Hipsters Are People Pigeons, Part II

I have returned to go HAM on hipsters. To recap the first portion of my anti-hipster diatribe, I wanna kick hipsters because they are always in my way and I have the ILL pedestrian rage as it is. Back to the issues at hand...

HORN-RIMMED GLASSES
Why?! How?! These are the glasses that you had to wear as a child--almost as a form of cruel punishment--because they were the only ones they made to fit the huge lenses that were mandated to accommodate astigmatism in both your little-person eyes. These are the glasses that readily identified the nerd archetype character in 90's sitcoms. HOW DID THIS BECOME A THING. Daria is the ONLY person who ever looked good in them, and she is a cartoon.

Moreover, how is it that these glasses are the only glasses hipsters can find and cling to with all their faux-identity might? Have you been to LensCrafters? They have nearly unlimited options in terms of eyewear. Not to mention, they are so big as to take up 65% of any given person's face who wears them. Your facial features literally become uniform to the glasses, creating this Twilight Zone episode/Pink Floyd's "The Wall" hybrid of uni-face that apparently is only freaking me out. And as a reminder, I am a native New Yorker, so I see crazy shit all the time. It's like a prerequisite to residency.

Also, I personally don't like to look like a victim in New York. Aside from the fact that my smack reflex is already heightened around people pigeons, horn-rimmed glasses are OD smackoffthefaceable. Which makes it easy to say "oops" after. I WON'T MEAN IT THOUGH.

MUSIC
For a while, I wasn't concerned about hipster infiltration of my music because I listen predominantly hip-hop, reggae, and enough reggaeton for all of Washington Heights and LES combined (it's an issue, I am aware. No, it is not something I am willing to give up. Sorry, everyone around me on the train who has to second-hand hear Daddy Yankee playing in my headphones). I didn't listen to Grizzly Bear or whatever other like abbreviation-/animal-related band name music, so I thought I was in the clear.

Then something horrible happened.

Childish Gambino got signed to a label, and hipsters were catching on to the amazingness that is Donald Glover. I hate to say it, but I'm about to be one of those people who says, "Ohh, yeah, you JUST found him out now?! I been on his shit since 2007 when he was Prince Reggie K. Yeah, I met him, too...but, you know..." </asshole talk>

I was able to enjoy Donald Glover's stand-up shows and his initial concerts in blissful peace...until the last one I went to at Terminal 5 in November. Oh, it was so tragic: plaid, unwashed hair, and groupie-like zeal everywhere, in a space not fit for the breadth of the audience. I internally shed a solitary tear. At that moment, I realized I was no longer safe, and that my music-going tendencies would have to be indoors and alone. :(

Since writing the first part about people pigeons, it is as if hipster karma has knocked at my door: one of my best friends' bands, Sylvana-Joyce & the Moment, is playing at the Knitting Factory in Williamsburg on Tuesday, January 31st. (WILLIAMSBURG, ugh.) Go get tickets, because I swear fore Michael Jackson and even Ben that you will not be able to afford them soon.

Sylvana-Joyce is the definition of authentic, and her music ("gypsy rock") is too good not to inevitably be consumed by hipsters. Sylvana-Joyce will be in tow at the show with hipster glasses, but she asked for my forgiveness in advance, so I will pardon her. (People Pigeons: a native New Yorker wearing hipster glasses is the actual definition of post-ironic.)

Let us pray the hipster prayer: 

Hail Macy's, full of clothes that look like I could have gotten them originally in 1972, 

our Pabst be with thee. 

Blessed postmodern art thou, among women who were like women before women were in, 

and blessed ...is the fruit of your labor by virtue of being in the 99% no matter what your tax bracket is. 

Holy Contrary, Mother of Mod, 

pray for our spinsters because marriage shouldn't have to be a recognition of a true bond anymore--True Religion excluded--

now and at the hour of our fetch, stay "in."

