SPARE ME WaPo, check out the title of this article about how Target is killing hipsterdom
The Target Of Their Ambivalence: Suburban-Retail Icon Seduces Hipsters Of Columbia Heights (link to article in full for hilarity)
This is how this P.O.S starts out:
For the hipsters, post-hipsters or quasi-hipsters who moved into Columbia Heights several years ago for the grit and the cheap rent and the proximity to the Wonderland Ballroom (the hipster, post-hipster or quasi-hipster bar that sponsors local music and nights like "Sundress Fest"), life can be divided into two discrete phases: Before Target. After Target.
The article goes on to profile roomates shopping: "a quasi hipster" wearing a "graphic tee and a shaggy black haircut, and the slim physique (city-soft) preferred by quasi-hipsters everywhere" and her roommate in a "vintage-y dress". GASP: they buy shit for their cat and bathroom compulsively!
According to the article, Target leads to the very lame process of ADULTIFICATION- hipsters getting older, uncool and then dying alone with their cats on their color coordinated sheets sets/bathroom floors.
"I'm 30," says Ana Marin, a bartender with a nose piercing and cool square glasses. On a Thursday evening, she shops at Target. "I [freaking] want matching sheets. The fact that Target came at the same time that I stopped wanting to use a T-shirt as a pillowcase . . ."
Target is also a gateway drug to other LAME ADULT things like going to artery clogging chain restaurants instead of mowing on chili dogs at Wonderland.
"The other day Bob went to Ruby Tuesday's." Bob Arkedis's friends, clustered around an outdoor table at the Wonderland for a recent happy hour, take great delight in ratting him out. But bob quickly adds that "It was kind of a joke,"
Claibourne Reppert, a tattooed hairstylist who lives on Euclid, has recently begun spending her Mondays off at Ruby Tuesday, which is across from the Target complex. "I don't know how we ended up there" the first time, she says. But once they did, "We all thought, 'Oh, that's kind of ironic and stupid.' " So they all stayed, and ordered ironic and stupid sangria and appetizers. Then they came back the next week and did it again.
I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN SO I JUST WANT TO SAY ONE THING: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE?
Read our previous discussion of Hipster Target
Previously in I Heart DC:
- 2/2: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use:
- 2/1: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use:
- 1/31: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use
- 1/30: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use
- 1/30: Capital City Diner: Up All Night
- 1/27: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use
- 1/26: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use
- 1/25: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use
- 1/24: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use
- 1/24: PHOTOS: Washington Ballet's Mad Hatter Dance Party
God loves a cheerful giver.
I just post-quasi-threw up in my mouth.
going to target right now, actually
This shit is so bad.
First off, you don't repeat your lead IN THE SAME FIRST SENTENCE [For the hipsters, post-hipsters or quasi-hipsters who moved into Columbia Heights several years ago for the grit and the cheap rent and the proximity to the Wonderland Ballroom (the hipster, post-hipster or quasi-hipster bar that sponsors local music)]. Also, you're just going to make-up labels and assign judgement to them without laying out an argument? Rude.
Second, this writer needs to get her facts straight: "The Wonderland Ballroom (the hipster, post-hipster or quasi-hipster bar that sponsors local music and nights like “Sundress Fest”)." The Sundress Party is a daytime cook-out, not a bar night. This is basic reporting that has been overlooked.
Are all the 'Washington Post' editors already down in Bethany Beach for the August break? Is there no one in the news room to check this horrendous "reporting"?
Libby - You've made it clear you hate the article, but why? Just because it's unflattering to young white people living in Columbia Heights? What do you think it gets wrong, and what's the truth about that?
Hates all white people in Columbia Heights. Parkview is where it's at.
Svet - you should call me. I got fired. I'm at home, let's do some Target popcorn.
"Perhaps wanting a coordinating bathmat/shower-curtain combo is a fact of life, particularly if you're female."
