BRADY BELL REPORTS SOME STUFF
Need a Hipster? Plant a bean and grow some!
The Hipster is a staple of local economies ranging from Portland, OR to Brooklyn, NY; back across the Rust Belt to Hamtramck, MI and down to all four corners of Austin, TX.
Though he hails predominately from the simpler, stable life in places like suburban Glenview, Il or the plains of eastern Kansas, the Hipster is known to make his way to population centers, either following a popular trend or creating his own, often gentrifying former shitholes into the right place to settle down and paint a giraffe in light pastel on fifty-dollar canvas or start a folk band with any variation of (‘misunderstood’) fair-skinned theater majors.
Soon a Coffee Bean opens and, eventually, six more.
Before the locals can get a grip, a “brew-and-view” comes to life in place of an abandoned corn silo, local retailers make a killing on off-brand energy beverages named ‘Nitro 69’, ‘Octane Grenade’, ‘Rare Organic Forest Huckleberry’ and so forth, a quarry is cleared for disc golf, fleets of Toyotas, Hondas and all other economy import sedans with bumper stickers advocating fair forestry, pro-choice agendas and Canadian literary journals sully the streets and, hence, money is brought into the community.
And though that money is sticky with hash, it keeps America moving.
So I can’t really talk shit, man. The brew-and-view is one of my favorite pastimes.
Hipster girls so often reject gender traditions, I find myself in the passenger seat on dates, and they buy the beer.
Why not?
It is 2012, after all: a time and place in which the troubles of the world are so far gone, so hopeless, so utterly depressing — right now, in more countries than one hand can count, people, young and old, black, brown and (to a lesser extent, white) are bloated with starvation, their homes are being burned to the ground, noxious chemicals wisp and waft throughout the metropolises of Earth, everybody’s son, grandmother or shady neighbor is dying of cancer or syphilis, sex means AIDS, one country aims a hydrogen bomb at another — that, when another Coffee Bean opens and those goddamned kids begin blasting the dumb beats of Dub Step in the nearby parking lot, be happy, and remember that they are not going to rape you, and that they have brought jobs to your community . . .
These people will be running the private sector long after Rush Limbaugh, Mitt Romney and Jimmy Buffet die; they understand capitalism (See: independent clothing lines, etc.), they are all too pussy-footed to fight, they prefer naturally grown foods, they all have BFAs in obscure realms of study . . . which is a fair trade for their bad taste in music and generally annoying demeanor. These little pansies may soon employ renewable energy in the new world, feed the poor fresh organic foods, abolish war, and revive certain cities with new life – and though that life may be lame, it is life no less.
Readers…It is our last chance.
