I constantly read about hipsters, but I don't actually see many while walking down the street. I suspect that hipster styles and Los Angeles's climate just don't go together.
The basic idea is to look like President McKinley wasn't assassinated and the whole 20th Century thing never happened. Back in the old days, people wore a lot of layers of wool because everybody lived in England or Cleveland or someplace and the coal for your stove wasn't free. To the eye of a Californian with central heating, everybody in sepia-toned photos looks awfully sweaty under all those clothes.
California was central to a major post-1960s revolution in how men dressed, as guys started to wear clothes light enough for the climate (e.g., the Silicon Valley casual look), even at the expense of giving up all those potentially fashionable coats and hats.
So, Southern California is just too warm most of the time for ironic old fashions best suited for Portland. Every so often on a cool winter's day here, I see somebody wearing some Portland-style hipster garb, but then the sun comes back out and it gets uncomfy for them.
A few years ago, my nonagenarian grandfather drove himself to Urban Outfitters and bought one of his grandsons a present of a wool cap, the kind of tweed thingie that Bobbie Jones' caddie at St. Andrews probably wore. When unwrapping the package, my son pretended to be enthusiastic about wearing his grandfather's fashion choice, until he saw it, and decided it was cool. He wore it everyday (and I started seeing pictures in the press of Brad Pitt wearing an identical one). But then February arrived and it got too warm for hipster clothes.
Basically, Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Rule of Proximity to the Canadian Border applies.
A few years ago, my nonagenarian grandfather drove himself to Urban Outfitters and bought one of his grandsons a present of a wool cap, the kind of tweed thingie that Bobbie Jones' caddie at St. Andrews probably wore. When unwrapping the package, my son pretended to be enthusiastic about wearing his grandfather's fashion choice, until he saw it, and decided it was cool. He wore it everyday (and I started seeing pictures in the press of Brad Pitt wearing an identical one). But then February arrived and it got too warm for hipster clothes.
Basically, Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Rule of Proximity to the Canadian Border applies.
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Well, not hipster fashion but the women on the real housewifes of Beverly Hils or Orange County are not that casual. I guess women in Beverly Hills or upper-middle lower wealthy Coto de Costa are not in jeans that much. On the real households of Orange County I only seen the men in shorts. And a real prissy city is Irvine which got voted as better fashion taste than La it must be the Asians.
"On the real households of Orange County I only seen the men in shorts."
Right. Shorts 9 months of the year is natural here. Doesn't leave much time for fashion.
The funny thing about SWPLs is...
the root of it is the anti-white culture leading to lots of young white people trying desperately not to be white in the way their parents and grand-parents were...
however - because they're white - they like similar stuff so they create a brand new sub-culture which is even more white than the ones they are running away from (because many aspects of the old cultures were traditional rather than white and therefore overlapped at least partially with most other non-white traditional cultures).
Ironic huh?
What about back in the day with cowboys and stuff in California? They always wore and jackets and leather and stuff.
Could be.
"I constantly read about hipsters, but I don't actually see many while walking down the street. I suspect that hipster styles and Los Angeles's climate just don't go together."
The hipster is an ambulatory species of conifer usually confined to the Pacific Northwest or the wetter, cooler sections of the Atlantic Northeast. It does not thrive in the hot, dry climate of Southern California. Hipsters can be recognized by their skinny jeans which are worn in an effort to force their sap upwards towards their heads.
I lived in Miami in the early 1990s when grunge first hit big nationally, and it was hilarious watching the Miami Beach dudes trying to wear clothes that were meant for Seattle and Portland. I saw one rollerblader whiz by wearing an unbuttoned at the chest plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves completely cut off.
Additionally, there's not much funnier than the Goths in hot weather blog: http://gothsinhotweather.blogspot.com/
Steve, perhaps you need to head out to Silver Lake some time. Plenty of people dressed hipsterish there.
However, you do have a point: in general it's too damn hot in LA to wear a lot of flannel.
"But then February arrived and it got too warm for hipster clothes."
Speaking on behalf of those of us suffering through this insufferable winter: STFU. Where I live a cap like that would be comfortable through June in many years.
Within a temperate area, there's also an urban/suburban split. It's awkward to drive a car wearing a heavy winter coat, and if you're able to park right in front of your destination, there's no need. It was 18 degrees out here last week, and I wasn't the only one wearing shorts into the gym from the parking lot.
On the other hand, if spend a lot of time waiting for buses and walking places, you're going to have to layer it up a bit.
wait, so as white people lose California fashion will now be set by the new white places like Portland? first good thing i've heard about immigration yet.
