The Hip and the Hep

“How is Portsmouth””
“It’s so gross, everywhere you go there is nothing but Hipsters.”
“Hipsters have reached The Great White North?”
“Yeah…”

Jesus, the holy icon of religious rock-stars, what has happened to America? Where have we gone wrong? The obvious points in our deviation stand out in fashion fopas, Sharpie covered converse, and hand made culture clashing outfits. The spread of Hipsters into the nooks and crannies of our humble subculture has been all encompassing. We are in the new age, where the subculture has transformed into a inbred potpourri of pop culture.

No self respecting person in the scene will ever call themselves a Hipsters, there is no merit to status as a Hipster. They are an empty movement and our repercussion from the popularity of “Revenge of the Nerds”. Like the fall of the Punk movement, the popular have donned Member Only jackets and American Apparel V-neck tee shirts to infiltrate and distort. They have infested our numbers and Jeff Kanew, director of the Nerd films, should have to answer for his crimes against the subculture. Where once we had the advantage of our quirks, now our quirks are plastered on the front of tee shirts obscured by letterman jackets.

24 years after the antics of Lewis and Gilbert, our way has been paved for the ultimate climax of lame. The road to hell is paved with our unifying disinterest in the scene and we witness the scenesters suffer a mental breakdown from our absences. Left with no one to impress, their clothing is no longer fashionable and their morals are no longer sound. Hipsters are the product of our oversold, commercialized, youth market. The counter culture is like any idea, it has grown and mutated into a empty shell of it former self. The product of our brand label infused society is the mix matched breakdown of our youth. The soul becomes extinct, but one wonders if Hipster ever had a soul.

So where is the movement or was there ever a movement? To answer, one must understand the origin of Hipsters. Hipsters comes from the jive word hep, which means to be in the know. Hep then became hip as it’s usage became wide spread and gentrified, but as my jive talking teacher always told me “to be Hip is to be a body part, beautifully executed in the midsection of the female gender, to be Hep is to have that female body part pressed against you.”

The point of this is our counter culture, no matter the time, has always been an off shoot of the Beat generation, who were hep to the core. Hep is what you are when you know the score and hip is watching the game. A Hepster is part of the movement and a Hipster spouts bullet points. Hep is punk rock and hip is “the Exploited” patch on the back of a leather jacket. You get the picture.