JACK KNOX: Victoria ranked Canada’s most-hipster city, 88th in world

News item: Victoria is the highestranking Canadian entry on a list of the most-hipster cities in the world.

Ispun toward her: “The man bun isn’t coming in as well as I hoped. Where’s my tuque?” “The one that keeps your head warm, or the one you wear like a baggie beanie with your ears showing?” she replied.

I almost choked on my avocado toast. “Beanie, of course. What, you think I come from Vancouver?” I said Vancouver as though I were trying to scrape it off the soles of my Chuck Taylor All Stars.

Poor Vancouver finished well down the ranking of the world’s most-hipster cities: 199th place, sandwiched between Braunschweig, Germany, and (I believe) Walmart. Quick, somebody call the grief counsellors.

Victoria? No. 1 in Canada, baby, not that this is news to us.

Remember, it was last April that both Vogue magazine and the Toronto Star — in the surprised/impressed tone of someone who just found an old high school teacher dancing naked at Burning Man — described Victoria as some sort of Portland North, gushing about our locavore foodie scene, craft beer and the 900 high-tech companies operating out of funky old brick buildings on Fort Street.

Then, this month, the New York Times declared Victoria an “urban jewel.” That was followed last week by an enthusiastic travel piece in the Wall Street Journal, which fell in love with what it called “funky Fernwood,” bubbling on about the drinkeries around the Belfry, the outdoor book-exchange boxes, century-old Arts-and-Crafts bungalows, community gardens and Cold Comfort’s “improbable but successful combination of vanilla ice cream and brown ale.”

So, no, we’re not surprised by our placing in the International Hipster Index.

Now, an embittered Vancouverite might point out that the index was compiled by MoveHub, an international relocation planning company, so might not have been subjected to the same rigorous scrutiny as, say, a peerreviewed article in a scientific journal.

MoveHub came up with its findings by comparing the number of vegan eateries, coffee shops, tattoo parlours, vintage boutiques and record stores per 100,000 residents in 446 cities in 20 countries. Topping the list was the English seaside’s Brighton and Hove, which just edged out Portland, Oregon. Salt Lake City was third and Seattle fourth.

The same embittered Vancouverite might point out that MoveHub wasn’t actually being complimentary when it decided to ask “What’s the most hipster city in the world?” The preamble to its findings said it posed the question because “Our pretentious brethren deserve attention. It’s all they really want.”

Also, this same plaid-clad-butmad Vancouverite might, somewhat churlishly, note that while Victoria is No. 1 in the Great White North, it only ranks 88th in the world index. Being the mosthipster city in Canada is like being the classiest Kardashian or the most reasonable voice in the pipeline debate. It’s all relative.

“It may surprise some people to learn that Canada is not particularly hipster,” MoveHub declared.

“Too dignified, probably. The hipster capital of Canada proved to be Victoria … which was competitive on vegan eats and record stores, but let down by its shoddy tattoo studio game.”

Shoddy tattoo studio game? Are they serious? Victoria goes through more ink than the aforementioned New York Times. Everybody from your favourite barista to your parish priest has a mistranslated Mandarin character (“Upholstery? It says upholstery?”) etched into his neck. We’re pretty sure even W.A.C. Bennett had a Guns N’ Roses on his lower back.

And what’s this “too dignified” nonsense? Obviously MoveHub has never seen a couple of Canajun hockey moms chucking knuckles at their kids’ Peewee Christmas tournament, or observed the wild-eyed hit-to-pass Pat Bay 500 race for the last ferry at Swartz Bay, or watched Victorians lose their inhibitions/undergarments/stomach contents at the Canada Day Celebration/Fête du Régurgitation bacchanal by the Inner Harbour.

That’s the problem with these out-of-town evaluations: Stereotypes. It’s like those publications that still insist on seeing Victoria as a sleepy outpost of Olde England. (Sleepy? Victoria? How could anyone think us sleepy when we were treated to both the Dynamic Beast and the Niagara Pipe Pull in the same week? We didn’t know whether to marvel at the engineering or smoke a cigarette.) The Globe and Mail once described the capital as a place where the word “hip” is usually followed by “replacement.”

Victoria is a lot of things: hipsterish, a bit of Britain, a government city, a tech centre, a military town, a retirement haven, a coastal dreamscape, a tourist mecca … Pick a pigeonhole. We’ll fill it.