There goes the neighborhood...

August 5, 2011 9:47 AM

Hipsters on the Hudson. The NYTimes is at it again, reporting on "Hipster Sprawl" (??).. yes, I made up that term.
posted by ReeMonster (58 comments total)

The Hudson valley has the the hippie cunchy arty backyard of NYC since beyond forever. the only way this article is at all relevant is if it travellered here from the past.
posted by The Whelk at 9:51 AM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

From the NY Times:"And yet there it is, everywhere you look: the old diner, renamed the Oakhurst and now serving gourmet curried chicken rolls, organic burgers and venison chili cheese fries..."


Hipster replacement!
Out with the old joints, in with the new:)
posted by Jody Tresidder at 9:51 AM on August 5, 2011 [5 favorites]

Also? Organic back to the land types in traditionally rural areas? Old fucking news. I'm in the middle of Nowhere Maine and every single roadhouse boasts how local and organic their produce is, there are " Do you know your farmer? " signs and big ados made about native crops, the tourists and vacatiioners get fresher food and the smaller farms get to enjoy a profit and be considered hip. This is not a trend, this is how things should be.
posted by The Whelk at 9:54 AM on August 5, 2011 [15 favorites]

I'm going to a wedding in Hudson in about a month, staying in a restored B&B on Main Street. I'm excited to get out of the city, so hopefully it doesn't turn completely into Brooklyn by the time I get there.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:55 AM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

Wow, you'd think that upstate NY around the Hudson Valley was some sort of counter-culture refuge since the late 60s or something.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 9:55 AM on August 5, 2011 [10 favorites]

Hipsters are an unfortunate, but necessary, part of the evolution of cities.

Let's say there's an area you'd like to live in or visit, but it's populated by a great number of hipsters, thus making it undesirable. How do you get rid of the hipsters?

Well, what do hipsters hate the most? Anything mainstream, right? Just build a big box music store in the area to bring in some top-40-listening, Twilight-obsessed teeny boppers. This area will soon become undesirable to the hipsters, and they'll move on.

But the teeny boppers are pretty unbearable, too, so you need to find a way to get them out. What makes kids instantly find something lame? Parents! So you fill the area with soccer moms to drive out the kids. But if you let that go on too long, there will be a Starbucks, Gymboree, and Gap on every corner, and you can't let that happen.

What could possibly scare off these ladies? Impoverished minorities! Move a bunch of impoverished minorities into the area, and you won't have that sticky soccer mom problem anymore. But that won't do, either, since "people" are "scared" of impoverished minorities. And nothing gets rid of impoverished minorities like a good dose of gentrification, but let's see...where does gentrification come from?

Oh, right: the hipsters.

And so the cycle repeats...
posted by phunniemee at 9:56 AM on August 5, 2011 [10 favorites]

Eckert Fine Art, with its paintings by Eric Forstmann and Robert Rauschenberg

Fucking... hipsters?
posted by nathancaswell at 9:57 AM on August 5, 2011

I can get behind this, better to have people "revitalize" Poughkeepsie than take up every available inch of Brooklyn. Isn't this the nature of things though? People move to New York when they are young, then start a family and want their kids to have a childhood something like their own so move to a less urban environment.

I went to a hipster wedding in Poughkeepsie recently, It was nice I guess.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:59 AM on August 5, 2011

Wait, This article makes sense if you assume the author has been recently unfrozen from 1870 and thus only knew the Hudson Valley for its countercultural religious movements!
posted by The Whelk at 9:59 AM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

Eh, give it time and things will change. I'm actually Facebook friends with the guy who made the video linked to the article -- he arguably is one of those "hipsters," as he moved up to Woodstock from Brooklyn about 10-15 years ago.

He's had it, and has started looking for jobs here in the city and would sell his RIGHT EAR to move back.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:00 AM on August 5, 2011

YOUNG PEOPLE, YOUNG PEOPLE EVERYWHERE
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:01 AM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

I've heard that the next hot thing are the ash monofill landfills in new york. Apparently there's this whole alt culture going on with co-ops, farmers' market, thrift stores, art studios, etc. New york y u so cool??!!
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:01 AM on August 5, 2011

Now I'm hungry and really craving chicken curry rolls and venison chili cheese fries. That sounds fucking delicious!
posted by kmz at 10:06 AM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

Are hipsters counter-culture though? They seem to be the culture, thats why I became a bro, I was a hipster before it was cool.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:07 AM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wait until they hear about the Huguenots!
posted by Threeway Handshake at 10:08 AM on August 5, 2011

God, hipster bashing is so played out...

