Ballou HS Rocks the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Suspect in 9-Year-Old's Murder Found Dead in D.C. Jail
Morning Roundup: Black Friday Edition
Go Home Already: Make Room
Photo of the Day: November 27, 2009
Our attempt to diagram out the logic behind choosing to live in Columbia Heights, according to the Washington Post's Monica Hesse. (Illustration by Amanda Mattos)
Some time ago I asked the DCist writing staff to avoid using the term "hipster" whenever possible. It's a word we all hear and say plenty, but I'm never quite sure what different people really mean by it. Is it just someone who wears skinny jeans and Chuck Taylors? Is it people who compost and keep chickens in their urban gardens? Is any man under 35 who has unusual facial hair a hipster? What's the difference between a scenester and hipster? Are you talking about these people? Or these people? Until I figure out some satisfactory answers, I prefer our writers be more specific about what they really mean. Using "hipster" just seems lazy and vague.
So you can imagine how hard Washington Post Style reporter Monica Hesse's story today, titled, "The Target Of Their Ambivalence: Suburban-Retail Icon Seduces Hipsters Of Columbia Heights", rubs me the wrong way. The lede alone is enough to make me want to pull my hair out:
For the hipsters, post-hipsters or quasi-hipsters who moved into Columbia Heights several years ago for the grit and the cheap rent and the proximity to the Wonderland Ballroom (the hipster, post-hipster or quasi-hipster bar that sponsors local music and nights like "Sundress Fest"), life can be divided into two discrete phases: Before Target. After Target.
Nevermind what "hipster" means, what the hell is a "post-hipster" or a "quasi-hipster"? Hesse offers nary a single definition in her 1,300 word examination of how the young (and presumably mostly white) people who live in Columbia Heights feel about the changes in the neighborhood and the arrival of Target and the rest of the DCUSA retail complex and its affect on their spending habits.
It's not that this isn't potentially a valid subject for a Style story. The effects of having big box chain stores suddenly plop down in the center of the city is worth writing about. But Hesse's diagnosis of the situation starts out wrong and never manages to right itself. Consider this passage, where "complex" refers to the DCUSA retail development:
But this complex is not why the quasi-hipsters of Columbia Heights had moved to the neighborhood. They were seeking bragging rights, and bodegas spilling over from Mount Pleasant. They were seeking urban.
Columbia Heights is still edgy. A few blocks from the Target, semi-permanent police cars monitor the muggings and shootings that still happen, in broad daylight, even -- as happened a few weeks ago -- at the Metro. This is an area being either positively revitalized or negatively gentrified, depending on how you view the development. It was a thriving, predominantly black neighborhood before it was ravaged by the 1968 riots, and now everyone is trying to either restore it to its former glory (save the Tivoli!) or make it into something new.
Ugh. Now, as far as I understand it, Monica Hesse lives (or at least at one time did live) in Columbia Heights, so maybe she's writing about herself here, but the idea that anyone ever moved to the neighborhood did so in order to "brag" about how much crime happens near their homes is just insane. Without even dealing with the fact that the vast majority of Columbia Heights residents are still non-white families who might well be happy about the convenience and low prices that Target and Marshall's and the like now afford, a number of actual reasons for choosing the neighborhood immediately spring to mind: convenient location and public transportation, affordability, charming rowhouses, or even, say, liking the vibe of the community. It seems safe to say however that no one, ever, in the history of gentrification, has moved to a neighborhood for the apparently more authentic experience of shopping at a CVS.
The article moves on to discuss how the proximity of Target has caused at least some people to make more impulse purchases (you don't say?), and how even city dwellers, as they get older and start to make a little more money, like to buy things for their homes that are a little bit nicer than what they had before (shocking!).
But the kicker comes at the end, when Hesse presents a couple of people who have started going to Ruby Tuesday's "ironically." Here's this suburban-style chain restaurant, and here's these fucking hipsters, eating there. In Columbia Heights. And it turns out they sort of like it. Could a meal at Ruby Tuesday's be a gateway drug that leads directly to a condo in Fairfax County? Maybe!
