Hipster Hall of Fame nominations begin to roll in

• Dear Hipster:
• Would you put Eliot Smith into the Historical Hipster Hall of Fame? I’m pretty sure I’ve never met a hipster who doesn’t profess great admiration for Either/Or.
• — Beth

• Hey Hipster:
• How about considering Walt Disney as a historical Hipster? He was way ahead of his time in the worlds of entertainment and animation, plus I am pretty sure he had a mustache.
• — Dennis

• Dear Hipster:
• I have the perfect person to nominate for your hipster hall o’ fame. I’ll tell you now, so the suspense isn’t too much for you to handle. It’s (drum roll please) none other than tennis legend John McEnroe. I know, It sounds crazy at first, but think about how he was into tennis when tennis wasn’t cool! Plus, tennis fashion from the ’70s and ’80s reminds me of ironic hipster style from the early 2010s. What do you think?
• — Charlie, a tennis fan from North Park

• Dear Hipster:
• I would like to nominate myself for the hall of fame. You have probably never heard of me before, but that’s cool. I’m pretty rad, and I used to brew my own beer back in the ’90s.
• — Aaron, Golden Hill

Much as I and the executive hipster committee appreciate these thoughtful suggestions, none of the above-mentioned candidates warrant inclusion in the hipster hall of fame. One of them isn’t yet a part of history, at least not in the strictest sense. Plus, every name listed belongs to an insufficiently obscure person. If I don’t have to at least Google the nominee in order to refresh my memory, he or she is way too mainstream.

Still, each nomination has merit. Except perhaps for the guy who nominated himself. That’s what we call “cheek,” of which I approve, but not enough to swing wide the doors of hipster fame.

Elliott (two L’s and two T’s there) Smith made a lot of music that a lot of people who grew up to be contemporary hipsters listened to, but the fact that he enjoyed a more or less favorable critical reception during his life is not very hipster. Stabbing oneself is also not hipster. It’s something, for sure, but that something isn’t hipster. I don’t know what it is.

Disney… I just don’t think that anyone can be a tycoon of anything and a hipster at the same time. Maybe, just maybe, if one were a tycoon of an industry that nobody has ever heard of before. Alternatively, if someone were able to have been a legitimate tycoon, yet also have maintained a degree of underground obscurity, that might warrant historical hipster preservation status. As for Disney’s mustache, I’d call it “refined,” perhaps I’d even go so far as to say “dapper”; it was neither the bristly whiskers of supreme manliness, nor the curly badge of ironic knowingness befitting a modern hipster.

The McEnroe suggestion intrigues me the most, and the committee on historical hipsterism only narrowly voted him down. Despite the fact that for a brief period in the early 2010s it seemed like hipster kids all over town dressed like 1970s tennis players in headbands and short shorts, nobody can say that John McEnroe would have been anything other than mainstream in his day, at least fashionwise.