Every now and then I meet new people. And sometimes, I'll meet someone I consider this person to be like-minded. Perhaps it's politically or socially, but more often than not it comes down to the other person's tastes in music, books, or movies. It's a connection based almost purely on how cool we think each other might just be.
When you're in on some artistic secret, a band nobody else really knows yet but you wish a few more people did (but not too many people), and then you meet someone who's also in on it you're happy. It gives the two of you common ground, a jumping off point into hopeful continued commonalities, maybe even into discovering something new. This is how it works.
So I'll be at a party or somesuch and I'll be talking to a person who I deem of equal coolness, and who deems me of the same, and the conversation will eventually turn, as it always does with New Yorkers, to where we each live. It generally goes something like this:
Me: "So where do you live?"
Them: "Williamsburg. How about you?" (Incidentally, insert any number of supposed hipster neighborhoods in here, and it works the same.)
Me: "Upper East Side."
Bam. Conversation's over, just like that.
Suddenly I go from a kindred spirit, someone who likes and hates most of the same things, to some guy who clearly is just trying to co-opt their indie mentality in order to seem cool. A poser, if you will.
And so I ask you, what the hell is wrong with where I live?
I'm the first guy to admit that the Upper East Side isn't exactly a hotbed for the indie scene. My neighbors don't posess all that much street cred. But just because I live amongst the over-privileged older and very-recently-ex-fraternitied/sororitied younger, does that suddenly make me one of them? One of the JT-listening, Us-reading automatons who I'll freely admit infest this place?
Look, I know what this area is. And in truth, I don't even know what my overarching point here is meant to be. Maybe I'm just pleading with the hipster masses to not write me off straight-away. Maybe I'm trying to help myself and those huddled few like me who live up here, assumed as a member of the uptownocracy (I just made that word up, and I kind of like it) based purely by our heinous zip codes. Or perhaps I just feel like bitching. I think I'll go with a little from all three.
Am I accusing the downtown hipsters of being judgmental? Well, yeah, I guess I am. I think it's a prime quality of being a hipster. You're always on the hunt to identify the few who are like you, and to scoff at those masses who aren't. And so when my supposed made-up exterior of guy-in-the-know is revealed to be just another damned UES'er in their eyes, the handshake turns into a scowl. But, I'm just as judgmental. My friends can tell you that apart from muttering "fucking tourists," my next most common group to curse about are "those fucking downtown hipsters." I like to think I do it because I'm vengeful towards their contempuousness, but I wonder sometimes if I don't do it because I'm simply jealous that they live in a 'cooler' neighborhood than me. It kills me to think that, but they've managed to make me completely subconscious about my own home.
I write this, I realize, because I have a massive inferiority complex about my apartment. I'm so concerned that I'm going to be crumpled up and thrown away like a fast food wrapper (not like a McDonald's wrapper though, because hipsters don't do McDonald's) that I find myself constantly on the defensive, and becoming immediately deprecating when talking about my home. "What? Oh, yeah, Upper East, I-know-it's-fucking-lame, but, you know." How sick is that?
I need to get over my bullshit about where I live. Or, I guess I could always move, which would be the more expensive and greater physical effort of a choice, but incredibly simpler from a psychological point of view. I suspect I'll go with neither option. I'll likely stay up here, being convenient to work and enjoying my relatively reasonable rent, and continue to belittle this neighborhood that in truth has been quite good to me. It feels unfair, and it feels like I'm betraying my pizza place, my local pub, my dry cleaner, and so on. But this is just one more example of what this city can do to you. It's not judt about who you are and what you do, but it's also about where you live. I may have a double walking the streets of this city somewhere, a guy who has completely identical tastes to me in everything, but because he lives in the Lower East Side he's levels and levels above me on the social scales that I (hate to admit) that I sort of want to belong to, the ones where I know I'd fit in.
