Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Ice bucket meh
Dear Hipster:
I nominate you for an ice-bucket challenge!!!! Who will you challenge? You can do up to four.
— Mark
Meh. I’m already over it.
(For anybody living under a rock, Ice Bucket Challenge = viral internet fundraiser whereby people soak themselves in icy water to raise awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and urge their friends and/or notable celebrities to donate money to the ALS Foundation. It is everywhere online, and a shocking number of people are catching heat for doing it wrong.)
I guess it’s cool that the weird insanity of Fire Challenge and Neknomination can be used for positive ends, and any excuse for Dave Grohl to do a bitchin’ Carrie parody is good enough for me, but hipsters aren’t big on “slacktivism” (the catchy term for internet-friendly activism requiring little real commitment). At our best, we prefer to make systemic changes in our lifestyles; whereby small benefits accrue, adding up to a theoretically greater good over the course of a lifetime. People may scoff at things like obsessively patronizing local businesses in favor of huge corporations, upcycling, and riding bikes instead of driving cars, but the peculiar social consciousness of the modern hipster aims to make positive changes in the hipster’s immediate locus, not in the amorphous greater world of problems. Of course, people being who they are, many hipsters are more into finding easy ways of appearing enlightened, without doing any of the heavy lifting that goes into making a real difference. I like to remember the visual by comedian Kelly Maclean, who paints the picture of a douchebag in a Prius (complete with “Namaste” sticker) nearly running a pregnant woman off the sidewalk in his haste to get wherever Prius-driving DBs have to go in a hurry.
I don’t want to come off as Hateful Harriet. It’s great that the ALS Foundation gets a big influx of cash. Of the foundation’s $24 million in fiscal year 2014 revenue, $7.2 million went directly to ALS research grants. So, of the ~$15 million raised as a result of the ice-bucket phenomenon, about $4,000,000 ought to make its way to similar grants. That chunk of change might fund the scientific breakthrough that cures Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s a long shot, verging on impossible, but the chance is there.
All things being equal, I challenge Charlie Sheen, with his bucketful of $100 bills, to give his housekeeper a $1000 tip next week. And not tell anyone about it. Just do something nice for somebody, quietly.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Ice bucket meh
Ice bucket meh
Dear Hipster:
I nominate you for an ice-bucket challenge!!!! Who will you challenge? You can do up to four.
— Mark
Meh. I’m already over it.
(For anybody living under a rock, Ice Bucket Challenge = viral internet fundraiser whereby people soak themselves in icy water to raise awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and urge their friends and/or notable celebrities to donate money to the ALS Foundation. It is everywhere online, and a shocking number of people are catching heat for doing it wrong.)
I guess it’s cool that the weird insanity of Fire Challenge and Neknomination can be used for positive ends, and any excuse for Dave Grohl to do a bitchin’ Carrie parody is good enough for me, but hipsters aren’t big on “slacktivism” (the catchy term for internet-friendly activism requiring little real commitment). At our best, we prefer to make systemic changes in our lifestyles; whereby small benefits accrue, adding up to a theoretically greater good over the course of a lifetime. People may scoff at things like obsessively patronizing local businesses in favor of huge corporations, upcycling, and riding bikes instead of driving cars, but the peculiar social consciousness of the modern hipster aims to make positive changes in the hipster’s immediate locus, not in the amorphous greater world of problems. Of course, people being who they are, many hipsters are more into finding easy ways of appearing enlightened, without doing any of the heavy lifting that goes into making a real difference. I like to remember the visual by comedian Kelly Maclean, who paints the picture of a douchebag in a Prius (complete with “Namaste” sticker) nearly running a pregnant woman off the sidewalk in his haste to get wherever Prius-driving DBs have to go in a hurry.
I don’t want to come off as Hateful Harriet. It’s great that the ALS Foundation gets a big influx of cash. Of the foundation’s $24 million in fiscal year 2014 revenue, $7.2 million went directly to ALS research grants. So, of the ~$15 million raised as a result of the ice-bucket phenomenon, about $4,000,000 ought to make its way to similar grants. That chunk of change might fund the scientific breakthrough that cures Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s a long shot, verging on impossible, but the chance is there.
All things being equal, I challenge Charlie Sheen, with his bucketful of $100 bills, to give his housekeeper a $1000 tip next week. And not tell anyone about it. Just do something nice for somebody, quietly.
Comments