It's true of course. New Yorkers will embark on almost all manner of buffoonery to recapture or reclaim some aspect of normalcy in a city that is overpriced and overcrowded. From this kayaking expedition above to using dumpsters to make impromptu swimming pools to rooftop farms. Every week the NY Times has an article on some new crazy thing going on.
Actually I should be clear. It's not New York I'm talking about. It's Brooklyn. Manhattan is dead to the world. It's a homogenous giant strip mall now. Brooklyn is where the true craziness goes on.
But all things equal, I'd rather live in a world where this kind of craziness happens. Which is why I think hipsters, that most maligned group known to man, are simply the bees knees.
Hipsters perform two useful functions in this city.
- They rebel against conformity and sanity and popularity as a principle.
- They engage in un-economic activities.
Those two functions together mean we get lots of things that push back against the strip-mall-ification of New York City. While you get some misses (e.g. like the popularity of skinny jeans, ironic hats and fixies) you also get some serious wins like a huge number of serious old school butcher stores opening in Brooklyn
No comments:
Post a Comment