J. David Goodman laments that there isn’t much of a fixed-speed bicycle market in China, and posits that it’s because there’s not too much of a Hipster community to foster such. Consequently he wonders how we might foment such in China.

Two things pop into mind:

• Fixed-speeds suck. Fixed-speeds are more a scenester thing based on some romanticized vision of 80s New York bike messengers. Slaloming one’s way between cars is a cute concept if one wants to buy into a “underground culture,” (which is about as authentic as the Trust Funders’ “slumming it” sections of Williamsburg) but when the bikes are more expensive than mountain bikes (my preferred mode for actual work) and road bikes while offering less control, support, efficiency or safety than those, what the hell is the point?
• If one is buying into a “counter-culture” in China, one becomes a punk. If Hipsterdom can be defined as an apolitical reaction to the ever-changing and largely arbitrary fads of an entrenched consumer culture, then there first needs to be an entrenched consumer culture that trumps politics. And quite frankly, let’s hope it never ends up that way: The last thing we need are more yuppies-to-be dictating what color keffiyehs the “radicals” will wear when they twitter their “protests.”

And while we’re talking about connoisseurs of kitsch, let’s get rid of hipsters here, too. It’s funny: In America we went straight from a conformist/non-conformist dichotomy to a universal heterogeneity that’s almost completely meaningless because of a lack of authenticity in how people adorn themselves.

In other words, we cover ourselves in white noise.

The problem with media isn’t so much that there is too much information – anyone who watches network news knows that, more than likely, less actual information is imparted to the viewer than before – but a form of saturation of spectacle has taken effect: Disinformation, advertising and just straight nonsense take equal space and are given equal credence. In a sense, fashion is the physical iteration of just that.

So just as I will probably never buy an e-reader for the fear that actual books – y’know, pure unadulterated sources of information, distilled, from cover to cover – would end up being portioned and chopped up like newspaper articles now, both in print and online, with spliced-in nonsense at every turn, I have absolutely no idea what somebody’s saying when they walk outside with a t-shirt displaying a sports team that doesn’t exist, jeans with holes and other forms of wear that they didn’t themselves put there, and a cell phone that performs its secondary abilities better than its primary function.

They are, quite literally, walking disinformation. They cancel me out, and they’re not even making a political point.

NPR did an interview with a self-described hipster over why Williamsburg, Brooklyn has some of the worst return rates of the 2010 US Census, to which it got some choice replies:

Mr. Stark: “…When it comes down to it, nobody wants to fill out like another form that’s just like getting sent to your house that really relatively has nothing to do with your life. I mean people would do if they got like five bucks.”

Ms. Lilly: “You know, on a personal note, maybe some people, they figure what’s the point to be counted if you don’t count for much anyway? If we don’t count, why be counted?”

Of course, the hipster blogs immediately railed against the “unfair” characterization NPR depicted of the hipster community, noting that the significant Hasidic community is also to blame for the low returns.

Now, while it appears that the Talmud has something to say about that issue, it also appears that there are about a dozen loopholes already in place, for without some form of practicality, it’d be hard to live in a larger world. And while religious fervor and paranoia are certainly one set of irrational fears, laziness is on its own level of idiocy.

I can’t believe shit like this today gets published in the Times. To paraphrase, “We yuppies, despite being responsible for the gentrification of the neighborhood, are complaining about how more yuppies are moving in and totally destroying its character. Also, our view.” Thankfully, some are pointing out said bullshit.

But then, it’s not exactly new. Any argument on Brownstoner or City Data tends to flow like that, with some especially ripe diatribes between hipsters and yuppies:

hipster: “So sick of these Park slope people . I would rather live in one of these Carroll gardens rentals much closer to manhattan and i feel like this is a tiny village in europe.”

yuppie: “Last time I was in Europe, there weren’t a bunch of goombah’s running around whistling at every chick walking by like they do in CG.”

hipster: “Yea but you keep forgeting about all the french and the other Europeans moving to Carroll Gardens.”

breeder: “Is Brownstoner in decline or something? Why on earth is there a feature about a rental property, for God’s sake? A *rental*! I thought this was a serious blog.”

