Let's Talk Hipsters

I can totally hear them saying, in ~that~ "Minnesota Nice" accent, "Oh, let's just put that nice little highway in there, and move out those niiiice black folks. Extra credit if they're Somali.

I have a hard on for it, as you can probably tell, because I see the homogenization of the US as a disturbing takeover by the corporations. Out with mom-and-pop, in with big box and chain restaurant. Bloomin' Fucking Onions over authentic cheese steaks.

Here you have the situation where you take the poorest of the people in the area from OTR, move them to "Rhinestone Projects" in Campbell County ( www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/21037 ; www.wlwt.com/news/kentucky-high-court-he...nmates-case/29164282 ) where they are strangers in the strangest of lands, with no roots, and where people openly despise and resent their existence. All because the Bougies want their downtown, and the county of reloction wants Federal Sec8 money and has plenty of land.

It's, darkly, funny. We're finally getting in line with the rest of the world after a detour (suburbs for rich white people). Dislocating poor people to suburbs and outlying areas so it is hard to get to their jobs in the cities is generally European practice, not American---see Paris suburbs.

PPI guess I was the OP of saying that hipsters bringing gentrification was a good thing. Now I suppose I gotsta try and defend that statement.

We are Amercians! We are capitalists! We believe in a free market economy?

Well, if you do then, you gotta take your gentrification with it. It's all about supply and demand baby. I agree that it sucks that authentic local culture gets pushed aside. And I feel bad that teachers and public service folks like police and firefighters probably commute 45 minutes to get to their jobs in these areas. But... It is what it is. I don't like corporate restaurants and homogenization any more than you do, I just don't support them. Closest restaurant to my house is Carrows.... Never been inside.

Jeb suggested earlier in the thread that a house being a solid investment is a lie. Mileage can vary on that. I had a duplex in the Bay Area town of Alameda, bought after they closed the Navy base. Rental market dried up initially. Then, guess what? Gentrification baby... To the point that it made Sunset magazines best places to live. Now I am in LA in a neighborhood built in the late 40's 1200 sf houses on regular smallish lots. Originally the neighborhood was ALL blue collar. When we bought in 2010 you needed 2 professional incomes to afford it... and even then we needed all the equity from previous home and life savings to get a down payment. 6 years later and shit has gotten so crazy I could not afford to buy a house in my own neighborhood. Developers buy the original house and knock it down, rebuild a McMansion on the lot and sell it for 3x what I bought mine for. This neighborhood was gentrified already and got regentrified to where now you have to be wealthy to afford anything. It's crazy, and none of my friends will ever become my neighbors... but that's life in the big city. I would imagine this happens to a certain extent in most cities. Then when Californians can't afford it anymore they move to Austin and Portland, when Austinites get priced out they move to.... Lubbock??? But, ya real estate investment is one big Ponzi scheme. You are hoping that in 5 years some idiot will pay you significantly more than you did. That goes hand in hand with gentrification. The opposite of gentrification is.... Let crappy neighborhoods stay crappy???? You wouldn't want that if you owned a home in one. You also wouldn't want that if you owned a home in the neighborhood next to one.

I intentionally left out the dollar amounts, because to anyone living in another state, they defy any logic.

^ This is also true.

It's not just low income people that get pushed out (here I do have to speak about Austin, as it is my point of reference). I do alright and can't afford a place in the city. I'm sure Chapel makes plenty more than I but it doesn't sound like he's moving the family in any time soon either.

We're in a small cottage home out in the suburbs (was the country when we first got here) but even out here the prices of houses have shot up, so we're trying to make this 1350sq ft work the best we can for a family of four. This was supposed to just be a small starter home, but since all the prices have blown up we've been in it longer than planned. I'm not sure how much longer we'll be able to hold on, but when we can't...we're going to have to make a serious decision.

Ochobee may not be excited to admit it, but a lot of the reason is because folks sold their modest homes out in California and such like Alastair points out, then moved to the dirt cheap (at the time) Austin with sacks of cash in hand. Prices have blown up. Not a mystery about how this went, and despite my earlier rant I've made plenty of friends with people from the left coast...I just don't like it when folks want to turn a new place into the same place they left. It's on me, but I came from the southeast (Alabama) where the cost of living was even lower...so the move to Austin in the late 90's was a struggle.

Hahaha...damn...

Haha, 1360 sqft here and we've got a family of four...KIDS. It's crowded. I told my kids we have a $600,000 house, but $520,000 of that is the 1/10 acre of land in Agoura Hills, CA. This place is fucking crazy. I could move to TX and build a goddamned moonbase.

