Harry Potter and the new hipsters emerged from the 1990s. Like everything about hipsters, they appropriated their name from the past. Like the hipsters from the 1940s, the modern hipster seeks to be different by exactly copying someone else. I hold no grudge against hipsters, I enjoy many hipster fashions (though tights are not pants), and I can support chic bicycling and (with some griping) fad diets that have made veganism somewhat cool. Hipsters though, no matter what they want to believe, are growing up.
Emma Watson is no longer a nerdy kid, but the new Natalie Portman, a sex symbol grown into perfection in public view. Fixed gear bicycles are available made to order for easy consumption. American Apparel's "local" niche has international stores. '80's sunglasses can be purchased at 7-Eleven or from Dolce & Gabbana. If no other proof exists, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis are at number one for their song "Thift Shop."
NPR's All Songs Considered introduced me to Macklemore, and I posted a link to his song, "Same Love," on this blog. I think "Same Love" is nearly brilliant, and the message resonates with me as well. The other songs are pop-alternative-hip-hop or whatever the hipsters are calling it these days. I did not give them too much thought in all honesty. Then months ago someone at NPR did a piece about "Thrift Shop."
Since it is now at number one, you have probably heard the song, but if you were not paying attention (like me), the premise is that Macklemore (or the narrator anyway) and his friends are buying clothes, gadgets, toys, and society's secondhand gems at a thrift store for cheap. Macklemore is going to make something unique and cool out of "your grandpa's clothes," and "twenty dollars in [his] pocket." In the post-recession world, as NPR pointed out, the young simply have no choice but to live in over-crowded run-down flats and shopping at thrift stores to be cool. Or do they?
If there was no money in hipsters, Macklemore would not be at a Warner Brother's aided number one, and there would not be dozens of stores and brands that cater to them. Levi's made a pair of red jeans, with reflective hits and an antimicrobial crotch, for riding bicycles, for men. The hipsters, or at least some of them, have money, and as they grow up, they will have more.
When my brother and sister-in-law (who are not hipsters) bought their first house all they could afford was a 1900's company built house in not quite the right part of town. It had character and charm, and most importantly, was affordable in a world where the wealthy were getting richer at the expense of newly-wed teachers. With time, much of that character would wear through to become costly renovations and security alarm installations. With a baby on the way, they upgraded to a 1980's house with less charm and more fire codes. I think this is, or will be, happening for the hipsters too.
My brother's family will be happy in their new home. Their son will be able to play in the yard and walk to school. They can ride their bikes to the store on nice summer days, but will drive most days. They have found happiness in the America GM built.
Happiness is elusive, so I am glad they have found it. I find the suburbs lacking, and at least some of the hipsters do too. A friend of mine lives in Ballard, a recently chic neighborhood of Seattle where cheap old homes are being razed to accommodate swanky townhouses (hers seems fairly standard as a three-story quad). Her home is very nice, and hits closer to the mark for me than my brother's house, as she easily walks to shops, the grocery, and restaurants. Ballard, in all its coolness, lacks public transportation, and while the new townhouses are swanky, they sprout like strange mushrooms along suburban streets. Even with the rising population density, Ballard still feels suburban.
It seems without exception, Americans, in their big SUVs, cheap petrol, and 3500 calorie diets, love the idea of European cities. From the sidewalk cafes in Paris to the nonsensical mayhem of Roman streets, the imagination of university students and retirees are captured by city living. The hipsters dream of a car-free bike-way, where track stands signify greatness, and the Harry Potter kids grew up fantasizing about Diagon Alley. While I am no Potter expert, it seems that the world of wizards bustles about from the boutiques to meetings at Gringotts, then to the Leaky Cauldron, or Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor for a treat on foot, rather than car or broom.