“I’m more authentic!” “No, I’m more authentic!” Fuck the both of you, whitebread yuppie scum! Nobody cares which overpriced realtor’s district has more boutique fusion/sushi bars when you’re paying twice Manhattan rates for the fucking F train.

Or an argument between white folks over which minority is the most dangerous:

whitey: “Project buildings all over the place, random acts of violence, crappy bodegas, thugs hanging out on the corner. Thats what comes to my mind when I think of Spanish Harlem.”

guido: “Not to be rascist [sic] or anything but I always thought the worst of Harlem was the black part…”

bystander: “why would the black sections of harlem be worse than spanish sections? because they’re black?”

guido: “Just my opinion growing up in the west Bronx which houses a large amount of hispanics, the area is poor but the areas with the higher crime are usually more towards the central and south…or predominantly black areas. [...] Washington Heights/Inwood which are Dominican neighborhoods have a lower crime rate than Spanish Harlem which is a Puerto Rican neighborhood (or used to be)

Anybody know why this is the case?”

West Bronx, you say? You don’t perchance mean Riverdale, do you? Honkey.

Or an argument between white folks over how Dominicans and their baby-making are ruining the area:

guido: These are poverty levels in the city… each zip has about a 75% Dominican population. These are the ghetto thats point blank. [...] I had to watch my back everywhere because there were like 1000 kids out.

honkey: Nothing against Dominicans. I have lived in Inwood for about 4 months now and [...] It is just very frustrating to live in America and feel like your being taken over.

Forgetting, of course, that they’ve been there fifty years and you’ve been there four months.

Or to put it another way, you’re all fucking idiots.

I was beginning to resent the NYTimes for printing this article on the new Times Square Mall (and this letter responding to it – landscape architects should stick to their own goddamn turf and off of urban planners’ and sociologists’, but that’s another pet peeve of mine) and had an entire diatribe about hating the semi-public tourist-trap malls that the city, in all its orgiastic development, has fallen head over heels for instead of policies that matter to the hoi polloi, but then I saw this piece, and all I could think to say was,

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA

RUN, MOTHERFUCKERS, RUUUN!

NYTimes, you have redeemed yourself. For now. At any rate, back to the rant:

If the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle is any indication, the concept of “semi-public space” is about as anathema to city life as the word “housing project” or “gentrification.” Bloomberg’s legacy (other than breaking the back of the UFT and naming the Mets’ stadium after a failed bank) might very well be the utter and complete lack of any and all regulation again wanton development for close to a decade. New York has always torn down and built up, sure, but New York has always had strict rules on architecture and urban planning, until now.

And like most Gilded Ages, with the heedless development by the rich and richer, we have entire swaths of the city practically walled off from the rest: Condo developments on the Far West Side, gated settlements in Bayside, and hipster colonies in “East Williamsburg.” The more egregious developments might as well be in Kabul, they’re so bunkered from the city proper: Underground parking, private streets (I’m looking at you, Riverside Boulevard, and your retractible car barriers), doormen; anything to recreate the suburban enclave in urbania.

Time Warner Center destroyed what was a public space – with street market, no less – and turned it into a “semi-public” space, which means a public space closed off to poor people. I remember the hullabaloo when it was being planned: They planned the entrance to the 59th St. subway station to be outside the mall lobby for the specific reason that if it exited directly into the space, they would have to keep it open to the general public – not just the public that wore Abercrombie.

Likewise, I’ve nothing against closing streets in Times Square, except for (the obvious and) the fact that the only people who seem to benefit are the tourists, and I think we’ve given the tourists quite enough of the city: Anybody who’s seen the condos on the block of the former CBGB’s can attest to just how much the city has lost to visitors. So it bugged me that the Times reporter writing this anecdotal story on what is essentially his back yard (after all, it’s called Times Square), reported that,

Despite reassurances from the Transportation Department that the changes would create a greener, more pedestrian-friendly city, some critics of the plan worried that it would sap the square of its chaotic energy. Others, apparently nostalgic for the seediness of the 1970s version of the square, denounced it as another step in New York’s transformation from the world’s greatest metropolis to a generic tourist trap.