I didn't mean to come down too hard, but I think that with a lot of the talk about pricing you have to look at it in relative terms. Austin didn't explode in price because Californians moved out here with their piles of equity, it exploded in price because of investors and developers swooping in and buying up land. When my wife and I moved out in 2004 people said we were crazy and that we'd be back- because Austin wasn't an upgrade. We moved because our only chance to even think of buying a house was to get out of California, and my wife at least had family out here. You didn't really see the influx of business (especially tech) until later, and by then the bubble in California had popped and most people were upside down on their mortgage.

We're in North Austin (pretty much where Austin, Round Rock and Cedar Park all touch) and picked it based on schools and all of the other suburban perks you look for when planning to have kids, and while house prices have gone up here it hasn't been at the same insane levels as in the city. The boom in prices in the city is much more from people on the other end of the social spectrum- single professionals (who want the cool luxury apartment downtown) and people so desperate to not live in the suburbs that they will overpay to live in SoCo or East Austin. While that certainly includes some Californians, they most likely came by way of the magic investor money flowing out of Silicon Valley and not from cashing out their house in California.

What board games do hipsters play? This will help me to spot them in the future so they can be properly shunned.

Gary Sax wrote: It's, darkly, funny. We're finally getting in line with the rest of the world after a detour (suburbs for rich white people). Dislocating poor people to suburbs and outlying areas so it is hard to get to their jobs in the cities is generally European practice, not American---see Paris suburbs.

At least Paris has subways.

Mad Dog wrote: What board games do hipsters play? This will help me to spot them in the future so they can be properly shunned.

Train

The end of the game is left intentionally ambiguous: “Train is over when it ends."

The designer has stated that the rules to her game are "deliberately ambiguous" and that there are "multiple winning conditions" which are not revealed to players and have not been made publicly available.

I wish I could delete unanswered messages.

And another thing regarding corporatization and homogonization and how it relates to hipsters gentrifying urban neighborhoods. I am not saying that one can't follow the other, HOWEVER....

Hipsters are not eating any Blooming Onions. They will support good ethnic cuisine however. All that corporate and homogenized bullshit is taking place in YOUR suburbs. They don't build Costcos downtown. Look in the mirror muthafucka, hipsters don't play that.

The stuff about corporatization and homogenization of America is only helping my initial premise that hipsters have some upside... They are absolutely not the ones eating at national restaurant chains or buying their clothes at Walmart.

I agree with Macdirk. At the end of the day I'll side with "hipsters", their better taste and more progressive values, than settling for "Everyman" options like the toxic waste served as food by corporate chains.

"Hipsters", in a lot of ways, paved the way for folks to break out of the corporate stranglehold on culture and commerce in the 80s and 90s. Now it's come back full circle and you've got Annheiser Busch hawking "craft" beers.

Alastair MacDirk wrote: They don't build Costcos downtown.

You can have my Costco when you take it from my cold, dead hands.

Equating gentrification and displacement is not correct. Depending on how the term is defined, supposedly gentrifying neighbourhoods have no higher rate of displacement than in non-gentrifying neighbours and many supposed indicators of gentrification are contrary to gentrification itself.

I feel that in an American context the ire should be directed towards restrictive zoning, an enforced lack of density and extremely car-centric development more than a difuse "gentrifying agent" that "feel righteous for taking mass transit whilst consuming vast quantities of goods made by Chinese wage-slaves". Women are also a gentrifying agent and a far more important one and better defined one than hipsters are. Change the terms and one must realize it's absurd. Hell, most posters here might indeed be "gentrifying agents", being able to spend hundreds of dollars on boardgames and the like.

@Wadenels

You could say the same thing about games!

wadenels wrote: I thought I'd enjoy tons of unique games, but they aren't unique. Most of the mediocre games are mediocre for all the same reasons. When game companies go out of business, as many of them eventually do, it isn't because the market is over-saturated with mediocre little publishers and a Chutlhu theme isn't enough to sell a game. Oh no. It's because they couldn't get enough Kickstarter backers and because FFG is undercutting them. Always said with a straight face.

Really, you could say the same thing about everything =P

Alastair MacDirk wrote: We are capitalists! We believe in a free market economy?

Nah.

I've lived in California and Austin. Couldn't afford a house in either. Now I'm in Pittsburgh and buying a home is much more reasonable. And I make more money than in Austin.

But sadly, no one to play Blood Bowl with.