Last I heard LA hipsters can be found in Silver Lake and Echo Park.
This is pretty obvious stuff. The SoCal climate determines everything.
Although, it does get cold enough--on winter days and some summer nights--to encourage men to put on denim trousers, flannel shirts, and fleece jackets. The key is layering.
'Coto de Costa' = Coto de Caza. Genuine 'new money' there, in that place. It's an hilarious scene.
I frequently go out to OC hot-spots and it's common to see the women dressed to the nines in beautiful dresses and heels and their men in grubby un-tucked shirts, jeans, and flip-flops. It's amusing.
'New Money' doesn't get it.
My social anthropology is weak. Is a hipster different from a bo-bo (bourgeoise bohemian)?
You are clearly not spending enough time in Loz Feliz, Silver Lake and Echo Park. Or maybe you're spending just the right time in that part of town (which is none). Anyway, that is where you will find all the southern hipsters who haven't made the trek up to Portlandia yet (or Austin, Minneapolis, Brooklyn, Oakland, etc, etc.).
Steampunk/Victorian clothing is a subculture here, a classier, more scifi version of car modding. It attracts girls of all races but usually only white males.
"Loz Feliz, Silver Lake and Echo Park"
But is there any there there? (As Gertrude Stein said about Oakland...)
The only place I've seen many pedestrians in Silver Lake is walking for exercise around the reservoir.
I drove down Sunset Blvd. through Silver Lake at 11pm on New Year's Eve a month and there was practically nobody on the sidewalk.
Hey Steve, you've done the N.Y. Dago, and now the Midwestern Insurance guy in your headshots; how about, cerca 2015, a Rollie Fingers mustache, and a Victorian era suit?
http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/article.cfm?AID=2208
Wife beater, open guayabera, fedora, microfiber slacks in a muted avocado. Instant warm weather hipster.
Check out Vermont St., by Skylight books and the Dresden Room (of Swingers fame). Plenty of hipsters walking around that stretch. In general, the LA hipster scene isn't concentrated in a single neighborhood (no equivalent to Williamsburg or Mission) so much as at various bars and coffee shops throughout the city. The list is long; I'll spare you.
The OC has a burgeoning hipster scene, as well. "The Lab" in Costa Mesa is a hotbed, as is Santa Ana's slowly gentrifying downtown.
SoCal hipster fashion, by the way, is consistent with hipster fashion elsewhere. Creative facial hair, baroque tattoos, suspenders, saddle shoes for the men. Big glasses, retro T's, bright tights for the lasses.
It's just about the most vapid sub-culture you could imagine.
Fashion vanities?
Sounds like a job for Tom Wolfe!
During the summer months, San Francisco is colder than Seattle. This explains a lot...
'New Money' doesn't get it.
'Old Money' dresses the same these days.
And there's not much distinction between different classes. Rich and non-rich dress pretty much alike. Everyone wears jeans all the time, for example.
Also, isn't LA and Southern California un-walkable? Don't you need to drive everywhere? Hipsters don't drive. What's the point of being a hipster and dressing like one if you're inside your car all the time?
Although it's not California, I enjoyed Tom Wolfe's take on the relation of fashion to climate in Miami in Back to Blood, especially the chapter where WASPy John Smith forces Nestor Camacho into a suit for reconnaissance work.
As someone already mentioned -- Silverlake is the hipster epicenter in L.A. But even there, it's toned down hipsters. Just beards and flannel and suspenders.
LA attracts the beautiful and hipsters are generally ugly and motivated by resentment of the beautiful. If you're a hot chick you don't become a hipster unless your parents messed you up in other ways.
"'Loz Feliz, Silver Lake and Echo Park'"
"But is there any there there?"
True. I guess they have to adjust their habits to the environment like anyone else.
If you really care to find them, you could find out where the hippest coffee shop is or where the latest fashionably obscure bands are playing.
There are warmer weather "hipster clothes," but you have to know where to find them. You actually have to seek the stuff out.
I don't know about this theory. There may be some other reason why LA has no hipsters. After all,there are a fair amount of hipsters in Atlanta, Austin, and Asheville NC. All of those places get pretty hot for half the year.
That McKinley video you link to "isn't available" in Canada. WTF? Is it about some nefarious American plot to seize Saskatchewan instead of the Philippines?