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I had the same reaction. This Post article was such garbage.
Totally. That article, Style section or not, the death of the WaPo can't be far behind if they will actually approve and post such garbage. At least put it in the Express or something.
Oh, Sommer. Such a hipsterish critique of a hipster-quoting article. DCist is going too meta!
I thought it was a pretty funny article, actually. I'm not so sure they're hipsters as much as they are douchebags, but that's another story...
Molly is a hipster.
Ah, yes. The spawn of yuppie parents and the P St. Whole Foods. Bet she's got skinny jeans and everything!
I will let Jean Luc Picard provide my response for me.
http://sinigami.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/picard-facepalm2.jpg
The article should be required reading for anyone who thinks print "journalism" trumps blogging in the professionalism department. What a steaming pile; it seems to combine the more amateurish elements of college journalism with the sort of facile narcissism one normally associates with reading your hospital chart and calling it a "poetry slam." PoP covered it this morning:
“Monica Hesse is known for finding unique angles in stories. So, in late October when her editor asked her to write a story about people watching the presidential debates, she replied, “Can I do a story about people not watching the presidential debates instead?”
“A story that was supposed to be about watching the presidential debates turned into a story about the insecurity and the weirdness of living in Washington when everyone seems smarter than you and you end up feigning recognition, pretending that you know politics which are obscure and you would have no reason of knowing,” says Hesse.”
In other words, this is what you get when you fire all your seasoned reporters and replace them with interns who write hard-hitting stories about the complexity, richness, and texture of their naval lint. The only "unique angle" I'd like to find her in is upside down in a panda outfit with her feet on the mantlepiece
Well, it is the STYLE section, people - what are you expecting, Bob Woodward?
The bigger issue is that this shitty quality of writing extends well beyond the Style section in the Post these days.
I'm just glad George Will didn't write the article. If I have to read him overuse Latin terms, baseball euphemisms, or the single sentence "Well." I'll vomit with rage.
Not just vomit, but vomit with rage. That'd be awesome.
Well.
;)
Methinks thou doth protest too much.
Thou *dost*.
~ The Cabal for Correct Conjugation thanketh thee.
Shut it, hipster.
I think it's a pretty damn funny article--it and Sommer's own identity crisis make for a pretty cutting indictment of how vain and fickle the whole bohemian hipster bs is. I'm a happy (relatively new) Columbia Heights resident, sorry if my polo shirts and SUV are cramping your style as you gaze on in disgust from the dark corner at Wonderland.
Part of this comment was printed in the Express today.
YourYou got your 15 minutes!
Part of this comment was printed in the Express today.
You got your 15 minutes of fame!
You know, if you get over your hatred of the word "hipster" the article isn't exactly inaccurate.
Are you saying that before there was anywhere to shop in Columbia Heights that people moved here for a reason other than cheap rent and Wonderland? It sure wasn't for the crime.
Get over it, it was a puff piece but it made me chuckle and there is some truth in it.
http://www.welovedc.com/2009/08/04/this-just-in-columbia-heights-no-longer-cool/
"You see, Columbia Heights is no longer cool because Target doesn’t lock-up it’s deodorant. In fact, it offers a much larger variety than the local CVS and features it in a brightly lighted aisle! SO not hip.
If you are a true hipster, you’ll move to Anacostia. That’s what the dude quoted in the article did. And he got out before the Target. Now that’s hip."
So, if I understand this correctly, and to borrow Sommer's vernacular, the underlying predicate for being a hipster is to not give a fuck about living in a shithole. Is that accurate? In other words, you move from one shithole (Columbia Heights) after it gets slightly less shitty (with the addition of Target) to an even shittier shithole (Anacostia) because, eh, you don't give a fuck about the crime, only about living that close to a Target, which is, of course, just a little ironic because hipsters aren't supposed to give a fuck about anything.
Fuck fuck, shit shit. There. I think I worked it all out. I'm more filthy than Wizzy at a Boy Scout Jamboree today.
