So You Think You're a Hipster?: Cautionary Case Studies from the City Streets - Tapa dura

Skinny jeans? Check. Charity-shop clothing? Check. Non-essential prescription glasses? Check. Beanie balanced artfully on the back of your skull?â Check. These items have become the uniform for a new breed of young people - hipsters - determined to take over cities with their "alternative" ways whilst overloading on irony and striving to be original and creative. So You Think You're a Hipster? examines what it takes to become one of this ever-growing tribe of middle-class urbanites, just as desperate to be accepted by their peers as they are to receive the next rent cheque from mum and dad. Over the following pages a series of hilarious case studies will identify typical examples of the subculture, helping you to avoid any future encounters with them. Take thrift-store guy, who at 35 still works selling worn sneakers and threadbare t-shirts for extortionate amounts and still dreams of one day getting his latest album reviewed on Pitchfork. Or the aspiring author who lugs around an old-fashioned typewriter to write down her inspirational musings at a moments notice. Then there's ironic moustache man whose facial hair makes him feel like a highly individual fashion maverick, despite the fact all his graphic designer friends have one, too.

Kara Simsek is a journalist specializing in music and the arts, but her true passion is writing about people with `weird' or `unconventional' lifestyles. She has written for Vice, Dazed and Confused, The Sun, Metro, The Independent and more. She also watches a LOT of Twin Peaks. Visit her blog at www.karasimsek.wordpress.com. The author is based in Dalston, East London.