I don't know where (if anywhere?) in LA you live, Steve, but you clearly don't make it over to the east side too often. LA definitely has hipsters; many of them are at the cutting-edge of the style; and, practicality be damned, they're more than happy to sweat their asses off in a flannel shirt and jeans in August if that's what they have convinced themselves is fashionable.
Silverlake is where the trendy hipster sorts concentrated about 10 years ago (or so I hear). There are still a lot of people there who obey that sort of fashion but, at the end of the day, that place is just too expensive to attract large numbers of the young people who push fashion forward anymore. A similar comment applies to Los Feliz, I guess? I've never seen that many hipsters there myself. There are a lot of hipsters in Echo Park, though.
In general, you're really unlikely to be able to see a whole lot of hipsters in any one area because they seem to have this weird desire to spread themselves as this as possible geographically, hoping to avoid some critical mass whereby they would spoil their host neighborhood with their hipness. (Analysis of underlying "self-loathing white gentile" attitudes would definitely be relevant here.)
If you want to see the hippest of the hip, head to York Blvd. in Highland Park, between Avenue 50 and Avenue 51 in the mid-afternoon on a Saturday.
"It's just about the most vapid sub-culture you could imagine."
We don't really have hipsters yet where I live (though I did see one recently, a nice slim girl -- I was tempted to tell her she managed to make a silly look really work for her -- so maybe they're encroaching). But my impression is that if you were writing for the Onion and trying to invent a "vapid sub-culture" that borrowed elements of the most vapid sub-cultures of the past, you couldn't do better than to come up with hipsters.
During the summer months, San Francisco is colder than Seattle.
This is a canard. Let's finally let go of Twain, shall we? A foggy August night in SF is often 62*, balmy.
"If you want to see the hippest of the hip, head to York Blvd. in Highland Park, between Avenue 50 and Avenue 51 in the mid-afternoon on a Saturday."
Highland Park's transformation in the last few years has been really striking. My kids and I go every couple of months to hit Galco for their exotic and old-timey sodas, and it's been amazing to see York Blvd. slowly transforming from endless four dollar Mexican lunch places to billiard rooms and hot yoga studios.
I keep wondering if it has any connection to the cops finally breaking the power of the notorious Leon family in next-door Glassell Park.
Also, Highland Park is the epicenter of the Avenues gang's effort to chase blacks out of Los Angeles, but they're mostly smart enough to leave white hipsters alone.
The whole hipster thing was very NYC focused in its inception.
LA fashion lagged in a 90's haze well into this millennium.
What strikes me most about how people in LA dress is how many obviously over the hill types try to dress like trendy teenagers.
I should have paid more attention to the fashions around me when I visited my cousin in Williamsburg, Brooklyn over the summer, which is awash in hipsters- they practically saturate the sidewalks. All I remember is that in a navy-blue jacket with white dress shirt, tie, and flat cap (light summer weight), I stuck out like a sore thumb- imagine William F. Buckley at Woodstock.
Incidentally, he tells me the really serious hipsters are migrating over to Bushwick from Williamsburg, but when I went to Sunday Mass in Bushwick, I knew exactly why the process isn't more advanced yet- Bushwick is still a little too "Vibrant" for the hipster scene, from the looks of things.
ATBOTL said: What strikes me most about how people in LA dress is how many obviously over the hill types try to dress like trendy teenagers.
Hunsdon enthused: The boomers ruined everything they touched, and continue to so ruin things to this very day. I suppose one cannot blame them too much. Given the "world historical situation" it would have taken a generation of heroes to not go batshit insane. The boomers aren't heroes.
Indulged and pampered by the so-called greatest generation---for worthy and understandable reasons, including the Great Depression, the next War to End All War, and the lingering dread of MAD----the boomers grew up in an America that was rich, white, and at the top of its game.
It is no surprise that today, they rage, rage, against the dying of their light. We have no elder statesmen: we have blow dried clones of Rick Perry. Country music, too, was overrun by the hat acts.
Tucks and lifts and injections and pills for stiffies and that frozen, plastic look you get when you're one tuck over the line. (So to speak.)
Forever young they must be, for forever children they are.
"however - because they're white - they like similar stuff so they create a brand new sub-culture which is even more white than the ones they are running away from (because many aspects of the old cultures"
I've said for years that there is no whiter music than hardcore punk from the 1980's. Every era of punk rock (except for pub rock) was a transition away from the R&B and blues influence of early rock and roll, starting with trashy teen garage rock combos from the early 1960's who were trying their hardest to be contemporaries of Howlin' Wolf. The harder these folks attempt to distance themselves from the uptight white culture from which most of them originate, the more they create an even whiter and more exclusive enclave.