I was into hipster-bashing when it was still underground....gawd.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 10:11 AM on August 5, 2011

Man, the next generation is going to have to jump through some fucking hoops to piss off the umathurmandrawingrectangle.avi anywhere close to the amorphous projection-blob people have made out of hipsters.
posted by griphus at 10:14 AM on August 5, 2011 [3 favorites]

People move to New York when they are young, then start a family and want their kids to have a childhood something like their own so move to a less urban environment.

There are a few of us who remember what a childhood in a less urban environment was like, and that is precisely why we would not leave the city ever.

(Seriously - the cutesy quaint storefronts images in the slideshow look attractive, but then I hit the images of "and here's how the NON-hipsters live" and it was a very uncomfortable reminder Why I Will Never Live Outside A City Ever).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:14 AM on August 5, 2011 [5 favorites]

Wow, you'd think that upstate NY around the Hudson Valley was some sort of counter-culture refuge since the late 60s or something.

I could swear I'd heard tell of some sort of shindig that took place in Woodstock.

(Given that hipster-producing colleges Vassar and Bard are right in the middle of the area they're talking about, I'm thinking some of the hipsters either haven't yet moved to Brooklyn because they're still in school or aren't going to move to Brooklyn because they graduated from college and decided to stick around.)
posted by craichead at 10:16 AM on August 5, 2011

So, there's hipsters but no New York City to balance it out?
posted by fuq at 10:17 AM on August 5, 2011

Q: Why did the hipster burn his mouth?
A: He ate his pizza before it got cool.

Ha!
posted by Fister Roboto at 10:19 AM on August 5, 2011 [11 favorites]

My dad loves Terni's
posted by grobstein at 10:22 AM on August 5, 2011

There are a few of us who remember what a childhood in a less urban environment was like, and that is precisely why we would not leave the city ever.

I wouldn't want to leave, but as a product of the New York public school system, I would not want to send kids to public school in New York. If I were to have kids, If I didn't have the money to send them to private school I would move away.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:29 AM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

I am off to do a google image search for "hipster wedding."

Remember when yuppies were hated? Have we come up with a new term for yuppy? I ask for my seventy-year-old father, who still likes to use the word.
posted by mecran01 at 10:32 AM on August 5, 2011

Have we come up with a new term for yuppy?

Maybe if you replaced white wine spritzers with PBR, and power suits with skinny jeans and ironic moustaches, and cocaine with cocaine, and some sort of wall street job with being a bar back 3 nights a week and sleeping till three.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:38 AM on August 5, 2011

I wouldn't want to leave, but as a product of the New York public school system, I would not want to send kids to public school in New York.

That's basically where I am. I was lucky enough to be smart and live in the right boondock neighborhoods (I still live in Bensonhurst) to go to a decent elementary school and magnet/specialized schools for junior high and high school. Except I got back in touch with one of my favorite teachers from said junior high and she says that it's going all to shit thanks to NCLB. The elementary school has gone way the hell downhill as well.

Then again I reflect on how I was brought up dragged to museums and classical music concerts and all sorts of cultural stuff not really available outside of NYC and how it's all still with me today and I just don't fucking know.
posted by griphus at 10:38 AM on August 5, 2011

I wouldn't want to leave, but as a product of the New York public school system, I would not want to send kids to public school in New York.

Public schools in tiny towns ain't much better. And you have the small-town homogenity of thought outside school on top of that. Even in this article, I can't shake the feeling that once you get past the hipsterville, there are people who look at you funny if you Think Different.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:38 AM on August 5, 2011

Maybe if you replaced white wine spritzers with PBR

The whole PBR thing is vastly out of date. Maybe 5 years ago at Union Pool. Nowadays all the "hipsters" drink rye. Old Overholt actually. It used to be Michters Rye, then Jim Beam Rye.

I say this as both a rye drinker and a 'hipster".
posted by nathancaswell at 10:40 AM on August 5, 2011 [5 favorites]

PS - Tequila is making a comeback.
posted by nathancaswell at 10:47 AM on August 5, 2011

Don't call it a comeback.
posted by dersins at 10:49 AM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

The whole PBR thing is vastly out of date

I stand corrected. Please disregard any of my previous comments about PBR. I knew that hipsters had moved on to cask aged ale at some point, but I did not know they had moved on to Rye.

This is why being a bro is easier, I just drink goldschlager now. That shit is sick bro.

Public schools in tiny towns ain't much better.

I am just hoping they are not full of faculty that are actively abusive. I guess the only way to win is to not have kids.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:49 AM on August 5, 2011

I think this article is operating with a WWII era definition of "hipster", the idea of a current hipster riding his fixie to a poetry slam is pretty laughable to me. Then again New York is such a mindfuck, people think that just because there's some one weirder than you every block that you can dress/act like a complete fool and it's perfectly acceptable because - hey I'm not as bad as that guy!
posted by youthenrage at 10:50 AM on August 5, 2011

> Public schools in tiny towns ain't much better.