Spurring the imaginations of more generations, The Lord of the Rings inspires us to imagine fantasy worlds without cars, and accordingly snug villages and cities. The Peter Jackson movies emerged early in the 2000s, reinforcing the imagined worlds of car-free urban living. Since then, George R.R. Martin has captivated the world, and HBO, with tales of Westeros, from crowded keeps to tight villages. Whether you dream of the steep streets of Minas Tirith, the canals of Bravos, or the magic of Diagon Alley, it seems you dream car-free. The villages in these books even inspire the tight roads suited more for walking than driving. For example, Hobbiton is a cluster of hobbit holes within walking distance to the Green Dragon, and Honeydukes Sweetshop in Hogsmeade is within tunneling distance of Hogwarts.
Have I spent some time dreaming of these places, I will admit to such frivolous endeavors, but I have also spent time dreaming of Vancouver's West End, Seattle's Capitol Hill, the Castro in San Francisco, and pretty much all of Portland. I will use Vancouver for this first example, because pressed up against Stanley Park, one of the finest city parks in all the world, are two neighborhoods. The West End holds residences dripping with charm and businesses full of local character. Carving out a toe-hold next to the marina at the entrance to Stanley Park is Coal Harbor. The flaw of the West End is that among some of the most desirable places in all of Canada, are countless buildings built during explosive growth during architecture's "ugly era" where buildings were built from plans that the Canadians clearly stole from the Soviet Gulag system. Coal Harbor has none of these buildings. The giants of this neighborhood are glass-clad carbon copies of one another. Every building is exactly the same, every road bustles with grey cars hurtling along under overcast skies. While the grey interiors of the grey-glass buildings built upon parking-garage foundations filled with grey cars has the soul-sucking warmth of Azkaban's Dementors, the flats are swanky, unlike some of those in the West End.
Even with the ugly era buildings lurking about the West End, the neighborhood has character, the streets are quiet, and even though commercial districts are really only two blocks away, you often feel that you are far away from the bustle of the city. The character and quiet of the West End evolved over decades. Paris and Rome took centuries to build, and became the dream-inspiring cityscapes of today. Manhattan, Boston, and Montreal grew out of people's desire for better places to live, not by design.
Modern cities are built, and in pursuit of lowering the bottom line, uniformly and soulless. Phoenix, Las Vegas, and the metastasized sprawl that GM and the car have infected the world with have become the new standard. I do not think it is a surprise that art built upon the car-centric city are dystopias. No one wants to live in the New York of Corban Dallas, nor in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. While we may dream of the car of the future, we dread where it will take us.
When the hipsters decide to buy their first homes, some will flee the city like Monica and Chandler in Friends, but I think many will want to find a neighborhood that suits their dreams. I know I would take Diagon Alley to Ballard, and I would even consider putting up with the wizards for it. The question is then not where will they live, but who will build it? Some will move into historic buildings dripping with charm and character, but like my brother's experience, eventually these people will want to live in a place that has wiring fit for a computer, and seismic codes fit for a plate margin. Some of these historic buildings will be remodeled, others will burn down and be replaced by new ones. But these districts, in western cities, will still be built along multi-lane streets, choked with cars, rather than alleys packed with cafes bursting with patrons.
In Las Vegas, some people are trying to manufacture these places. They build shopping malls with expansive parking lots at the edge of town, and top them with high-end residences. The residents of these shopping malls live within walking distance of the Whole Foods, and the sculpted foam exteriors have the appearance of Italy, Greece, or Brooklyn, but the BMW is in the resident's-only garage, and it shows. SUVs full of soccer moms crowd the access roads to park near the big box stores with old world facades, which I doubt would fool Macklemore, and his multi-platinum hipsters.
I, along with the hipsters, want real soul. We want a neighborhood that has local businesses found no where else in the world. With real estate prices that we can afford, attracting diverse people in diverse fields. We want students flat mating, yoga teachers in studios so small they require their heightened flexibility to climb into bed, yuppies in lofts, dinks (double-income, no kids) in two-bedroom units, and families in townhouses. In this cityscape, I could leave my building, which looks somehow unique against all the other buildings, and go to a cafe, bar, shop, grocery, or on a run in the park, without fear of getting hit by a car, because this ideal neighborhood has narrow, car-free streets.
