The Anatomy of a Hipster Party and Redneck Wedding.
Redneck? or Hipster?
This summer I was a fly on the wall at two gatherings of two groups of people in Chicago that are arguably on the opposite ends of the white people cultural spectrum - hipsters and rednecks. Yet these groups have strange, inexplicable ties.... the interesting thing here is that both groups drink cheap beer (the rednecks drank Schlitz and the hipsters drank PBR and Miller High Life) and some of the men in both groups had long hair and tattooes, but I suspect that the motivations for these similar looks were much different.
Many hipsters try to co-opt the look of working class people (well, working class people from the late 70's, early 80's especially) but it's an entirely self-conscious decision. For the rednecks, it's not really supposed to be ironic. It's also interesting too because (and these of course are all broad generalizations) but hipsters often condescend towards rednecks and the lower working classes but rednecks are ambivalent or unaware of hipsters. And finally I observed that both groups tend to be pretty ridiculous when intoxicated, demonstrating once again that alcohol can be an equal opportunity idiot maker.
Anyway, since these events were a couple months ago, and I'm feeling lazy, I'll break down the two parties bullet point style.
The Redneck Wedding I Videotaped:
Symptoms:
-I had a feeling that the bride's side of the family was more regular middle class and the groom's side was more solidly redneck. Most of the groomsmen had shaved heads or crewcuts, goatees, and token stainless steel stud earrings in one ear. I remember one member of the family in particular (likely the crazy uncle) had shoulder length greying hair, a patchy beard, missing teeth and had an ugly flannel suit that looked like he had it in mothballs since 1978, the last time he wore a tie. I also spotted at least four mullets, half of which were on women who looked like WPBA professional bowlers.
-Schlitz beer was everywhere. Before the ceremony where the wedding party were taking sips in between pictures, after the ceremony where a big cooler full of 12-packs was in the back of the limosine, and yes....at the reception where toasts were made with Schlitz in a can. Yep, you read that right.
-Since the groom was wheelchair-bound (from a car accident if I remember right) he wheeled the bride in his seat out for the introductions. It would have been a touching moment if not for the fact that the very-unromantic sounds of AC-DC's "Back in Black" were blaring from the loudspeakers as they crossed the hall, a song that in my mind is supposed to be reserved for introducing professional wrestlers or rural high school basketball teams.
-During the toasts, one of the groomsmen (probably the most inebriated) grabbed the microphone for an unscheduled toast. "OK, people, you best cover the kids ears because this toast will probably be PG-13," he said as a mix of laughs and groans simultaneously was heard from the nearby tables. The speech continued something like this...
"I met Jason in a bar a few years ago, and I think we've been to that same bar about every one of the last 782 days since then. At the time Jason didn't have a girlfriend so he said, 'Hey maybe I should fake a handicap so I can get some sympathy points with the ladies. Well, Jason, now that's you're married, why don't you come clean and get out of that damn chair?" (The laughs and groans increased at this point). But anyway, he ended up meeting Kelli, who I think is way too good for him. In fact, I predict that this marriage will last about a year. So, let's toast to them, and I'll see you guys next year for the divorce party!"
-During the dancing, they played Cotton Eyed Joe, which is tied with the Chicken Dance and the Electric Slide for the Most Regrettable Wedding Reception Dance Staple. At one point during the song, I watched as a man wearing a felt cowboy hat tried to shotgun three beers at once on the dance floor. And no, it didn't quite work out.
-Livin' on a Prayer brought the house down. Even I was getting into it, singing 'Take my hand, we'll make it I swear" with fervor as I was videotaping the whole endevour.
--The Hipster Party:
Up until recently, I lived with Amy, better known as an America's Top Model Contestant from last season. (On a side note, it cracks me up that when people find out about this....they think I'm either the luckiest man alive or a horrible pervert considering I LIVE WITH HER BOYFRIEND TOO. KTHXBYE). Anyway, Amy had her 21st birthday party at our apartment in August and chaos eventually ensued. So here's the thing, Amy used to go to Columbia College and Alex attends school there currently and most of their friends also go or did go to school there. Now considering Columbia College is an expensive downtown based art/film school, it goes without saying that it attracts more tight-pants wearing, middle class hipsters kids from the suburbs than a Wicker Park dive bar offering free PBR.