I hope Amanda copyrighted that image, because I see it coming to an ironic hipster teeshirt near you. Move over "Legalize Gay!" It's a hipster-bashing Venn diagram world. You just live in it.
Sommer was so wound up that she actually said "FUCKING" in a post!!!! That, in and of itself, was worth the price of admission.
Mama CHUD Chinatown Sue, The PIGMAN, and I still call Columbia Heights our home but technically our secret base is that huge lump called Mount Pleasant. Hipsters or not,
we stomp garbage. We beat up punks. We chat with the homeless. We're more like FUNKY HIPSTERS with an attitude.
Sommer knows that using the word "hipster" in a post will increase the threaded replies tenfold and help her win the "most commented story" award for the various -ist websites.
Picture of author with another botched story she wrote about herself, definitely a hipster :) http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2009/04/06/full-disclosure-fail-wapo-writer-gushes-glories-guerrilla-queer-bar
With all there is WaPo to comment on, I'm not sure the a missive on the overuse of the word hipster is very relevant.
no one ive heard of living in cohi lives there for cheap rooms or charming-anything. they are there because they want to be able to say they live in cohi. and call it "cohi"
Pffft. Columbia Heights was never "cool." And nobody wants to live in "CoHe" any more than they want to live in "The Morgue."
All the cool kids live in Tivoli North. And by "cool kids" I mean "retarded monkeys." Also, did you know "Tivoli" is "I Love It" spelled backwards? It's also an anagram for "I Volatile." Think about that the next time a rock hits you upside the head.
where are you finding this 'e' in Tivoli, Monkey?
The "e" in "Tivoli" is silent. Like in "banana."
Or like the "p" in swimming.
You mean now I have to tell people that not only am I from Not-Brooklyn Red Hook, but now I have to include Not-DC Tivoli in there too?
I despair.
I still blame Peter Nickles for this. He'll be sorry when I finish this time machine and go back in time to keep his parents from ever meeting. All I need is a shoebox, a toiletpaper tube, and some rubberbands. And a song in my heart!
Give us any chance, we’ll take it! Give us any rule, we’ll break it!
We’re gonna make our dreams come true.
Doin’ it our way!
Nothin’s gonna turn us back now, straight ahead and on the track now.
We’re gonna make our dreams come true,
Doin’ it our way.
There is nothing we won’t try, never heard the word impossible.
This time there’s no stopping us.
We’re gonna do it!
On your mark, get set, and go now, got a dream and we just know now,
We’re gonna make our dream come true.
And we’ll do it our way, yes our way.
Make all our dreams come true,
And do it our way, yes our way,
Make all our dreams come true
For me and you!
[jazz hands]
All kidding aside, it is *killing* me that the Post is covering this sort of non-story and barely following the Pershing Park arrests/Peter Nickles fiasco. I know it's August and all, but can the Post maybe make an effort on this? City Paper is kicking their butt on local reporting, which is truly sad (although I enjoy the outrageous headlines and cover stories sometimes.)
Hipsters are people who fall down a lot and use LIFE ALERT.
Hipsters are also sold in family size packs by Hanes and Fruit of the Loom in the Lingerie aisle at Target.
Those are broken hipsters. That's what happens to hipsters when they fail to stare down forty.
According to this article, hipsters are people who don't have matching sheets.
I discover that I am not a hipster.
I don't even use sheets. Yes! I am that hardcore. Call me Mattress Man!
There should be a concentric circle within "crime" in the Venn diagram for "Having bricks thrown at your head by publicly housed children".
No that's f*cking hip. Eat it, Portland!
no brick throwers, tho there are targets in portland, but you have to bike out to the airport, which is kinda cool thing to do, at least it brings some cred with it, but if you go to the target out in multnomah village, there is no cred to be had there, though apparently 19 y.o. drummers for billy corgan to abuse, but that's beside the point, basically in the land of ports, where hipster authenticity originates, where fixies are second only to home-built, and the more people sharing a toilet in your co-op, the more hip you are, there is a target or two, and it's okay to be frugal as long as you checked for what you need at the goodwill first, and then the other goodwill, and even the crummy one up on the west side, then you receive permission to bike out to the airport, view the enemy lands of vancouver and buy your set of knives, before returning to the safety of your vegan kitchen and unemployed roommates.