The main problem with LA hipster culture is it's decentralization. Silver Lake and Long Beach are about the only places where people have formed anything close to a hipster community. The West side in general is hipster-lite.
Among whites the young babyboomers are the least educated since many of them dropped out of high school compared to kids today. Granted, there was better blue collar jobs. Also, the group legalized under Reagan some of them fall into the young babyboomers.
In what SoCal do you live? LA is the perfect climate for fashion. High 60s, low 70s are ideal suit weather for men, if you're in the shade.
You can't blame the bad fashion out there on the weather. It's a slovenly culture and it always has been.
There's no place that produces less of beauty or value given its population size and wealth than SoCal and it has always been thus, even when it was a whitopia. Cowen's list of best things San Diego was absurdly funny.
Haha, never thought I would hear the hypothesis that Los Angeles is lacking in hipsters. We've got hipsters oozing out our 28 waist jeans here.
Hipsters wear a "selective uniform" that is amplified during certain hours and in accordance with weather conditions. I've seen hipsters meld in quite well at some blazing hot music festivals over the past year. They were conspicuous by their horrible pasty complexions and Concentration Camp-style emaciation.
I work with some hipsters who naturally don the corporate costume during the day but are clearly discernible by their horrible beards and weird combination of corpora-dandy wear.
As previous commenters noted, just hang out/drive through Silver Lake, Echo Park, even downtown's Art District, and you'll see more hipsters than you ever want to see in your life.
classic iSteve: "I just checked outside and don't see any 'hipsters', ergo Los Angeles doesn't have any."
And of course he lives in the northwest end of the entertainment industry sprawl, which even the trust-fundiest trucker-hatted youths can't afford. Try going downtown--they've colonized the triangle below the library and Little Tokyo completely (formerly part of Greater Skid Row)
Steve I think your age is showing with this post!
LA is dripping with hipsters. You seem to be confusing hipster with grunge.
I'm surprised you haven't noticed the huge Hispanic trend of skinny males wearing skinny jeans etc. There are plenty of them around Valley Village/North Hollywood which is my best guess as to where you live. Hispanic kids not being overweight is a real change. Even a lot of the girls are starting to be a lot skinnier after not paying attention to the hipster ethic for years.
"I knew exactly why the process isn't more advanced yet- Bushwick is still a little too "Vibrant" for the hipster scene, from the looks of things."
They live in Bushwick out of necessity. Billyburg's just too expensive these days for the young'uns.
Well, maybe that's why Hispanics in La birthrate is dropping, some of the younger ones in places like North Hollywood copying whites. Maybe a good trend after all.
Also, the hipster made parts of La expensive and some Hispanics left and according to Joel Konklin a big immirgant supporter even Hispanic kids are dropping in the La are.
I saw the Ramones playing in the early 1990s, one of their last shows I think. The audience wasnt exactly hipster, wrong era. We were all dressed in black, leather jackets, black jeans etc and there was one guy there in a dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, neat short hair - obviously came straight from work. I looked at him and realized he was the coolest guy there by a mile.
Not fashion but a lot of liberals notice the most conservative generation is the silence generation between the late 1920'a and early 1940's. Oddly enough they were the leaders for the left in the 1960's like Tom Hayden was born in 1937 or 1939. Reagan actually did good with these folks and they were the biggest supporters of prop 13.
One tuck over the line
LOL. It strikes me that I've never heard the song on any oldies station, yet they play White Rabbit. Why is that?
Oddly enough they were the leaders for the left in the 1960's like Tom Hayden was born in 1937 or 1939.
Tom Hayden was an exceptional case, being non-Scots Irish.
The Berkeley Free Speech Movement and Students for a Democratic Society were dominated by peepul who had something in common with conservative radio talker Michael "Savage" Weinstein. "Red diaper babies," he calls 'em ... Children of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg set.
A foggy August night in SF is often 62*, balmy.
It was 56 degrees F. and breezy in SF at about 9:00 AM July 4, 1986. I was there.
For all of you recommending Silver Lake for finding LA hipsters: I saw a band there this weekend after seeing the exact same band in a similar club in Seattle, so I can make a reasonably scientific comparison of hipster levels.
Silver Lake is more hipster than the rest of LA, but compared to somewhere like Seattle or even New York it's at like 10% hipster power.
I was very disappointed; I like hipster watching. All mocking aside, hipster girls look lovely.
Steve, I suggest an iSteve piece about the popularity of very high-heeled shoes and boots among the younger generation of women.
