Hooray for the hipsters, those saviours of post-Brexit Britain
COLUMNIST
DEMEAN the hipster phenomenon, scoff at it, patronise it, poke fun at the men with beards on their Apple Macbooks – do all that, I know I have many times over.
But in the decade of austerity, and Brexit and Trump, hipsterism is a glimmer of cultural light in a dark, pessimistic world.
On a cold, wet and gloomy November afternoon, we are sitting out of the rain under the protection of some rainbow-coloured awning.
The tables are made from reclaimed wood, the chairs we’re sitting on look like the victims of a school refurbishment, the half-pint of beer I’m drinking direct from the brewery’s tap bar tastes nothing like anything I’d have had a decade or more ago.
My son can run around in the open air, despite the weather and the dying light, in the safe enclosed space of the craft brewery’s yard where my beer was produced. In this most ultra of hipster environments, people can order an organic Fairtrade and rainforest-friendly, smallbatch roasted coffee in the style they want from the adjacent café.
Everything appears ad hoc, but on closer examination you realise it’s been knowingly put together – the unpolished wood, the mismatching retro furnishings, the 1970s handmade-style crockery, the pastel colour palettes.
It’s a place that might be described pejoratively as “peak hipster”.
The stuff you’re buying is good, pricier than elsewhere – but it’s marketed on localism, quality and provenance. And being different.
Bearded twentysomethings in skinny, rolled-up, saffron-coloured chinos are as likely to be buying an oat milk latte as serving one.
The fact that you’re sitting in the cold and avoiding the wet doesn’t really matter, you’re with friends having fun, eating and drinking interesting, nice (most of the time), things.
You can either roll your eyes at this kind of place, tutting to yourself about the costly price for a cup of obscure tea, or you can lose the cynicism and enjoy it.
Hipsterism has become a focus for ridicule; with its careful and yet rough-around-the-edges, self-knowing design-style appropriated by big business and marketers keeping up with latest voguish fashion trends and an excuse to come up with ways to charge more for stuff.
As its trends become mainstream, it’s easy to attack: the manicured facial hair, the tattoos, the pop-up craft beer bars.
Perhaps as hipsterism becomes orthodox, the authenticity of this strand of creative culture is being lost, a little.
But the hipster has never been a self-designated label.
It is a culture celebrated at the same time as it’s ridiculed.
They are seen as saviours of postBrexit Britain – Culture Minister Matthew Hancock said hipsters are capitalists and are key to the UK paying its way after we leave the EU.
Others have hoped, publicly, that economic annihilation after Brexit will be the levelling the economy needs – gleefully pointing to hipsters as people the country will gladly see the back of when Armageddon befalls us.
One Brexit blogger (someone called Peter North) wrote: “I expect to see a cultural revolution where young people actually start doing surprising and reckless things again rather than becoming tedious hipsters drinking energy drinks in popup cereal bar book shops or whatever it is they do these days.
“We’ll be back to the days when students had to be frugal and from their resourcefulness manage to produce interesting things and events.”
But then, you could think a different way.
There was a disused yard near my home which wasn’t earning anyone any money, but has now been turned into somewhere generating jobs and incomes for local people, selling lovingly made local beer, hosting farmers’ markets and street food events and giving people somewhere to go on wet Saturday afternoons.
Little patches of disused industrial land, not fit for much else, have been thriftily repurposed across the country – into breweries, arts and creative centres, egalitarian restaurants. All sorts of things you might never have imagined you’d needed or wanted before.
You could call it gentrification, but that’s doing it a disservice. And we have those people we call hipsters to thank.
Forget the cliches, ignore the sniping; shake off the shackles of scepticism – and leave the hipsters alone.
They’re just young people looking for nice things and enjoying themselves.
Where’s the harm in that?