The guy on the left proves that somehow it's cool to look like Jeffrey Dahmer from 1982.
-Our party was dead until after 11:30 p.m. It was just myself, my roommates, a few random people, and a Cuban drug dealer guy (that's a long side story) sitting around the back patio and smoking. Cuban Miami Drug Dealer Guy tells me I look like a "major stoner." OK, I guess I should go ahead and tell his story...
I talked to him for awhile and he was very open about his life. CMDDG was a 22-year old guy that was on his way to Cleveland from small town Oklahoma from the way of Miami. See, here he was this regular Miami kind of guy, he sold cars, dealt pot, and taught cute tourist girls how to kiteboard in the ocean. He even looked the part, he had a white collared canvas shirt, a tank top underneath and khaki shorts and sandals. His hair was slicked back (all guys with their hair slicked back has to be a bit shady, that's what we've learned in the movies) and wore an eyebrow piercing in his left brow.
CMDDG had the good life for awhile, going to the hottest clubs in South Beach and staying out until the break of dawn (he kept telling me how 'off the hook' this one club is where it was designed to look like a car wash. Yep, a car wash), gettin' high and making phat cash. But things came crashing down when his dad got out of jail. His dad had been in the state pen for 15 years for being caught with like 150 kilos or so of cocaine back in the 90's. In prison, the dad reformed, turned his back on his old ways and was then shocked when he got out and saw that his son turned out to be a young version of him. (Can't you see a real life version of the old dramatic "I learned it from you, Dad!" commercial?)
So the dad strips everything away from CMDDG and makes him move to a small town in Oklahoma as a sort of penance. There he lives an unsatisfying life as a construction worker/fish out of water. After a month or two, he meets up with Amy's friend - a naive blonde recent high school graduate who was about to move to New York state for college. Thus, CMDDG hitched a ride from her to make his way to Cleveland to begin the next chapter of his life. A stirring tale to say the least.
-Myself and CMDDG quickly began to feel out of place because around midnight the party began to blow up. 15 people blossomed into over 100 and what's worse...they were almost all 20 year old art students and the evidence was everywhere.... Our fence looked like a bike rack, with dozens of fixed gear road bikes hanging haphazardly over it. There were countless tattooes, especially of stars and music notes and foreign language phrases...The men wore beards and earrings, the women wore straight bangs, side ponytails...and they both wore the token black framed glasses. Hardly anyone talked to me at this point...they probably noticed someone over the age of 25 that didn't dress to be conspicuous and stayed far away.
I knew Rollie Fingers. And you sir, are no Rollie Fingers.
-Our party was trendy enough to have it's own party photographer...who sort of acts as a kind of hipster paparrazzi. She follows this certain group around and photographs them being young, drunk, and artsy...usually at house parties or industrial looking warehouses or abandoned buildings. I asked her why she was doing this...and she said she didn't get paid or anything but "I get to go to a lot of awesome parties!" Apparently, she just lets people use the photos for their Facebook pages...and that's reward enough. The most amusing thing was watching people playing up to the camera like they were subjects of a Spin Magazine photo shoot. At one point, a heavily tattooed and scantily clad boy and a girl kept taking their shirts off and trading them while the photographer was snapping away like crazy.
-By the end of the night, our apartment looked like hell...hundreds of beer bottles and cans scattered around and someone apparently thought I'd be funny if actual soil was thrown around the kitchen. Someone had also shot off New Years Eve style party poppers in various places (including my bedroom). Also, my roommate's $300 glasses got stolen and all of our hidden beer had been stolen. Someone had ripped my RedEye article off the fridge and drew funny faces on it.
-Hipsters are supposed to be these knowing, liberal, openminded people while rednecks are supposed to be the ignorant, brutal ones, but the end of the hipster party (not the redneck one) turned out to be quite violent. I had gone to bed around 3:30 a.m. while my roommate tried to kick out the scragglers...but they refused to leave, instead throwing bottles in a neighbors yard and attempting to rip the umbrella out of the patio table and yelling at my roommate. Of course, my roommate acted by decking one of them...probably not the smartest move since he was backed into a corner at the fence and the garage. Plus there were five of them. So they proceeded to kick his ass.
Now, luckily these were sissy boy art kids, otherwise he could have gone to the hospital. Instead he got some bruises, scrapes, bumps and light contusions.