If we stopped dedicating so much public space and public funds to our cars, we could have parks, sidewalk cafes, and cities that make Hermione, Aragorn, and Parisians jealous. I can identify a growing market for this (aging hipsters, and whatever I am). I can imagine how this could integrate into an existing city. I even see a method for accomplishing the design, have an architectural firm design the streets and lots, then have each lot designed by a different architect, just like the natural growth of a city. What I do not know is how to build this.
If one looks at Bellevue in Seattle, we can see that a separate city can be successful as an offshoot of the main city, Bellevue is simply an over-developed suburb. In Vancouver residential towers spring up at light rail stops. Exurbs have erupted from the car culture and the suburban dream. But all of these things lack soul or creativity. Without a doubt Bellevue will one day be an suitable place to live for people who like colors other than gray. At the Simon Fraser University campus the planning committees have created Univercity. The buildings are mostly blah, the carefully planned businesses are comfortable for a middle aged Canadian, and the streets are designed to sacrifice the lives of school children in the best interest of SUV drivers. It is a dream of the car, and accordingly, is something of a dystopia. The hipster students shun the place in favor of grittier neighborhoods with long commutes to school. They pack organic, free-range, gluten-free lunches to eat while they talk about how environmentally conscientious they are for living in old buildings that leak heat like sieves many miles away from the soulless LEED certified buildings of their campus. While I certainly grudge their uninformed hypocrisy, I cannot fault them for not wanting to live in Univercity.
From past experience of urban design it would seem that the only way to make a city as interesting as Portland is to let it happen by accident. As happy an accident as it is, even Portland fails to compare to Minas Tirith (but with plumbing, internet, and bicycles). With free public transport downtown, and armies of unemployed bike riders, Portland is still plagued with design by and for automobiles. This is no place for hipsters to settle down and raise a family. Portland, in all its great American city-ness, is a reminder not of the greatness of the movement, but of the limits of what free people can do in the face of corporations. Even with all of the Pedalpaloozas and naked bike rides, Portland is still GM's city.
What the aging hipster must do is admit that they want to own their urban dream, and are willing to buy it along with their American Apparel tights, Gap jeans, and designer sun glasses. They must admit that they can live in any city, but that they need corporate backing to build a car-free, intimate utopia. Those of us who truly want this lifestyle must look to Macklemore to see, is the thrift shop on Diagon Alley the dream, or does it just bide our time until we have the money to move out to Mercer Island?
Emma Watson is no longer a nerdy kid, but the new Natalie Portman, a sex symbol grown into perfection in public view. Fixed gear bicycles are available made to order for easy consumption. American Apparel's "local" niche has international stores. '80's sunglasses can be purchased at 7-Eleven or from Dolce & Gabbana. If no other proof exists, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis are at number one for their song "Thift Shop."
NPR's All Songs Considered introduced me to Macklemore, and I posted a link to his song, "Same Love," on this blog. I think "Same Love" is nearly brilliant, and the message resonates with me as well. The other songs are pop-alternative-hip-hop or whatever the hipsters are calling it these days. I did not give them too much thought in all honesty. Then months ago someone at NPR did a piece about "Thrift Shop."
Since it is now at number one, you have probably heard the song, but if you were not paying attention (like me), the premise is that Macklemore (or the narrator anyway) and his friends are buying clothes, gadgets, toys, and society's secondhand gems at a thrift store for cheap. Macklemore is going to make something unique and cool out of "your grandpa's clothes," and "twenty dollars in [his] pocket." In the post-recession world, as NPR pointed out, the young simply have no choice but to live in over-crowded run-down flats and shopping at thrift stores to be cool. Or do they?
If there was no money in hipsters, Macklemore would not be at a Warner Brother's aided number one, and there would not be dozens of stores and brands that cater to them. Levi's made a pair of red jeans, with reflective hits and an antimicrobial crotch, for riding bicycles, for men. The hipsters, or at least some of them, have money, and as they grow up, they will have more.
When my brother and sister-in-law (who are not hipsters) bought their first house all they could afford was a 1900's company built house in not quite the right part of town. It had character and charm, and most importantly, was affordable in a world where the wealthy were getting richer at the expense of newly-wed teachers. With time, much of that character would wear through to become costly renovations and security alarm installations. With a baby on the way, they upgraded to a 1980's house with less charm and more fire codes. I think this is, or will be, happening for the hipsters too.