I am just hoping they are not full of faculty that are actively abusive.

...Depends on your definition of "abusive."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:50 AM on August 5, 2011

My sister was in the vanguard of this migration – she gave up a huge rent-stabilized apartment on lower Fifth Avenue to move up to Hudson when her second child came along, then bought a house across the river to start gentrifying a working-class town there, where their only friends are the two other hipster families. Now they're happily publishing unreadable novels while chelating their gluten-free kids and terrorizing the local schools with their autism-spectrum diagnoses. And presumably hating the newer hipsters who moved up since it got cool.
posted by Now I'm Prune Tracy! at 10:56 AM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

"the only way this article is at all relevant is if it travellered here from the past."

Would it do so on a Time Travelator?

I read that comment in the Sling Blade voice.

Kingston is really lovely. I was up there on my motorcycle a few weeks ago (9W/the Hudson Valley is one of my favorite routes). It's a shame when these towns start to crumble (poor Newburgh!).

I really want to explore old Kingston some day (free art shuttles on the first Saturday of the month! Hey, that's tomorrow!). Did you know it was the third settlement on the Hudson, along with Albany and New York City? And it was the first capital of New York State. There's a lot of classic architecture up there, too.
posted by Eideteker at 11:02 AM on August 5, 2011

Call it the Brooklynization of the Hudson Valley, the steady hipness creep with its locavore cuisine, its Williamsburgian bars, its Gyrotonic exercise, feng shui consultants and deep clay art therapy and, most of all, its recent arrivals from New York City.

None of this describes hipsters.

Just because a bunch of crunchy granola types move into a neighborhood doesn't mean a hipster takeover has happened.

But of course it does, what am I talking about? Because "hipster" is so ill-defined as to mean anybody whose purchasing decisions seem more precious than ours.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:02 AM on August 5, 2011 [4 favorites]

I recently spent a couple days biking (non-fixie) around this area with a friend. We started in Beacon and went up to Hudson and stayed at a B&B there, then biked back the next day. This hipsterization/gentrification trend is certainly in full swing. We went through at least 3 or 4 towns that had new and hip shops/cafes/restaurants. According to the B&B proprietor, Hudson was pretty sketchy a few years ago, for all the people saying this trend is not new, I get your point, but it's certainly a departure from recent history. For instance, Poughkeepsie used to be a total shithole. On our way through we passed a farmer's market and biked over the Walkway over the Hudson, a restored train bridge that is now a pedestrian/bike bridge (it's pretty awesome). Ten years ago, it looked like these towns had no future, but now they're getting new signs of life, and it's nice to see.

In summary, while I hate NY Times trend spotting, I think they're reasonably accurate in this case.
posted by A dead Quaker at 11:04 AM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

...Depends on your definition of "abusive."

Yeah, I guess any school is pretty rough on anyone the least bit different. Homeschooling it is!
posted by Ad hominem at 11:06 AM on August 5, 2011

Fucking venison chilli cheese fries sound FUCKING AWESOME!!!
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:12 AM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'm calling applejack as the hot new drink.
posted by The Whelk at 11:16 AM on August 5, 2011

Don't tell Portland
posted by The Whelk at 11:17 AM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

Applejack is great. I have no idea why it's fallen into disfavor. It's especially good in summer cocktails.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:20 AM on August 5, 2011

I like hipsters.

I'm so ahead of the curve.
posted by Decani at 11:20 AM on August 5, 2011

I'm calling applejack as the hot new drink.

I don't know what the legality is, but I bet you could make A KILLING selling moonshine in certain rustic Americana bar/restaurants. There are some fancy Canadian distilleries that make some high quality stuff you could just decant into Mason jars and nobody would be the wiser.

You'd have a lot of hungover hipsters though, cause that shit gives you a fucking headache the next day.
posted by nathancaswell at 11:21 AM on August 5, 2011

Wait, This article makes sense if you assume the author has been recently unfrozen from 1870. . .

This is an article from the New York Times. I resent the implication that they would have bothered to unfreeze the author from 1870.
posted by The Bellman at 11:28 AM on August 5, 2011

I don't know what the legality is, but I bet you could make A KILLING selling moonshine in certain rustic Americana bar/restaurants

I know someone who does this, albeit illegally at those kinds of parties, Up here in Maine I've seen some slick labels on stuff calling itself moonshine.....

