Bikers’ Rights! And Other Reasons Why I Could Never be a Hipster

Hipsters Patrick and Brian. It's Patrick's birthday, and to celebrate Brian wore the American flag. Obvi.

Last weekend was magical. I headed to Brooklyn by way of the Lower East Side to celebrate the impending nuptials of one Miss Katie Poff. We ate barbecue, we went shopping, we laid out by the pool, we even watched some episodes of Laguna Beach on DVD.

After watching the sun set over the East River and behind the skyline of Manhattan we did some shots of Goldschlager and headed out to the bars. It was at this exact moment that I was almost rundown by a violent hipster bike-rider who was angry that I had so brazenly taken my stroll into the bike lanes of the unreasonably wide Williamsburg roadways. “Bikers’ rights!” he yelled as he whizzed past me, ringing a bell situated on top of his handlebars. “I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to exist anywhere!” I screamed, adjusting the bachelorette masquerade mask on top of my head and refusing to move. My indignation then led me to actually run into a swerving hipster who just so happened to get caught up in the fracas. “That was dick of me, I’m sorry,” I told her. She just shook her head. Let the hipster hating begin.

For anyone who doesn’t know yet, hipsters “walk among the masses in daily life but are not a part of them and shun or reduce to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream.” Thank you, Hipster Handbook. They ride bicycles and wear fedoras. They go to flea markets and pretend that places like CVS and Starbucks don’t exist. And they’re super judgey, and not in a good way, where, like, I’m super judgey but it’s about things like Angelina Jolie breaking up Jennifer Aniston’s marriage. They’re judgey about actual people. To their face. Excuse me, no one made any comments about your stupid vest, so back off (“That’s because that vest was disgusting.” Name it! Mean Girls! Ah. Hipsters probably loved that movie, and then loved it too much so that they had to stop loving it and ridicule it until it became lovable again. Because that’s what they do).

Sunset over Manhattan

Anyway, at pretty much every bar we went into people shot us dirty looks. I thought it was because we were wearing pink feathers and handing out cards as part of a bachelorette party game. It was actually because we looked like preppy college graduates who work for a living and were dancing to the Black Eyed Peas. I’m sorry, but I just can’t tell the difference between any of the Thievery Corporation’s songs. If liking Beyonce is wrong, I don’t wanna be right!

I feel like I should also note here that at the Bedford Ave. subway stop there was a grown man in a full neon-blue body suit laying on the ground with a plastic baby doll attached to his fingers, and to the beat of a drum (somewhere I couldn’t see, possibly in my head as it’s the death march I hear right before I think I’m going to die) he made the doll on his fingers walk around as another full-grown man kicked at it. I’m just going to leave you with that image for a sec. Got it? Moving on.

But perhaps the greatest reason I can’t be a hipster was because of the writing on the wall. Literally, the bathroom wall at some semi-sports bar (I use this term loosely as the only reason it can be considered a sports bar was that it had a New Orleans Saints flag hanging inside). While dipping in for a pit stop, I found what could possibly be the most eloquent thing a hipster has ever written (immortalized in black Sharpie on red wall-paint), “DouceBag BlogWriters” (misspelling NOT for effect). I knew bloggers were hated in the mainstream for dispensing misinformation and hiding behind their computers as they impose their own thoughts and beliefs on everyone’s’ lives. But in Williamsburg? I’m lucky I made it out of there alive.

So I’ve found a group of people who truly hate me. Which seems like a lot of work for someone who doesn’t really care about doing anything. But what happens when that day comes – when being a hipster is finally the cool thing to do? When they might have to shun all they’ve come to know and believe because their life-culture has become too mainstream?

Uh, yeah. I wouldn’t count on it.