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First, since we were talking about what's cool today we need to mention Portlandia. Portlandia is a television show that is dedicated to making fun of hipsters in Portland, Ore. I immediately thought of a specific episode while reading Why do people hate hipsters?

In this skit Fred Armisen, one of the main actors, is the hipster with a large beard, tattoos, gages, big glasses, flannel and only rides a bike. He goes to his favorite bar to drink micro brewed beer and sees a clean cut guy with khakis and button-up shirt. He wouldn't even go into the bar. He got angry, and rode away on his bike. Throughout the cuts in the scene Armisen slowly becomes more clean cut and the other guy becomes more hipster until they switch places. Then the used-to-be clean cut guy rides up to the bar on his bike and sees the clean cut Armisen sitting at the bar having a beer. That guys gets angry, and rides away on his bike to repeat the cycle.

Portlandia makes fun of all the different kinds of hipsters there are. Each skit has a different kind of person. Which explains why it is so difficult to distinguish between counter-culture and mainstream. Each person is sitting in their own spot on the spectrum of counter-culture on one side and mainstream on the other.

In the article by Gladwell, he interviewed the coolhunters. I had to laugh at the part where DeeDee said that whenever she sees the Joe Regular Guy somewhere hip she has to talk to him. That Joe Regular Guy looking person is my boyfriend. He literally works at IBM, lives in Greenpoint Brooklyn with five hipsters and goes to their bands' shows in the basements of bars. He works all day in until 8 at night and promises his friends he'll make it to their show. He goes straight from work in his suit. I've seen it happen. Which is where I think the articles focused too much on dress and style and not enough on lifestyle.

Do you know how much rent is in Brooklyn? Rent is so high that if it were a 30 year mortgage for a house, which is standard, a lot of people could have 1.6 million dollar homes in almost any other city.  And most of them are artists, which means they don't make a lot of money. Maybe they shop in thrift stores for a reason. And maybe because it's New York the coolhunters decided to push that fashion on everyone else in the country.

I'm sure all of us have participated in some kind of counter-culture activities at some point in time. It just depends on how you decide to spend your time.