Leaving the diversity of my Ivory Rotunda recently for a house party, I was greeted by the full-on invasion of hipster subculture into Charlottesville’s post-college/pre-baby scene. The Angst-schluss is coming, Captain VonTrapp.
After chopping my way through a savannah of beards and novelty ’staches, I found a clearing at the corner of Monticello Avenue and Monticello Road where the hipsters had gathered. Stoically they danced..er..shuffled with their hands in their pockets…around the Arcade Fire. Mesmerized by the flames rising from the hem of their trilby-topped tribal leader’s ironic bowling shirt, they offered up a sacrifice to the sparkling Blue Moon goddess. My eyes grew wide and I was sore afraid as they lifted the sacrifice, squealing, over the Flaming Lips. Fight or flight overtook fright as I recognized the sacrifice:
ME!
The only black person at the party. The only person (male or female) over 120 pounds at the party. The only nerd at the party who hadn’t stood in front of a mirror for an hour to achieve the perfect nerd look. The one who laughed too loudly and smiled too much. The only one who hoped the hostess would put on some Flo-Rida or some Fergie so this partay could get started!
“Wait!” cried out a voice. “I know this square.”
A figure emerged from the crowd, inciting murmurs as a Hipster Funhouse mirror version of myself approached the squealing piglet that was me. Stud collar. Wifebeater. Skull tattoos. Oversized sunglasses. 20 fewer pounds. I’m a lie. 40 fewer pounds.
“Ssssissster” came the whispers from the mob.
I gasped, “I’m going to tell momma you’ve been passing as Latina again if you don’t get these evil hipsters to free me.”
My sometime sibling pulled off her kaffiyeh and moved as if to wipe my sweaty brow, but stuffed it in my mouth instead. Yalps arose as they lifted me again over the pyre and marinated me with Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Just then the clock struck 12, and the doors burst open. The Good Hipsters had arrived! Fresh from that evening’s fundraisers!
“Wait!” cried Becky, leader of the Good Hipsters.
“We hunger for flesh!” shrieked Flaming Bowling Shirt. “We hunger for plump, UVA-sweatshirt wearing, southern-accent-having, Carrie-Underwood-loving, American-Idol-watching, Hot-101.9-listening, sunny-disposition-having, Wal-Mart-shopping, Rivals-going carrion to stab with the daggers of our judgmental glances!!!”
“Gentle hipsters,” began Becky, the response to which was a few groans. “Yes I know we don’t like to call ourselves that. Whatever. Anyway…Gentle hipsters, we can rebuild her. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first Hipsterbot. Uva Lagrape will be that Hipsterbot.
Better..at referencing pop culture she never admits to imbibing.
Stronger..at transforming modern-technology-induced lack of social grace/politeness into the oxymoron that is indie conformity.
Faster..at using drugs, be they cigarettes, coffee, weed or adderall, to numb herself from obsessing about death in a post-God civilization, at least until she turns 30 and starts having children and doesn’t have time to be such a narcissistic navel-gazer.
We will infuse her with the best of the Good Hipster and the worst of the Evil Hipster:
| vintage tees | western shirts |
| dad’s old sportcoat | dad’s old track jacket |
| peasant dress | wifebeater |
| quit smoking | chimney |
| 1 stable job | number of jobs in the past 6 months less than or greater than 1 |
| the occasional joint | cocaine/prescription drugs |
| married/openly coupled | single (or says “that’s not my boy/girlfriend” whenever you say “I saw your boy/girlfriend the other day at Blue Moon”) |
| free time spent volunteering at local non-profits | free time spent smoking in front of Millers/Mudhouse |
| occasionally laughs out loud at a good story | hates to laugh, but if she does it’s through tight lips and accompanied by staccato exhales of clove cigarette smoke |
| introduces themselves when you enter their circle | looks at you askance when you enter their circle, then goes back to talking to each other pretending you’re not there |
| asks the only black woman at the party if she has any weed | asks the only black woman at the party if she has any crack |
| makes up for innate social awkwardness by making jokes or pulling out guitar | makes up for innate social awkwardness by walking away from you while you’re in the middle of a sentence. |
| worship thinness | worship thinness (can’t escape that). |
[pic from ret0dd]
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Tagged as: hipsters, love, social commentary
I liked it, though I totally disagree with it. Well written.
Interesting that your feelings of persecution are both political *and* personal. Perhaps everyone in the world really is trying to keep you down. Freaky.
/there is no such thing as evil.
HA!
funny but also revealing you have some social anxiety
really? I got a WTF reflex after I read it.
(puff) I am So Evil (puff).
