Hipster Jihad Ahead, Williamsburg on Cranberry Red Alert

It's not hard for a girl to pick subway cars when traveling alone at night. Find one with another girl in it. No unconscious drunks (because they may pee their pants and smell up the car). Lone men who are not afraid of you catching them staring at you, and will in fact try to absorb your stare with a stare-back, are to be avoided as well.

Alright, so last night at 11 PM, at the Lorimer stop on the L train, I slid through the closing doors of a car that satisfied these simple requirements. In addition to the requisite girl, there were two guys sitting on my right side talking to each other from across the width of the car. They were friends and when I walked in, the more talkative one (Talky) said to the less talkative one (Listeny), She's one.

I brushed the comment off and tried to concentrated on my reading instead because I've grown out of that phase of caring what the boys in the yard think. About my milkshake or anything else.

But Talky was toastmastering it up and enunciating like mad, so I ended up eavesdropping on his conversation with Listeny for the rest of the ride while staring at the book in my hands, which had been rendered into a mere prop.

Talky: Yeah man, I can't wait man, I'm gonna just go all out on them one day. One day, it's gonna happen. I'm gonna hurt 'em. Bang bang bang.

Listeny: [laughs softly]

Talky: And I'm gonna get stickers made that say "KILL THE HIPSTERS," fucking stickers!

Listeny: [more soft laughing]

Talky: And we'll put 'em up everywhere, all over where they hang out. Get stickers made up that say KILL HIPSTERS. Fucking Dano is ALL OVER that shit man, he's fucking excited. We just gotta get 'em made up to say KILL THE HIPSTERS.

Listeny, helpfully: Maybe you can get stencils.

At this point, I'm straining to catch every hilarious yet sort of horrifying word, while also trying to become invisible by holding my breath (an irrational habit from my college days).

As we pull into the Bedford stop, I groan inwardly as several boy hipsters come into our car. Peripheral vision alone tells me that they are wearing black skinny jeans, white t-shirts, tats, and some sort of weighty hat (felt?).

Talky waved an arm at the Bedford station platform: This is where they all hang out. They're EVERYWHERE man. It's fucking ridiculous. I'm telling you man, one day I'm just gonna fucking kill them all. Look at 'em. [Holds head in hands dramatically.] It's the 80s all over again! Fucking hipsters. Kill every one of 'em. Bam bam!

Listeny: [nods agreeably]

Talky, thoughtfully: Actually, I would just kill all the guy hipsters. Cos the girls are actually kinda hot.

Listeny: [nods in further agreement]

Talky: No, seriously man, look at her. She's hot. [It is important to note two things: one, that when complimenting the Female Hipster, Talky's voice is high as if in disbelief, as if one is describing having encountered an unicorn in a public sauna, "yeah, it was a horse, with a horn, seriously man."; Two, there was a second hipster girl sitting diagonally across from me that was super pretty and much hotter than me, and whom, I'm pretty sure, was the object of Talky's admiration.]

Talky continued thoughtfully: But you know what's sad man? You see how they have no tits? Well they're gonna be like that FOREVER. Eight, nine years from now. They'll still have no tits.

Listeny: [nods with wide-eyed compassion]

Talky: We'll kill all the guy hipsters and fuck the girl ones! [You don't need a parenthetical here to know that Talky laughed viciously as he said this.]

It's only at this point, as we hurtle across the river to Manhattan, that I have a moment of self-reflection. All along through the violent trajectory of Talky's talk, I had thought, Oh. My. God. Those poor hipsters. Someone must warn them. But suddenly I flashbacked to when Talky had said "she's one," when I'd boarded the car at Lorimer. Since I was the only one who boarded, it like, sort of seems to mean that they pegged ME as a hipster.

Wha?

I laughed softly (on the inside only of course, still holding my breath and trying to be invisible on the outside) at this prepostrous mislabeling. How can I be a hipster? I'm a lawyer, for crying aloud! Plus, I am wearing work clothes. "Biz caz," to be precise. A brown wool jacket with gold details. Sure, I had bought it from the Salvation Army in Astoria for less than $10, but I wore it with only a smidge, a tiny tiny smidge, of irony.



I inspected my green pencil skirt. Pencil skirt! What can be more corporate, more unhipster? But but but... there is a white stencil of a bird on it, and a whimsical trail of blue flowers, and a big hidden front pouch pocket that allows me to stuff my hands dejectedly into them between "takes" of professional behavior at work (i.e., when I am alone in an elevator). While it was not a second hand skirt like the jacket was, I did get it as a freebie from an independent German/Canadian fashion designer for whom I had modeled her '06 Fall Collection.

Damn.

Okay, and I might as well concede that my handbag was actually an old beat up men's shoulder bag that I had bought at a yard sale from a man with a gristly face who had got it in Turkey decades ago. Furthermore, it was my Day 1 of a self-instigated 30 Day Vegan Challenge. And as if that weren't enough, I was wearing those Chinatown cloth shoes that cost $3.99 and look kind of like Mary Janes, but proletarian (Mao Janes?). A creeping inescapable stereotype loomed over me.

Threatened, I looked up at the hipster girl across the car from me. Her dewy young skin that came from a life time of organic facial products, her light grey skinny jeans, and her... oh my god. Her Chinatown cloth shoes that cost $3.99 and look kind of like Mary Janes, but proletarian (Mao Janes?).

Holy shit. The shoe is on, like, my foot. (Or however the saying goes.)

Before I got off at the Union Square stop (oh. my. god. tell it to stop tell it to stop!), Talky's promises to bring on a hipster jihad began to loop, and he had returned to talking about how much he wanted to kill all the hipsters, how fucking amazing it would be, etc.

Talky and Listeny got off at the same time as I did, and I had a light chuckle (internally) as I read the backs of their identical t-shirts and realized that they both work for the same moving company. I imagined that during the day, these guys are probably employed by the very hipsters they want to kill, hauling their heavy-ass record collections, turntables, and drafting desks from one overpriced Williamsburg loft to another, under the direction of some domineering hipster financier (i.e., parent) or a hipster himself, a whiny rice milk guzzling media intern. And I also imagined that whenever Talky and Listeny have a moment alone, they rub Hipster Boy's microphone on their balls and impart tiny drops of bodily fluids into Hipster Girl's blown glass art school sculptures.

On the subway platform, I walked the wrong way, made an u-y, and passed by the dynamic duo one last time. Talky was loudly coaching Listeny once again on how to identify hipsters, "Just look for people who're wearing clothes from the 80s..."

Look, put aside whether you or me or Jane or Jake are hipsters or not. Put aside the fact that this warning is only 90% earnest and 10% ironic. Put all that aside, and I think that we've still got a problem. Hipsters and Talky, they're all in the same age bracket but living on two separate tracks, electrons spinning in their own respective orbitals. That's fine if it's the last year of high school and everyone's getting mature and the jocks are finally leaving the astronomy nerds alone. Of course that's fine. But where the socio economic divide also distinctly parallels the cultural divide between hipsters and non-hipsters, then I think we've got a sort of problem. Sure right now it's all stickers and stencils and bravado-ish threats. But who knows what might happen if we continue down this path of living together but apart, like Britney and K Fed, like McDonalds and Chipotle?

PS. Alright you suckers, I'm calling in all the favor-owers amongst ye, please come to my debut stand-up show at Comedy Village on Sept. 18, and laugh like your lives depended on it. (And if I ever get into cahoots with a certain moving company, it won't be too far from the truth, you flat-chested hipster.)