Also, let's not forget the important message of this piece, what you buy dictates your entire personality and well being. The style section is basically a paid ad insert anyway.

but john you were in the style section no the arts section < small> that's even wooooooorse
posted by The Whelk at 11:37 AM on August 5, 2011

OMG THE NEXT GENERATION ARE GETTING BETTER JOBS AND CHANGING THEIR AESTHETIC SUCH THAT THEY WANT TO LIVE IN OTHER URBAN AREAS WHICH MIGHT BE NEAR ME AND NOW I CAN'T COUNT ON A SPECIFIC LOCALE IN ORDER TO KNOW WHO TO MAKE FUN OF.
posted by clvrmnky at 11:43 AM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

God, hipster bashing is so played out...

I mostly agree with you, but the Times Styles desk must have some kind of autodialer that just keeps sending out semi-ironic texts 24/7 to be able to constantly find new sources for stories like this . . .

“It’s just my comfort zone,” said Rebekah Blu, who has specialized in rock ’n’ roll, celebrity and what she calls Goddess photography and moved to town with her husband and two infants from the East Village two months ago.

I mean, sweet trucker-capped christ if I read that character description in The Onion it'd sound overdone.

Also this?

a locavore menu and weekly spoken-word slams

This is pissing in my homemade granola. This is pouring housebrand cola in my 16-year-old Islay malt. This is a perfectly seared artisanal grassfed hangar steak (which I'll continue to love no matter how trendy it gets because trendy doesn't change delicious) smothered in a thick sauce of bullshit. Why would someone do something so terrible to something so objectively good?
posted by gompa at 1:09 PM on August 5, 2011

Would you rather attend 2 hours per week of:

a) Spoken-word slam.
b) Highly technical seminar on subject you had no interest in, in a room that was 10 degrees too hot and had uncomfortable chairs? Oh and all information is presented via real-time handwriting on overhead projector transparencies.
posted by nathancaswell at 1:22 PM on August 5, 2011

I'll pick b). It'd at least be vaguely soothing in the way that sleeping on a Greyhound bus is vaguely soothing even while being mostly unsettling. Anything beats watching a metaphor have the life beaten out of it line by precious line.
posted by gompa at 2:01 PM on August 5, 2011

I don't know what the legality is, but I bet you could make A KILLING selling moonshine in certain rustic Americana bar/restaurants.

has the nyt style section already done an article on "white dog"?
posted by dubold at 3:32 PM on August 5, 2011

PS - Tequila is making a comeback.

Usually about an hour after I get home from the bar, every. single. time. I drink it.
posted by Hoopo at 3:34 PM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

I had a house upstate until just recently and we thought long and hard about moving up there with the kids but, uh, there's this winter.
Sure winter, whatever, I grew up even farther north and I know what it is to be fuck-this-could-kill-me-cold, and it's good and cold in the Hudson valley, but it's also dark and if you don't live in town, and you used to live in town, and you are used to living in town, you could spend lots of quality time getting to know the corners of your living space. And if you're not psychologically/emotionally ready for that - you can dream up some very interesting arguments to have with your loved ones, just to pass the time.
No, I loved the Hudson valley in lots of ways, but that winter business was a level of serious I never was willing to bring my game. That's the difference between one kid and two.
posted by From Bklyn at 3:39 PM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Organic back to the land types in traditionally rural areas? Old fucking news. I'm in the middle of Nowhere Maine and every single roadhouse boasts how local and organic their produce is, there are " Do you know your farmer? " signs and big ados made about native crops, the tourists and vacatiioners get fresher food and the smaller farms get to enjoy a profit and be considered hip.

I'm in California and just this week saw a car with a "Support Local Farms" Maine license plate.
posted by LionIndex at 5:04 PM on August 5, 2011

Having grown up in Dutchess County, travelled the rest of the country, come back to live in Woodstock, Mt Tremper and then Kingston, then back to Wappingers and finally ending up in Brooklyn for the last 12 years, I can tell you that the amount of bullshit in the comments in this thread is hilarious but predictable.
posted by spicynuts at 4:58 AM on August 6, 2011

I'm from Upstate myself, and I don't get the complaints about the weather. It's certainly no worse than Quebec or Vermont. Neither of those are tropical climes, but they're perfectly livable, as long as you can grow a thick coat of musky, oil-rich fur.

If young people colonize Upstate New York, then to my mind that's an unmitigated good. The area's been economically depressed for years, and people have been fleeing the state for quite some time as well. More people means more jobs, and more young people means less "Red State Upstate."

Also, there have always been arty kooks living in Upstate New York. Always. People who are into music and photography are not interlopers up there.

Also, can we officially proclaim that "hipster" has no meaning anymore?
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:26 AM on August 6, 2011

I was saying hipster was a meaningless placeholder for The Other before it was cool.
posted by The Whelk at 10:18 AM on August 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

Here come the artists with their intense faces,
with their need for money and quiet spaces.
They leave New York, they leave L.A..
Here they are - who knows how long they'll stay

Greg Brown, "Boomtown," 1994
posted by ioesf at 11:07 AM on August 6, 2011