My brother's family will be happy in their new home. Their son will be able to play in the yard and walk to school. They can ride their bikes to the store on nice summer days, but will drive most days. They have found happiness in the America GM built.
Happiness is elusive, so I am glad they have found it. I find the suburbs lacking, and at least some of the hipsters do too. A friend of mine lives in Ballard, a recently chic neighborhood of Seattle where cheap old homes are being razed to accommodate swanky townhouses (hers seems fairly standard as a three-story quad). Her home is very nice, and hits closer to the mark for me than my brother's house, as she easily walks to shops, the grocery, and restaurants. Ballard, in all its coolness, lacks public transportation, and while the new townhouses are swanky, they sprout like strange mushrooms along suburban streets. Even with the rising population density, Ballard still feels suburban.
It seems without exception, Americans, in their big SUVs, cheap petrol, and 3500 calorie diets, love the idea of European cities. From the sidewalk cafes in Paris to the nonsensical mayhem of Roman streets, the imagination of university students and retirees are captured by city living. The hipsters dream of a car-free bike-way, where track stands signify greatness, and the Harry Potter kids grew up fantasizing about Diagon Alley. While I am no Potter expert, it seems that the world of wizards bustles about from the boutiques to meetings at Gringotts, then to the Leaky Cauldron, or Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor for a treat on foot, rather than car or broom.
Spurring the imaginations of more generations, The Lord of the Rings inspires us to imagine fantasy worlds without cars, and accordingly snug villages and cities. The Peter Jackson movies emerged early in the 2000s, reinforcing the imagined worlds of car-free urban living. Since then, George R.R. Martin has captivated the world, and HBO, with tales of Westeros, from crowded keeps to tight villages. Whether you dream of the steep streets of Minas Tirith, the canals of Bravos, or the magic of Diagon Alley, it seems you dream car-free. The villages in these books even inspire the tight roads suited more for walking than driving. For example, Hobbiton is a cluster of hobbit holes within walking distance to the Green Dragon, and Honeydukes Sweetshop in Hogsmeade is within tunneling distance of Hogwarts.
Have I spent some time dreaming of these places, I will admit to such frivolous endeavors, but I have also spent time dreaming of Vancouver's West End, Seattle's Capitol Hill, the Castro in San Francisco, and pretty much all of Portland. I will use Vancouver for this first example, because pressed up against Stanley Park, one of the finest city parks in all the world, are two neighborhoods. The West End holds residences dripping with charm and businesses full of local character. Carving out a toe-hold next to the marina at the entrance to Stanley Park is Coal Harbor. The flaw of the West End is that among some of the most desirable places in all of Canada, are countless buildings built during explosive growth during architecture's "ugly era" where buildings were built from plans that the Canadians clearly stole from the Soviet Gulag system. Coal Harbor has none of these buildings. The giants of this neighborhood are glass-clad carbon copies of one another. Every building is exactly the same, every road bustles with grey cars hurtling along under overcast skies. While the grey interiors of the grey-glass buildings built upon parking-garage foundations filled with grey cars has the soul-sucking warmth of Azkaban's Dementors, the flats are swanky, unlike some of those in the West End.
Even with the ugly era buildings lurking about the West End, the neighborhood has character, the streets are quiet, and even though commercial districts are really only two blocks away, you often feel that you are far away from the bustle of the city. The character and quiet of the West End evolved over decades. Paris and Rome took centuries to build, and became the dream-inspiring cityscapes of today. Manhattan, Boston, and Montreal grew out of people's desire for better places to live, not by design.
Modern cities are built, and in pursuit of lowering the bottom line, uniformly and soulless. Phoenix, Las Vegas, and the metastasized sprawl that GM and the car have infected the world with have become the new standard. I do not think it is a surprise that art built upon the car-centric city are dystopias. No one wants to live in the New York of Corban Dallas, nor in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. While we may dream of the car of the future, we dread where it will take us.
