Word: hipster
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Though the irony-sporting, status quo-abhorring, plaid-clad denizens of Williamsburg are a distinctly modern species, the hipster as a genus has its roots in the 1930s and '40s. The name itself was coined after the jazz age, when hip arose to describe aficionados of the growing scene. The word's origins are disputed - some say it was a derivative of "hop," a slang term for opium, while others think it comes from the West African word hipi, meaning to open one's eyes. But gradually it morphed into a noun, and the "hipster" was born...
...Hipsters were usually middle-class white youths seeking to emulate the lifestyle of the largely-black jazz musicians they followed. But the subculture grew, and after World War II, a burgeoning literary scene attached itself to the movement: Jack Kerouac and poet Allen Ginsberg were early hipsters, but it would be Norman Mailer who would try and give the movement definition. In an essay titled "The White Negro," Mailer painted hipsters as American existentialists, living a life surrounded by death - annihilated by atomic war or strangled by social conformity - and electing instead to "divorce oneself from society, to exist without...
...word would fade for years until it was reborn in the early '90s, used again to describe a generation of middle-class youths interested in an alternative art and music scene. But instead of creating a culture of their own, hipsters proved content to borrow from trends long past. Take your grandmother's sweater and Bob Dylan's Wayfarers, add jean shorts, Converse All-Stars and a can of Pabst and bam - hipster...
...troubled cities and favorite punch lines, would love to hop on the next bus down the Turnpike and never look back. Sure, the city has made strides since its devastating race riots in 1967 - there's a sparkling-new downtown arena, some bright residential complexes, the gestation of a hipster scene. But Newark is still a drug-infested, poverty-stricken place where rubble piles up on Park Avenue and the shabby Hotel Riviera sits across the street from an auto-parts joint, around the corner from an abandoned five-story building...
...energetic 73-year-old, was recently in London to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of his friend Chris Blackwell's Island Records, which brought everyone from Bob Marley to U2 to world prominence. Passing out leaflets for Montreux at a commemorative concert in London, Nobs says more than one hipster handed them back with the words, "Jazz? No thanks." (See TIME's Global Adviser for exotic, beautiful and interesting getaways...