. I guess I need to buy a new bumper sticker for my Vespa, “smart, it’s the new cynical.”
I was wearing my organic bleach free converse made from recycled materials but they just didn’t seem as cool as the Toms slip-on’s (a company that donates a pare of shoes to a child in a third word country for every pair purchased) that everyone else was wearing. When did this happen? When did green become the new Yuppie? The cultural evolution of the hipster although seemingly convoluted, is essentially as predictable as a passive aggressive teenager home alone with a new a guitar amp and dime bag. Hippnes until lately has been comprised of a generalized disdain for authority and mainstream media while maintaining an ironic, slightly leftist moral matrix.God, how I have longed to be a hipster, even in the days when I was living in the breast of the beast touring the country in an independent hardcore band, desperately on the brink of obscurity. Like the Buddhist ideal of enlightenment, the struggle to be hip made me eternally not. It is not something you can study for or win. It is something that you are, and I am not There is hope however for those of us on the edge, recently things have begun to change for the hipster. Political awareness has swum its way up the main-sub-stream, faster than heroin in the 90’s. At any given time at least one article on the Vice magazine’s home page is about a global warming related topic. The Onion can be found sprawled across just as many coffee shop tables as Juxtapoz and Chuck Palahniuk. Most of the political information I used for this post in fact I found on pitchforkmedia.com. 
Most shockingly perhaps is that the hipster has a presidential candidate this year that isn’t Ralph Nader. Barack Obama has officially earned his white belt and Roy Orbison shades. In fact street artist Shepard Fairey of Obey fame has created a pro Obama poster that is selling for $2400 on eBay. Wilco, Superchunk, and The Arcade Fire have all played free shows promoting voter registration paid for by the Obama campaign. Barack even spoke at a Decemberists show in Portland Oregon.
I missed the age when my generation was strong with Beavis and Butthead logic and Kurt Cobain indifference, but it looks as though I may get a second chance just as I was getting the hang of pretending that I didn’t read the newspaper. I guess I need to buy a new bumper sticker for my Vespa, “smart, it’s the new cynical.”
4 comments:
To go along with your theme...Nalgene is the old in terms of cool/green and Sigg is the new. Nalgene is made with leeching plastic and contains BCPs. Sigg is metal and non-leeching. Make the switch, only if you are cool enough. haha.
sorry, i meant BPA... the chemical that is harmful in plastic is Bisphenol-A.
so basically my un-coolness could cost me my health?
Nalgene now makes BPA-free bottles called "everyday". They claim the current BPA bottles are still safe based on scientific evidence, but due to consumer demand they are phasing them out. I own a CamelBak brand BPA-free bottle. Yay for reusable bottles!
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