Haters and Thieves

Once again: two steps forward, one step back. Got my tax papers sorted, and had a great time opening a bike shop, but, on the other hand, my car was stolen today in broad daylight off Guerero Street. All of this has happened before. Probably joyriders. Maybe just used it as a toilet and moved on. If I collect it back again, I'm buying the club.

It's never a great time to be a victim of theft, but this is particularly awful from a logistics standpoint. I have shit-tons of work to do in the next 48 hours, and was planning on moving furniture back to the HC next week. I'm doing my best to be zen about it, but it's ratcheting up the stress.

Also, what's with all the haters? I got a little pissed and installed some anti-troll code on this old blog, but it really seems like Mission Bicycle brings out the venom in folks.

It's weird. Having lived through the early part of the decade in North Brooklyn, one of the early hot zones for that vein of culture, I honestly don't think the term "Hipster" now means anything more than "tight jeans, messy hair, and small-label music." At best, urbanized/bourgeois bohemia. At worst, just another fashion trend. But this is a good 20%+ of the under-30 population, so at this point bitching about hipsters sounds about as on-point as getting all het up about "the rap music."

Moreover, I'd much rather be self-aware and self-congratulatory than self-loathing, which if you're reading blogs like this or Laughing Squid and feeling the need to fire back, you might want to think about. Hubris is a tragic flaw, but confidence is a prerequisite to getting things done, and self-loathing just leads to drug problems. The great spirit of pragmatism teaches us to shun insecurity and self-abuse as unhelpful, and likely tools of the establishment.

Broadly speaking there's something at work here that I've been interested in for a while. It easy to be right a lot (or at least win a lot of arguments) by being a critic, so on some level it's not surprising that nay-saying is common among the educated. But a lot of people seem to be pretty deeply invested in their holier-than-thou criticisms, and there's a very real way in which this kind of sniping negativity is self-perpetuating.

This is, I think, the reason for so much "anti-hipster" (but again, what does that really mean when suburban teenagers have been exposed to the White Stripes for about 8 years now) backlash: many people were at one point or another made to feel out of it, uncool, or stupid, and in the classic manner of recapitulating traumatic circumstances have made the decision, possibly subconsciously, to heretofore occupy the position of oppressor rather than oppressed in all such matters.

Once again, we realize what a shame it is so much of the world is still trapped in high school.

The other thing that occurs to me is that a lot of people in creative/cultural or related industries are pressured into spiritually compromising positions on a semi-regular basis, and that this shit runs downhill somewhere. To pick a cliched instance, puffing something in a review they personally think sucks, but have to try and sell in order for their superiors to increase profits. I've never really had to take that kind of crap from anybody -- a rare and enormous privilege, I know -- but I imagine the psychological impact of being placed into this kind of cultural bondage must be non-trivial at least. Creates pressure. It might lead some people to act out a bit. Especially when they've been drinking.

So, with some remove I can be sympathetic. But up close it still chaps my hide when suckers try and run this game on me. I know that from the right angle I fit very well into certain stereotypical outlines, and I also know that once someone starts looking at you with that kind of paint-by-number sceneter-boxing eye, protest only serves to cement the diagnosis. But ultimately, anyone who tries to tell me this or that "isn't cool" -- on an assertive basis, without a coherent rationale beyond the fact that they do or don't like it themselves, etc -- basically loses credibility, and so ultimately I don't give a rats ass what they think of me.

However, when they try to push further and impugn my ethos, for instance taking a swing (and a miss) at some perceived soft spot -- e.g. suggesting "mommy and daddy" funded our little bike enterprise, when actually it was hundreds of hours of overtime + many peoples' blood/sweat/tears (literally) -- well then I'm like to get a little bit prickly. I'm not suggesting I'm much of an underdog (straight white male with a college education over here), but I am self-made, and I do real shit with my life whenever humanly possible. Suggestions to the contrary have been known to touch a nerve.

But ultimately we must move on. Haters are just another distraction, cultural casualties and collateral damage in the war of psychic liberation, like crazy people on the subway. Often there's not much that can be done for them: none but ourselves can free our own minds, etc.

Speaking of which, here's some pretty good music:

   This is for my blue-collar workin' 
      beer guzzlin' 
   bootleg DVD sellin' 
        keep hustlin' 
                    push