The Hipster Handbook [Paperback]

Robert Lanham (Author), Bret Nicely (Illustrator), Jeff Bechtel (Illustrator)

Book Description

Release date: February 4, 2003

hip•ster - \hip-stur (s)\ n. One who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool. (Note: it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; a Hipster would instead say "deck.") The Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. A Hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat.

Clues You Are a Hipster

1. You graduated from a liberal arts school whose football team hasn't won a game since the Reagan administration.

2. You frequently use the term "postmodern" (or its commonly used variation"PoMo") as an adjective, noun, and verb.

3. You carry a shoulder-strap messenger bag and have at one time or another worn a pair of horn-rimmed or Elvis Costello-style glasses.

4. You have refined taste and consider yourself exceptionally cultured, but have one pop vice (ElimiDATE, Quiet Riot, and Entertainment Weekly are popular ones) that helps to define you as well-rounded.

5. You have kissed someone of the same gender and often bring this up in casual conversation.

6. You spend much of your leisure time in bars and restaurants with monosyllabic names like Plant, Bound, and Shine.

7. You bought your dishes and a checkered tablecloth at a thrift shop to be kitschy, and often throw vegetarian dinner parties.

8. You have one Republican friend whom you always describe as being your "one Republican friend."

9. You enjoy complaining about gentrification even though you are responsible for it yourself.

10. Your hair looks best unwashed and you position your head on your pillow at night in a way that will really maximize your cowlicks.

11. You own records put out by Matador, DFA, Definitive Jux, Dischord, Warp, Thrill Jockey, Smells Like Records, and Drag City.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Just as The Official Preppy Handbook exposed wearers of Lacoste polos and drinkers of Bloody Marys, Lanham’s new book delves into the lives of those who deem themselves too cool for school. Hipsters, he says, are the ones you see around town smoking European cigarettes, wearing platform shoes and reading biographies of Che Guevara. Lanham, editor of the site FreeWilliamsburg.com (Williamsburg being a favorite New York City hipster enclave), does his best to dissect the personality types, the hangouts, the colleges and even the facial hair of the modern-day Hipster. There’s no main narrative per se, rather a prolonged pastiche of sarcastic observances and witty asides. And in a clever marketing gimmick, Lanham compiles a raft of lists detailing crucial Hipster music (including the Beastie Boys record Paul’s Boutique) and literature (Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity), which are sure to spark debate. Topping it off is a questionnaire, to suss out whether or not you could qualify for Hipsterdom (e.g., if you subscribe to Wallpaper, you’re in; if Maxim’s more your speed, you’re out). The truly hip wouldn’t touch this with a 10-foot pole, of course, but they aren’t really Lanham’s target.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"The Hipster Handbook. . .proves that behind every goatee, shaggy hairdo and baggy blouse, there's still a lot of preening."
-- The New York Times

"The Hipster Handbook is your official guide to the language, culture and style of hipsters young and old…. There's even a dating guide for various hipster combinations." –Los Angeles Times

"Describes everything cool–the slang, the dress code, the career path, greetings and (of course) taste in music kids from the Inner Mission to Williamsburg ascribe to--in pitch-perfect detail…. [T]his guy clearly has some insider information himself. Gently teasing and hilarious." –Philadelphia Weekly

"The Hipster Handbook is The Official Preppy Handbook for people who wear Atari T-shirts." –Esquire

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; 1st edition (February 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400032016
• ISBN-13: 978-1400032013
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.5 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #80,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 52 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How to read this book as a 'hipster' January 13, 2004

By Jeff MH

Format:Paperback

(Short answer: Ironically)

If you are reading this book in hopes of becoming a 'hipster', give up, for this book like 'hipster culture' oozes irony and laughs at those who take it at face value. Instead you would become what laymen may term a 'poseur', analogous to the 'fashion punks' who brought punk to the near mainstream in the 80s, and would quickly be revealed by such gaffes as the use of a term like 'deck' with any seriousness or lack of irony.

However, 'real' hipsters need not despair. This book can still be read by them without shame and be prominently displayed on their thrift store used coffee table in their small apartment as long as it is done with an excess of irony. Doing so is in fact essential in some ways to remaining a 'real hipster' in the face of the subculture's sudden commodification.

