6 Sick Hipsters [Paperback]

Rayo Casablanca (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 25, 2008

In this hilarious, frenetic, adrenalin-charged debut, Rayo Casablanca does for modern day Williamsburg, Brooklyn, what Bret Easton Ellis's Less than Zero did for '80s L.A.--but with a knowing grin and a far cooler soundtrack...

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is the center of the hipster universe, and the members of the Whole Sick Crew are its shining stars. The gang includes Wolfgang, a heavy metal musician and high school guidance counselor who supplies coke to his charges; Rad, a doctor obsessed with obscure new wave songs who has a bad habit of cutting himself when he's stressed; Beth Ann, the neighborhood's queen knitter who's slowly going blind and Harrison, a museum curator moonlighting as a writer of highly prized porn. Collectively, they're the arbiters of taste for every vinyl-loving, Gap-spurning, thrift store regular in town. But lately someone has been laying waste to Brooklyn's uber-hipsters, dispatching them in gruesome fashion.

The cops are dragging their heels, but the Whole Sick Crew knows that a serial killer dubbed Doctor Jeep is responsible. They have a plan to stop him and it's about to go spectacularly awry. Before the week is over, they'll be up to their skinny-jeaned waists in mayhem, manipulation, contract killers, raw sewage, and murderous monkeys. Something is rotten in the state of Billyburg, and the last hipsters standing will discover just how rotten it really is...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Casablanca satirizes a big, soft target in his debut: the hipster paradise of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Serial killer Doctor Jeep has been on a killing spree, offing an array of hip locals. The cops have bungled the investigation, so a small band of Williamsburg hipsters who call themselves the Whole Sick Crew decide to hunt down Doctor Jeep and kill him, despite the fact that none of them knew anything about killing or hunting down killers. Things, of course, go wrong, and the results are bloody and reveal a horrifying secret. Though Casablanca nails the cheesiness of the neighborhood and its residents, he gives his characters some amazingly stilted dialogue, and the narrative's awkward, late shift into quasi-thriller territory doesn't quite work. There's a good time to be had watching the skinny jean set suffer, and that may be enough to hook a chunk of readers. (Apr.)
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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation (March 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0758222831
• ISBN-13: 978-0758222831
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,343,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where Hipsters, 80's Pop Culture and Mystery Collide, March 18, 2008

By 

E.L. (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 6 Sick Hipsters (Paperback)

This book starts with a JOLT and ends just like you thought it would EXCEPT totally different. Chocked full of action, 6 Sick Hipsters uses analytical dialogue to keep you guessing while radically misguided but ultra hip intellects search for the answers, sort of like your favorite Scooby Doo episode on acid. This book will make you LOL, ponder the power of pop culture, and could possibly give you nightmares. Super fun read.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wacky and creative wild ride, May 3, 2008

By 

J. Spitzer (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 6 Sick Hipsters (Paperback)

What a fun book. Great and wild ride for a weekend. I wish I was a hipster with a tamed Baboon.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sick Man, March 20, 2008

By 

Alex Martin (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 6 Sick Hipsters (Paperback)

They stalk on spiderlike legs wearing jeans tighter than an old woman's wrinkled shoes. As they are the scourge of Starbucks baristas, so also Hipsters are the bones of this novel, but don't for a minute assume they're the flesh of it. Rayo Casablanca's debut is as dark as it is hilarious, as encapsulating as it is clever. He leads us by the hand so charmingly through places so noir their bars sell bourbon on tap and we're left smiling deftly with two toddler steps after each of his morbid strides. From Paleontological pornography to a gangster called "Tank the Niggatron", 6 Sick Hipsters leaves no stone unturned and when you're not laughing out loud you're silently nodding with a half-shameful envy.

Aside from the vinyl and drainpipes the novel stipulates pop-culture trivia like monastic creed and at a swollen and malformed range accepted only by the vicious trend setters themselves. From Thomas Pynchon to The Sisters of Mercy, 6 Sick Hipsters swells with allusions, but ultimately the novel's charm comes from the juxtaposition of iniquitous comedy, sly satire and a subculture fetish, and by his good graces does he do it well. All in all a funny, dark and clever debut.