Am I getting too old to ever reclaim my hipster identity?
Posted: December 9, 2009 | Author: Monica Tan | Filed under: BLOG | Tags: fading youth, hipster culture, hipsters, partying |7 Comments »It will be of no surprise to old-time readers to hear that in the summer of 2004-2005 I was a FULL-BLOWN HIPSTER.
Back then I was just 21 years of age, and a bartender of a club that hosted, what was, Sydney’s coolest party. I had just graduated from university and was also blogging, making zines, podcasts, indie dj-ing and volunteering at a community radio station. Nothing I made was very good, but at the time, I thought I was genius and on reflection, I still believe I learned a lot.
But really, as is the case for most scenesters, what I really lived to do was party. I partied while I worked (dancing behind the bar), and partied harder when I wasn’t. I was friends with other scenesters, and at every party we went to, we’d bump into other scenesters that we’d have short, trivial conversations with. We were always surrounded by musos, DJs, fashion designers, artists, models, who wore amazing clothes, took loads of drugs, and looked amazing on the dancefloor.
My hipster lifestyle kept chugging along when I relocated to London for a year, but when I returned to Sydney I found that things had changed. Whether it was me or the parties, the scene just didn’t seem quite so cool anymore. Then, six months later I started working my first proper job in the media industry – for a very, mainstream tabloid title – and my hipster lifestyle quickly began to fade away.
At some point I woke up and realised, without any intention, my hipster days were well and truly over.
And for the most part, I’m fine with that. The things I’m doing here in Beijing: my Mandarin language classes, learning about China, blog strategy work for a non-profit, freelance writing, it’s extremely interesting, creative, inspiring, meaningful and intellectually challenging. This is my “thing”, something I’d never really found in the world of hipsterism.
But every now and then, I do miss that time in my life.
Today, in the midst of memorising han zi, I decided to play on my iPod one of the old mixes from the DJs of that party I used to bartend at. I lost myself a little in nostalgia. I recalled the nervy thrill of the hours leading up to the party starting – because you knew what was about to come would be totally out of control. And then the room would fill with all those crazy, gorgeous creatures, out would come the drink, the drugs, the mob ecstasy of just being in a room filled with other crazy, gorgeous creatures.
I remembered all the heart-breakingly beautiful boys my friends and I had nicknames for and that we’d “see around” but never really knew (although I pashed a couple). I recalled, with some embarrassment, how cool I’d feel when I schmoozed with the scene’s micro-celebrities. And fondly, best of all, thought of the heightened sense of closeness I’d experience with my friends (they were my crew!) And the way the music, music, music would always possess us – ah yes, I miss all this.
Perhaps, as this post points out, we were “always trying so hard”. While there was something primal and essential about how present we were, dancing, flirting, drinking, drugs, making out – a lot of this was also performance. Every participant came knowing the deal. You dressed a certain way, you had certain values, lived a certain lifestyle, acknowledged a certain social ranking, and most of all, you acted a certain way in the club. There was an understanding – we’re here to go crazy – and that’s as much a responsibility as it was a privilege.
As “legitimate” as my life is now, there will always be a part of me that will yearn for those outrageous, glamorous days as a scenester (and I know why). However, Beijing provides little outlet to satisfy those desires and by the time I get out of this city, – with its oppressive grey skies, and its 12 million clock-punching Chinese – my youth will have passed with barely a wisp of fading smoke to remember it by.
And, alas, once one’s 20s have gone – they are IRRETRIEVABLE!
Yeah I’ve definitely done two, and variations of just about all of the rest!
Hipster? Okay, if you did three of the following you can qualify to join their hallowed ranks:
1) Wear no-lens glasses.
2) Wear an 80s-style T-shirt for the irony of it all.
3) Describe yourself a ‘freelancer’ (doesn’t matter what kind of freelance, could be journo, could be refuse-disposal technician)
4) Upload a video of you singing/reading poetry to Youtube.
5) Tell everyone at the party that you were soooo going to join the demo the next day and then wake up, like, five hours too late, or something.
6) Wear a neckerchief.
7) Ostentatiously drink soy milk, herbal tea, traditional medicine etc. saying how you don’t go in for all that artificial stuff as it’s “not natural” during the day, then do shitloads of ecstasy and ketamine that were probably mixed in someone’s bathtub and cut with flea powder at night.
Myself, I was way too much of a physics student as a 21-year old to do any of this kind of stuff, I made up for it at 22 though . . .
great post monica! i wrote a long response, but then messed up the browser and lost it all. summary: reminiscing is great fun, but life is change, and hanging on is fruitless. having said that, i’m going to a party tonight with some old friends and planning on partying like yesteryear. we’ll see if it works out.
(by the way, the reason i lost my post was that it is almost impossible to click the “Notify me” button in the comments form without hitting the link to the previous blog post, at least in the browsers i tried — firefox & google chrome)
then again, living in melbourne is like being in hipster land 24/7…
I think I completely missed my hipster phase and am reliving it now with my 19 year old classmates – except we are all too poor and nerdy to attend wild parties (well at least I am). I also tend to approach these things with the foresight of an old granny – and only reserve my one night stands and so forth to the occasional instance.
The one thing I hate and love about being in my 20s is all the ‘who am I’s and the ‘what the fuck am I doing?’s. I mean I guess it’s part of growing up and it’s definitely a ride but geez it’s a wild one. I think by the time I’m in my 30s I’ll be glad that life won’t be at that kind of crazy pace anymore.
As you may have seen on my blog, I’m working on an article along these lines at the moment. Reading this, I kind of wish I could just hand it to you: I think you’d do it more literary justice than I will!
I think you’ve hit the appeal of the Big Night Out on the head – it’s that you never know what will happen. Of course, if you try to manufacture that sense of spontaneity, it just doesn’t work, and you never predict which nights will be fun and which ones won’t.
While you’re right that you’re “only young once”, I also think that you’ve crammed enough in that you have no cause for regret. Think about it! I do, and it amazes me how much I’ve experienced in the past ten years: huge crushes, heartbreak, intellectual awakening, political awakenings, professional awakenings, different communities passions, all manner of different amazing nights out.
I don’t like to party in the Cross like I did when I was 23 (partly because, as you say, it’s not the same), and I don’t go to as many “hipster parties” (or the same kind of “hipster parties”) as I did when I was 24-25, but that’s okay, because I did it, and while it was fabulous then, it doesn’t hold the same appeal now.
There are also more ways of being young and having fun than being hipster, and I think what you’re doing now is another example of something that is arguably best – or most easily – done in your twenties. Not to mention some of the awesome parties you’ve mentioned.
I think part of what makes it so appealing is that you have no responsibilities. You can pash anyone and it doesn’t mean a thing, you can drink too much and your young, fit body springs back the next day. But I think youth is way overrated. I reckon it should be measured not by age, but by how willing and able we are to change things we think need changing. So a 70 year old in a retirement home is old, but a 70 year old who’s travelling to impoverished nations, volunteering for NGOs is young. That way, we can be young for ever. Well, until we die.