As you know, I have myself a couple of little series in which I like to mercilessly mock the odd conversations I hear hipsters having or the strange people I meet on my daily commute. I know, I’m just nice like that. Anyway, on the odd occasion I’m lucky enough to see an actual real live hipster on an actual real live bus, and the conversations they have on that bus are equally as amusing.
This particular collision of worlds happened one morning on the way into work. Two such hipsters who appeared to be buddies had crossed paths on their morning commute and had begun to regale each other with fascinating tales about what cool and trendy things they had gotten up to over the weekend. This was all mightily irritating for me. I struggle to understand why people feel the need to converse this early in the morning. Especially converse loudly. I’m actually of the belief that people should have to follow a strict no talking policy before 8am, especially on public transport. Anyway, their incessant chipperness had awoken me from my usual zombified state so I had little choice but to listen in.
Most of what they said was immediately forgotten, because it mostly went along the lines of ‘Blah blah blah….. craft beer….. blah blah blah…. macrobiotic…. blah blah blah…. only special people like us have ever heard of it’ but there was one bit that stood out. The Lady Hipster told the Boy Hipster that she had spent Saturday night checking out a new bar that had opened in the City Centre. No surprises there. Any Hipster worth their salt would have to be one of the very first people to cross the threshold of a new establishment because 1) they have to be able to say they went there first before it was cool, and 2) they can then declare it soooooo yesterday as everyone who’s anyone is going somewhere else now. Lady Hipster seemed impressed with the new spot though, because she told Boy Hipster ‘Yeah, it was really good. It’s really, like, London, you know? Like, you can tell someone really London owns it.’
This statement tickled me for two reasons (other than the fact it made her sound like a massive douche). Firstly, I knew the bar she was talking about. Being in the line of work I am, I also knew that while they had clearly gone to great pains to make it appear quirky and independent, that bar was owned by a brewery. A brewery that amongst other ventures owns some very well known chains. Poor little Lady Hipster had unwittingly been conned into frequenting a soulless, generic chain pub. Not only that, but she’d actively recommended it to a fellow Hipster. If only she knew, hey? I guarantee she would turn her nose up at those branded cocktails quicker than you can say ‘It sounds soooo much better on vinyl’. Secondly, since when did the word London become an adjective? London is a place, how on earth could an inanimate object be ‘London’? I know what she meant. She meant it was ‘cool’. As though everything from London is ‘cool’. But this is just absurd. Can you only have creative flair if you come from London? Could only someone from London have thought up something so frightfully clever as stringing up fairy lights and hanging plant pots from the ceiling? Can you imagine how silly Lady Hipster would feel if she knew this mass produced bar was actually the brainchild of a Midlands based organisation?
Shock horror, sometimes cool people come from places other than London, who’d have thunk it? Don’t tell Lady Hipster, she might spontaneously self-combust!
Love,
Picking the Day 