A Hasty Stroll

I was rushing and rushing to get through the first draft of Spy Rock Memories, Part 7, and the story kept getting longer and longer. I mean, I knew exactly when and how it was going to end, but it was taking forever to get there.

It wasn't just that I was determined to finish the draft tonight so that I could get started on editing it tomorrow; I also wanted to get over to the city to meet Aaron for one of our patented late night wanders about town. But by the time Part 7 had finally topped out at around 8,200 words (probably 3,000 of which are going to have to be cut right back out of it), I was already supposed to be on the street corner in the West Village where we were meant to begin our walk. I tore down to the subway, knowing it would take me at least 20 minutes to get there, only to find that the ever-deteriorating MTA (you know, we're a poor country, we can't afford things like reliable public transit anymore the way modern, progressive countries like, say, Turkey can) wouldn't be sending a train my way for another 20 minutes.

So some hasty rearrangements had to be made, we met in the East Village instead, and headed more or less straight for the Williamsburg Bridge for the walk back to Brooklyn. Still a very nice walk on the first night this week with normal, almost cool temperatures, but it lacked a certain meandering quality possessed by all the best late night summer strolls. We talked about MRR, circa '77 until now, and related punk rock media, cultural and philosophical issues, and Aaron gave me a copy of his new book, which apparently includes an interview of yours truly and another interview conducted by yours truly with AVA editor Bruce Anderson. Riveting stuff, as I recall, though it's been a few years since I last perused either. Anyway, check out the new book at Last Gasp or on Amazon or any of the other usual outlets; it looks pretty good, and I'd be reading it right now if I weren't busy typing this.

Most Annoying Hipster Affectation

Jim Jersey Beat started a thread by this same name over at the PPMB, and soon had everyone and his irate mama chiming in to enumerate what they most disliked about those pesky hipsters.

If there's anyone more judgmental than hipsters, it's got to be the punks, but alas, the punks are not always as keenly attuned to the shifting vagaries of fashion as they might be, so a great deal of hot air was expended in denouncing things like trucker hats, white belts and "girl pants," all very 2-5 years ago, if not downright last century. But considerable vitriol was also unleashed toward "ironic" beards and mustaches, phony jihad scarves (well, apparently the scarves are the real deal; the people wearing them, not so much), not to mention "ascots and neckerchiefs" ("Who are we," demands one poster, "Fred from Scooby Doo?").

As someone who's done his fair share of fulminating, especially about the scruffy beards and clothes that have been giving me horrific flashbacks to the 70s, I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, in fact, to discover that most of these things no longer bothered me. I've made my peace with the hipsters, apparently, not that any of them ever showed any indication whatsoever of caring what I thought. But even the beards, which for a year or two had been my bête noire, have become so much white noise to me as I wend my way through the Williamsburg streets.

Well, perhaps not completely... Last night as I was coming home I walked past the Metropolitan, reputed to be our neighborhood gay bar, but which I had always suspected of being merely another hipster hangout for boys and girls of tenuous or conflicted sexuality. I was quite surprised to see a couple guys rather passionately making out just outside the front door. Surprised, I say, because it's the first overtly gay activity I've ever noticed emanating from the place; previously I'd only ever seen the usual hipster suspects standing around smoking cigarettes and looking angst-ridden.

As it happened, one of the making-out dudes was smooth-cheeked or at least closely shaven, and actually kind of cute, whereas his osculatory partner was a standard-issue beardo. And some of the old revulsion came rushing back: how, I heard myself demanding, could you rub your face up against that?

But I digress. For the most part I no longer find myself thinking badly of hipsters based on facial hair or clothes or even that jaundiced view of the non-hipster world they wear along with their carefully sculpted Weltschmerz and anomie. Live and let live, I say, and as long as I'm living here in the heart of postgraduate sleepaway camp, it's about all I can say, if I want to keep my sanity.

Then Jenna Alive weighed in with one hipster affectation I truly can not abide: smoking. True, not all hipsters smoke, but a wildly disproportionate number do, and when you consider that these are not exactly unsophisticated or ignorant people, but have come from mostly well-to-do families and colleges that the vast majority of Americans could neither afford nor be accepted to, you have to believe that the conspicuous - and highly mannered - consumption of tobacco is indeed a fashion statement. A particularly stupid one, granted, but fashion nonetheless.

Even then, I could stretch my tolerance to include 20-somethings frantically smoking because they're hoping for an early death (and need to cling to something) were it not for the fact that they're inflicting their stink on everyone else around them. Ah, but you've heard me railing in that vein before, so I'll stop right there and reveal that while thinking about smoking, it dawned me that the one thing that really annoys me about hipsters is when they deny being hipsters.

