Renaissance

Who's a 'Detroit Hipster?' The Answer Is As Fuzzy As Their Faces, Foley Says

April 01, 2015, 2:30 PM by  Alan Stamm

In articles and social media posts, Detroit writer Aaron Foley performs valued public services as a language purist, outspoken iconoclast and conversation incubator.

Just over three months ago in Metro Times, he began questioning Nolan Finley's "where are all the black people" column. Three days ago on Facebook, the journalist-author called out a Freep business column that has this howler: "Industry experts say craft beer brewers tend to be young white men with beards, while African Americans mostly haven't bellied up to the craft-beer bar yet." 

Now he calls out the Free Press, WWJ, Bridge magazine, Thrillist and others for blithely tossing around "hipster" as though it were a Hacky Sack.


This Photoshopped spoof is from a Facebook page named "Underachieving Detroit Hipster Guy."

"Could I be a hipster?" Foley asks at Belt Magazine, describing himself as a 30-year-old Detroiter who's "a fan of top-shelf cocktails and Chuck Taylors," as well as galleries and bands.

I’m still not sure exactly what a hipster is, since it’s not exactly spelled out by Detroit media. No local columnist has ever tried to define it, as if it were to be already understood. . . . It’s just sort of plopped there as a given.

But it’s curious that as media reinforces ideals in their editorial pages about Detroiters coming together, both in the city limits and across county lines, that they continue to beat around a term that’s irrationally divisive. 

Hipster is starting to sound like a code word for something else. We can’t put up “whites only” or “colored only” signs anymore up here in the North, but if one were to trace the local media’s path of what exactly defines a hipster in Detroit, those ancient sentiments are hard to ignore.

Foley, an African American, pokes at a column early this year by Tom Walsh (without naming him):

According to the Detroit Free Press, it was hipsters who made the rugged Carhartt brand popular outside the construction industry – not Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg two decades ago during “The Chronic” era, nor the countless hip-hop heads in the years since.

The Freep also gets chain-yanked for reporting -- if that's the right word -- that a "'Hipster' barbershop trend arrives in Detroit."

Other sarcastic swipes aim at WWJ for listing five "Best bars for hipsters in Detroit," at Bridge for  an interactive "Hipster map of Detroit" and at Thrillist for two "hipster" entries in a roundup last fall of "The 10 Types of People Moving to Detroit."

Foley's sharpest shot aims at shrinking corporate newsrooms here and elsewhere:

One of the consequences of the collapse of journalism is that newsrooms are now gutted of their diversity in age and race. We’re left with veteran journalists forced to guess the habits of their grandchildren’s age, and younger, green journalists who haven’t figured out how to communicate with people that aren’t just like them.

Belt, based in Cleveland, will publish a fall book by Foley titled "How To Live In Detroit Without Being A Jackass."


Read more:  Belt Magazine


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