18 December 2010

Hipsters Go Back To Their Futures

I must say:  The question never crossed my mind.  But I got the answer to it today.  Here it is:  What if there had been hipsters during the '80's?




Might they have ridden a "fixie" like the Schwinn in the middle of this photo?  


If they had, they might have borne the wrath of all the disdain I heaped upon that decade's young and annoying people:  the yuppies.  


Now, I've never been a yuppie or a hipster.  Couldn't have been either, even if I'd wanted to.  But I'll make a confession:  Back in those days, I wore a cycling jacket in a pink just like the one on that bike.  It was a rather nice jacket, actually.  


You know that anyone who ends a sentence with "actually" isn't wearing a jacket in a color like that!  Likewise, on the day I learned, in Sociology 101, that my family was "working class," I was no longer part of it.  Now, what that's got to do with hipster fixies and yuppies and a jacket I wore twenty years ago, I don't know.


All I know is that if I'm rambling the way I just did after seeing a tacky bike in a shop, I've spent too many hours reading way too many student papers.  Some of them were due months ago; I suppose I've been suffused with the "holiday spirit."  Plus, I don't want to deny any student whose "sob story" may actually be true.  I mean, what if some freshman's grandmother died for the fifth time this year?


If she did, she sure won't be riding that bike in the picture.  Me, I wouldn't be caught dead on it.  But you probably knew that already.

4 comments:

  1. One of my all- time favorite TV shows was "Thirty Something." You never see it in reruns.

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  2. Steve, I liked that show, too. And I'm surprised that we've heard almost nothing about it since it ended. When you think about it, much of current TV and advertising has been influenced by "thirtysomething." When you look at all those domestic dramas in which people spend a lot of time talking (e.g., Seinfeld) or in which the working mothers express their anxieties over the roles that have morphed into, and become, them, you see the hand of "thirtysomething"'s producers.

    Also, "Sisters"--to this day one of my all-time favorites was, in some ways, nearly a spinoff. And Patricia Kalember, who played Susanna in "thirtysomething", played Georgie in "Sisters."

    You can see the influence in advertising mainly in its photography and cinematography, but also in the way the people in them interact with each other.

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  3. pictures of Nick in the pink jacket please? : )

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  4. Velouria: I'm looking for one. When I was Nick, I used to avoid having my photo taken. But I may have one of me in the pink bike jacket. I assure you it was a cycling jacket--made in Italy, to boot. (Pun intended.)

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