Dogberry,
I'm sure Libby hates it for the shitty generalizations and assignment of opinion in a piece that masquerades as straight-up reporting. Also, the piece doesn't assign race or socio-economic class to the individuals profiled. That is your own interpretation, Rorschach.
But, I'll let Libby speak for herself.
we clearly need a Kitty City at our house. THANK GOD FOR TARGET.
Oh...and this is a SECOND Michael that just left that last comment. Perhaps I should have put an initial after it. Sorry.
Dogberry Michael is not the cool Michael, just sayin'
I mean who replies with the name Michael in a thread where there is already a Michael posting? Gay.
The problem with this essay is not so much the content but the way in which is presented.
The author wrongly assumes that hipsters make up the majority of CoHi residents and that it is only hispters affected by the arrival of big-box shopping and chain stores. Nothing could be further from the truth. The author is trying to make waves by writing about something she knows nothing about. Last I checked, very few people moved to Columbia Heights for "the grit" or "the proximity to the Wonderland Ballroom." People moved there because it was CHEAP. IT WAS CHEAP. IT WAS CHEAP. IT WAS CHEAP. IT WAS CHEAP. Wonderland was pretty tight 2 or 3 years ago, but not enough for people to make major real estate decisions around it.
UGH. This is the sort of article that triggers the kind of b.s. watercooler talk that makes me grind my teeth. "Hey, I read an article about hipsters in the Post. What do you think of it? Are you a hipster."
The fact that Ms Hesse uses the term "hipster" 6 times in the first paragraph shows that she's trying to drum up some sort of bullshit sensationalism around the term. This is garbage. Poorly written, difficult to follow and reeking of sloppiness. This is not journalism, this is total trash.
PS - Adbusters did a pretty hysterical piece on hipsters representing the dead end of Western culture and innovation. Who knew that wearing tight jeans and drinking crap beer would send hundreds of years of innovation down the toilet.
Damn right sucka. Now go buy me some Target popcorn.
is this really news?
shit like this is why i stopped reading the washington post YEARS ago. it's lame. it's stupid. it's full of crappy holier-than-thou articles like this where they simultaneously put EVERYONE down. now i only read the financial times, and can feel superior to the idiot losers who work at Wash Post who have time to write about stuff like this.
target is the shit. but i do hate how that complex looks.
Actually, I am gay. So that is apt.
I do think it's funny that the shitty Vietnamese place on Park in the dead zone between Columbia Heights and Mt. Pleasant (and which has been there for at least 10 years and never had no whiteys inside it and was just a hang out for Vietnamese gangstas) has rebranded itself as a destination for the upwardly mobile.
Same food, whitey approved atmosphere = money making machine.
I love this article purely for the reaction it is getting here.
What do you find in life to be so happy about other Michael?
I only read tea leaves and BYT.
I did buy a WaPo (75 cents?) today but just so I could see what that non-speaking pantomime cartoon character was doing. Oh and to see what else Steven Pastis ripped off about my life and attributed to Rat.
Um...Target, naturally. Makes anyone gay. Isaac Mizrahi was a linebacker before joining their label. Didn't you know that?
a mild gotcha piece on the article's author - http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2009/04/06/full-disclosure-fail-wapo-writer-gushes-glories-guerrilla-queer-bar
she generally writes cynical cornballery > http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/monica+hesse/
Where is Jason to tell us we need to move this thread to the shitshow? I bet he's watching Battlestar Galactica.
yeah yeah, anything the washington post writes comes off pretty corny. but the phenomenon they're investigating is very real, and i don't really see why this article sucks sooooooo much.
i live about a block away from said target. i'm a DJ for a living (such a columbia heights HIPSTER job lololololz) and all things being equal, i'd like to support local business and shop for things in a pleasing, well-decorated space. however, target has lots of awesome cheap stuff, so i go there all the time. this makes me cringe a little bit, laugh a little bit, and give a little bit of my love to you.