When the hipsters decide to buy their first homes, some will flee the city like Monica and Chandler in Friends, but I think many will want to find a neighborhood that suits their dreams. I know I would take Diagon Alley to Ballard, and I would even consider putting up with the wizards for it. The question is then not where will they live, but who will build it? Some will move into historic buildings dripping with charm and character, but like my brother's experience, eventually these people will want to live in a place that has wiring fit for a computer, and seismic codes fit for a plate margin. Some of these historic buildings will be remodeled, others will burn down and be replaced by new ones. But these districts, in western cities, will still be built along multi-lane streets, choked with cars, rather than alleys packed with cafes bursting with patrons.
In Las Vegas, some people are trying to manufacture these places. They build shopping malls with expansive parking lots at the edge of town, and top them with high-end residences. The residents of these shopping malls live within walking distance of the Whole Foods, and the sculpted foam exteriors have the appearance of Italy, Greece, or Brooklyn, but the BMW is in the resident's-only garage, and it shows. SUVs full of soccer moms crowd the access roads to park near the big box stores with old world facades, which I doubt would fool Macklemore, and his multi-platinum hipsters.
I, along with the hipsters, want real soul. We want a neighborhood that has local businesses found no where else in the world. With real estate prices that we can afford, attracting diverse people in diverse fields. We want students flat mating, yoga teachers in studios so small they require their heightened flexibility to climb into bed, yuppies in lofts, dinks (double-income, no kids) in two-bedroom units, and families in townhouses. In this cityscape, I could leave my building, which looks somehow unique against all the other buildings, and go to a cafe, bar, shop, grocery, or on a run in the park, without fear of getting hit by a car, because this ideal neighborhood has narrow, car-free streets.
If we stopped dedicating so much public space and public funds to our cars, we could have parks, sidewalk cafes, and cities that make Hermione, Aragorn, and Parisians jealous. I can identify a growing market for this (aging hipsters, and whatever I am). I can imagine how this could integrate into an existing city. I even see a method for accomplishing the design, have an architectural firm design the streets and lots, then have each lot designed by a different architect, just like the natural growth of a city. What I do not know is how to build this.
If one looks at Bellevue in Seattle, we can see that a separate city can be successful as an offshoot of the main city, Bellevue is simply an over-developed suburb. In Vancouver residential towers spring up at light rail stops. Exurbs have erupted from the car culture and the suburban dream. But all of these things lack soul or creativity. Without a doubt Bellevue will one day be an suitable place to live for people who like colors other than gray. At the Simon Fraser University campus the planning committees have created Univercity. The buildings are mostly blah, the carefully planned businesses are comfortable for a middle aged Canadian, and the streets are designed to sacrifice the lives of school children in the best interest of SUV drivers. It is a dream of the car, and accordingly, is something of a dystopia. The hipster students shun the place in favor of grittier neighborhoods with long commutes to school. They pack organic, free-range, gluten-free lunches to eat while they talk about how environmentally conscientious they are for living in old buildings that leak heat like sieves many miles away from the soulless LEED certified buildings of their campus. While I certainly grudge their uninformed hypocrisy, I cannot fault them for not wanting to live in Univercity.
From past experience of urban design it would seem that the only way to make a city as interesting as Portland is to let it happen by accident. As happy an accident as it is, even Portland fails to compare to Minas Tirith (but with plumbing, internet, and bicycles). With free public transport downtown, and armies of unemployed bike riders, Portland is still plagued with design by and for automobiles. This is no place for hipsters to settle down and raise a family. Portland, in all its great American city-ness, is a reminder not of the greatness of the movement, but of the limits of what free people can do in the face of corporations. Even with all of the Pedalpaloozas and naked bike rides, Portland is still GM's city.
What the aging hipster must do is admit that they want to own their urban dream, and are willing to buy it along with their American Apparel tights, Gap jeans, and designer sun glasses. They must admit that they can live in any city, but that they need corporate backing to build a car-free, intimate utopia. Those of us who truly want this lifestyle must look to Macklemore to see, is the thrift shop on Diagon Alley the dream, or does it just bide our time until we have the money to move out to Mercer Island?
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