I was fortunate enough to share a seat row on a flight from Chicago to Seattle with a young female member of the hipster mafia. She had all the proper accessories: skinny-jeans, a Mac book, plaid, roughed up messenger bag, an ironic tattoo, bed-hair and of course big goofy Steve Urkel glasses that had no lenses in the frames. There were affirmative grunts to the flight attendant and 4 tiny (under 3oz for the TSA – thank you very much asshole London liquid bombers for making us all know what 3oz looks like…) bottles of hooch in Listerine containers to mix with her tomato juice. The aroma of sweat, cheap booze, and stale pot smoke lingered faintly in the background – all while the aforementioned macbook placed a cheesy 1970’s horror flick – after which she cracked open “Dont Hassel the Hoff” and read with gusto – Not making any of this up!
There was no sharing of the seat arm. No ‘excuse me’ for repeatedly bumping into me while arranging the contents of her bag or when reaching across my face and over my book for another clandestined drink mixer. Nope, I was sitting next to a late 20 something 15 year old. It was not awesome.
So this is what we have wrought? All our blog posts about nerd culture, bikes, beer snobbery, bluegrass, how amazing old vinyl is, and laments for the way things were back in the days when Kevin Bacon’s Footloose was cool and before we got real jobs working for the man. We caused this – you and I with our own smugness. Our own blathering on and on about bike polo and hot nerdy girls. Our fault.
This girl and maybe millions like her are the worker bees that will fund the twilight of SSI and try to figure out how to clean up the mess we, our parents, and our grand parents have made of things here on terra firma. We’re fucked. How in the bejesus is all that going to happen when The League of Hipster Youth is trying, this very minute, to figure out how to extend their stay in mom’s basement indefinantly so they can use “their” money for music, handmade bikes, Apple products, PBR, and primo hindukush?! Again, we’re fucked.
