I met a real life heroin addict

William S. Burroughs, the only person in the history of the world to be both a hipster and a heroin user.

Instead of going to draw-ling (Karen's pronunciation) class at the Fleisher Museum last night, we went to Dive bar and drank. Very irresp0nsible, though we had the best intentions of learning shading techniques earlier in the day and parked in the correct parking lot and everything. But we were running late and so, rather than disrupt the scene, we (very considerately) found our way to Dive and the company of the five other patrons, the bartender (who had her hair done up like Princess Leia), and the bartender's girlfriend who was very chatty and friendly. Dive bar is basically one long bar with stools, but it's frequented by dirty li'l Philly hipsters with thousands of piercings, even more tattoos, and angled bangs that fall in their disenchanted eyes. Karen sat next to a guy who met the hipster criteria except he broke several of the rules of hipsterdom and was disqualified almost right away.

1. He had a blue tattoo in the center of his forehead. Hipsters generally have some type of job/art school gig and while they will get their chests, arms, backs, knees, biceps, shoulder blades, and ankles tattoed, they will not cross over the line into "unemployable due to facial tattooing. "

2. He told us right away that he was sexually abused by his grandfather (this wasn't c0mpletely out of context; I mean, aside from the fact that we'd known him for 2 minutes. The bartender was reading Bastard Out of Carolina and he overheard us talking about how the narrator, Bone, is molested by her mom's girlfriend. On an unrelated note: the bartender only had four pages left in the book and she didn't immediately finish it. I couldn't understand that). Okay, so hipsters are allowed to have unhappy childhoods, but they never talk about them. They create self-portraits out of wax and their neighbors trash, but they don't tell the stories. They don't talk much at all really. They're too busy observing the scene.

3. He was drinking Coke, not PBR or Bud Light or anything ironic.

4. He explained that he doesn't shoot up until 2 PM every day. Hipsters swallow X and do cocaine occassionally and drink too much all the time and maybe, maybe have tried a line of heroin but they do not "do" track marks.

5. He contributed to the list I made up and passed around: "Top 10 Things I Love that Prevent Me From Killing Myself in the Morning" (though he crossed off the word morning and wrote afternoon instead because he sleeps in). I handed the list to the guy next to me, who was definitely a hipster (had the Beatles/Brit pop look going). He said nothing. He wrote "The number 7" (cleverly next to #7 on the list!) and slid the sheet back to me. Hipsters don't try to make friends in bars. They have plenty of friends, most of whom they don't even like that much. Above all, they don't do anything silly/stupid on purpose. Silly requires effort and carries the danger of being embarrassed. Hipsters don't do embarrassed.

I don't know what happened to David the heroin addict because he disappeared while I was in the bathroom. He took the list with him.

Comments

michiban said…
ha, awesome. your man/roommate/my coworker gave me your link and i'm glad he did. you've definitely got a keen sense for hipsters, blogs, and whatever life throws at you.
xomox

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