These boots are made for walkin'...
My prediction:La,Orange and San Diego less Hispanic than the Inland Empire. Most of the coastial counties legal and illegal immirgants and their children lived in the older housing and there is no room to built new housing. Unlike the state report that looks at only births and deaths it doesn't predict more and more Hispanics moving out of the expensive coastial counties to the less expensive inland counties as much. Right now, high unemployment is keeping the Hispanics in the coastial counties that have a car from moving as much.If immirgation is shifting from Hispanic to Asian the coastial counties by the 2020's well have less Hispanics with babies and older Hispanics might join their children in the Inland Empire. Prediction by 2060 Riverside and San Bernadino will be 65 percen Hispanic and the state 52 to 55 while La, Orange and San Diego will be maybe as low as 45 precent.
Here's how to map L.A.'s separation of classes
By Mark Lacter | January 29, 2013 4:01 PM
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These Census tracts tell you a lot about the area's haves and have nots. The creative class, made up of folks in science and technology, business and management, arts, culture, media and entertainment, law, and healthcare, all live in the purple-shaded areas (notice the concentrations along the coast, western San Fernando Valley, and San Gabriel Valley). The service class, which covers workers in food service and preparation, retail sales, and clerical and administrative positions, are in red (concentrated in central L.A., the eastern SFV, portions of the South Bay, and inland Long Beach). And the working class, which include those with factory and construction jobs, are in blue (just a smattering of Census tracts). The creative class makes up 34.1 percent of L.A. area workers, slightly higher than the national average, according to an analysis by The Atlantic's Richard Florida. The service class is at 46.3 percent and the working class 19.5 percent. These breakdowns are not especially surprising, but the map's shadings offer a dramatic relief to what's become one of the most polarized regions of the country. Going back to the 1940s and 1950s, it wasn't neary this way; the working class made up a far larger percentage of the labor force. Would any of the candidates for mayor care to take a crack at this? Of the creative class, Florida writes:
In the city, there is a major creative class cluster stretching from Hollywood, Bel Air, and Westwood, where UCLA is located, to the beach community of Venice, and a small cluster near downtown, especially around USC. For the metro broadly, the creative class stretches out along the coast from Santa Monica, home to the RAND Corporation and Milken Institute to Malibu on the north; and, Manhattan Beach to Palos Verdes; south from Huntington Beach and Newport Beach to Irvine, home to the University of California, Irvine, Laguna Beach and Dana Point; as well Pasadena, home to Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
[CUT]
Following the pattern we saw in the first post in this series on New York, L.A. too is divided and segmented by class. But unlike New York's pattern, with its heavy creative class concentration at the core in Manhattan and surrounding parts of Brooklyn and Jersey City, L.A.'s creative class, much of which is no doubt affiliated with the film and television industry, is more spread out along the coast. That said, L.A.'s class geography does not conform to a typical urban-suburban pattern, with lower-wage service workers concentrated in the urban core and the more affluent creative class at the suburban fringe. The pattern of creative class clustering seen in New York does carry over but is expressed in different forms. There are creative class pockets in the city and its downtown as well as in coastal suburbs.
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Here's how to map L.A.'s separation of classes
By Mark Lacter | January 29, 2013 4:01 PM
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Neighborhood (Census Tract #) Creative Class Share
Turtle Rock/UC Irvine, Orange County (626.29) 84.3%
Laurel Canyon, Hollywood (1941.02) 79.5%
Woodland Hills (1375.04) 78.1%
Westwood (2651) 78.0%
North of Montana, Santa Monica (7012.01) 77.9%
South Pasadena (4635) 77.7%
Rancho Park, Palms (2693) 77.4%
Los Feliz (882.02) 76.7%
South Arroyo, Pasadena (4638) 76.6%
Cheviot Hills, Palms (2695) 76.0%
Metro Average 34.1%
Top 10 service locations...
Neighborhood (Census Tract #) Service Class Share
Cal Poly Pomona (4024.04) 82.3%
USC, West Adams-Expo Park (2227) 79.5%
Bixby Village, Long Beach (5746.01) 79.4%
Park Mesa Heights, Crenshaw (2349.01) 78.3%
Silver Lake/Chinatown (2071.02) 74.9%
Silver Lake/Chinatown (2071.03) 71.5%
North Hollywood (1241.03) 71.1%
Hollywood Heights (1902.01) 69.0%
Cambodia Town, Long Beach (5764.01) 68.9%
Hollywood (1908.01) 68.8%
Metro Average 46.3%
Top 10 working class districts...