Just another night in Chi-town.
Redneck? or Hipster?This summer I was a fly on the wall at two gatherings of two groups of people in Chicago that are arguably on the opposite ends of the white people cultural spectrum - hipsters and rednecks. Yet these groups have strange, inexplicable ties.... the interesting thing here is that both groups drink cheap beer (the rednecks drank Schlitz and the hipsters drank PBR and Miller High Life) and some of the men in both groups had long hair and tattooes, but I suspect that the motivations for these similar looks were much different.
Many hipsters try to co-opt the look of working class people (well, working class people from the late 70's, early 80's especially) but it's an entirely self-conscious decision. For the rednecks, it's not really supposed to be ironic. It's also interesting too because (and these of course are all broad generalizations) but hipsters often condescend towards rednecks and the lower working classes but rednecks are ambivalent or unaware of hipsters. And finally I observed that both groups tend to be pretty ridiculous when intoxicated, demonstrating once again that alcohol can be an equal opportunity idiot maker.
Anyway, since these events were a couple months ago, and I'm feeling lazy, I'll break down the two parties bullet point style.
The Redneck Wedding I Videotaped:
Symptoms:
-I had a feeling that the bride's side of the family was more regular middle class and the groom's side was more solidly redneck. Most of the groomsmen had shaved heads or crewcuts, goatees, and token stainless steel stud earrings in one ear. I remember one member of the family in particular (likely the crazy uncle) had shoulder length greying hair, a patchy beard, missing teeth and had an ugly flannel suit that looked like he had it in mothballs since 1978, the last time he wore a tie. I also spotted at least four mullets, half of which were on women who looked like WPBA professional bowlers.
-Schlitz beer was everywhere. Before the ceremony where the wedding party were taking sips in between pictures, after the ceremony where a big cooler full of 12-packs was in the back of the limosine, and yes....at the reception where toasts were made with Schlitz in a can. Yep, you read that right.
-Since the groom was wheelchair-bound (from a car accident if I remember right) he wheeled the bride in his seat out for the introductions. It would have been a touching moment if not for the fact that the very-unromantic sounds of AC-DC's "Back in Black" were blaring from the loudspeakers as they crossed the hall, a song that in my mind is supposed to be reserved for introducing professional wrestlers or rural high school basketball teams.
-During the toasts, one of the groomsmen (probably the most inebriated) grabbed the microphone for an unscheduled toast. "OK, people, you best cover the kids ears because this toast will probably be PG-13," he said as a mix of laughs and groans simultaneously was heard from the nearby tables. The speech continued something like this...
"I met Jason in a bar a few years ago, and I think we've been to that same bar about every one of the last 782 days since then. At the time Jason didn't have a girlfriend so he said, 'Hey maybe I should fake a handicap so I can get some sympathy points with the ladies. Well, Jason, now that's you're married, why don't you come clean and get out of that damn chair?" (The laughs and groans increased at this point). But anyway, he ended up meeting Kelli, who I think is way too good for him. In fact, I predict that this marriage will last about a year. So, let's toast to them, and I'll see you guys next year for the divorce party!"
-During the dancing, they played Cotton Eyed Joe, which is tied with the Chicken Dance and the Electric Slide for the Most Regrettable Wedding Reception Dance Staple. At one point during the song, I watched as a man wearing a felt cowboy hat tried to shotgun three beers at once on the dance floor. And no, it didn't quite work out.
-Livin' on a Prayer brought the house down. Even I was getting into it, singing 'Take my hand, we'll make it I swear" with fervor as I was videotaping the whole endevour.
--The Hipster Party:
Up until recently, I lived with Amy, better known as an America's Top Model Contestant from last season. (On a side note, it cracks me up that when people find out about this....they think I'm either the luckiest man alive or a horrible pervert considering I LIVE WITH HER BOYFRIEND TOO. KTHXBYE). Anyway, Amy had her 21st birthday party at our apartment in August and chaos eventually ensued. So here's the thing, Amy used to go to Columbia College and Alex attends school there currently and most of their friends also go or did go to school there. Now considering Columbia College is an expensive downtown based art/film school, it goes without saying that it attracts more tight-pants wearing, middle class hipsters kids from the suburbs than a Wicker Park dive bar offering free PBR.