I live like 4 blocks from it and have been in there exactly twice. Once to buy a DVD and once to browse the hardware section (which is completely gay, no real hardware at all) so I bet you have a point. I was in there long enough to start to want to linger in the household goods section but then I was able to get out.
Isn't this hitting a little too late? Columbia Heights isn't cheap anymore (unless you get a clist room in a group house thats been passed down for a decade), so prefix-hipsters aren't even moving there as much now. Petworth east of Georgia, Bloomingdale and Brookland are where the cheap seats are (fewer white people = cheaper rent).
Oh and if you haven't seen the paper version of the article yet, DO IT. They used a stock iphoto picture of what I guess is a hipster, except for the tribal tattoo they actually superimposed it on her arm.
I am not even exaggerating or lying or mistruthing at all.
Wait I'm confused. I ate at a T.G.I. Friday a few months ago while on a trip. I ordered the ironic and stupid turkey burger with avacado. How ironic?
I don't understand irony.
In 20 years tribal tattoos and listening to Limp Bizkit will be the newest in hipster irony. I'm not joking.
I'll give it 5
Patrick - given that people are back into the most horrible fashion period in history outside of Adam's fig leaf (hint: the 80s) I wouldn't disagree.
And maybe JNCO jeans.
@ Svetlana and Michael (used to own real JAMS)
Last time I saw Exactly do a DJ set, they were blasting "Break Stuff." Perhaps the numetal revival is coming sooner than I predicted in my previous comment.
It sure seems like many posters here misconstrued the article. What a fuss about nothing.
Isaac Mizrahi was actually very successful in the fashion world and very gay looooong before his Target collab came to be. He really just needed a job.
I think one of the worst parts of this article is her use of the term "edgy." Columbia Heights is still "edgy." She uses the word "edgy" to skate around the very prevalent crime and racial implications of the neighborhood. The author acts as though hipsters are the only residents of Columbia Heights and like this is the apocalypse. But what does this mean for the majority of the other residents of Columbia Heights? Does she even care?
Fuck the hipsters, I'd hope there were some more important things to write about these days...
i really did used to wear JAMS and combined that with colored wife beaters that matched and colored Converse. Then we'd walk around Helen, GA with a boom box listening to that band with the big beards...uh, shit, umm...ZZTOP and annoyinig tourists and doing tricks on my GT DYNO TEAM MODEL BMX.
If I saw me today I'd punch me in the face.
i love target. it's cheap and has basic clothing items that i can afford and wear all the time.
what exactly is the definition of a hipster (i am not one) that this target is ruining?
T.G.I. Friday's Given One Last Shot
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39378
I didn't even read the article. I was laughing too much at the drawn in fake tattoo.
However this thread needs to be captured for some movie script by that guy that was mentioned (more cross coverage).
And people wonder why I moved from Columbia Heights to NE....
I love TGI Friday's. Taste the rainbow. Go on, taste it:
http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/food/byt-me-suburban-style/
i could go for some ruby tuesdays' salad bar right about now, just sayin...
You guys are stupid.
Especially you all who are getting defensive.
Bad jounalism is nothing new.
Although your blubbering is quite entertaining I could do without.
Damn I miss my GT pro performer.
Steve. Easy then: www.google.com enter "blubbering I can't do without" though maybe "blathering I can't do without" would get you some more intellectual results.
Ok my manic episode is subsiding. I'm off to read "A Mass for the Dead" by William Gibson. Not to be confused with any of the Requiem Masses by the likes of Joe Green or Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart.
also: am i the only one who thinks target is actually overpriced most of the time? sheets, for example. go to a bloomingdale's white sale, get better sheets for the same price.
lol. i just had to post that. i really hate target; it gives me a headache... those fluorescent lights, ugh.
What does one have to do to qualify as a hipster in DC? Not go to church on Sunday?
dablyputs - comment on BYT.
