No Millennium

I despise hipsters. At one time, I might have been mistaken for one, but I would have told you I was -- ahem -- bohemian.


I hate the way, though basically very shallow, they pretend to great profundity.

I hate the way they drive up rents and property values in formerly affordable neighborhoods. They're the advance guard of gentrification.

I hate the way they believe a passing familiarity with Bukowski and Kerouac makes them literary intellectuals.

I hate their attitude of smug superiority. I hate their disdain.

I hate the fact that they are really yuppies in disguise.

I hate the way they appropriate things that matter to me and turn them into mere fashion statements.

I hate their trust funds. After a few years of romantic pseudo-poverty, they join the bourgeoisie in daddy's law firm or on Wall Street.

I hate the fact that they think organizing a dance party is somehow a meaningful act of cultural subversion.

I hate the way they've reduced most contemporary art to a dreary parade of faux-naive stick figure doodles and pseudo-Japanesque graffiti.

I hate their pretense of leftism. They may name-check Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, but in the next breath they shamelessly whore themselves to the culture industry. Outside of Hip-Hop, I've never seen such worship of name brands! But they see no contradiction.

I hate the fact that they think fashion design is of the utmost interest and importance.

I hate the fact that the only poor people they've ever encountered are in fiction. And fewer and fewer of these as the publishing industry narrows its sights and tightens its belt.

I hate the fact that they are incorrigibly provincial and basically incapable of introspection, with no historical memory to speak of.

I hate the fact that they don't know they've been had. Or don't care.


It gets harder to he hip after age thirty. Eventually life catches up with you. Nowadays, people whose chief interest seems to be what is cool or au courant infuriate me, as you can see. But if some shaggy-haired ingenue, vintage duds worn with oh-so-studied ironic nonchalance, were to offer me a publishing contract or a gallery show -- well, I wouldn't refuse.