- Go to Shoreditch Grind, near a roundabout in the middle of London’s hipster district. It’s a coffee shop with rough-hewn wooden tables, plentiful sunlight from wide windows, and austere pendant lighting. Then head to Takk in Manchester. It’s a coffee shop with a big glass storefront, reclaimed wood furniture, and hanging Edison bulbs. Compare the two: You might not even know you’re in different spaces.
It’s no accident that these places look similar. Though they’re not part of a chain and don’t have their interior design directed by a single corporate overlord, these coffee shops have a way of mimicking the same tired style, a hipster reduction obsessed with a superficial sense of history and the remnants of industrial machinery that once occupied the neighbourhoods they take over. And it’s not just London and Manchester – this style is spreading across the world, from Bangkok to Beijing, Seoul to San Francisco.
yikes do people still use foursquare? that kind of gave the article an "old man yells at cloud" quality to me...foursquare
I think you might be right in that it does have a bit of an "old man yells at clouds" feel to it. I still thought it was kind of interesting though and that there might be some truth to the article. The "hipster aesthetic" when it comes to interior design does seem to feel homogenized, though I didn't know it was an international thing (not that I'm ever in Asia or Europe). I wonder if this design will go down in our memories as part of the feel of the 2010s, much like fins on cars for the '50s or bell bottom jeans for the '60s and '70s.
I'm trying desperately to keep a few of my coworkers from hipstering up our restaurant. They're trying to convince the manager to let them try interior design inspired by Pinterest-- corrugated steel and reclaimed wood, vaguely industrial lighting. They'll probably win. I mean, shit, I'm leaving in a week.
Here's Central Perk from Friends: http://cdn.scahw.com.au/cdn-1d0ec3d5a48e030/ImageVaultFiles/id_366642/cf_7/628-centralperk.JPG something something HIPSTERS I could gut the shit out of this essay but I've been gutting the shit out of things too much lately so I'm just going to leave the author's wise words about totes: Somehow, a square of cloth sewn shut into a pouch and given arm-straps and maybe a logo has inspired a deep current of anxiety in the male population. The tote has “feminine connotations”, according to Reddit. “Is it gay for a guy to carry a tote at school?” wonders a user at Yahoo Answers. Even Styleforum, that den of menswear fashion, has gotten in on the embarrassment. “I am afraid to just carry the [leather tote bag] in my hands as I am worried it would look like a handbag,” writes Baby Pink, a username that seems like it would carry even more, uh, baggage about effete anxiety. Yet tote bags were originally as manly as could be. LL Bean designed the modern tote’s first ancestor in 1944 with the Bean’s Ice Carrier, a hefty bag made of reinforced cotton for carrying giant blocks of ice from “car to ice chest”. How much more rugged can you get?With apologies to Freud, my tote obsession has nothing to do with purse envy. Don’t call it a “murse” or a “man-bag”, two derogatory terms for what is clearly its own practical, potent genre. It is time for gentlemen everywhere to embrace this necessary vessel and overcome their shame, to shout from the rooftops: I’m a tote bagger, and I am proud.
If you're interested, you can tell them that an acoustician friend of yours was routinely called into restaurants 10 years ago that were full of corrugated steel and reclaimed wood because no one could talk over the din. If you could hear those pictures...
I often wonder where the next trend will lead us. After all the lumberjack beards are shaved and the mustache ends uncurled. Hipster is literally an all encompassing trend from music to clothing. I'm just really curious what comes after? Do we get something really really new that old people are uncomfortable with? Or do we live in the ruin of the hipster trend?