COPYPASTE by Viet Huynh

DECEMBER

2011

dec 2011

This issueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quote on design

Brought to you by Frank Chimero

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contributing artists

viet huynh thai le nhi nguyen barnett ruth daniel lee viet huynh sweat &pixel studio sweat &pixel studio nam quan alex scott bryant anderson nghia nguyen lys bui dave linsky vivian tsu edward rigging emma hickerson ricky chang steven levy sarah fallon kristina bjora alexander george nathan mattisse victoria wang guy billout brian ashcraft · scott brown scott carney · joshua david patrick duo · charles webb gary wolf · evan radcliff yoskay yamamoto · superfried jared nickerson · ilovedust carson ting

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dec 2011

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DESIGN & CULTURE MAGAZINE

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DESIGN & CULTURE MAGAZINE

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dec 2011

Cover artwork by Viet Huynh

dec 2011

CONTENTS 8 JARED NICKERSON 16 SWAG 20 DJ GIRL TALK 26 123KLAN 33 BRISBANE NIGHT OUT 40 LOOK MA NO BRAKES 48 APPLE EVOLUTION 50 HIPSTER

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JARED NICKERSON ed ricketts

carson ting

dec 2011

Ed Ricketts chats to the Canadian-born character illustrator about vector mash-ups, dark humour and deluded designers with a God complex.

“It’s definitely become more of a staple of my work: the cute stuff but with an aggressive, almost evil, twist on things,” says Jared Nickerson of his often frantic, densely detailed character pieces. “I think it’s just turned out that way. I’ve always liked that mix throughout all forms of arts, like my birds that aren’t always happy, mushroom characters with weapons, or milk cartons with vampire fangs – random stuff, to be honest.” The 27-year-old Canadian illustrator is now ensconced in Seattle. Working entirely with vectors, Nickerson’s synonymous with a clean, crisp character style mixing pop culture references with a darker, more surreal tone, à la Robert Crumb.His style is perfectly exemplified by Daddy was a Jewel Thief, a rather bustling, anarchic image that was created for last year’s BloodSweatVector exhibition – more on this later. As this was a personal piece, he had no real initial plan for it, and the theme developed organically as he worked on it. “At the time it was one of the most complicated patterns I’d done. I just started throwing things in and seeing what worked. The overall theme was kind of rustic – the antlers and the axes and grainy textures – and mystical, with the wizards and gems. So basically I kept adding to it within that theme, although not everything in the image fits, until it took shape. So there wasn’t a real plan. What tends to happen is that I use characters in a few different designs, and then in a few months I collect a load of them together and put them into a pattern.” As part of this process, Nickerson has started developing what might be called character boards, although he never uses the term himself — it’s almost certainly too formal.

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“I just take my favourite elements from the design, to see them in more detail and without all the stuff surrounding them,” he explains. “Some of them are like their own individual pieces of artwork, separate from the main design. I think I do it for my benefit, just to solidify everything.” Nickerson’s distinctive character style has developed over his years as a full time freelancer. His earlier style, he says, was much more minimal, with simplistic lines, before he adopted a more portrait-like approach – what he calls the ‘editorial’ style. “Then in the last few years I got into my own sort of character style, and I’ve stuck with that. I enjoy characters more than anything else, and it seems to be the most popular.” Regardless of subject matter or client, nearly all of his images intriguingly blend the cute with the grotesque. Mini-characters that at first appear happy are, on closer inspection, wielding weapons, while sad birds sit atop text such as “Humanity has raped my soul.” Far from pretentious, this sort of incongruity is darkly amusing.

“ EVERYTHING HAS SOME SORT OF CHARACTERS IN IT.THAT WHOLE TREND LOOKS AS IF IT MIGHT STICK AROUND.”

