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
Martinis and kidney shaped pools
and; Can one be both retro and creative?
We don't like sand either, Anakin.
Dear Hipster:
Consider the following a sort of follow-up to your recent missive about weather and seasons. Which is the more hipster destination, the desert or the beach?
— Dale J.
Video:
"I don't like sand"
Hmmm, both certainly have their hipster advantages and failings, with more of the latter coming to mind. The desert is best known for deadly snakes, deadlier heat, and high strung types with more dirtbikes than teeth. The beach has tourists, tourists, tourists, more tourists, some mean locals, and meaner stingrays. Note the absence of typically hipster attractions in those lists. Before you jump to concluding all hipsters hate the beach and desert the way Anakin Skywalker hates sand and sandy places, let’s keep two things in mind. First, although hipsters stand accused of ruining many things, they have never ruined anything so badly as Hayden Christensen ruined Star Wars. Second, hipsters actually like certain things about both the beach and desert, and they have successfully combined those partial favoritisms into a uniquely hipster love of Palm Springs. The stark beauty (such as it is) of the desert, tempered by the soothing influence of kidney shaped pools and fresh martinis, relieves world-weary hipsters of their 21st-century burdens much better than either the too-crowded beach or the too-inhospitable desert can do alone.
Dear Hipster:
I know you always say contemporary hipsters are at heart creative types, coloring even simple service jobs with their personal styles and flairs, you might call it, finding the artistic expression locked away in a martini, a latte, or a straight razor shave. That’s all well and good, and I support this in theory, but I think there’s an inherent conflict with another hipster strategy, namely, being super retro and borrowing heavily from the past for everything from fashion to music. How can you be creative if you’re just rehashing somebody else’s material (usually from the eighties, or so it seems)?
— Phillip C.
Video:
Peter Schilling's "Major Tom"
Well, you’re certainly right about how much we hipster types like to reinterpret the past. It’s kind of our thing. But I’m not so sure loving retro stuff actually undercuts creativity, because it comes from a place of love and admiration. Think of it like a really good cover song, which everybody loves, hipster or otherwise.
E.g., Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom (Coming Home),” a seminal 1980s pop tune, and a fantastic song; but that old Shiny Toy Guns’ cover (made for a Lincoln commercial, of all ridiculous reasons) is unquestionably superior in every way, and I don’t even like Shiny Toy Guns. Part of the reason it’s so good is the way the chorus hits and then peaks, and peaks, and peaks again till you’re straight up ready to blast into space and float weightless through the endless black nothing. But the best part is that it’s a tender loving valentine to 1980s pop, free of vindictiveness towards a dubious decade of bad economic policy, questionable synth tunes, and so much damn hairspray.
Video:
Shiny Toy Guns covers "Major Tom"
For the many readers with no idea what specifically obscure nonsense I’m talking about, let me put it this way. Someday, future hipsters will grab something from right now, maybe a song, maybe a haircut, or maybe just a dank meme about Spongebob Squarepants. Whatever it is, they will pick it up and they will run with it as something amazing and beautiful grabbed out of time and unfettered by context, and I promise you and I will love it.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Martinis and kidney shaped pools
and; Can one be both retro and creative?
Martinis and kidney shaped pools
and; Can one be both retro and creative?
We don't like sand either, Anakin.
Dear Hipster:
Consider the following a sort of follow-up to your recent missive about weather and seasons. Which is the more hipster destination, the desert or the beach?
— Dale J.
Video:
"I don't like sand"
Hmmm, both certainly have their hipster advantages and failings, with more of the latter coming to mind. The desert is best known for deadly snakes, deadlier heat, and high strung types with more dirtbikes than teeth. The beach has tourists, tourists, tourists, more tourists, some mean locals, and meaner stingrays. Note the absence of typically hipster attractions in those lists. Before you jump to concluding all hipsters hate the beach and desert the way Anakin Skywalker hates sand and sandy places, let’s keep two things in mind. First, although hipsters stand accused of ruining many things, they have never ruined anything so badly as Hayden Christensen ruined Star Wars. Second, hipsters actually like certain things about both the beach and desert, and they have successfully combined those partial favoritisms into a uniquely hipster love of Palm Springs. The stark beauty (such as it is) of the desert, tempered by the soothing influence of kidney shaped pools and fresh martinis, relieves world-weary hipsters of their 21st-century burdens much better than either the too-crowded beach or the too-inhospitable desert can do alone.
Dear Hipster:
I know you always say contemporary hipsters are at heart creative types, coloring even simple service jobs with their personal styles and flairs, you might call it, finding the artistic expression locked away in a martini, a latte, or a straight razor shave. That’s all well and good, and I support this in theory, but I think there’s an inherent conflict with another hipster strategy, namely, being super retro and borrowing heavily from the past for everything from fashion to music. How can you be creative if you’re just rehashing somebody else’s material (usually from the eighties, or so it seems)?
— Phillip C.
Video:
Peter Schilling's "Major Tom"
Well, you’re certainly right about how much we hipster types like to reinterpret the past. It’s kind of our thing. But I’m not so sure loving retro stuff actually undercuts creativity, because it comes from a place of love and admiration. Think of it like a really good cover song, which everybody loves, hipster or otherwise.
E.g., Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom (Coming Home),” a seminal 1980s pop tune, and a fantastic song; but that old Shiny Toy Guns’ cover (made for a Lincoln commercial, of all ridiculous reasons) is unquestionably superior in every way, and I don’t even like Shiny Toy Guns. Part of the reason it’s so good is the way the chorus hits and then peaks, and peaks, and peaks again till you’re straight up ready to blast into space and float weightless through the endless black nothing. But the best part is that it’s a tender loving valentine to 1980s pop, free of vindictiveness towards a dubious decade of bad economic policy, questionable synth tunes, and so much damn hairspray.
Video:
Shiny Toy Guns covers "Major Tom"
For the many readers with no idea what specifically obscure nonsense I’m talking about, let me put it this way. Someday, future hipsters will grab something from right now, maybe a song, maybe a haircut, or maybe just a dank meme about Spongebob Squarepants. Whatever it is, they will pick it up and they will run with it as something amazing and beautiful grabbed out of time and unfettered by context, and I promise you and I will love it.
Comments