Well, I’m happy to report that, a day after the stretch of Broadway between 42nd and 47th Streets was closed to cars, the soul of Times Square remains intact. The neon still sparkles. Tourists still wander around bewildered. The whiff of last night’s junk food still hangs in the air.

because it misses the fucking point. This still isn’t the Times Square of the New York musical, or the Times Square of the seedy underworld, or even the Times Square of the public spectacle; this is the Times Square of the fucking pleasant curiosity, which is exactly the sort of glossy pastiche everybody who decries the Disneyfication of the city is complaining about: Token gestures to a middle class mentality while sweeping the uncontrollable* under the rug so that the consumers won’t get too skittish. It’s not even like they’re using the space for anything but stupid lawn chairs, making it feel like a hipster’s thesis paper more than public policy.

Thankfully, and I’ll indulge myself a little more by relinking it, a lot of it’s coming down on their ears.

*the hoi polloi, the plebs, the canaille, the base, the unwashed masses, the public, the people.

The Times did another soft piece about a yuppie with crutches that basically made a blog with a witty name concerning his tribulations on the subway. I think a better name for it might be “whiny dude with a blog dot com,” but that’s just me.

Premise: He’s “too soft-spoken” to ask for a seat, so takes pics of strangers with his iPhone to e-shame them into volunteering them.

Irony: Law says you have to ask if you want the seat, and if that’s too much of a social faux pas in the mean city, then what, pray tell, is unsolicited photographing?

But this reminds me of a city planning thought about what makes cities sociable. I say this as someone who’s grown up in a wild and wooly neighborhood, but a hood that really does embody the word “neighborhood.” That is to say, I know my neighbors. A large city is a den of anonymity – if but for the sanity of those in it, as evidenced by the passive-aggression of this yuppie here – but it’s still an incredible bevy of interpersonal connection and assumed protocol.

Neighborhoods change people all the time but require an outside force to change character: New laws, new money, a new dynamic imposed on the order. Redlining, gentrification, etc. I mention this because I think the underlying problem with crutchboy here is something of a citywide gentrification thing. The new buildings going up on the Far West Side, Long Island City, our guy’s “East Williamsburg*,” condos abound; they all have two common elements. One, they’re in the middle of nowhere. Two, they have no connection with anything.

Doormen lobbies and drive-in parking garages – the sidewalks are as empty when the buildings are full as they are when they’re still being built. Along with this is their downmarket cousins, the Hipster colonies where young whites play in neighborhoods where they assiduously avoid the locals – and oftentimes each other. The Bush boom heralded iPods on the subways and an inflated sense of self. The irony, of course, is that were he not the one in crutches, he’d probably ignore those who were.

Summed up with a nice exchange outside my window from the opposing co-op one Saturday night to the street:

“It’s 1am! Could you stop playing that fucking music!”

“I’ve been here 40 years! Eat shit!”

I guess what I’m thinking is that his views – overcrowded trains, all-pervasive asininity – are an inference of the breakdown of a social bubble (yuppiedom) in a contracting economy. NYC is taking itself back.

*You’re in Bushwick, asshole.

I, in my years of bike messengering and commuting via bike in Manhattan, have developed many strong opinions on helmets, bike lanes, traffic laws, activists and public image in general. I know that my take on the matter is a mishmash of conflicting views (that I self-servingly liken to a microcosm of the city itself) and justifications that don’t work beyond their intended audience.

For instance, I wear helmets sparingly because I feel I’m not as aware, aurally, of my surroundings when I have one on (that, and the aerodynamic shape of certain helmets – especially with the little plastic bill in front – seem to ensure that they’d crack on impact anyway) and if I’m to be broadsided by a crosstown bus I’d prefer avoidance than mitigation. Read the rest of this entry »