Off to Miller’s for a frozen Chopin now — bye
hunh. hunh.
i didn’t know you could get adderal. where?
/did i miss something?
good story. it’s a little confusing, but i think that’s because reading the internet has caused me to forget how to read.
i’ve heard adderal can help that. ask any 20-something (thanks, Donk).
If you are into hipsters, you should hang out at the architecture school.
guffaw! <——–excuse the 19tth century interjection, but I just spit out my coffee..
lagrape is it possible that you just look like a drug dealer?
lagrape is it possible that you have adderal?
lagrape is it possible that you need a membership to KYLE’S NEW CROSSFIT TRAINING CENTRE?
HAHA!
that is otter’s shtick, but I couldn’t resist.
oh good lord don’t encourage him
You’re right. I regret it.
look what you did. (see below)
I always thought otter was busting Thor’s self-promoting chops. Did not realize otter was a KYLE’S NEW ADVANCED CROSSFIT TRAINING CENTRE fanatic.
bless your heart !!!!!!
Crossfit is really the most revolutionary trend in fitness. The combination of diet and core-training as opposed to mere flexibility and seeking after bulk has revolutionized amateur and professional training with the outcome of greater and more consistent performance in any number of activities. it is at the same time more natural and holistic than most training methods, while being also very forward-looking—that is to say while being more sophisticated than any diet/fitness regimen, it is also more scientifically attuned to the natural history of the body and metabolism and the use of metabolic process. It is often ignored by mere strength-trainers that the actual practice of almost any sport, or the demands placed on the body in any rigorous activity, require far more than merely bench-pressing twice one’s weight. I have personally seen strength and endurance trainers each fail and collapse in the most seemingly routine tests that would seem to be the strength of their disciplines, and conversely, not even make an average, untrained, showing in cross-disciplinary demands. The true crossfit athlete, who adopts the training regimen, the diet AND the personal-intellectual philosophy behind it… is nigh on the maximum human potential. Mountaineer Rock-climbers, Ultra-Marathon runners, Special Forces Operatives, have all come to respect and abundantly embrace this very advanced and scientific holistic self re-creation methodology and philosophy. In my own experience of it, even in so short a time as I’ve been practising it, it has been to me almost a religious/spiritual re-awakening. I have noticed that people like me more and better and more quickly, that my personal finances have fallen into order, that my performance at both creative and professional work (intellectual) has sharpened and accelerated, that my comments are at the same time more pointed and annoying (as is my wish), and that I can see really-really far. Sometimes, trees speak to me about important things. Sometimes, I can levitate a few feet above my chair. Sometimes, water walks on me (like in Soviet Russia). And I have become a sort of sexual dynamo, savious of Mankind, nominee for the Nobel Prizes in peace, Literature and Science, and that senseis of various martial arts disciplines and monks from various obscure ancient religions approach ME on the street, out of the blue, and offer me sanctification in their spiritual paths or blackbelts in their various fighting-practices. I also never, ever, get sick at sea.
I realize that may be a little stark and elliptical as a description of it, and it may not convey that I am endorsing it. Would you like for me to provide some more complete information and a few helpful links and photographs and a video or several? Really, the best way to get an idea of the wonders it performs is to pre-order a membership at… wait for it… KYLE’S NEW ADVANCED CROSSFIT TRAINING CENTRE.
When Halsey Minor, back when, could afford membership in a crossfit gym, he found he could communicate with many insects by skillfully and muscularly manipulating his haircut (causing individual hairs and locks of hair to wave and wiggle) to create signs comprehensible to praying-mantises, ants, wasps and mayflies.
Sorry, Donk. Crossfit-trained men and women can read text upside-down and backwards in almost any human and some plant-languages and can see formatting where none exists because of superior bloodflow and greater harmonic cerebral mineral symmetry achieved through their practice. One gets in the habit of assuming that all peoples everywhere would have long-since begun their work in this discipline and started to access their true ‘telos’ as homo-sapiens-sapiens.
So… kinda like Richard Simmons meets L. Ron Hubbard, eh?
are M&Ms part of the diet?
what about fried oysters?
otterdung, no matter what the ad said you CANNOT get paid by the word to blog. Further doing blogging while partaking of the bolivian marching powder is not a good idea for you or your dear readers, seriously
Perhaps you need to submit a post or two and see how they do. This will properly gauge the interest among your fellow cvillains to your new found passion for sweat equity (there really is no way Kyle is giving you a piece of the action)
kyle, please delete 20-24
LOL bolivian marching powder – euphemism of the day WIN
LOL Robin Williams, 1981.
blah blah blah black preacher voice blah blah gay elmer fudd blah blah
I stole it from Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney- fair and square
Watch it. You’re on shakey ground there.