{golf clap}
Edgy. I've never heard of an adjective generally reserved for clothing lines also be used for crime.
I also like the way she subtly makes fun of CVS's deodorant section, as if the people that shop there don't pay much attention to hygiene, or can't afford anything other than a basic stick of deodorant (that's funny, right?): “It [deodorant] comes in scents like “Lotus Glow” and “Valencia Mist” that you never see at CVS.”
So is "Valencia Mist" hipster or post-hipster? I'm so confused. If you need me, I'll be at Ruby Tuesday.
People that don't use the word hipster anymore, just realized that they are too old to be hipsters. Nothing sadder than a hipster staring down 40 like a freight train on PBR.
Good grief, there are hipsters staring down 40?! I thought there was a safe distance between them and me. How was I to know the disease had even infected GenXers? ACK!
i think this was meant as a light-hearted story. I found questioning the authenticity of the urban pioneer crowd once they're no longer on the frontier to be somewhat amusing. the response to it has also been kinda funny. defensive, etc. at least one quasi-hipster told me having a target in the neighborhood is good addition b/c it's 'one less reason to go into virginia,' which is either a long ride for a fixie or another smart car charge on the parent's credit card.
Only hipsters would complain about how the word hipster is used.
As for a definition, look no further than your own backyard:
http://dcist.com/mt/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=10&limit=30&search=hipster&x=0&y=0
It seems DCist has defined hipster through its own pieces.
It's pretty awesome how a story about hipsters and why we should define them is running with an ad from American Apparel.
A great article about what a hipster is, and why they should die. https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html
The Washington Post actually runs stories on... Washington? How'd we get so lucky?
Hey Dude? You hip?
I'm hip. I'm cool too.
Nevermind that "hipsters" are finding their oh-so-hip wardrobe at Target anyway and that they probably grew up in a suburb before they moved to DC, suddenly now they are vilified for returning to the scene of the crime, their youth, their Mecca (Target + Bed, Bath and Beyond + Ruby Tuesday = no-longer-so-suburban-bliss). Suburban stores coming to DC is to surburban transplants to the District like when we were told red wine and chocolate were actually good for us; we could suddenly indulge in formerly guilty pleasures.
Oh no, no, no. Hipsters don't get their clothes from Target. Only Dads who live in Rockville wear clothes from Target (bought by their wives). Hipsters can't be seen in beige Mossimo cargo shorts - they're too cheap and ill-fitting.
Hipsters only get kitten jungle gyms and deodorant from Target, allegedly.
Back when I was a yute, us true hipsters got our ironic retro clothes at Sal's Boutique. Kids today have it easy.
I think the author wrote an interesting piece that was informative to the washington post's target audience. I was intrigued by what the young citified elitists in their printed tees and skinny jeans are up to. Ironically going to Ruby Tuesday was enlightening. One trip to a casual dining restaurant and you loose all sophistication, good to know.
Get mad, real cool.
This strikes me as the kind of story that the reporter decided to write, then went out and found people who met her criteria. In other words, a column disguised as reporting. I can't say I learned much from it.
Columbia Heights is waaaaay cool for dumpster diving. I'd avoid the seafood, though.
I've been ranting to everyone I know about this article, ESPECIALLY about that damn Ruby Tuesdays paragraph. Glad to know I'm not the only one.
