I’m coming to the conclusion that “Hipsters” (as I assume the word would be interpreted if I asked the next passer by that I met) are “fashionable” (i.e. buy the latest clothes, music, eat out at the places where people want to be seen etc etc). They are enslaved to marketing and the PR gurus who spin it. They are as conservative as they come. They define themselves by what they consume - they need the cash, they say yes to the man so they can get their fix of what’s hot and quickly ditch what’s not. They’re the new bourgeoisie.

Your use of the word “cool” is also a clue here - Zygmunt Bauman, Polish sociologist based in the UK - demystified “cool” by explaining it simply as what it means - non-committal, dispassionate, disinterested. To be cool you’ve got to not care. To be passionate about something, to be interesting in a cause or a hobby is to be a geek. Cool is therefore one of the reasons why a lot of people don’t care anymore about politics, relationships, about human rights abuses, about environmental disasters, it’s why no-one values loyalty anymore.

So, “hipsters” and “cool” are, to me at least, entirely opposed to bohemians, who would (in my understanding of the term) eschew consumerism and convention, be passionate about causes, throw social norms to the wind.

This might explain why modern British regeneration projects embrace “cool”, “creativity” and “counter-cultural” as branding tools - and the resulting “places” are empty, soulless, bland, boring and as uncool, uncreative and conventional as you can imagine.

Ditch hipsters, sophistos and cool. Embrace geeks, nerds and the earnest.

P.S. Zygmunt Bauman is a legend. If you haven’t read any of his many books, do. Liquid Life, Liquid Love or Liquid Modernity are good starts.

Ian - I agree with you here f’sho. I think what Adbusters might actually reminiscing on is the simple clarity of the spacial/cultural/style hegemony that existed before the city came back into vogue. I sometimes miss that too, because I might have been the last era of that hegemony before the solitudes really started breaking down. Identities seemed somehow less complex than they are now.

Elizabeth - Like I said above, I definitely agree about the complexity issue. Simple definitions elude them.

Jim H - In a VERY broad sense I can agree with this characterization of the decades for sure. The question I’m interested in is what does that mean?

If I could go back in time and be less tired when writing this, I would have called it “Theater of Style”. That’s what I’m arguing that the city has become and the hipsters seem to all be fighting for lead roles. To me the mashup/hipster culture is the first wave of a generation coming to terms with the role of capitalism and consumerism in cultural production, the access to pretty much all things, and themselves all at once. I think that a little bit of frivolity is par-for the course if you think about it as a global urban youth movement that just recently acquired the tools to develop its first bits of grammar. This is barely even stage 1.

Here’s a question: Are Hipsters bohemians? Do they impact the Bohemian Index of a city, and why or why not?

The dominant musical genre for American generations are-
Ragtime – Missionary Generation (late 1890’s)
Big Band Jazz – Lost Generation (1920’s)
Swing – GI Generation (mid-1930’s)
Rock ‘n’ Roll – Silent Generation (early to mid-1950’s)
Psychedelic Rock – Baby Boomers (mid – to late 1960’s)
Hip Hop, Rap – Generation X (mid – 1980’s)
Mashup – Millenial Generation

http://www.amazon.com/Millennial-Makeover-MySpace-American-Politics/dp/0813543010?&camp=212361&linkCode=wey&tag=maxiwealadvi-20&creative=380737

That said, I think we’re in the most frivolous part of the musical cycle right now, and people are due to move in a more adventurous direction soon.