Which they pretty much all do. In fact, serious hipsters actually get outraged and indignant if you so much as hint at the H-word in their presence. "What's a hipster?" they'll snarl, "just some ridiculous stereotype that means nothing at all in the real world."

"So it's just a complete and utter coincidence that you wear the same clothes and have the same facial fair and see the same movies and read the same books as every other 20-something in the neighborhood?"

"People can have common values and ideas without being lumped into stupid media characterizations. Calling someone a hipster, well, that's abusive, it's practically like a form of racism."

I have actually had several conversations with self-denying hipsters than ran along almost exactly those lines, and none ended satisfactorily. After the first or second, I learned that there was no point in pursuing this line of questioning, so I'd just nod my head sagely and let them go on disclaiming their hipsterness. But quietly I'd think to myself, "Other subcultures don't seem to have such a problem saying who they are - punk, hippies, hiphoppers, even emo kids wear their status almost like a badge of honor - so what is the hipsters' problem?

You know what, though? I actually don't care anymore. Or maybe I do, but I'm sleepy and want to go to bed. Tomorrow perhaps I'll find a hipster on the street and ask him to explain this to me, but more likely I'll stay in and watch the Champions League final between Man United and Chelsea. Maybe I'll even start growing a scruffy beard and claim that it's not a beard at all, just the result of my being so preoccupied with vital artistic concerns that I forgot to shave. As Chris Grivet would say, "Ha. No."

Beardo Nation

I don't have any right to complain, I suppose, having chosen to live in this neighborhood, but there are times, most frequently in a packed car on the L train, when I question my own judgment in having voluntarily subjected myself to being surrounded by people with some of the worst dress and grooming sense in history (well, at least since the 1970s, which is far as I care to go back, lest I have to start ruminating on the horrors of paisley bellbottoms and other atrocities of the 60s).

I mean, Williamsburg, capital of post-collegiate America that it is, should be awash in beautiful young men and women, or at least one would think, but instead it provides a daily assault on the senses by hordes of what would appear to be derelicts, at least in embryo if not of the fully sprung variety.

But before I go any further, I should clarify: when I say "people," I actually mean the men, because most local women manage to look at least interesting, and sometimes downright fabulous. And for the most part, they tend to wash both their clothes and hair on a regular basis. The men, not so much. Not hardly at all, in fact.

I know I'm in danger of sounding like one of those fuddy-duddies who used to fulminate about "dirty hippies" or like Ronald Reagan, who once said of the 60s counterculture: "They dress like Tarzan, look like Jane, and smell like Cheetah." But at least I'm not going on about how, "You can't even tell the boys from the girls."

Quite the contrary. If only there were a bit more androgyny, if only a few of these potentially good-looking young men's idea of "masculinity" didn't entail making themselves look as grotty and unkempt as possible, with the ideal image apparently being a 70 year old Bukowski at the tail end of a three week Night Train and crystal meth binge.

Mostly, of course, it's the beards. Why? We didn't endure the travails of all these centuries of civilization building and razor inventing to come to this feral pass. Or did we? Is there where it ends, with a whole tribe of what are presumably among America's best and brightest (certainly if the amounts forked out on college tuition by their doting parents are any indicator) deliberately uglifying themselves as a statement against... what? The commodification of contemporary culture? The fact that they're only 25 years old and already getting too paunchy and disheveled to look good in their super-skinny American Apparel shirts?

Of course the women are not without blame in this matter: as long as they're willing to tolerate or even embrace guys who sport the beardo/bum look, there will be ever-growing legions of new young men who say to themselves, "Shave? Why bother?" I'll admit I'm a bit squeamish, but every time I see an even moderately good-looking girl sucking face with some human Brillo pad, I'm simultaneously astounded and appalled.

"How can you do that?" I always want to ask. "I mean, even with your eyes closed, it still feels (and probably tastes and smells) like you're kissing the ass end of a wombat, doesn't it?" Admittedly, I have met one girl who forthrightly claims that she's sexually attracted to beardos, up to and including Abe Lincoln, but she's clearly in a small minority. What of the others? Are they that hard up? So lacking in self-esteem that they can't even say to a potential suitor, "Yeah, like I really want to make out with Charles Manson. Go home and shave before you even THINK about trying to talk to me, loser." In my experience, women have never had a problem with speaking that forthrightly in the past; what could have changed?

But I guess I'd be overlooking the regrettable fact that people still met and spawned all through the 1970s, the last time dirty, smelly beards were in fashion, and that in fact many of today's most visually offensive hipsters may even have been the offspring of some of those squalid couplings. So perhaps it's an ancestral memory thing, though thinking further, I realize that most of Williamsburg's most bearded denizens these days are more likely to have been born in the 80s, when people were clean-shaven, watched John Hughes movies, and committed few fashion crimes more egregious than big hair and Kajagoogoo.