Yes, the article was a fluffy piece of garbage, a waste of newsprint. I've lived in Columbia Heights for 7 years, on two different blocks. When I moved here, there was not only no Target, but the Tivoli Theater was boarded up, and the Giant was a grimy little store on 14th Street where the Allegro is now. I never was, and never will be a "hipster", just a middle-class, middle-aged guy looking for a good deal on housing within walking distance of Metro, and pretty much all my shopping needs. The crime has gotten better, but I'd like to see it go away altogether. I like Wonderland, but I also like the salad bar at Ruby Tuesday. All in all, I think the retrofitting of national chain retail stores into a preexisting urban neighborhood has been handled extremely well, without any suburban-style setbacks and parking lots. I'm extremely happy with the way the neighborhood is headed.
Dude... You want a good deal on housing within walking distance of public transportation and shopping? That pretty much defines hipster! (since no one can agree on a definition, we all get to pick our own)
it sucked - 'nuff said
The lady in the print Post picture had tattoos. Does anybody know which battleship she served on in the Navy?
USS Retarded Monkey
I don't think they've even started building a battleship to honor the 43rd President of the United States.
You're probably right. She must have served on the USS Molly!(TM)
This is one of my favorite Post stories in a while.
I heart your Venn diagram!
Whoooosh........
My GOD! that American Apparel ad is so friggin hot. wait, what? Oh yeah hipster columbia apparelling american.
Is Molly a hipster? Or just her irresponsible owners?
I live in Mt. P and thought the article was pretty spot on. Everyone I know who bitched and moaned about a Target moving into the hood now shops there regularly. Personally, I now have no reason to ever go to the suburbs (because the suburbs have come to us). Thats not a bad thing -- walking through my neighborhood to run errands, stopping at the dollar store, pfeiffers, hellers, farmers market, etc on the the way to Target is a nicer way to spend a weekend morning than driving to Rockville or Pentagon city.
Like Summer, I've never been able to figure out what "hipster" means. Generally, I think it means anyone who hates polo shirts/khakis and refuses to go to any bar or restaurant on a friday/saturday night because they are full of douchebags.
Finally, CVS can choke on a big bowl of dick and fall back into the deep dark pit it spawned from.
3rd Paragraph: "and its effect on their spending habits."
I think Monica Hesse is an evil genius. Her article was peppered with words and phrases specifically designed to tweak the "hipster" community. It's almost Manchurian Candidate-esque. Very revealing. This is a key moment in DC Hipsterology.
Truth hurts, doesn't it?
I can't find anymore record stores that sell cassette tapes for my Walkman. I am steaming mad and also a self-styled hipster from the 70's. Can You dig it!?
speaking of which, when the hell did we start pronouncing the "e" in Nike? Circa 1977, that simply wasn't done.
When we learned how it was supposed to be pronounced?
The hipster phenomenon has a lot to do with a profound change in the urban fabric of twenty first century American cities. In the middle of the twentieth century, white flight was driving the affluent out of urban areas everywhere. That cities are experiencing a cultural and economic renaissance is naturally correlated with the next generation of those same affluent families moving back into the same urban areas that their parents and grand parents abandoned.
The fact that these young affluent white people listen to certain music and dress a certain way is a related but separate issue that has more to do with a revitalization of folk aesthetic in independent music as well as post-modern fashion. These are trends that these people were exposed to because of their families' resources that allowed them to go to liberal arts colleges and to travel in Europe for a semester or two. In these exclusive and comfortable environments, they have the leisure time to develop a sophisticated version of what is the current mode of "cool." For all of the hipster-haters, I think it is pretty clear that this urban-folk aesthetic is pretty much the "coolest" thing we got going on right now as an american culture. Even hip hop (the previous cool) has started to be influenced by tighter clothes and neon sunglasses.
We've got a real talker over here>/a>
But, MH, that would be providing *context* and *history* for a piece in the newspaper. It might have required a minor in american history, having read Jane Jacobs, and possibly having glaced at demographic charts. It's so much easier to select some stereotypes and find some people who'll say things that confirm them, especially if you know those people socially. We don't like context; I'm told it died a few years ago. We have irony, though, and the contextless reporting of unresearched and apparently uncaused irony.
Explaining that irony, and the various symbols that surround it (what various groups think of, say, Target and Heller's), would require the reporter to discover something she may not have known.
