Dear Hipster: At this point, I have heard of hipster bars putting just about everything into a cocktail, or even straight up opening entire bars devoted to obscure alcohols. However, I have yet to run …
October 13, 2021
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Stories by DJ Stevens
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Mead and other boozy revivals
The purpose behind limiting access to pumpkin spice
Dear Hipster: One cannot help but grow up in America without being sold on the virtue of individualism, personal liberty, and the right for “you to do you,” as it were. At the same time, …
October 6, 2021
The moment you first heard about Panda Express releasing an Orange Chicken Sandwich
Dear Hipster: Here’s a bit of a hipster paradox that, at least in my opinion, requires a little unpacking. I would be a rich man if I got a nickel every time some random hipster …
September 29, 2021
Ralph + Advil = “Radvil”
Dear Hipster: Please pass along these cat name suggestions to Tyler from this last week’s column. Remember, he was torn between human names and nouns. He can have both by using your suggestion of descriptive …
September 22, 2021
Think George Mallory’s take on trying to climb Mount Everest: “because it’s there”
Dear Hipster: As I understand it, one of the most powerful motivating forces in the hipster universe is “wouldn’t it be funny if…” Invoking this ironic catchphrase still seems to justify doing all kinds of …
September 15, 2021
Dress up like an extra from Seinfeld and head in to Applebee’s
Before we get ahead of ourselves, I’ll remind everyone that we posed a riddle to the general public a few weeks back. We got some inspired guesses, and a few snide remarks, but a handful …
September 8, 2021
Brian Griffin has nothing on The Cat in the Hat
Dear Hipster: Everyone has to pick one, so: are hipsters dog or cat people? — Dylan D. Short answer: hipsters are bird people. Long answer: we relate to preferred pets on a level deeper than …
September 1, 2021
Everything will be fine at Coachella
Dear Hipster: For many years, faithful readers have come to you for help in identifying hipsters and their hipster behaviors. But nothing lasts forever, and even the coolest hipster may one day wake up, look …
August 25, 2021
What SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and Spotify don't have
Dear Hipster: Given that SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and Spotify make it relatively simple for musicians (myself included) to put their tracks, mixtapes, EPs, and albums out in front of an internet audience, it’s almost as if …
August 11, 2021
Nostalgia without anguish or disappointment
Dear Hipster: Here’s an obviously non-controversial premise for you: hipsters are very nostalgic, and they love old-fashioned stuff so much that they’re constantly imitating past trends in an effort to color modern life with the …
August 4, 2021
You can always find me in H&M
Dear Hipster: Riddle me this — if all the hipsters left town tomorrow, would there be no more hipsters, or would somebody step in to fill the “power vacuum,” so to speak, such as occurs …
July 28, 2021
When Honus Wagner looked like Robert De Niro
Dear Hipster: Even if staying outside the mainstream and being countercultural is super important, it sure is exhausting keeping track of what’s hip and not hip, so that one knows where one stands in relation …
July 21, 2021
Compare Middle Earth’s elves and men
Dear Hipster: What is the meaning of life? Is it all just a bunch of frothy beverages and salted caramels, or is there more to it? Will the tie-dye revolution ever dismantle the oh-so-fashions of …
July 14, 2021
Spotting realism failures in Harry Potter
Dear Hipster: One thing that has always bothered me is, why do fictional hipsters always seem to have it so easy? You see some hipsters on TV and movies, and they somehow get away with …
July 7, 2021
Cool, Costco summer is here!
Dear Hipster: Summer is here! And it’s not canceled this year! I’d say it’s time to celebrate, but do I even need to say it? I would imagine almost everybody is super stoked to have …
June 30, 2021
Is Charlie Brown a counterculture icon?
Dear Hipster: Immanuel Kant famously proposed that people should be treated as “ends in themselves,” not as a means to an end. As a corollary of that principle, people are supposed to help themselves and …
June 23, 2021
That Tumblr featuring Michael Jordan wearing questionable outfits
Dear Hipster: Around this time of year I always feel like the world’s attention is divided, at least a little bit, between hockey and basketball. Of course, by “the world” I mean “popular televised American …
June 16, 2021
Dessert choice or choice dessert?
Dear Hipster: As the proud owner of a sophisticated sweet tooth, I am always a little confused by people who have no opinion one way or the other on sweets and dessert. It has always …
June 9, 2021
Birthday buddies: Tenzing Norgay, Noel Gallagher, Bob Hope, and Daniel Tosh
Dear Hipster: What does it all mean? — Thad The answers are out there, Thad, but you have to follow the clues, and it takes special training in hipster numerology and phenomenology to uncover those …
June 2, 2021
Who owns Oscar Wilde’s “lowest form of wit”?
Dear Hipster: Hipsters are known for having a generally snarky attitude towards most things, but they hardly own what Oscar Wilde called “the lowest form of wit.” Why is snark so easy? — Max That’s …
May 19, 2021
Have you ever had a decent Mudslide?