So I think we really could expect better, but unfortunately probably won't get it. In the meantime, I will have to console myself by meditating on the misery endured by those who insist on sporting face muffs and dressing in head to toe dirty black during these 95-degree days with humidity to match. Hopefully this will have a seriously deleterious effect on your sperm count and you at least won't reproduce.

Bike Gang

Way back on Wednesday, no, actually Tuesday B.F. (Before the Flood), Aaron Cometbus showed up in my neighborhood. We met at the corner cafe and sat there drinking coffee for a while, but then he invited me along to pick up his bike from the repair shop. Aaron has a habit of inviting me on exciting errands. Last time I saw him, practically the first words out of his mouth were, "Dude, come with me to the UPS store!"

I suspected Aaron of having an agenda, which is generally a safe assumption, and in this case, it turned out that he had decided it was time I bought a bike. The thought has crossed my mind numerous times this summer, especially when waiting in vain for recalcitrant trains or wishing I could whip silently and swiftly through the late night streets to Greenpoint instead of slogging along on foot for the better part of half an hour.

But I kept putting off on the grounds that a) bikes are too expensive in NYC; b) I already have a perfectly good bike in California which one of these days I'll theoretically manage to get shipped out here. But Aaron was keen on this bike repairman/dealer who operates out of his garage on Lorimer. "I think he's the real deal," he says, which is about as full-on an endorsement as you're ever going to get from Aaron.

And sure enough, before I'd been there five minutes, I was being sold a not particularly lovely but perfectly functional bicycle for $50, which included a quick clean-up and spruce-up, a new (well, only slightly used) back tire, new handle grips) and a heavy duty (albeit slightly rusty) chain for locking it to lampposts thrown in. No, it's not quite as nice as my OG bike, purchased in Willits, California for $75 in 1993, but it's coming in a lot more handy.

Like tonight, for example, when I was tied up on the phone for quite a while, making me rather later for the Gravy Train show over on the North Side. No problem: onto the bike I went, and was there in maybe five minutes, ten minutes max. True, in my bike riding clothes consisting of baggy shorts and muscle T, I was a bit out of place in the finely kempt and coiffed crowd of rather glossy hipsters who half filled Studio B (the rest of the audience consisted of, if you believe Jackie O. gay boys and their fag hags, or if you trust my impession, lots of little lesbians and a sprinkling of young men of indeterminate orientation).

For there allegedly being no lesbians there, Jackie O. sure got chatted up a lot, which was more than you could say for myself or Unlovable Frank, who stood morosely around the edge of the stage and greeted me on my arrival with, "Great drummer, eh?" He was referring to the woman playing drums for the first band, Love Or Perish, who turned out to be one Molly Neuman, late of Lookout Records, Pee Chees, Bratmobile, riot grrrl, etc. etc.

She is a very good drummer indeed, and seems to have gotten even better since the last time I saw her. The rest of the band? They were very good, too, or rather they played very well and looked good. The songs were a bit forgettable, though, and the last one went on for an unforgivable five or six minutes.

That crime paled, however, compared with what was at least an hour's wait for the next band. This being Williamsburg, of course, nobody in the crowd had to go to work the next morning (except Jackie O. and Unlovable Frank, and yes, I'm being sarcastic about the rest of the audience, too). Jackie explained that the reason we'd been subjected to this seemingly interminable barrage of cheesy dance music (which actually started out good but plummeted rather precipitously downhill for a very long time before it finally stopped) was that we were being graced with a "celebrity" DJ, namely J.D. Samson from the band Le Tigre. Why someone supposedly knows how to be a DJ because they play in a band has always baffled me, but I'm giving J.D. the benefit of the doubt and assuming that she was responsible for the good dance music in the first half of the hour rather than the reprehensible codswallop in the latter.

I also discovered, lurking in the front row, the long-presumed-vanished Rop, also formerly of Rice, the Pee Chees, Lookout Records Mail Order, and a host of other activities. The last time I saw him, in Park Slope in the year 2000, he was leaving for New Mexico, and most people I knew assumed he was still there. "Actually, I never left Brooklyn," he breezily informed me. "I just didn't come out much for a while." Unlovable Frank introduced me to the writer/illustrator Cristy Road, who I'd been hearing and seeing so much about, and we had a nice chat about Florida and books and all sorts, and STILL there was no sign of another band playing.

Okay, they finally did come on, "they" being something called VIP, which turned out to be three manic gay white rappers, two of them sounding as though they'd swallowed helium balloons in the vein of MC Chris. The gay disco Beastie Boys, I opined, whereupon Unlovable Frank responded with, "A high school talent show in Chelsea." I found them a lot more amusing than Frank did, and he eventually sulked off to the bar to wait them out.