And saying things straighforwardly or without synechdoche is just so gauche.
I think I've already read this article. Very timely
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/01/nyregion/kmart-changes-its-tune-to-manhattan.html?pagewanted=allMOLLY DOES NOT LIKE THIS
Hey Molly. I wuz afraid this would happen. What ever happened in Vegas. Stays in Vegas...Aight!? U me kewl..right?
we are cool. as long as you return my dog collar and leash.
What about the photos? We kewl with that. I'm still a little red? How 'bout you? Mama CHUD Chinatown Sue sez Hello and don't be a stranger to the underground. She left you a hole open near the fountain.
Yeah, but which one of you was wearing the collar and leash? Bow-chica-bow-wow!
Oh crap. I suppose it was only a matter of time.
COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!!!
I don't know - it's Molly THE DOG, and not just MOLLY. Enough of a differentiator?
Good point! Let me call MOLLY THE LAWYER and inquire.
more on Monica Hesse > http://newsbusters.org/people/monica-hesse
Wash Post writers are smug white guilt fools who are from places like suburban or rural Iowa, Idaho, Montana, Maine, Wisconsin, both Dakotas, Washington State, Vermont -- other places that provide no or very limited "cultural" understanding to write anything for their local papers where pigs, cows, and chickens make the front page.
The Wash Post writers are wannabe hipsters --- there are yipsters -- white bread fools.
Get out of here with that white trash garbage.
Bums then, bums now, eternally bums.
for the whole UPTown and 1-4 -- DROP THE UNIBOMBER
Sexy Fitsum
need anything more be said about this "basura de blanco" woman
Lo siento if you gringos are offended
shave your legs...
I have to agree with Sommer on this one. For one, the idea that people want matching bathrooms and non-shitty dishes does not mean one has become their parents. When one buys kittens embroidered on their towels and snowmen dishes for winter, that makes one suburban and like their parents. The concept of interior decorating has taken off over the past couple decades and places like Target, Wal-Mart, Ikea, etc., have made it affordable for people who have a budget to have nice looking homes instead of a frat house "appeal." So having a Target and shopping area is not the loss of being "cool" but the added convenience to affordable items.
Now, onto the idea of "hipsters" in Columbia Heights. I came from the Midwest to attend GW and spent 4 years living in Foggy Bottom with the American Apparel, J. Crew, collar popping, Ugg wearing crowd. I moved to the Columbia Heights area not because it is hipster, but because I could find a cheap 2 bedroom place near a metro. Added bonus was the Target and new Giant so now I don't have to truck blocks and blocks away to get my stuff. If the young, white people who I find around the neighborhood looking scruffy and hating suburbia are hipsters, I would much rather deal with them than the people from GW or Gtown.
Silly childrens.
Hipster is an attitude. The actual accoutrements come and go.
Mostly it's smugness mixed with a shocking lack of actual life experience. Usually with a ludicrously giggle-worthy view of how things like crime and their fellow man actually work.
What I've always loved about it is it's elitism. For such supposedly enlightened and cool people they sure can be shits to anyone that doesn't dress/act/live as cool as them.
If that's cool, give me dweebs from the suburbs of Des Moines anyday.
perfect! very astute, i've been trying to figure out just what bothers me about them (and the the hypocrisy of this crowd, oops i mean "irony"), and that's it. the judgmental attitudes coupled with almost no real life experience and the elitism.
i mean, there are places in this area that i think i would rather sleep on hot coals than live (columbia heights being one of those places, but most places outside the beltway being others) but dude--i get why other people live in those places, and even (gasp) why they WANT to live there. but it's not my thing. so i live and let live. i happen to think my way is the best, but you know, that's why i made my decisions the way i made them.
if i hear one more 22 year old (very likely only having moved out of their familial 'burb 4 years ago and traded up to the wilds of College Town X) sigh about how they just can't STAND going "all the way to [fill in someplace Not DC here] because the suburbs are so far away and icky" i'm going to call them out. or kick them. whichever. depends on the time of the month i suppose.