Dear Hipster: Although I would tend to agree that cool hipster stuff (music, fashion, food, or whatever) pushes boundaries in a good way, one thing I have noticed time and time again is that avant …
May 12, 2021
The Golden Age of something
Dear Hipster: You’d have to be a dummy to ignore the profligacy of remakes, reboots, and retro-themed books, music, and movies that have cropped up with increasing frequency over the course of the past decade. …
May 5, 2021
What separates Schoenberg from a toddler bashing on a piano
Dear Hipster: I get how it’s cool and hipster to have obscure, preferably one-of-a-kind aesthetic sensibilities, but I don’t get why it’s important. This is kind of abstract, but how is there any value in …
April 28, 2021
Waxing poetic on the origin of Cap’n Crunch
Dear Hipster: What has had a greater effect on defining what it means to be a 21st-century American hipster: movies and TV, music, or something else entirely? — AJ That’s a bit like asking, ‘Who …
April 21, 2021
If Elliott Smith came back from the dead
Dear Hipster: You want to know one thing you never hear about? Hipster mansions. If you picture the most hipster house you can imagine, you see a teeny tiny little cottage somewhere, or an itty …
April 14, 2021
Can Peeps cure scurvy?
Hipster: Why do I feel compelled to purchase discount, post-Easter candy when I would never, under normal circumstances, purchase a giant bag of Kit Kats and mini-Snickers for myself? Is there something about leftover holiday …
April 7, 2021
A combination of unlike elements
Dear Hipster: I have always wondered about the allure of weird, hipster businesses concepts that combine unlike elements under one roof. I’m thinking of things like a combination laundromat and bar, or a garage that …
March 31, 2021
Truth beyond Plato, Proust, Picasso, or Pinksy
The world is full of accidental poets. You can find them anywhere if you look, and searching for accidental poetry is a time-honored hipster tradition. Accidental poetry stands in stark contrast to the rarefied musings …
March 24, 2021
Is “The Rain Song” the best Led Zeppelin song?
Dear Hipster: I have recently discovered that a friend of mine —perhaps really more of an “acquaintance” when you get right down to it — is an adamant moon-landing conspiracy theorist. I’m not talking about …
March 17, 2021
Foghorn Leghorn Chokey Chicken
Dear Hipster: Is it good or bad if somebody does a good thing, but for a bad or evil reason? For example, if a rich man gives his fortune to charity, but he does it …
March 10, 2021
Generation Z at war with Millennials — who cares?
Dear Hipster: So, my news feed has been blowing me up all day with stories and tweets etc. about how Generation Z (mostly a bunch of teenagers and people in their very early twenties) has …
March 3, 2021
Where is the artisan milk market?
Dear Hipster: Maybe you can help me out with this thing I’ve been pondering lately. It’s a question of hipster commodities. Why is it possible to get a nearly infinite variety of artisan cheeses, but …
February 24, 2021
Instagram gardeners
Dear Hipster: We can all agree that maintaining your own urban herb and vegetable garden is tres hipstère, particularly where you use your garden to grow unique foods for hosting elaborate dinner parties where each …
February 17, 2021
The Dale Earnhardt on a Kia “upgrade”
Dear Hipster: I was looking at some handmade furniture the other day from a self-described “artisan” who doesn’t have a website or a storefront, only an Instagram presence, and I was like, “Oh, that’s really …
February 10, 2021
Arbitrary reasons to terminate a weak date
Dear Hipster: After a long, dreadfully lonely 2020 in which I managed to contract, and recover from, a mild case of coronavirus despite remaining in near-total isolation, I’m super low-key dating again because, well, eff …
February 3, 2021
The struggle to become CEO of the World
Dear Hipster: When the big tech oligarchs who now clearly control everything turn on each other in a violent struggle to become CEO of the World, who do you see coming out on top? Tim …
January 27, 2021
Jay and Silent Bob’s earth shattering revelation
Dear Hipster: I’m depressed. Please cheer me up. — Kaye I’m going to assume you’re probably more displeased over the trillion trivial insults you might receive from life on any given day rather than actually …
January 20, 2021
The end of civil discourse
Hipissimo Maestro: You hipsters have a penchant — pronounced in the original French way — for preserving and often restoring dying arts. I’m hoping reviving the art of polite, civil, mannerly conversation, even on the …
January 13, 2021
Full contract bridge
Dear Hipster: I always wondered what happened to contract bridge, and it always surprises me that I haven’t heard about a resurgence of bridge with hipsters. When I was growing up, it was almost a …
January 6, 2021
Snap-Dragon as a Christmastime celebration
Dear Hipster: I grew up in the ’60s, when being hip was an ineffable, deliciously rare characteristic. Both my parents were Beats in their day, listening to Billie Holiday and yes, smoking the occasional joint. …
December 30, 2020
Like wearing Ugg boots and board shorts
Dear Hipster: My roommate and I worked our way through a half dozen cans of Steel Reserve the other night while we watched the majority of a new Netflix documentary series about obscure competitions called …
December 23, 2020