He waited in vain, however, as they were back to share the stage with Gravy Train in the night's big production number, and also appeared in a music video/short film which aired in between bands and during the entire time Gravy Train were playing. At least Gravy Train didn't make us wait for hours; they came clattering on to the stage rather quickly, in fact, led by a rubber-limbed and gurning Brontez, who as usual was the life of the party. Seth (Hunx) and the ladies lurked behind the keyboard at the back of the stage while Brontez hectored and harangued the crowd into a frenzy, and both boys were down to not much more than their underwear (well, Brontez was down to his tighty-whities and nothing more) well before the set was finished.

Although Jackie O., Unlovable Frank and I had all arrived separately, we left together and simultaneously discovered that we'd all come on our bikes. Off we went, through the back streets of Williamsburg, like an incredibly diverse (in terms of ages, genders and orientations) bike gang with a total membership of three. It was a relatively short journey before Frank had to peel off for the bridge and Manhattan, and Jackie left me in her dust and headed off to Bushwick.

But for about ten minutes it was one of those timeless rides, mostly in silence, where we seemed to fly in formation and the streets and sidewalks belonged to no one but us, a few moments when biking through the back streets on a warm summer night seems like the best - hell, like the only - thing in the world to do. Earlier in the evening I'd been talking to a different kind of biker - his Harley was parked out in front of my house - and he told me how he and two buddies had, on the spur of the moment, ridden off to Philadelphia to get cheese steaks one Sunday night. And that's how it felt on my bike tonight: I just wanted to keep riding and riding until nothing short of the ocean or the Continental Divide put a stop to my meanderings.

But instead I came home and wrote about it just for you.

Giving Directions To Hipsters

Counting last summer and the (not quite) two months since I returned in March, I've spent less than five months in Williamsburg. And to be fair, the Williamsburg where I live is not the first place many people think of when they hear the name, that distinction being reserved for the Hipster Strip and its immediate surrounds along Bedford Avenue. But apparently I already have the look of an old-timer, because the newly arrived seem to make a beeline for me to ask for directions.

And there are a lot of new arrivals these days, about three quarters of them appearing to have graduated college in the past couple weeks. Sporting nascent beards (you can tell because they haven't had a chance to get grubby from the city air) and ironic hats, they wander through the convoluted streets trying desperately not to let on that they have no idea where they're going or what they expect to find when they get there.

It's taken me a while to get used to the street plan, which was apparently laid out before rulers or t-squares were invented, or else by someone who was drunk, but after semi-mastering the tangled mass of spaghetti that passes for the map of London, Brooklyn was never going to be too much of a challenge. Still, when an earnest young man with a burgeoning but very clean red beard interrupted my reverie to ask directions to Lorimer and Norman, I had to look up at the overhead street sign to verify that we were indeed standing on Lorimer Street.

Lorimer runs near my house as well, but it's a very different Lorimer from the one that skirts the northeast edge of McCarren Park, and anyway, all the streets go rather askew at the point where Williamsburg meets Greenpoint. It's as if the two communities designed themselves to produce maximum confusion and difficulty for anyone straying across the admittedly nebulous border, calling to mind the way that early railroad lines used different gauges of track to make it difficult for the competition to encroach on their territory.

Actually, I wasn't in a reverie as much as I was pondering the conversation I'd just had with a guy who, unlike most of those around me, had lived his entire life in the neighborhood. I'd been wondering what the locals thought of the influx of middle and upper middle class young people that has so radically transformed this area in the past decade or two, and he'd been happy to share his views on the subject.

"These new people," he'd sputtered, "Hey, I got nothing against them, and they done some good stuff for the neighborhood. I go out of my way to be polite to them, but man, they got some attitudes. Like, I'm holding the door open, you know, just to be a nice guy, and they just go walking through, no thanks, nothing, not even noticing me, like I'm the fucking doorman or something. So I decided, fuck 'em, I'm not going to let myself get all burned up about it, I'm just going to let the door slam in their faces and let them deal with it."

I also learned, by his correcting me several times, that he resolutely refused to refer to the area bordering the Hipster Strip as Williamsburg, that to him it always had been and always would be known as "the North Side." Trying to soften his mood about the newcomers (myself included), I said, "Hey, they may have no manners, but at least they're driving up your property values. At the rate things are going, you'll be able to retire a rich man."

"Yeah, you got a point there," he said, "if I owned my house, that is. I rent." Oops. "Hey, it's all right," he assured me, "I'm making plenty of money off the new folks. I'm an exterminator, see, and these people see so much as a cockroach, let alone a rat, and they're screaming for me." To illustrate his point, he showed me a picture of a bedbug that he keeps stored on his cell phone. "This little guy here is gonna put my kids through college."