Neighborhood (Census Tract #) Working Class Share
Westlake (2089.02) 69.9%
Whiteman Airport, Pacoima (1047.03) 65.0%
Central Alameda, South Park (2287.10) 62.9%
Pixley Park, Maywood (5333) 62.2%
El Monte (4333.02) 59.8%
Westlake (2084.01) 59.1%
Cudahy (5344.03) 58.9%
South Park (2240.10) 58.6%
Central Alemeda, South Park (2281) 58.2%
South Figueroa, South Park (2284.10) 57.3%
Metro Average 19.5%
Well, I said several times that the factory workers were Hispanic and I think those tracts are Hispanic with maybe El Monte being Hispanc or Asian a lot of lower class Asians moved into El Monte.
Also, one more observation the creative class area will prevent the expanison of the service class and working class in the La area hence the slower growth in Hisapnics and Afro-Americans decline and some poorer asians or more moderate income minorities moving into the Inland Empire. As Steve stated before even with the high tax system La can still import the creative class.
Service jobs are interesting here its not all Hispanic, since there are poorer black tracts or asian tracts here. In fact it proves that Hispanics could be replaced in service jobs like food prepartion. Clerical is probably mixed by all four ethnic groups. Granted, since Orange County is included Retail and clerical can refer to Whites as much as Asians and Hispanics. Food prepartion in Orange County is probably mainly Hispanic though unless its fancy chiefs.
If Florida is a California without ideas, as the adage goes, then perhaps California is a Florida without style. After all, Miami Beach is where Gianni Versace gave his life for his art.
This shows that La County itself is more class spilt then Orange County which is a overprice middle class area with lots of poverty in Santa Ana and Anahiem. And rich coastial communties and some rich inland areas like Coto and Yorba Linda.
We have no elder statesmen: we have blow dried clones of Rick Perry. Country music, too, was overrun by the hat acts.
I may regret saying this, but it seems clear that the elder statesmen are you and me. Figuratively speaking. All the intelligent discourse is on blogs, and nothing else matters.
This is a nation without heroes. Or, Who are the heroes. Hollywood action heroes, or football players. To repeat someone else's joke, this American life is become a Far Side panel.
But to repeat, who could be pointed to as a hero, in this life. Politicians, entertainers? For awhile there were heros in art, perhaps. Neil Young, Frank Herbert, or Robert Pirsig?
And this is not off the topic, by the way. Obviously hipsters are about identity that is defined … with what … in opposition to traditional authority? The character in the skinny jeans, his whole act, is non-threatening. A hipster fashion here of late is goofy cartoon imagery. Literally dressing up in a cartoon image, complete with appurtenance and duck bill fixtures. And interesting, this look is not the sole purview of the white male. Women and blacks are following suit, into that realm. Lots of young blacks, those who aspire off the street, do the cartoon thing. Women too.
Country music. Or my goodness god. As an exercise in frustration, try to track down the lyricists to hit country songs. Can hardly be found. Talk about repackaging and redefining values and mores. Wood ducks and channel cat, i'm a little more country that that.
I did not know who is Rick Perry; paid political class is truly the root of all evil. There is an authentic country act called The Band Perry, incidentally, they have had i think two hits. Real chops those kids.
Someone unthread said that hipsters spread themselves thin. It bears repeating, as it gets to their core. They do not like to see themselves reflected, in others. Because the shallowness of it is in fact sad.
(Of course, if the milieu is felt as sad, then it is not shallow. People are often misconstrued as caricatures, by uh say egocentric brains, as a means of distance.)
People strive to create an image; as opposed to striving along a heroic model.
It seems really end game; devolving into the matrix. I know i am rambling.
Calling the Band Perry authentic may seem, off the wall. Better to say that they were from the country, and now are domesticated.
They did the Walmart tour, and sung with such heart. I tracked down their songwriting credits and they owned some of them, partly. Which was impressive for teenagers. The front page of google "the band perry hip to my heart" does not deliver their town hall performances, … which were authentic.
Fitting that those best versions are hard to find, and the awful commercial videos are up.
"Back in the old days, people wore a lot of layers of wool because everybody lived in England or Cleveland or someplace and the coal for your stove wasn't free."
This weekend, I lost the heat in my apartment... in February... in New England. Steve's line above came immediately to mind as I piled on layer after layer just to hang around the kitchen. I consider myself a hardy soul when it comes to the cold, but I have a newfound respect for my preindustrial forebears in the Northeast.
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