hipsterism 101: a brief history of the counter culture
i’m glad this “hipster” thing is dying down. at least in its current incarnation, which is a total fucking joke. it used to mean counter-culture, and it has largely become anything but that this time around.
don’t worry. it will reappear anew in the first half of every decade as a reaction to the previous 5 years, as it has done since the 1950’s. hipsterdom in the early part of each decade becomes slightly corporate and marketed outward towards the latter half. i’m not too clear on the 60’s and 70’s but i’ll write what i write. let me demonstrate a couple of things:
late 40’s/early 50’s
- beat poets convene in New York; later to San Francisco. ‘Howl’ and ‘On The Road’ are published.
late 50’s
- beatniks become a in-joke, with caricatures of bongo slapping black turtlenecked coffee drinking thinkers appearing in numerous movies; such as Funny Face (1957), and Bell Book & Candle (1958), not to mention The Wild One (1953) which already preempts the classification of “hipster” / motorcycle / beatnik lingo.
early 60’s
- The Merry Pranksters were a group that lived communally in California. they experiment with LSD and acid far more than the beatniks of New York, who are far more into “uppers”. this lends to large acid and LSD taking parties. furthermore, they travel across the country in a multicolored school bus to attend the World Fair in NYC in 1964, turning on many, many people along the way to LSD, acid, and marijuana.
- thanks to the ideals of soul searching that the beatniks presented, more and more people are concious of the growing social trends of yoga and coffeehouse culture. with beatnik figureheads like Alan Ginsburg adopting these eastern philosophies often the two are mixed and what emerges is essentially the “hippie” in the classical sense.
- Bob Dylan gives The Beatles marijuana and acid upon their first meeting on August 28th, 1964.
late 60’s
- Andy Warhol, while successful during this period, begins to focus less on making actual art and more on the concept of art. his celebrity begets creativity and he becomes more obsessed with the cult of personality than the cult of art. he stops directing any of his own films and leaves 99% of the work of the art making up to the employees of The Factory; his art house.
- Hippies become caricatures, with movies, books, cereal and shaving cream marketed towards their needs, it becomes a commercial sector.
- The Beatles turn their fans onto drugs, sparking a whole bunch of people to take drugs that can’t exactly handle them.
- the anti-war movement is mixed up with the drug culture. to make a generalized statement - if you were against the war, you were to take drugs and affect the counter culture mentality. many, many people take drugs that ultimately shouldnt have, as it leads to - at the tail end of the 1960’s - a large amount of people that can’t deal with being on drugs going batshit crazy.
early 70’s
- with hippieism effectively over, the art community after having experienced the eye opening late 60’s turns to Hollywood and puts out a slew of great movies - such as Harold & Maude, The Godfather, and A Clockwork Orange. this is in part due to the ‘hipster bombshell’ of the late 60’s, that audiences are ready for that and do not want to be mollycoddled into the focus-group mentality of the elder Hollywood hierarchy.
- people in general start to want to experience new things, with the “cool crowd” gravitating towards the sounds of the black and hispanic and gay crowd - namely, disco. in 1970, David Mancuso, a New York DJ, opens the first disco club in his apartment which he calls The Loft. this leads to a heavy onset of dance culture.
late 70’s
- disco becomes a huge business and what started out as music for the NY art scene becomes seen by the masses as a “fad” and by the close of the 70’s, a huge embarrassment for music in general.
- people get way too stoned for about five years straight. pet rocks, anyone? why are people giving housewives cocaine? eventually the “free love” trickles down to suburbia and “swingers parties” become a huge thing - ruining quite a lot of marriages along the way.
early 80’s
- punk hits california in a major way and Black Flag tour, turning a lot of bored teenagers with stuck-in-the-70’s parents onto the angst of punk.
- skateboarding, having started in the late 70’s, gains favorability in the punk crowd.
- heavy metal hits the US with a particularly strong following in LA.
late 80’s
- metal becomes glossed over and over produced.
