"before we break out pitchforks and torches to oust the hipsters, let's realize that all folks who dress smartly and listen to good music whatever else aren't the same folks who look sort of similar but have big condos and drive bmws. those folks are typically cue takers whereas folks in the former category are trendsetters. i live in urban outfitters homebase and i can tell you that they pirate the arts and crafts of folks in the trendsetting category to be mass marketed to those in the cue taking group. does that make sense?"
JT Ramsay and others,
As someone who lives in Austin, the home base of Whole Foods, I can definitely say "Yes." There is a huge construction boom going on downtown, mostly condos in very tall cityline-changing buildings, where the price will be starting at $300,000 and will go up to US $2 million just for ONE of these units. That's insane. (NYT Piece: http://www.jbgoodwin.com/news_articles/Austin%20Construction%20Boom%20-%20Feb.%2014,%202007.pdf) There are also a lot of complaints about the horrible traffic, but in answer to that there's a saying, "Don't complain about the traffic in Austin if you have lived here less than ten years, because you're one of the people causing it." The place bleeds culture and entertainment, created in the past mostly by fringe-type artists, and on a shoestring. The advancing guard want to partake in that but live in the lap of prefab luxury, too.
Discussions about hip bankers who drive BMWs, etc, always reminds me of a passage in Daniel Bell's _The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism_ where he notes how corporations advertise kicking off your heels, going against the grain, being the black sheep, going your own way, etc., yet enforce strict conformity in the workplace. "The consequence of this contradiction, as I put it in these pages, is that a corporation finds its people being straight by day and swingers by night." (p. xxv)
"Hipster" could mean a lot of things. When I hear the term I tend to think of the sort of people that thought Napoleon Dynamite and I Heart Huckabees were eminently quote worthy, great cinema masterpieces, who like bands like Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade, wear girl pants, etc., etc. But the term could refer to lots of stuff - Silicon Valley bohos, etc. It's a garbage basket term, like "emo," or even unfortunately like "punk" now. (Apparently all kinds of things have become retroactively punk, like Elvis or The Beatles; there are stickers that say "Punk Princess" and the like.) "Hipster" means so many things it's basically meaningless: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_%28contemporary_subculture%29
-B.