I can't think of an environment that doesn't generate this sort of elitism, hipster or otherwise. Sure, you've got the urban elitists with their walkable communities and prudent use of Zipcars and perpetual search for the next big happy hour special. But you've also got the suburban elitists who wouldn't think of driving into town because they heard someone got robbed there once. WTOP.com comment threads are full of their insane rantings about illegal aliens and Obama's birth certificate and Cartesian duellism. There's even the rural elites who are probably the most deluded of all, who think they're God's people and wear the "Flyover State" moniker like a badge of honor, and don't even consider this a form of elitism. But they've all chosen their rut and they're the only ones forced to live in it. The only real conflict comes when it comes to their share of the earmarks: the urban elite wants more public transit money, the suburban elite want more highways, and the rural elite want cheap strychnine and tax subsidies for snake handlers. And Obama's birth certificate. So let them duke it out in online forums and stupid letters to the editor and irritating Post articles. Flame wars always generate more heat than light, but sometimes you just want to watch something burn while you video tape it for purposes of sexual gratification.
Now now. We'll have no actual analysis here.
In defense of the burbs people, there really is real crime in the city, far more than in many suburbs. In DC in particular we've somehow decided that living with crime is a sign of how cool we are. That attitude is actually fairly stupid, and I don't blame the burb people for not sharing it.
It's a bit hard to explain to rational people that your block is 'safe' because the crack house and the halfway house are three blocks in the other direction....
And the birther nutjobs and the immigrant haters aren't just in the burbs. In particular, the immigrant haters are in the cities as well. Like it or not, there's a great deal of animosity toward hispanics, both legal and illegal, from many in DC.
Your point about who gets the $$ is spot on. Oddly, cities have gotten the short end of the stick in fiscal matters for some time, despite having so many actual voters.
The crime numbers I've seen infer that the difference between urban and suburban crime are negligible. It's just that in urban sectors, that crime is concentrated in a smaller area, as opposed to being spread out in a sprawling suburb. In both areas, you have the same criminals plying their trade in the same pockets of poverty.
It's a moot point anyway, as overall crime trends regardless of location are at 40-year lows. That still doesn't get in the way of certain politicians from using it as a tool to get re-elected.
I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that one, Monkey, unless you have real stats to back that up.
DC has far and away higher crime rates (well, violent crimes anyway......... probably way more white collar criminals are in Potomac and such) than, say, Fairfax. Particularly for areas that are truly suburban, rather than the weird blend of urban/suburban that parts of DC burbs are......
Of course there are 'bad' pockets in the burbs, but generally speaking (PG County excepted) they do tend to have less street crime.
Of course, it depends on how far you want to take it. Georgetown or Cleveland Park probably have less crime than some burbs.
But I challenge you to find many burbs (PG excluded) that have more street crime than, say, Logan, Columbia Heights, or any of the other hipster areas.
Back that up with the fact that the cops in the burbs tend to actually, you know, investigate crimes, unlike what so often happens in DC.
Yes, crime is down in DC. But it's still far more than the 'someone got robbed there once' that you think the burb people use as an excuse.
I know that most people think that their way of life is best (such is human nature), but I have never heard the level of distain spewed by these folks come out of other people. Plus, the salient detail here is the hypocrisy involved. You don't see Mrs. Fairfax County go on and on about how she can't believe people actually LIVE in that hellhole of a ghetto, but then go take her jogging stroller through Fairfax's meth neighborhoods like everything's a-OK (weak, I know, but it's a difficult anology to make because there IS no equivalent).
You DO see the folks decrying the suburbs because of the big box stores, franchise resturants, chain clothing stores actually GOING to these stores both in the 'burbs (ever seen the Pentagon City Costco parking lot on Saturday morning? 50% DC plates, easy) and now in their own 'hoods. But it's different. Totally not the same.