As someone who lives across the street from the aforementioned Target, I have to say this article is insulting on so many levels, but not the audience it intends to insult. CoHi is a multi cultural community in which a small fragment of hipsters exist. The bulk of CoHi consists of families who have been there for generations, who are not even in the same econ level as the hipsters it pokes fun at. It's not some suburban wonder land- we had a double shooting on that block at 3PM in the day last month, and a regular string of crime, violence and gang activity in the area. The Target is full of economically challenged families who walk or take the metro and wheel back their bargains in small collapsible carts to their apartments, not motor off in an SUV back to their ranch with a pool. The Ruby Tuesday is usually devoid of all hipsters entirely. What this article lacks in substance, investigative merit, and logic, it fully makes up for in insulting stereotypes and poor writing.
It's just stupid.
DC doesn't have any hipsters... only nerdsters.
Three Michaels? We should totally compare notes.
Referring to Columbia Heights as CoHi is just as dumb and lazy as this article.
I don't know which is funnier. The analogy of hipsters and slowly boiled frogs *or* people arguing about the article, what a hipster is, and if edgy is code word for non-white people.
If I want to get mugged at Target, I'll just go to the one at Beltway Plaza. Now there is a true DC experience. Funny how all the true DC experiences aren't even in DC these days.
Edgy = Youts.
edgy hipster = bliipster?
Time to break out the hipster bingo cards!
http://www.catbirdseat.org/catbirdseat/bingo.html
Don't get your hemp panties in a bunch. Life is cyclical, as is gentrification. Tattoos and piercings are no longer the harbinger of hipsters; that was 20 years ago. Don't be reactive- judge on pure value to you, not by what someone else values. Matching sheets? Who cares? You can still be 'you' at Target and Ruby Tuesday, and anyone who claims otherwise is simply posturing for ego's sake.
To Ms. Hesse:
1. You're a hack
2. What the fuck is a post-hipster? Are you some PoMo cultural deconstructionist that lords neoglisms over our heads without proposing any semblance of an explanation.
To up-in-arms BYTers:
1. In a way, I find it kinda disappointing that there's a mass of people upset over an attack on 'hipsters,' who, imo, embody less than stellar qualities. I'm speaking mostly about condescending tastes in the arts and entertainment, and the importance of a nonchalant-but-obviously-trying-really-hard aesthetic sartorial appeal. To want to ascribe yourself to that sort of generalized identity is kinda silly to me. You may disagree with that philosophy in general, but let's face it, that's the stereotypical stigma, right?
To the "LOL at the Uproar" crowd:
1. This is a fucking internet forum and people are bored at work. It's excellent fodder for debate. Fuck off.
To me, because if I'm going to moralize on everyone, I might as well attack myself:
I'm from Alabama
hey Logan - why do all the trees in Georgia lean west?
Because Alabama sucks.
first world problems. OH NOES!!! an area that was never hip being deemed unhip!!! why would you live in dc if you wanted to be hip?
I bought a birthday card for my mother at target. i'm not a hipster. hipsters don't have mothers.
"Alabama: At least We're Not Mississippi"
Damnit. I don't have a Momz and I posted on BYT.
Oops just came down hard. No more comments.
I have like a million things to say about this that I need to sort out in my head. I just stumbled into the article while waiting in line at the corner store and I actually spit soda all over the counter when I saw it.
The short version is that this fits into yet another of the WaPo's constant attempts through the style section to be snarky about youth in the "haha, see everyone turns out to be a sell-out in the end" sense. Also, it's pretty fucked up of them to use gentrification as a foil in the article (to trip up all our ironic posturing or whatever dumb way they see youth our age) and then actually skip any discussion of race or of the process by which that Mall got built or shit, interview anyone who is from the neighborhood who uses the target who isn't what the WaPo qualifies as a hipster. Stupid, stupid, stupid shit.
DCist has BYT's number:
http://dcist.com/2009/08/the_washington_post_on_hipsters_and.php
This article reeks of ironic racism.
