Instead of dying, they just go to Live Wire

Dear Hipster:

What is the age cutoff for the hipster look? We all agree that it’s sad to see women hanging on to youth looks into their 30s and beyond. Long-haired rockers with receding hairlines and middle-aged pot bellies are equally sad. At what age do the skinny pants and old timey boots start looking like a younger man’s clothes? And if there is such a point, what does does that say about the hipster scene?

— Moses, Fletcher Hills

Some say there’s nothing worse than an aging hipster. The sight of any guy with an ironic mustache flecked with gray, middle-aged cankles straining against the traces of some much-loved Chucks, tattoos gone green and smudgy with the decay of years; it just puts people off.

But it’s unfair, because the aging hipster holds a kind of dignity.

He doesn’t put up with shit from bartenders. Younger hipsters either know who he is or they will know who he is once they get a clue. He was over it before you were into it. He liked the Dead Kennedys for real during the ’80s, spent the ’90s telling anyone who would listen that punk was dead, and found it funny hearing a 25-year-old sing “Kill the Poor” last week, so now, wouldn’t you know it, he’s got all of Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables playing on the jukebox and nobody in the bar has anything to say about it.

The way I see it, old hipsters never die, they just go to Live Wire. If you see someone wearing the costume but it doesn’t fit, don’t blame the jeans. It just means he lost his hipster soul somewhere along the way.