I really, truly am fed up with the moniker of "hipster.”

Frank Zappa once said, “Everyone in this room is wearing a uniform -- don’t kid yourself.”

So I don’t know if any of you caught the episode of “King of the Hill” a couple of weeks ago in which a group of hipsters infests Arlen and drives up the rents in a traditionally Mexican-American neighborhood. If not you can watch the video here. I couldn’t watch the whole episode. I had to go to the kitchen and do dishes, because I know those people. They are my friends, for better or worse. Then I had to take a good long look in the mirror.

Yes, I was fed on a steady diet of hard-core punk rock during high school. Yes, I come from a middle class family and I am educated. Yes, I wear vintage clothing. Yes, I’m a professional artist, as is my husband. Yes, I live in a … no, I can’t say it … cough … oh God I feel like want to hurl … Okay fine! It’s a flippin’ LOFT, OKAY!?!? There! I said it.

Man, this feels like an NA meeting.

Okay, so I guess I wouldn’t literally be considered one of them. Most big city hipsters have a natural gag reflex when it comes to kids, which I experienced first hand when we went to New York for a music festival some years ago. The looks I got when we showed up with Michael on our shoulders to watch Modest Mouse said something to the effect of: “Don’t give my girlfriend any ideas.” And, “They brought their kid? [background]; NOTE: since hipsters like to employ irony, isn’t it HILARIOUS that they get all bent out of shape when they see a yuppie co-opting their style?)”

Something happened a few months ago that really disgusted me, that strikes at the heart of why I don’t want my neighborhood gentrified. New Year’s Eve, my mother-in-law was kind enough to watch the kids, and Justin and I went out for a night on the town. After the ball dropped we gravitated to our homing beacon -- The Tap -- where several of our friends from out of town were gathered. As I sat with my friend, let’s call her L, who’s currently residing in Austin, a young lady hailing from Northern California who was dating one of our other friends proceeded to whisper an onslaught of derogatory remarks directed at some of the regulars, who were dancing, along with a waitress. L and I were appalled. We love those ladies. They are our friends, and frankly, they’re like family to me. Hearing that sort of crap cut me really deep. As native Paseños, and as regulars of the Tap, we were completely taken aback by the callousness and disrespect of her remarks. When the Tap closed, L came back to our apartment, and she aired her grievances about the shallowness of the hipster generation, and how sick she was of the Austin scene, and why that sort of BS makes her want to move back home.

The point here is that most hipsters like the atmosphere of places like The Tap, but -- and I’m generalizing here -- would prefer if their people were there instead of the neighborhood regulars. That kind of attitude perforating the neighborhood is something that I dread. I have always been adamant about how special this city is, which is why we stay here and why we haven’t moved to another city where we could be making three times our current annual salaries. Pushing out your natives because they’re not cool enough to bring in big time investment is a crappy way to repay them for the hard work of making El Paso what it is. I’m at a point in my life where that too-cool-for-school attitude is just sickening, and I think it’s an absolute folly that cities are actively courting a generation of consumer-product-obsessed, substance-abusing, under-employed snobs so they can replace a group of hard-working, family-oriented immigrants in any given neighborhood so consumption-based industries can thrive and raise property values.

I am reticent to allow the neighborhood’s character to be stripped to accommodate one class of people. The ideal is always to allow for a mix of services, shops and restaurants for every taste and budget, but as we all know, things just don’t work out that way.
But beyond that, I am sick of being part of a generation in which NOBODY REALLY GIVES A SHIT! I’m sick of hearing my peers talk the talk of socialism, when a) they don’t really do anything to promote it or make life any better for the underprivileged, b) they’re too busy recovering from a hangover or planning their next soirée, and c) when it comes down to it, real people with real life concerns don’t interest them in the least.

This quote from Wikipedia neatly summarizes my derision: “Elise Thompson, an editor for the LA blog LAist argues that ‘people who came of age in the 70s and 80s punk rock movement seem to universally hate ‘hipsters', which she defines as people wearing ‘ expensive “alternative” fashion[s]’, going to the ‘latest, coolest, hippest bar...[and] listen[ing] to the latest, coolest, hippest band.’ Thompson argues that hipsters ‘... don’t seem to subscribe to any particular philosophy...[or]...particular genre of music.’ Instead, she argues that they are ‘soldiers of fortune of style’ who take up whatever is popular and in style,’appropriat[ing] the style[s]’ of past countercultural movements such as punk, while ‘discard[ing] everything that the style stood for.’ [6]

"Christian Lorentzen of Time Out New York claims that metrosexuality is the hipster appropriation of gay culture. But for Lorentzen, the modern hipster drinks in underground culture with a heavy dose of irony and insincerity. He writes that ‘these aesthetics are assimilated — cannibalized — into a repertoire of meaninglessness, from which the hipster can construct an identity in the manner of a collage, or a shuffled playlist on an iPod.’ [1]”

I’m not the only one. Articles from around the country by and about members of the "Creative Class":

-- philadelphia weekly

-- die hipster

-- gawker.com

-- more gawker

-- yet more gawker

-- cafepress

-- npr

You know, when I was in Middle and High School, I got into punk rock because I wasn’t one of the cool kids, and I didn’t fit in. The songs of social justice, angst and anger at our culture spoke to me, and now that the cool kids have co-opted that into just another layer of their superficial schtik, I don’t know where I belong anymore.

I’ll keep making art. I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep buying vintage clothes. You’ll have to pry me out of this apartment with an eviction before I leave willingly. But I will say this: If you’re new in town and meet me in a bar, and you think I’m one of your own and I hear one snotty remark about my neighbors or my City, if I hear one comment about how “kitchy” and “cute” anything is, if I hear one derogatory remark about the way Paseños dress, or how overweight they are or any shit like that, I will tell you to go f**k yourself and you can move back to LA where you belong.

Here are a couple of links to some things that make me laugh and cry:

-- the lower east side is now just a neighborhood mall

-- the burg tv