With the sudden entrance of this book into mainstream consciousness, as once once 'hip' statements of 'hipsterdom' such as the trucker hat and the messenger bag are paraded around on mass media (MTV and NBC respectively--although any self respecting 'hipster' would only ever be caught watching Queer Eye on Bravo), the essential exclusivity and irony of hipsterdom has come under attack.

'Hipsters' of course must defend themselves the only way they can, with further layers of irony. They must show that they get the joke, that they are not the sheeplike wannabe 'hipsters' trying to be like them by copying their fashions and terminologies a day too late, that they can still tell the 'real thing' and keep their 'club' exclusive in the face of scrutiny by the dumb masses. This book can become another obscure reference by those in the know, not to be talked about overtly, but to be subtly slipped into conversation.

And of course a true 'hipster' would never refer to his- or herself as a 'hipster' nor would one identify his- or herself as part of any movement. And of course if you took any of this at face value or learned anything you did not already know in this review, then neither are you a 'hipster' nor will you ever be.

With much 'irony',
'j'

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars You are about to be exposed... February 10, 2003

By Menelaus

Format:Paperback

A very funny book exposing the varieties of hipsters. A tongue in cheek guide which proves what existed all along: hipsters are merely sheep following others' trends, much like the mainstream schlubs the hipsters themselves loathe. Hillarious but also strangely informative.

34 of 41 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Lanham's Joke June 30, 2003

By Margot T. Ellis

Format:Paperback

Only recently, through a series of 'revealing' literary works, has the greater American public been made aware of the well-dressed, foppish, socially progressive, and supremely emasculated urban crowd known as metrosexuals. The existance of men who would rather spend a day at the beauty parlor than the ball field has come as a shock to every beer-guzzling frat boy who could not, for all the gold in fort knox, envision a world in which fashion savvy and unparalleled narcissism are more useful masculine traits than a strong physique and the ability to consume mass quantites of alcohol.

Treading similar ground, Robert Lanham's Hipster Handbook attempts to sate the masses by allowing a fleeting glimpse into an ever changing subculture indigenous to the metropolises of America. Lanham's opus manages to act simultaneously as both a (relatively) accurate satire of progressive urban life, as well as a guide by which one could, conceivably, become a hipster him(or her) self.

It is because of the janus-faced nature of the Handbook that nobody in America could actually take it seriously. On the one hand, Lanham would have us buy into his view that what he sees reflects the true nature of the hipster, while at the same time, he relentlessly parodies such a lifestyle, making it clear to the reader that very few Americans indeed could ever come close to living it. Proof: Lanham makes perfectly lucid the notion that, while a 9-5 job is considered utterly 'fin,' hipsters should possess the wealth necessary for the fast-paced, fashionable, trendy world of hipsterdom. The occasional waitressing shift at your local hipster bar will not pay for your Wicker Park loft, nor will it buy your Manhattan Portage messenger bag, your collection of Kraftwerks and Built To Spill CDs, or your Structure jeans.

This leads us to an important conclusion: Lanham did not write the Handbook for practical use. Although reading it cover to cover will reveal excellent music suggestions, a few fashion tips and some ridiculous hairstyles, deciding to enter the hipster scene by way of the Handbook would be a faux-pas of legendary proportions.

The previous paragraph should lead readers who chastised the book for its' 'how-to' quality to reconsider their scathing reviews; Lanham did not write the Handbook to teach SUV drivers and beer-bonging homophobes how to be socially conscious and modern. Rather, his amusing observations on this small corner of society are meant to reinforce the irony of such a lifestyle, but also to impress upon the rest of America that, contrary to traditional notions, and at a time where the word conservative is as pertinent as ever, it is quickly become ok- and perhaps even the norm in cities- to be distinctly progressive.

Which brings me back to the beginning; Hipsters and Metrosexuals are completely 21st century entities, both revered and ridiculed by the public at large. Lanham realized this, and so he wrote and marketed his book the only way he could: accessable and factual for the layman, but insightful and witty for the urban intellectual. Nobody truly comes out a winner, and no great insights are produced, but everybody feels like they understand a little better, and society as a whole is the wiser for it.