But Call Me Betsy

Your friend and mine, Jenn Bing, sent me this pic yesterday, and I thought I would share it with you. I am mostly familiar with the 2006, woodsy hipster as I was dating someone like that at the time. Though he wasn't really a hipster. He tried to be. He listened to the right fringe music, drank PBRs ironically, had a tattoo (one), and I think he may have even considered smoking a pipe. Be at heart, he was too big of a nerd to be a hipster. Too high strung as well. I started reading The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J.Jacobs. Each chapter is him trying out different ways of being--what's it like to employ Radical Honesty with everyone, to have a naked picture of yourself appear in a national magazine, to live each day as a rationalist,etc. One of the things he mentioned in the rationalist chapter is this theory that applies to people always thinking that they're in the slowest line at the grocery store. And that applies to how our brains tend to remember unpleasant experiences...

On the subway this morning, I was sitting by two 20+something hipster guys talking about their babies and babies-to-be. One said, "Dude, Mara like totally had the baby all natural. She was in labor for like 49 hours and then had the baby in our bathtub. It was radical. I put it on YouTube." Other guy,"No way! She is hardcore. I don't know if Jules will be able to handle that. She's all, 'Give me the epidural right now...'" Laughter, jangling of chain wallets. Can you still be in the scene and a dad? How does that work? Do you bring your baby to the Death Cab concerts in an organic, hemp baby sling? Get the baby a tattoo for its first birthday? Pierce its belly button? If you're interested, here is an article on what not to name your baby if you are a hipster. Liz, are you paying attention?

Last night, I went to this lecture about urban sustainability and landscape with Carrie and this other dude at some random warehouse in Fishtown. I had no expectations, except that I thought it might be interesting to learn a little more about saving the planet somehow. Unfortunately, the building we met in, though cool in an Andy Warhol aesthetic, didn't have any heat. And then secondly, the first person who lecture was very nervous and not at all a public speaker. He kept pausing....These really long....painful...pauses. The longest pause was 21 seconds. I counted. Carrie said later that she had to turn around to look back toward the projector at him because she thought he had narcolepsy and was possibly asleep on his biodegradable laptop. The only real sustainable thing I learned was that if I contorted my body, I could manage to keep from suffering from hypothermia, but just barely. It also occurred to me that I don't fit in with hippie hipsters (a particular brand of hipst...

That was the plan on Friday in meeting up with a bevy of girls at Mantra for happy hour. We liked it lots because the wine was only $5 and we got to sit outside to people-watch. Because Celia is such a good photographer, it ended up also being a night of photographs. Consider her the guest picture taker, except you will note that I ended up taking quite a few of her. First though, check out our adorable waitress, Brie. We left her almost a fifty percent tip and hope to see her again as she is our new girl crush. Here is Celia, demonstrating how not to pick up men. Hands-off. I can't remember why we were doing all these things with our hands. Here is my hand illustrating lovely fingernails with flecks of red polish. All the chairs outside were backless. I warned everyone that it was quite likely that I would start to fall backwards after a few glasses of wine. Celia noted that I would then reach for the table, but not be able to grasp the edge to save myself because of the chip. ...

Stumbled on this funny video called Hipster Olympics on You Tube. Worth a watch, especially if you've just been to a party in Fishtown the night before swarming with hipsters in all shapes and sizes. Well, no, really only in hipster sizes--thin men in tight girl jeans, thin girls with zig-zag bangs and see-through blouses with beads. Several headbands in sight, including one guy who wore a yellow athletic headband as though he had just stepped off the tennis court circa Wimbledon 1978. Talked for awhile to a tiny girl from India who looked as though she were channeling a Native American--black hair in two thick braids, a shiny shirt/dress, and yes, another headband, though this one was made out of scarves and feathers and things. Met another tall, skinny guy wearing a wristband from a show the night before. He was cute and fey and of indiscriminate sexual preference. I think I offended him by saying I thought this particular artist was exploitive (me parroting Lisa Marie). Actuall...

The truth is, I haven't yet decided who I'm voting for tomorrow. Well, obviously not John McCain, but I'm on the fence about H and O. My friend Ben has been trying to get me to send an email to the Hillary peeps saying she should drop out and though he can be persuasive in many, many ways (he's an attorney and so cannot stop arguing and saying things like, "Permission to redirect, your honor"), I have not caved. Philadelphia seems to love Obama ...there's a million and one of those blue and red drawings of him and not even one caricature of Hillary to be found in the whole city.Walked to Rittenhouse today to do some writing and was given a flyer by a random Democrat running for court jester who luckily didn't try to talk to me further, but I did get to see a few disgruntled teens with skateboards drinking huge cans of beer and attempting to catch pigeons with their bare hands. I'm ambivalent about both candidates. I want to vote for Hillary b/c I...

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 d...