The next über-hip locus will be in the South or the North

Dear Hipster:

I’ve been enjoying the hipster town comparisons to San Diego. Now I’m curious: if you didn’t live here, what hipsterville would you call home? Please don’t answer Austin, Brooklyn, or Portland.

— G. Galad

I will answer neither Austin nor Brooklyn nor Portland, because they are saturated with lesser hipsters and, unless offered a leadership position in the local hipster government, I would need to go somewhere with more of a hipster vacuum. Nature abhors a hipster vacuum, and whenever one occurs, hipsters rush in from far and wide to equalize the hipster pressure differential. Of course, because the average hipster carries an ironic momentum equal to the weight of his vintage vinyl collection (usually substantial) multiplied by the force of his detachment from contemporary consumer culture (usually greater than 14 megahips per flannel), Johnny Come Latelys to the hipster picnic can’t stop themselves before tumbling into the teeming hipster metropolis, already one-hipster-too-many for comfort. This creates a hipster glut, which sets up the next spillover into whatever hipster void should next open.

Predicting the arrival of the new scene is among the most valuable skills a hipster can possess; tantamount to being the first hillbilly to find oil in Texas or, if you’re feeling supercynical, the first vulture to spot the wildebeest carcass poaching on the open plains. Either way, it’s wide-open opportunity for the enterprising hipster who happens to be the first cool kid around.

But, as Mom, Dad, and most of my friends past and present always used to (and still) say, “DJ, enough with the obscure trivia. Answer the damn question!”

With a choice of anywhere in the U.S., it would be a toss-up between Fairbanks, Alaska, and Nashville, Tennessee.

I know, I know. That sounds super random, but it’s the result of extensive hipster studies, not mere conjecture. I strongly suspect the next über-hip locus will be in the South or the North. Hipsters, craving a more authentic hipster experience, will gravitate toward the woodsy, lumberjackish lifestyle of the Arctic Circle. In the alternative, they may seek to dabble in the carnivorous, barbecue belt zeitgeist; a more genteel version of which so many urban hipsters have adapted to coastal city life. In either case, it would be a kind of Saturn Return for the contemporary hipster, an inevitable evolution to the next form.