Creating Hipsturbia
By Alex Williams
New York Times 02/15/2013
I was drawn to this article because of the hipster culture we have here in Eugene. I certainly cracked up several times while reading it when Williams described the shops and the people in the hipster regions.
The lead made me laugh. It was compelling. It didn’t really tell me what I was going to be reading for a while. But I enjoyed it enough that I kept reading anyway. The story itself never really hit home strongly with me. I understand what Williams was trying to say: that the hipsters from the big city were moving to the smaller towns and were bringing their hipster-ness with them. But it all seemed a bit flaky. Maybe it was the organization. Maybe it was that once Williams would start to truly focus on something the path would suddenly move to something else, making the point kind of hang in the air instead of being driven in.
This piece definitely qualifies as a trend piece. The writer is observing that a certain group of people are moving out of Brooklyn. I’m wondering if it’s the same in other big cities. Are the hipsters going to be moving out of Portland? Not sure.
The writer made some pretty rockin’ scenes. I got a very good image of the smaller towns these people are moving to and they are appealing. There weren’t very many anecdotes, and the ones that were there were very very small ones. Mostly stories telling of why the hipsters were leaving. One that says with me is of the young parents trying to take care of their kids when there are roof parties going on till three a.m.
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