I just read the Hipster Handbook, which I can reccommend as very funny. It chronicles what is hip and what isn't, though it shows a real New York bias, which is where it was written from. It's pretty funny, and I think it might also be worth reading their links. Also I like it that they make fun of Dave Eggers for being so pompous.

You might want to check it out at www.thehipsterhandbook.com.

I am willing to accept that being hip outside New York is a contradiction in terms, but he goes to some lengths to say how Iowa City is hip, in a blue collar hipster way. There are a lot of local trends of questionable hipness here which would make a nice regional second edition of the book. Because while tattoos, for instance, have their own meaning and relevance based on how they are worn and what the tattoo is, here tattoo culture is very different than New York. Almost all women seem to have giant tribal tattoos on their lower back/upper ass, which I can tell because they all have ultra low rider pants that expose them.

And REI, which I don't even think exists at home, would definitely not be a part of any Williamsburg wardrobe, but here, what exists of hipster culture definitely sport a fair amout of wicking fabric. I guess it is also because at home thrifting is hip, whereas here garage sales are very suburban affairs, with little irony on sale. And the thrift stores are curated in such a way that no one is going to score a bowling shirt that says Maude for 10cents, like you might at a garage sale in Passiac. There is definitely a shortage of irony here, or at least the right kind of disaffected irony.

Here, if you found a bowling shirt, it would be on a hanger, self conciously presented and way overpriced. Plus there is a gay fashion congnecenti running these thrift stores, which is why they all have names like Out of the Closet and Second Time Around. There are also local trends in watches here, specifically that people down dress but wear amazingly expensive watches. I mean, really obsecenly expensive, big showy ones. Which is funny because, for instance, the other night I was at a place where Phil Knight was, who is the head of Nike. And you'd never know it by the way he dressed or the kind of car he drove. Everything is very low key, with the exception of these watches. All of which brings me back to my original point, which is that effortles attitude, which is the basis for being hip, just can't be pulled off in the provences, because even when you look the part, you are still an Omaha hipster, or whatever, which is fundamentally trying, which is axiomatically unhip. Because if you were really the hippest person in Omaha, you'd be living in an awful apartment in Brooklyn, being totally blase about the midwest and how ironic all that open space is. Also, instead of reading the Hipster Handbook and laughing knowingly, you should really be friends with the author and at his book release party, and holding some indeterminate position on how you feel about the book.

I think there is a kind of municipal insecurity around here, about whether San Francisco is as good as New York. Which is why that is the first thing everyone asks me when I meet them and they find out where I'm from. The answer is of course, no. There is nothing like New York. Which doesn't make it better exactly, but nothing really compares. Of course there are things here that are nicer, like proximity to the beach or whatever, but you can't really compete with the center of the world. Not that its a contest. But people in New York would never ask if New York is better than any other place, it is just presumed to be the case.