Are you hip to the “MJFox Equations” meme?
The good news is, they are often quite funny. The bad news is, you go to hell.
no offense of course, but the length is the joke.
/TWSS.
perhaps your length is a joke…
that’s what TWSS means.
did you eat a Shifflet for breakfast?
wake up, Dear Chum.
@42, that was @40, and was poking harmless fun. TWSS.
TWSS means that? I thought in this case it meant Terrible Wasted, So Sorry.
And who I had for breakfast is none of your business, but one does get choices when you use your length properly
ha! maybe i read my teen-texting dictionary wrong? That’s What She Said? Either way, your wit was appropriately placed and incisive.
love this zany madcap abortion of a story. it makes me want to invite you over to play with me and Mrs. Rotinaj. but lagrape, I never realized you were black! now i keep imagining you as played by Naomie Harris.
Now you’ve done it.
Thought this story was hysterically funny – nice work grape. Can we puhleez add porkpie hats to the list? (good or evil take your pick). Every time I see one the only thing I can think is that they’re copying Ed Trask…
there is no such thing as “hip enough”. there are no degrees of hipness. hip is binary. it’s dialectic. you either are, or you aren’t.
por ejemplo, i only comment on posts that shenanigans comments on, in hopes of upping my own hipness-by-proxy
wait a minute, I’m pretty sure shenanigans doesn’t have hips.
OOPS! Sorry. He’s a Richmond mural artist (married to my cousin) and the drummer for Avail. Started wearing porkpies, like, 20 years ago…
all of you can STFU
Haha… that latfh.com site is pretty funny. Maybe my fave: “I can’t believe mom left me in the charge of these two hipsters.“
1. Disagree with what, b-yo?
2. How do I reveal society anxiety, Schadenfreudigans?
3. I don’t look like a drug dealer. I look like a plump Rosario Dawson. Or a young Phoebe Snow. Not Naomie Harris. Sorry. Too much time spent studying and not enough time vomiting up my lunch.
4. the porkpie hat is definitely a hipster thing, but it’s kinda always been around. The thin-brimmed fedora trilby is the new hipster marker.
If you look like Rosario Dawson, they ask you about drugs because they are just hitting on you- especially if you are wearing that outfit
If I were wearing that outfit it would burst, revealing my womanliness.
That would be more awkward than the hipster party that inspired this post.
Is there really a difference between a good hipster and a bad one? They’re all pretty terrible in my opinion.
I can’t find the FFA and I am laffing so much I can’t type too well. I ordered 2 green Snuggies back in February to wear on the proposed drunken Snuggy pubcrawl and they arrived today. Great customer service…i haz it.
holy shit. what kind of shipping method did you select? turtle?
I chose economy, which apparently meant a blind one-legged old man with emphysema on a unicycle coming from Peru via Alaska. They are awesome though. Just what you need on a humid 85C June day.
Also came with free gift of a ‘book light’ that disintegrated on my hand when I pulled out the tab from the battery compartment. Hilarious.
what do you ‘have’ that would require TWO whole Snuggies to cover? been at the Twinkies this last long winter? the green WILL look nice with your carrot-top though.
why is this still the feature post? i’m sick of looking at that picture
What, Johnny Depp on the left and a young Tim Robbins on the right just ain’t doing it for ya, anymore?
me too. worst ever.
Me too. NEW FFA please.
Ahhh fuckit.
AAAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!
From the liquid adamantium chamber I RISE!
All my womanly weight away from me flies.
My horsey loud guffaw
Replaced with a smirk.
Most import of all
Geek replaced with jerk.
I no longer care for your Britney Spears
From that white trash I’ll wring black tears.
Consider hip-pop a murdered thing
I shall mince and serve at Burger King
Modern country falls under my truck
Run it over til dead, I don’t give a fuck
Shod me Urban Outfitter, my ensign
Start by sheathing a Hedges & Benson
Where is the Miley and Flo-Rida?
Where is the Pitbull that was flowing?
They have passed like Rain on the Scarecrow.
Like The Wind Beneath My Wings.
Pop music of the masses will submerge like the Titanic
At least the pop over which Blacks and Rednecks get manic.
How did it come to this?
from rants & raves:
“If you ever want to have some fun, tell some local that you think this town is over rated and pretentious and they will spend as long as you care to let them proving your point. It’s hysterical how the pretentions surface when they try to disabuse you of your opinion. So “Mister Jefferson” was born here BIG FUCKING DEAL- GET OVER IT!!! roflmao at “y’all” …”
Pretension is so last year.