Insider twentysomething Christian journalist Brett McCracken has grown up in the evangelical Christian subculture and observed the recent shift away from the "stained glass and steeples" old guard of traditional Christianity to a more unorthodox, stylized 21st-century church. This change raises a big issue for the church in our postmodern world: the question of cool. The question is whether or not Christianity can be, should be, or is, in fact, cool. This probing book is about an emerging category of Christians McCracken calls "Christian hipsters"--the unlikely fusion of the American obsessions with worldly "cool" and otherworldly religion--an analysis of what they're about, why they exist, and what it all means for Christianity and the church's relevancy and hipness in today's youth-oriented culture.

Twenty-first century popular culture has given birth to a peculiar cultural figure: the hipster. Stereotypically associated with nerd glasses, beards and buns, boho clothing, and ironic T-shirts, hipsters represent a (post-)postmodern (post-)subculture whose style, aesthetics, and practices have increasingly become mainstream. Hipster Culture is the first comprehensive collection of original studies that address the hipster and hipster culture from a range of cultural studies perspectives. Analyzing the cultural, economic, aesthetic, and political meanings and implications of a wide range of phenomena prominently associated with hipster culture, the contributors bring their expertise and own research perspectives to bear, thus shaping the volume's transnational and intersectional approach. Chapters address global and local manifestations of hipster culture, processes of urban gentrification and cultural appropriation, alternative foodways and eclectic fashion styles, the significance of nostalgia, retro technologies and social media, and the aesthetics and cultural politics of literature, film, art, and music marked by self-reflexivity, irony, and a simultaneous longing for an earnest authenticity. Hipster Culture explores the diversification of hipster culture, sheds light on popular constructions of the hipster as cultural Other, and critically investigates hipster culture's entanglements with and challenges to dominant cultural discourses of gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, age, religion, and nationality.

A hilarious book that will teach you everything you need to know to be too cool for school: "Your official guide to the language, culture and style of hipsters young and old." —Los Angeles Times 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.

A field guide to scenesters, trend-hoppers, and other cutting-edge species you’ve like, probably never heard of. They’re pretty obscure. An illustrated pocket guide to the hip characters populating “cool neighborhoods” across America, Hipster Animals helps readers identify these urban wildlife in their natural habitats. Including details on the creatures’ identifying characteristics, diets, mating behavior, and calls, this parody reference guide provides a snarky glimpse into the foreign—yet all too familiar—world of the trendsetters among us.

Exposes the new generation of whiteness thriving at the expense and borrowed ingenuity of black people—and explores how this intensifies racial inequality. American culture loves blackness. From music and fashion to activism and language, black culture constantly achieves worldwide influence. Yet, when it comes to who is allowed to thrive from black hipness, the pioneers are usually left behind as black aesthetics are converted into mainstream success—and white profit. Weaving together narrative, scholarship, and critique, Lauren Michele Jackson reveals why cultural appropriation—something that’s become embedded in our daily lives—deserves serious attention. It is a blueprint for taking wealth and power, and ultimately exacerbates the economic, political, and social inequity that persists in America. She unravels the racial contradictions lurking behind American culture as we know it—from shapeshifting celebrities and memes gone viral to brazen poets, loveable potheads, and faulty political leaders. An audacious debut, White Negroes brilliantly summons a re-interrogation of Norman Mailer’s infamous 1957 essay of a similar name. It also introduces a bold new voice in Jackson. Piercing, curious, and bursting with pop cultural touchstones, White Negroes is a dispatch in awe of black creativity everywhere and an urgent call for our thoughtful consumption.

50 musings on the self-appointed cool kids taking over your towns. 50 musings on the self-appointed cool kids taking over your towns. Skinny jeans? Check. Thrift-store clothing? Check. Non-essential prescription glasses? Check. Beanie hat balanced artfully on the back of your skull? Check. These items have become the uniform for a new breed of young people—hipsters—determined to take over cities with their “alternative” ways while overloading on irony and striving to be original and creative. So You Think You’re a Hipster? examines what it takes to become one of this ever-growing tribe of young urbanites, just as desperate to be accepted by their peers as they are to receive the next rent check from mom and dad. A series of hilarious case studies will identify typical examples of the subculture, helping you to avoid any future encounters with them. Take the vintage store worker who, at 35, still works selling worn sneakers and threadbare t-shirts for extortionate amounts and still dreams of one day getting his latest album reviewed on Pitchfork. Or the aspiring author who lugs around an old-fashioned typewriter to write down her inspirational musings at a moment’s notice. Then there’s the bearded urban hunter dressed head to toe in workwear and outdoor gear despite the fact it's the middle of summer. Basically there are nearly as many hipsters featured here as you would find at an LCD Soundsystem concert.

Few urban critters are more reviled than the hipster. They are notoriously difficult to define, and yet we know one when we see one. No wonder: they were among the global cultural phenomena that ushered in the 21st century. They have become a bulwark of mainstream culture, cultural commodity, status, butt of all jokes and ready-made meme. But frightening as it is to imagine, for more than a century hipsters have been lurking among us. Defined by their appearances and the cloud of meaning attached to them--the cool vanguard of gentrification, the personification of capitalism with a conscience--hipsters are all looks, and these looks are a visual timeline to America's past and present. Underlining this timeline is the pattern of American popular culture's love/hate/theft relationship with Black culture. Yet the pattern of recycling has reached a chilling point: the 21st century hipster made all possible past fads into new trends, including and especially the old uncool. In Decolonize Hipsters, Grégory Pierrot gives us a field guide to the phenomenon, a symptom and vanguard of the wave of aggressive white supremacist sentiment now oozing from around the globe.

A humor book based on the “depressingly astute” blog satirizing the fashionably unconventional yet always on trend. (The New Yorker) From the dive bars of Brooklyn's Williamsburg to the dirty alleys of San Francisco's Mission, the urban hipster has redefined American cool with a sighing disdain for everything mainstream. Hipsters are easily identified by their worn-out shoes, fixies and PBR tallboys, but until now no one had investigated beyond the hipster look to the even more hilarious hipster psyche. With personally researched articles, revealing illustrations and helpful charts and graphs, Stuff Hipsters Hate exposes the bottomless well of impassioned scorn that motivates the ever-apathetic hipster, including: lMATING AND SOCIAL HATES ♠ buying you a drink ♠ monogamy ♠ texting back in a timely fashion APPAREL AND GROOMING HATES ♠ high heels ♠ muscles ♠ being asked about their tattoos WORK AND LIFE HATES ♠ full-time jobs ♠ knowing their bank balance ♠ enthusiasm “Wickedly Funny” –The Frisky

A witty, candid, sharply written memoir by the cofounder of Steely Dan In his entertaining debut as an author, Donald Fagen—musician, songwriter, and cofounder of Steely Dan—reveals the cultural figures and currents that shaped his artistic sensibility, as well as offering a look at his college days and a hilarious account of life on the road. Fagen presents the “eminent hipsters” who spoke to him as he was growing up in a bland New Jersey suburb in the early 1960s; his colorful, mind-expanding years at Bard College, where he first met his musical partner Walter Becker; and the agonies and ecstasies of a recent cross-country tour with Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs. Acclaimed for his literate lyrics and complex arrangements as a musician, Fagen here proves himself a sophisticated writer with his own distinctive voice.