Bucket List Mon Feb 27 2012

My Chicago Bucket List: Stop Making Fun of Hipsters

By Niki Fritz

Previous Entry: Galentine's Day
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FAIL: Number 29: Go to Logan Square and don't make fun of hipsters (An impossibly difficult "to-do" that I knocked off my original list of 25 for its implausibility. I know myself well.)

I have a notoriously nasty habit of routinely and senselessly making fun of hipsters.
I do not make clever little "Portlandia"-worthy jabs or even witty insight into the hypocrisy of the hipster subculture; I'm more prone to nod towards a dude on a bike and say, "Hey man, look at that hipster riding a bike. He looks so...stupid."

I have justified such high-brown heckling because I have dated approximately 53 percent of the hipster community in Chicago. If I have had to help shimmy off skinny jeans, then I should be allowed the reward of mockery for my troubles.

But recently it has been rather loudly brought to my attention that I may indeed be a hipster myself. (See most recent Facebook pic update for proof of hipster demise). It may be time for the dimly disguised self-loathing to stop.

Last week afforded me the perfect opportunity to set my hipster stereotypes aside and embrace hipster's headquarters: Logan Square. The Chicago Reader was hosting its 3rd Annual Anti Valentines Day Party conveniently located at the Logan Square Auditorium in the heart of New Hipsterdom and I was not about to let a little awkward facial hair scare me away.

I started the night out admirably comment-free with a stroll through Logan Square's square where I ran into a delightfully average looking family man walking a pathetically coned mutt. Friendly neighbor directed me to the local "fancy" Mexican Restaurant, aka El Cid, where I had some good fish tacos and the best happy-Niki-making margaritas ever.

Maybe it was the delightfully strong margarita or the sudden barrage of apathetic-looking flannel as I walked in Logan Square Auditorium, but suddenly the night's vow to keep an open mind and a closed mockerator seemed impossible. And it was.

I failed within two seconds of walking in the door when the lack of enthusiasm or greeting by door hipsters made me question how angst seemed to be the natural state of hipsters, or maybe something that secretly grows in their mustaches.

I quickly and quietly chastised myself for my judgment; a punishment I forgot as soon as we got to the top of the stairs and saw at least a dozen 'stached gentlemen leaning apathetically against the bar waiting for their PBRs. I judged vocally and physically with an overly dramatic roll of my eyes to my friend and then ordered myself a $4 PBR without realizing the hypocrisy.

Luckily my also vocally gifted friend checked my 'tude and I managed to sustain the majority of the performance without making any more hipster judgments... at least audibly. With my arrogance quickly held in check, I met some lovely people including a part-time porn actor/nude model and a member of the CFW's Young Women's Leadership Council, neither of whom fit my hipster meme. I have to say, by the end of the night I was rather proud of my evidently growing maturity level.

Unfortunately on the way out of a lovely three-PBR-filled night, we ran into the cloud of hipster hand-rolled cigarette smoke. I muttered something about cigarettes hand rolled with pages from The Infinite Jest now being available on Etsy. And I laughed because it was funny... really awfully funny.

Because sometimes the things hipsters do, say or wear are as hilarious as they are completely baffling for me. Because the more I try to understand the impossible juxtaposition a hipster, of the desire to be an individual by doing the opposite of the mainstream, the more confused I am.

And yet I feel the need to understand the hipster identity in a way I don't need to understand other 20-something social groups. I never desperately yearn to understand the intimacies of GTL or why people carry around small dogs in big purses. These are groups that I do not identify with and have no need to understand.

But if I were to assign myself a millennial identity, the most accurate would be hipster. The thing is, I/we all want to belong to a group, whether that group is the "in group," the "mainstream," the "socially acceptable," or whether that group is the "out group," the "rebels," the "hipsters." We all want to feel like there is another human being out there that understands and accepts us.

The danger is each of these groups can sometime require us to lose a part of our authenticity in order to belong. We will chug Natty Ice, submit to fake tans, wear obnoxiously sparkly clothes and fist pump at clubs when we would rather be at home reading Harry Potter. We will deny our love of a too popular band (I heart you forever Mumford), we will squeeze into unflattering skinny jeans, we will stop bathing to get the natural dirty look, we will go to ridiculous experimental instrumental concerts and pretend we "get it."

And this is why I think I make fun of hipsters. I make fun of hipsters because that is the only way I know how to not lose myself into the culture. If I make fun of them, if I make fun of myself, just maybe I won't take myself too seriously and I will be able to belong to a group without lying and losing myself.

I realize that scorning the group I most identify with is not wise. I realize I may often prejudge and miss truths about potential soul mates because of the pattern of their facial hair. But hopefully somewhere along the way, (I'm shooting for mid to late thirties) I will figure out how to just be myself, how to navigate the in and the out without losing myself.

But that self-realization is at least another five to 10 years away. For now I'm going to admit number 29 is not going to happen this year. I'm going to continue to make fun of hipsters. But at least I can now say for every hipster jab I'm really making fun of myself and "my people." So with that realization I will tell you three hilarious and slightly pathetic truthisms about myself (one for each vocal joke I made at a hipster's expense in Logan Square.)

1. I love my funky asymmetrical haircut but more I love the compliments I get from "hipster-esque" people at parties in regards to my quasi-hipster haircut.

2. I like the look of skinny jeans but I prefer leggings because they don't pinch my side chunks after I eat a Five Guys hamburger for lunch.

3. I really want Glee to cover a Mumford and Sons song but if they do I will download it and immediately disguise it on my iPod as something cooler like Sleigh Bells.