Ripe for hipsterfication?

Dear Hipster:

What are the five most hipster things that have ever happened?

— Derek

[It was at that moment Stevens realized he could not joke his way out of this one, or cleverly elide the truth via some snarky aside meant to detract the questioner from the absence of a substantive answer. No, he had to give serious consideration to this inquiry.]

I don’t think I can answer this all in one go; but I’ll make you a deal.

[He stalled for time.]

I’ll provide one example per week, starting from the fifth-most, and ending on the most-most hipster thing of all time. I need time, because it’s important that I get these answers unimpeachably correct.

[It wasn’t. As with everything, he would be pulling answers out of thin air, and passing them off as fact. However, because nobody knew this, Stevens was pretty sure he would get away with it.]

So, the Fifth Most Hipster Thing Ever is... The Hindu Love Gods.

Take the band R.E.M., replace Michael Stipe with Warren Zevon, record a single album of cover songs that were never meant to be released in the first place, make sure one of those is a cover of the best Prince song, enter Hipster Heaven. Try as I might, I can’t think of a single music project that made less sense than this — and I include the Sgt. Peppers movie, Sisqo’s thong song, and the Pussycat Dolls in that — yet it was actually pretty good. If that wasn’t enough, the one album managed to sneak onto the Billboard 200, but close enough to the bottom that it was only ironically popular.

Omg. So hipster. Can’t breathe.

Hipster:

North Park and South Park have gone mainstream. Do you predict a mass hipstergration (hipster migration) out of these places? If so, what ‘hood is ripe for a Hipsterfication?

— F. Cotton, San Pasqual Valley

One might speculate on any neighborhood with reasonable rents and available housing to become the next hipster locus du jour. That is, after all, the popular narrative. But recent history proves otherwise.

For example, I have a friend who lives in Logan Heights, and I remember telling him, like, five years ago, how the neighborhood would soon blow up and there would be hipsters moving in on his otherwise peaceful street, because the rents were kind of low and hipsters were finding it harder and harder to live in the usual neighborhoods on their barista salaries.

“They’ve been saying that for years,” my friend said, “and it hasn’t happened yet.”

Ditto for another friend who bought a house on Fifty Somethingth Street. She has been waiting for an alt-ramen noodle bar to open up next door for years now.

The next hipster haven will be somewhere nobody expects. Maybe Encinitas. Can you not imagine all the hipsters caring deeply whether they live east or west of the five? Imagine the hipsters on the right (left?) side of the freeway not-so-silently judging the hipsters on the wrong (right?) side of the freeway; sort of how real life Encinitas people do, but with detached irony. It would start ironically, but the next thing you know all the hipsters are sporting yoga pants and board shorts, and complaining about “non-locals” taking up all the brunch parking. The future is now!