Hipsters Are People Pigeons, Part I

Yes, folks, this is the long-awaited hipster post that I've been asked to write because their whole existence is a www.RilliTho.com all by itself. They bring the most stereotypical, attitude-laden Native New Yorker out in me, which some people find hilarious. But rilli, I want to stop the mass hipsteria immediately.

I call hipsters "people pigeons" because they are everywhere in my way and I wanna kick em. I think people should put up signs not to feed them cultural trends just as people put up signs not to feed pigeons to deter them from populating any desirable area. Pigeons may have variations in color and slightly different taste in bread crumbs, but at the end of the day, they all poop on our new shoes that we just got 2-for-1 at Charlotte Russe. Except the difference with people pigeons (PP, from here on in) is that they then make those shoes more expensive by their noting my impeccable taste and making them popular enough that prices go up. They are an entire movement based on appropriation.

Now, I can only speak for hipsters as I witness them in New York City. I have a grand list of complaints about them that likely exceed DMX's and TI's jailtime combined.

1. They are essentially permanent tourists. They walk slowly, visit all the "hotspots" of the city, and have a uniform akin to the fanny packs and oversized t-shirts of all other tourists to New York. 

1a. The hipster uniform is sneaky. It is sneaky in that their powers of replicating New Yorker fashion makes them look like down-ass OG New Yorkers...until they open their beaks. This essentially makes them the Agent Smiths of New York, pecking through the streets that were once ours in the clothes that are still ours, making us involuntary workers in their Pigeon People matrix of conformity and despair.

1b. However, the "irony" of this uniform is that nonconformity is the People Pigeon mantra, indie music and indie films their cultural soundtrack. I'm not saying anything here that hasn't been said already a thousand times by other people, but this "postironic," actual-irony bullshit needs to be understood by hipsters.

2. Williamsburg. I tried going to a bar there once, half-knowing what I was getting into, but not knowing what can only be described as the plague of the locusts--yes, I am going hyperbolic Biblical status on this. Oh, the sense of entitlement that has overtaken the once-gritty/beautiful dichotomy of Williamsburg! Today, you can barely call it Brooklyn--but heaven forbid you tell a hipster that. People Pigeons LOVE taking pride in being self-proclaimed Brooklynites, having no idea what it really means to be Brooklyn. They may be in Brooklyn, but they are not Brooklyn. 

I feel the most sympathy for the Williamsburg Dominicans, who really should have the most to complain about here. Do you know what the L train used to look like? Five years ago, you would not catch me on the L train if my grandmother's cockatiel was suffering a thromboembolism and crying suddenly--in an amazing moment where birds developed a larynx armed with the capability of crying--and the only veterinarian in the city who could potentially treat him (Yeah, I know--let's please pretend for the sake of satire that cockatiels can get the ill strokes) was a stop off Bedford Avenue.

Look at this shit--and this is just the train. That means the people who rode the L train had to amass other graffiti junkies to graffiti-crackhouse the whole fucking train. As a reminder, trains move. Underground. Where subway rats and other horrifying, potentially Hanta Virus-carrying vermin lurk. Imagine not only what the inside of the trains were like--but the stations. The stations, Dear Baby Jesus and all his Holy diapers! Horror--sheer horror.

But People Pigeons want to now claim Brooklyn. After everything that people who have lived in Williamsburg for decades had to endure. Appropriation. And before you call me out for it, I lived in Chelsea when Chelsea was the hood (yes, that was a time, dear Transplants-to-NY). Therefore, I'm giving myself a get-out-of-judgment-free pass for every needle I had to hop over on the street and every outpatient cup of methadone I had to pretend was orange juice when I was a wee lass. What I'm trying to say is, I grew up thinking "park" was a synonym for "drug cartel playhouse."

I'm sorry to end so abruptly, but I just feel my foot wanting to kick the pigeons so hard right now that I have to pseudo-benzo myself into a calmness that will allow me the placidity to write a Part II. I hope you've enjoyed my resentment. Native New Yorker out.