I don't give a fuck about target, but that best buy has saved my hipster/karaoke/video/art game at least twice in recent memory, also i've included ruby tuesday in bar crawls and its salad bar is the shit, though we ended up at the raven as usual... Also PARKVIEW is the shit.
KARAOKE TONIGHT AND THIS SATURDAY. get into it.
Is it more or less ironic to shop at marshalls?
Remember when there was the upscale Target? Dayton's. Am I the only person that saw those before they disappeared?
"This is how this P.O.S starts out:"
LIBBY YOU ARE SO ON TODAY
Just spoke with someone who got interviewed for this article. The author completely misled her about what the piece was about and removed her long talk about gentrification and chain stores and urban planning and how there are better alternatives to revitalizing things than this. The word hipster was used by neither party in the interview.
Absolute hack writer.
I blame GW for everything. This website, that article, these comments, Libby.
i dominated the olive garden last weekend. i must have gained 6 pounds. that is all.
I haven't seen the entire DC blogosphere united in its opinion (on ANYTHING) in some time. But pretty much everyone seems to know that this WaPo article is a steaming pile of cat turds. Thank you, Libby.
The only people that think the article is a steaming pile of cat turds also happen to live in Columbia Heights.
Also, the amount of attention this article is generating is further proof of the Streisand effect.
Scratch that last one. I'm thinking of something else....it'll come to me. Just hang on.
I wrote this as a letter to the editor to Wapo but since it'll never get published, here it goes:
I suspect mine won’t be the only letter voicing its disappointment in Monica Hesse’s August 4th’ article “The Target of their Ambivalence.” However, I find a delicious irony in a piece of such dubious journalistic merit went to print a mere day after Ian Shapira’s lament of his misappropriated story on Gawker (“How Gawker Ripped Off My Newspaper Article”). “Journalism at a major newspaper is different from what's usually required in the wild and riffy world of the Internet,” said Shapira. It’s a familiar trope that continuously gets dolled out by newspaper writers who, under considerable financial duress, look to draw a line in the sand between the laborious work required and high standards enforced by print editors and the laissez faire, run anything mentality of their online counterparts. While this argument is not the simplistic dichotomy it’s often presented as, it stems from the legitimate concern against the watering down of journalistic rigor in the digital age. Yet, then what should be made of Hesse’s article, a blog-like diatribe so devoid of actual facts that it stated “hipsters were seeking bragging rights” by moving to “edgy” neighborhoods for its crime and bodegas. That is a bold assertion, one that is given no supporting resources or quotes from the author to ground it as an actual phenomenon. It should be noted that as a freelance writer for DC publications both web-based and print, I have been instructed countless times against using the term hipster since its catchall usage has made it ineffective as a descriptor, never mind whatever qualifies as a “post” or “quasi-hipster.” The article eventually arrives at its conclusion, which as far as I can tell, discusses the unique phenomena of local residents shopping at Target because it’s convenient. If Shapira is as concerned about the demise of original news reporting as he claims, my suggestion would be that he look inside of his organization before he blames the demise of the industry on the encroaching web-based menace.
Looks like the article struck a nerve and was then written in true hipster-style (i.e., no rational defense of what irks you, merely a whiny I HATE IT!).
Hipsters don't deserve to have a word that defines them. They offer nothing new. Their entire existence is a pretentious throwback. Anything out there to fucking douse the corrosive chemical flame of so-called "hipsterdom" I like. My generation is the most boring one in centuries. In fact, I liked this article. (and I don't feel the slightest shame shopping at Target)
matt - Read Strunk & White.
Old people read the Post. I don't blame the Post for writing to their audience. This is exactly the kind of article that my parents would read and want to discuss with me on the phone for 20 minutes. It's a perfect segue into asking questions like "Do you Twitter? Margret's daughter Twitters. And Oprah too!" and "You don't drink Sparks, do you honey? I heard on NPR that a young man had a heart attack from drinking a Sparks! I don't want you to have a heart attack honey."