Once the lifestyles begin to look similar, what really IS the difference between the city and the suburbs (particularly the close-in suburbs where population density, diversity, and walk scores are often equal to or HIGHER than many neighborhoods in DC--and rents lower)? You know what the difference is? Geographic snobbery and elitism.
Now, I leave you with Moliere:
"One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others."
Spoken like a true Misanthrope.
hipsters can survive falls up to fifteen stories... try it sometime.
I think the important debate here is not whither the hipster but why does Monica Hesse have a job writing articles to be placed where someone might read them? This is sort of a public nuisance issue, like your neighbor's dog shitting on your lawn.
it's really not that bad of an article. unless you're a tivoli-quasi-hipster.
Fortunately, you can use the Washington Post to clean up after the dog.
Not much you can do to clean up her writing, however.
Ka-Boom!
it used to be that the surest way to tell if someone were a hipster was by how vehemently they denied being a hipster. now it seems that the surest way to tell if someone is a hipster is by how vehemently they deny that there even is such thing as a hipster... that and the american apparel ads all over this page.
"I [freaking] want matching sheets. The fact that Target came at the same time that I stopped wanting to use a T-shirt as a pillowcase . . ."
What kind of journalistic style calls for interjecting a [freaking] into a source's quote?!
I suspect that was a freakin f-bomb pre-copy editor. The WaPo may not have jouralistic standards anymore but they still have their decency intact.
Ha, hipsters are everywhere, aren't they. It's true--the more you deny, the bigger you are. Check it: http://stuffhipstershate.tumblr.com/
Oh this is funny, I don't think I've ever seen something get so much attention!
WaPo, you've hit on something here I think, just look at the reaction!
You could print a story titled "Bush Admits He Screwed Everything UP" and no one would give it a second look.
But...if you start trotting out more articles examining the whatever they ares, you might start selling papers again.
"Hipsters Rage in Summer Heat"
"We Just Wanna Be Ironic" - In depth exclusive interviews
"Aging - Decimating the Hipster Population Yet Hidden in Shame"
I tend to think that if you give a shit about a Washington Post newspaper article about how people feel about a store appearing in their neighborhood... that you're a hipster for giving a shit in the first place. :)
The author of the piece is doing a live chat on WaPo now, as she is apparently their new "web mistress of web ettiquette" columnist, or some other ridiculous title. Have at her!
There's a Web Mistress of Webiquette? I thought she got banished from Narnia after she tried to kill Aslan.
Web Hostess, my my mistake. Although that title reminds me of a flight attendent in the '60s, or the hostesses in Japanese bars - it's a little dated and icky.
Try a little experiment: write a similar article about how hypocritical suburban republicans are for enjoying things urban democrats make possible in a similarly catty tone and it just won't get published. She's just lazy and unoriginal, can only write what she rants.
This topic of hipster has been exhausted by blogs and publications for some time now. This article https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html has gotten over 4000 comments on the topic. I think that people generally get defensive due to the fact that this sort of talk is trying to define people that are scared of being defined because then their persona will lack originality. The writers on such topics tend to show the most defensiveness of all. People who are labeled "hipster" do most of the time dress a certain way, like to live in transitional neighborhoods and love to talk about the term "hipster". But they are people also interested in the arts, culture, literature, good music (well not all people would agree good) and have many good attributes. So lets quit trying to define this thing and leave the good stuff and ditch the bad. Be who you are for Christ sake.
CVS locks up the toothpaste too. It's very upsetting. More so even than the WaPo article and all the comments from the angry hipsters (for which my definition includes men in women's jeans and girls with moon faces). People steal from CVS. Everywhere. Not just in Columbia Heights. Let my toothpaste go!
Uhm, is that Cale in that third photo on LATFH?
I was just coming out of Target today (oh the 'irony') on the way back to my house (in CoHi!) and ran into a group protesting in front of DCUSA. They were 'Students against Sweatshops' and it was hipster MECCA! A whole conglomerate of hipsters, some of which I'm sure don't even live in CoHi! A nice cause, I will say, but totally the hipster way of 'trying to make a difference' instead of doing something that will actually make a change!