It’s amazing to me the number of hipster kids that are out there. I see them everywhere. The other day I was getting coffee and two of them sitting next to each other — inside, with scarves wrapped around their necks, of course — reading the same book: CHOKE, by Chuck Palahniuk. (Aside: Why do people like that man’s books? I’ve read three of them, and they all were pretty bad. Admittedly, Choke was the best of all three, but it still wasn’t good.) Maybe they were reading it for a class, or, I dunno, a book club. Like “Thoughtful and Angst-y Monthly.” Heh.

Currently, there is a small cluster of them sitting nearby. All are wearing a mixture of tight jeans, band tees, dark-framed glasses, scarves, trendy shoes, long coats, and accessories that run the whole “eclectic” gamut. Two of the girls are hot, but that is irrelevant to my point, though awesome. Glasses on girls is the shit.

It seems to me that in the intervening years since I was in high school, the “goth kids” that were so prevalent have been replaced by the hipster movement — which for the sake of discussion, includes “emo” and “indy.” I know there are still goth kids out there; occasionally, I see them loafing at the Waffle House or being depressed and in my way while I attempt to make a purchase at the book store. But I see them around much less than I did when I was younger. Shit, used to be you couldn’t go to Perkins or Denny’s at 3:00 am without tripping over ten of the pasty, black-clad little bastards. Perhaps emo became the new goth somewhere along the way. That clique was only just burgenoing when I graduated eight years ago. Does that make the indy kids the new punk kids? I still see them around quite a bit, though, with their mohawks and their Chuck Taylors and their Boy Geniuses. Maybe I’m just too old and “out of touch with today’s youth.” Though if being in touch with today’s youth means I have to like the bilge that is Death Cab For Cutie and other such music, which I shall term “pussy rock,” then put me in the nursing home already.

Damn. Three more hipster kids just walked in. I think they belong with the group already congregating. Maybe they’re part of Project Mayhem (Project Gayhem? Anyone? Anyone?”). Certainly enough of them Except I doubt Tyler Durdan would have worn a scarf. Robert Paulson, maybe.

Of course, I’m making these judgments as I sit in a coffee shop, taking a break from the project I’m working on, writing in my blog, while I wear my New Balance and black-framed glasses. Listening to the JUNO soundtrack, which is full of folksy and quirky music and is awesome, I realize that I fit into many of the same parameters for hipster kids that I just laid out. But I’m not hipster. I’m not trendy enough, and I don’t have the enthusiasm any more to maintain any sort of image. I find too much of it now to be ridiculous, not cool. And I’m not in school anymore. Once you get a real job (which sucks, but which is besides the point), it seems you leave behind a lot of the “image” baggage you once carried in school.

Is there a category such as Post-Hipster? If so, put me in it.

JAB