The guy on the left proves that somehow it's cool to look like Jeffrey Dahmer from 1982.-Our party was dead until after 11:30 p.m. It was just myself, my roommates, a few random people, and a Cuban drug dealer guy (that's a long side story) sitting around the back patio and smoking. Cuban Miami Drug Dealer Guy tells me I look like a "major stoner." OK, I guess I should go ahead and tell his story...
I talked to him for awhile and he was very open about his life. CMDDG was a 22-year old guy that was on his way to Cleveland from small town Oklahoma from the way of Miami. See, here he was this regular Miami kind of guy, he sold cars, dealt pot, and taught cute tourist girls how to kiteboard in the ocean. He even looked the part, he had a white collared canvas shirt, a tank top underneath and khaki shorts and sandals. His hair was slicked back (all guys with their hair slicked back has to be a bit shady, that's what we've learned in the movies) and wore an eyebrow piercing in his left brow.
CMDDG had the good life for awhile, going to the hottest clubs in South Beach and staying out until the break of dawn (he kept telling me how 'off the hook' this one club is where it was designed to look like a car wash. Yep, a car wash), gettin' high and making phat cash. But things came crashing down when his dad got out of jail. His dad had been in the state pen for 15 years for being caught with like 150 kilos or so of cocaine back in the 90's. In prison, the dad reformed, turned his back on his old ways and was then shocked when he got out and saw that his son turned out to be a young version of him. (Can't you see a real life version of the old dramatic "I learned it from you, Dad!" commercial?)
So the dad strips everything away from CMDDG and makes him move to a small town in Oklahoma as a sort of penance. There he lives an unsatisfying life as a construction worker/fish out of water. After a month or two, he meets up with Amy's friend - a naive blonde recent high school graduate who was about to move to New York state for college. Thus, CMDDG hitched a ride from her to make his way to Cleveland to begin the next chapter of his life. A stirring tale to say the least.
-Myself and CMDDG quickly began to feel out of place because around midnight the party began to blow up. 15 people blossomed into over 100 and what's worse...they were almost all 20 year old art students and the evidence was everywhere.... Our fence looked like a bike rack, with dozens of fixed gear road bikes hanging haphazardly over it. There were countless tattooes, especially of stars and music notes and foreign language phrases...The men wore beards and earrings, the women wore straight bangs, side ponytails...and they both wore the token black framed glasses. Hardly anyone talked to me at this point...they probably noticed someone over the age of 25 that didn't dress to be conspicuous and stayed far away.
I knew Rollie Fingers. And you sir, are no Rollie Fingers.-Our party was trendy enough to have it's own party photographer...who sort of acts as a kind of hipster paparrazzi. She follows this certain group around and photographs them being young, drunk, and artsy...usually at house parties or industrial looking warehouses or abandoned buildings. I asked her why she was doing this...and she said she didn't get paid or anything but "I get to go to a lot of awesome parties!" Apparently, she just lets people use the photos for their Facebook pages...and that's reward enough. The most amusing thing was watching people playing up to the camera like they were subjects of a Spin Magazine photo shoot. At one point, a heavily tattooed and scantily clad boy and a girl kept taking their shirts off and trading them while the photographer was snapping away like crazy.
-By the end of the night, our apartment looked like hell...hundreds of beer bottles and cans scattered around and someone apparently thought I'd be funny if actual soil was thrown around the kitchen. Someone had also shot off New Years Eve style party poppers in various places (including my bedroom). Also, my roommate's $300 glasses got stolen and all of our hidden beer had been stolen. Someone had ripped my RedEye article off the fridge and drew funny faces on it.
-Hipsters are supposed to be these knowing, liberal, openminded people while rednecks are supposed to be the ignorant, brutal ones, but the end of the hipster party (not the redneck one) turned out to be quite violent. I had gone to bed around 3:30 a.m. while my roommate tried to kick out the scragglers...but they refused to leave, instead throwing bottles in a neighbors yard and attempting to rip the umbrella out of the patio table and yelling at my roommate. Of course, my roommate acted by decking one of them...probably not the smartest move since he was backed into a corner at the fence and the garage. Plus there were five of them. So they proceeded to kick his ass.
Now, luckily these were sissy boy art kids, otherwise he could have gone to the hospital. Instead he got some bruises, scrapes, bumps and light contusions.
Just another night in Chi-town.
Hey, is that Fallout Boy???
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