Hipsters and artists should be a match made in heaven. Hipsters build their hyper-cultured lifestyle around the art scene, providing the artist with an eager audience that is sometimes large enough to launch an underground nobody into the mainstream spotlight. As symbiotic as that sounds, underlying these superficial benefits is a whole lot of tension, expressed best in the flood of irreverent, hipster-centric art we’ve seen. Now, we’re going to start keeping score. Who gets the last laugh with these pieces: hipsters, artists, culture in general, no one at all? Find out after the jump.
The New York Times has, it seems, finally admitted (if implicitly) their completely pussy-footed outsiderism when it comes to Brooklyn. This week, their popular 36 Hours travel feature, which has recently covered cities such as Santiago, Lisbon, Valencia, Santa Cruz, and Marrakesh, has turned its gaze on Brooklyn, the borough the NYT loves to awkwardly love. Though they did make some good (if obvious) choices for a hypothetical weekend across the river (Tom’s Restaurant, the Brooklyn Museum and the Botanical Garden) they also left out some serious (and also obvious) draws (the Brooklyn Flea, Roberta’s, the whole of Red Hook). But we know they had to make choices, and not everyone can hang around in Brooklyn forever. However, we imagine that certain parts of the article could be a little obnoxious to Brooklyn natives, as, true to NYT fashion, they kind of miss the mark when it comes to talking about their other half. Click through for the 6 most annoying parts of their 36 Hours in Brooklyn, and our indignant rebuttals.
Ever wonder what it was like to ride over the Brooklyn Bridge in the 19th century? Jason Kottke pointed us to this early Edison video, taken from the front of a B.M.T. train traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan in 1899. We’re not sure whether the shaky image has more to do with the camera or the vehicle, but one thing is clear: the simple crossing was a hell of a lot more exciting (and apparently scarier, too) a hundred years ago than it is now.
Lapham’s Quarterly recently posted a thought-provoking question on its Tumblr. (Yes, this highbrow journal does have a Tumblr.) “Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography,” wrote the critic John Berger. Now, Lapham’s has invited readers to reblog their post and add a personification of a city. We heartily endorse their project, but since all New Yorkers are hyper-local types, we thought we’d apply Berger’s maxim to the neighborhoods we know best. Some of our ideas are literal, others are more impressionistic, and they’re all absolutely subjective. Play along and personify your city, town, or neighborhood in the comments.
If you ever wore a felt-tip pen around your neck, wished the letter magnets on your refrigerator would rearrange themselves, or longed to bust the corner bodega for selling bogus videotapes, then surely you were a fan of PBS’s early ’90s series Ghostwriter. For those who missed out, Ghostwriter was an educational TV show about a group of multicultural middle school kids who solved mysteries with the aid of a friendly ghost (who had a penchant for words), set against the vaguely gritty backdrop of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. What wasn’t so obvious to us back then was the impressive array of celebrity cameos peppered throughout the series — such as a Samuel L. Jackson playing Ghostwriter Team member Jamal Jenkins’ father. Word! Check out the surprising array of stars featured in Ghostwriter episodes below.
FAILE is a renowned Brooklyn-based street artwork collective that travels the world creating buzz-worthy projects. Their most recent installation, a contemporary cathedral in ruins in Lisbon, Portugal, features ceramic tiles native to Portuguese architecture and explores the concept of freedom. Click through to view a few pictures of the project, as well as a short video of the artists in action.
In the past we’ve shown you dollar bills embellished with Lady Gaga’s image, Warhol’s $43.8 million masterpiece 200 One Dollar Bills, and some really stunning money mosaics out of Russia. Now Brooklyn-based tattoo artist Scott Campbell has created a series of lasercut wads of money in which he crafts tattoo-style images into the fibers of cash. His self-proclaimed blue collar aesthetic provides an interesting juxtaposition where counterculture signifiers like skulls and guns meet what could be considered the ultimate symbol of the establishment. Click through to view some of our favorites.
After sending the hype machine into overdrive and blowing up the iTunes charts, M.I.A.’s favorite Brooklyn duo finally releases its debut album in physical form today.
Former Poison the Well guitarist Derek Miller made a radical musical shift when joining forces as Sleigh Bells with vocalist Alexis Krauss — whose own teen-pop past belies the visceral sounds of the band. Finding the meeting point between melody, noise, and all-out enthusiasm, Treats plays like a rabble-rousing cross between the Go! Team, Crystal Castles, and Maya herself.
David Belt wants you to hurl beer bottles at friends and strangers, alike — and he wants you to be unashamed while you do it. He also prefers that you be sober, too.
From the man who brought you dumpster pools last summer, comes “Glassphemy!” Together with the development company he co-founded, Macro Sea, Belt has designed a 20-foot-by-30-foot container of tube steel and bulletproof glass, which sits in some undisclosed parking lot in Brooklyn. The idea is this: a group of people stand outside the protective glass at one end of the installation while another group chucks empty bottles of Budweiser, Heineken, and Miller High Life — hey, no beer snobs here — at the initial group from an elevated platform on the opposite end. Glass shatters, lights flash, and everyone is excited to be there.
The purpose behind all this cathartic mayhem? To make recycling cool.
Brooklyn residents are notorious for their collectively low Census return rate. According to the Brooklyn Eagle, only 52% of Brooklynites bothered filling out and dropping the form in the mail in 2000. But this year the borough outdid themselves — only 46% of residents returned the form by the April 1st deadline. Williamsburg’s notorious hipster population managed a 36% return rate. To be honest, we’re shocked that it’s above 20%.
Last night, Stephen Colbert tackled the topic during his Tip of the Hat/Wag of the Finger segment. We assumed that Colbert would wag his judgmental finger at the hipsters, but au contraire. Colbert said that he has a new-found respect for them because “as a demographic they are consistently not filling out Obama’s Census.” Peep the video after the jump and skip to 1:45 if you don’t want to sit through Colbert talking about the Forbes Fictional 15 and Richard Branson.
