Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Jewels and Ju-ju beads

The other day, walking the tourist-ridden streets of Union Square in San Francisco, gray clouds floating overhead and wind cold enough for a scarf, I passed a young, frattish-looking guy.

His attire struck me as "business casual with a hint of jock." I quickly formed an impression of him, substantiating this impression by guessing his life story, based on what I was seeing before me, as most people tend to do, naturally, involuntarily; our being human is sizing people up. Convinced of this norm--not this day, but long, long ago--I went to work: This man played sports in high school, eschewed studiousness and never doubted his path to success; he was ever confident life for him would be OK -- better than OK, great and prosperous, in fact.

With his dockers, penny loafers and polo shirt loosely tucked in, it seemed, outwardly, things were working, and exactly in the mundane way he expected.

Today, however, this man's business casual was weighed down heavily by another look. A beaded look.

Around his neck he wore mardi gras beads. A lot of them, at least five or six strands deep. Fine, I thought, "He's in San Francisco and even though it's not Mardi Gras and there are no parades or celebrations whose occasion might prompt one to adorn oneselve with such decorative and radiantly colored beads, he's just, well, vacationing."

And this I surmised, was one of the many manifestations in which people of this ilk express their desire to make party, no matter the place or time of day.

All this, in an instant. I rubbed my brow, sighed, and continued on my way. For the next street block, I didn't look at anybody. Until, that is, I saw this other guy...




This isn't the guy. This is just a guy with some sweet beads.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Hipsters: Self-conscious or simply full of self?

I don't know what it is. Hipsters can get on my nerves. Not that I don't love some of the styles they are helping to revitalize; I do. I appreciate them bringing change to the scene. Change is always good. I don't personally wear tight pants, but hey, it's cool that people are diversifying and breaking out into fragmented cultural niches. I like that. The fucked up haircuts, the skinny little bodies (not new, just more evident with the junior-size clothing craze), or the bodies that have gone through too much partying without adequate exercise to balance it all out (same thing applies): Really hairy fuckers with fuzzy curls sticking out of their butt crack, which you can see because the pants are three sizes too small. Though the hip-hoppers were not much different, only instead of downsizing they upsized pants three sizes too big. And such a preference results in ass hanging as well. But the thug bangers at least cover that ass up with some boxers. These fucking hipster kids wear either (a) nothing, or (b) tighty-whiteys that are so sheer you can still see those hairy-ass trails leading down to the, well, ass.

But all this ass aside--whether hipsters wear tight pants, tighty-whiteys, whatever. This is moot. What matters is personality. And it strikes me that hipsters are so concerned with being "hip" that they reserve and delimit their personality in a strange fear that friendliness or sincerity will make them seem uncool. To whom? you fuckin' conformists. You only act that way because you want to show everyone all cool you are, so cool that you reject the conversation of someone below, someone "unlike" you. It's this type of attitude that is contradictory to what constitutes the truly cool. You can figure it out.

It's the unwarranted pretentiousness that bothers me. Even if you are, like, a gifted artist -- it still does not give you license to treat others assholish. If I'm not wearing something that doesn't look like I spent all day shopping at thrift stores, don't have a haircut that is so perfectly imperfectly cut, or some clever statement of image, then, well, I must have nothing to offer. That's my critique of the hipster. A hip-hop kid may give an e-mo looking boy a hard time, but more often that not they'll be like, "aw, nah man. I'm chist playin' with you," and take him in, open up a dialogue, talk about things of difference, exchange viewpoints. Laugh about it. Poke it, but poke it in jest. A hipster, on the other hand, takes one look; one look is all you get. If you don't make sartorial cut, you don't get "in" -- as "in" -troduced, in - vited, socially, whatever. All you get is the ax -- exclusion, excoriation, excommunication.

Hmm...

Totally tainted with generalizations, but if you know the two groups, if you know the power that hip-hop once wielded and now must share, then you know something about what I'm trying to say, albeit fitfully and streamfully without too much thought about specific particulars.

Monday, March 14, 2005

Snowboarding and Mother Nature.

Anybody care to comment on, well, anything snowboarding? I heard a report on NPR this morning about the threat of global warming. Experts predict that if changes undertaken, there will be a 70-percent of annual snowfall by the end of the century. That's a heavy forecast.