Look, I care nothing what the WaPo says. If you do, you’re a tool.
Learn French instead. Personal enrichment, yes, yes.
let me start by saying "several years ago," as the author states, wonderland ballroom didn't exist. try four years ago. several years ago wonderland was a drag bar called knob hill (now would be the time to get in a good laugh) that cranked the music so loud, my bedroom windows rattled 'til 3:00am. then there were the crackheads that lingered in and out of the "houses" on either side of me. i say "houses" because they were really boarded up shells that shielded the junkies from the sun during the daytime and the cops at night. partner all of that with the prostitutes that walked up and down 11th street and THEN you will have the cheap rent, edgy, pre-gentrified oasis the author sought to portray. there wasn't a hipster within 5 miles of columbia heights then. by the time wonderland moved into the neighborhood, rents had already practically doubled. they were still affordable, yes, but not as cheap as the writer would have you believe.
as for that target, has anyone sought to poll the longtime residents of columbia heights (read: african-american) as to whether or not they think it's a good idea? i don't think so. i only see comments from newly transplanted, young, semi-professional whites who say it's destroying the neighborhood (not here on BYT. just commenting on what i've seen since the target popped up). well, let me inform you, the longtime residents i know welcome the target and other growth in the neighborhood. they were tired of traveling to pg plaza, pentagon city and potomac yards to shop at target and best buy. sure the rents are now sky high, but that's only a problem for NEW renters. the longterm residents of columbia heights OWN their homes and the values have increased. these people were there during the weekly shootings, all night go-go sessions blasting from car speakers and shitty carryouts allowing people to linger in front talking loudly, drinking and smoking weed until the wee hours of the morning. the value of their homes have increased 4x's and, in some cases, even higher!
the longterm residents don't give a shit that some young intern from the mid-west can't afford to live on their block and they're blaming it on a target popping up in the middle of 14th street. all they know is they can walk a few blocks to get the things they need instead of taking the green line all the way out to pg.
finally, to the wash. post writer and everyone that wants a taste of pre-gentrified (*gag*) living in columbia heights, there are plenty of steals to be found on harvard, fairmont, irving, and euclid on the OPPOSITE side of georgia avenue if you're feeling adventurous. cheap rents, rowdy neighbors, weed selling, B&E's and car thefts. enjoy....
Good post SF, esp the part about the longtermers not caring about some intern, etc.
and this:
"there are plenty of steals to be found on harvard, fairmont, irving, and euclid on the OPPOSITE side of georgia avenue if you’re feeling adventurous. cheap rents, rowdy neighbors, weed selling, B&E’s and car thefts. enjoy"
Exactly. That's where I live. Within a couple weeks of moving there I bought the crackheads on the corner some Courvasier (sp?) in the alley, I helped a dude start his car, and I left the doors to my truck unlocked and in the glove compartment I put an empty gun holster.
I walk around my hood with impunity and don't even lock the doors. Come by on Thursday nights, there's a weekly fish fry behind Warder.
@ Stereo Faith
*Knob Hill was a DL bar, right? This is what everyone tells me anyway.
Has the term "city-soft" ever been used before this article? A quick Google search says no...
Good post by Michael. So purely Dickensian in tone and nature. Esp the impunity part.
Now where's the other moron? freddie, teddie or something..
michael, moved from northeast DC to columbia heights in '99. in 2001 i was awoken one sunday afternoon by someone trying to break in. it was as brazen as brazen could be. luckily i heard him before he got all the way in. he'd bent back the security bars, broken the window and was in the process of raising it. jeezus.
patrick, if by DL you mean down low, then yeah i guess. not sure how "down low" those dudes wanted to be though. they often conspicuously hung out front dressed as women. i say if you've got it, flaunt it! stark contrast from today's wonderland patrons.