- skateboarding becomes commercial with the advent of Vision Street Wear who effectively sold skate clothes to Macys, etc, much to the anger of original skaters who become disillusioned. as the sport evolves away from the Vision Street Wear ethos it thus becomes way, way more street and technical and thus away from the vert skating heyday which peaked in 1987’s Bones Brigade skate video “The Search For Animal Chin” (which is awesome, by the way).
- punk retreats. where it eventually becomes…
early 90’s
- … grunge, which started as a reaction to the overproduced metal while taking with it the ethos and DIY aesthetic of punk rock, especially 80’s Bay Area punk (such as Flipper and Dead Kennedys) and the east coast punk sound (of Minor Threat and The Misfits). Lollapalooza kicks off, as well.
- dance music has a renaissance in europe and “rave” culture becomes an underground phenomenon. dance groups/bands that the mainstream hasn’t heard of become top 10 hits overnight when 10,000 people snap up the songs they’d heard the night before in the club, sending it to the top of the charts instantly. KL7 and The Prodigy become stars within weeks.
- the “indie” rock sound breaks out just in time, with bands like Pavement putting out brilliant albums out of nowhere. the Seattle influence begets leading the way back to coffee shop culture, and soon coffee shops are opening up everywhere. by the mid 90’s coffee shops are de rigeur and a whole new breed of DIY, open mic culture brings with it a slew of creativity. Stand up comedy thrives, with comedians such as Bill Hicks, Kids In The Hall, and Janeane Garofalo setting new standards for the Generation X crowd.
late 90’s and beyond
- in 1995, Coca Cola discontinues its “OK Cola” franchise, which had agressivley courted Gen X’rs with its ironic detachment. if you want to know the year irony died, it was 1995.
- grunge labors on but dies a miserable death in 1997 when Creed release ‘My Own Prison’, which already aped Pearl Jam, who had already started to kind of suck.
- independent coffee shops become deserted with the rise of Starbucks coffee in the mid 1990’s. “poetry jams” become a joke.
- indie rock gets good, then great, then Natalie Portman plays Zach Braff “New Slang” by The Shins in that fucking Garden State movie and all hell breaks loose. suddenly everyone adopts the sweaters and the tight pants and the “feelings”; all misappropriated from the ironic use of those same things in the mid 1990’s.
- Urban Outfitters expands exponentially from around 6 stores in 1996 to around 60 by 2003. their profits during this time period jump around 79% each year, with irony and kitsch being made readily available. ironically, CEO Richard Hayne is a conservative right winger who voted for George W Bush twice and has heavy ties with Texas oil. after infamously pulling items encouraging same sex marriage (namely ‘i support gay marriage’ shirts) from Urban Outfitters, Haynes has stepped largely out of the public eye. i wonder if people knew who controlled the company if they’d still shop there?
- Woodstock ‘99 includes riot and rape, a far cry from the peace-niks and free love mentality of ‘68. i guess they shouldnt have had Limp Bizkit and $8 water.
- American Apparel starts to sell LA hipster street fashion back to itself at double the price. however, the company DOES have good ethics in terms of its factory workers rights. i cant fault that.
- Fight Club - which was a great book about anti consumer culture and preached brilliant counter culture values - becomes a great movie. then it becomes a line of tshirts and a shitty video game starring Fred Durst. sigh.
- “hipsterism” becomes an affectation meaning no more than the clothes and income and literally just a fashion statement, bringing us to where we are now - where the counter culture has become the current culture. there is no REAL counter culture anymore, other than… shit. i dont know. i cant think of one at all. and thats pretty sad. while theres been a large number of what would be considered “hipsters” going into public planning jobs working for a greener future (which is an admirable and noble and respectful thing), nobody is really doing anything to go against the grain, so to speak. we’ve all become our own grain.
and who will deter it? its about time for a new shake-up… i can almost gaurantee it will come soon - we’ve about reached breaking point. i had fun researching this and typing it up, maybe you’ll think twice the next time you want to call someone a hipster. are they really doing anything? the word has no meaning anymore.