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While it’s no surprise that clients such as Adidas and Nike would gravitate towards Nickerson’s style, he has also attracted more traditionally corporate companies, such as Microsoft. He sees no real difference, at least when it comes to his artistic approach. “As with the project for Adidas Originals, a lot of my larger clients lately have come from Behance, such as Microsoft and Nike, and I guess they see something in my work they like. Does he ever have to tone down his style for the likes of Microsoft? “Not really. If a client wants me to imitate a specific style [of an artist], I tell them to contact that artist. It’s hard to turn away money, but I’ve had a good response from clients when saying it. They respect the idea that I have my own style and I don’t want to imitate anyone else.” Sometimes a client simply wants to use his existing images, as did D a n d y F r o g , a French company that produces customised umbrellas. They wanted his personal piece Psychedelic Apples of Death, a typical pattern with the pithy phrase: ‘Fuck your sneakers’. “That’s not unusual,” he says. “When I do personal work it often ends up paying off anyway, because it often features in client work – or part of it does anyway, as happened with P.A.D.” This ability to re-use elements of patterns easily is an advantage of working in vector illustration, he says. “It’s different to other digital media though because they’re just shapes – you’re not drawing. So you have to approach the medium differently; it’s more about organising than doing brushstrokes, and you have to gear your mind differently.”

...weâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;re designers. we draw stuff with a pen or a mouse We Are not saving lives.

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CONNECT WITH JARED WWW.J3CONCEPTS.COM WWW.BEHANCE.NET/J3CONCEPTS WWW.TWITTER.COM/J3CONCEPTS WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/J3CONCEPTS WWW.BLOODSWEATVECTOR.COM

Nowadays he tends to begin a project by going straight to the keyboard. “Most people start by sketching things out, but over the years I’ve eliminated that extra step. In some cases I wish I still did sketch ahead of time, just for planning reasons, but overall it’s fine – I’ll doodle instead.” He’s also switched from a tablet to drawing everything with a mouse and the Pen tool. “It’s probably my most— used tool in Illustrator,” he reveals. “Also, people are surprised I don’t use layers in my work – it’s all on the one layer and the individual characters are grouped objects.” He isn’t afraid to use text either – many of his pieces are scattered with punchy, sarcastic comments. “Things like, ‘We don’t care about your status update’ are obviously just a bite at Twitter and Facebook. I use those sites of

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course, but I get a kick out of how personally some people take them. Then there are things like, ‘Doing good, thanks’, which you’ll see over a lot of my work. That goes hand–in– hand with the whole ‘designers are not gods’ characteristics that I use.” He dislikes the God-complex and over-exposure within the art community. “It’s just saturated with morons,” he says, passionately but not hatefully. “I find it ridiculous; we’re designers, we draw stuff with a pen or a mouse. We’re not saving lives. ‘Doing good, thanks’ is just my way of saying, you know what, I’m doing good, a normal person, a normal guy doing what I do.”

As well as illustrating, Nickerson is art director for laFraise, a European clothing company with user-submitted designs. “I do design a certain amount of graphics, like the characters on their website,” he explains. “I help with the whole moderation process for submitted designs too, and create some inspirational blog entries. Character design and streetwear always work well together: mascots, advertising; everything seems to have some sort of character in it. That whole trend looks as if it will stick around.” On a more personal level, he co-founded BloodSweat Vector with Brad Mahaffey, for vector artists to share work, gain feedback, and be inspired. “We wanted a place for artists we liked to post work and get feedback – it’s important to have people you respect commenting on your

work. It’s invite-only, so if an artist wants to join we see if their work is in the style we like. We’ll launch a whole resource section soon, where you can purchase wallpapers, vectors and so on.” And what of the future for himself? He responds in his refreshingly blunt manner. “Honestly? I am bored to hell. I love what I do, I wouldn’t trade it for anything else, but I want to take my work to another level – whether it’s animation or 3D or any other medium. My commercial work has been fairly steady, and I love doing the job for laFraise, so all those things will keep me stable. So I’m going to teach myself a 3D program and start to get into that, and go from there. I’m sure it’ll be a lot more work than I foresee – but maybe in a year or so you’ll see some progress with that.”

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FOR THE LOVE OF THE...

PSEUDO’S DAUGHTER

THE CHILL

dec 2011

skytop

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As usual, here are the collection of the freshest gears in the swagger game hand-picked just for you. Swaggerstatus guaranteed, and Jay Z approved.

dec 2011

ACCESSORIES GAME

BEATSPRO Beats Pro headphones are tailored for use by working DJs, producers, engineers and musicians, both in the studio and onstage. A breakthrough in professional music listening and creative equipment, the Beats Spin headphones were developed through the collaborative efforts of legendary artist and producer Dr. Dre, Monster and Jimmy Lovine. The result is a first-of-its-kind high-performance headphone with a host of extremely useful innovations that will literally change the way pros think about their headphones.

$349.99

ZIIIRO GRAVITY Two attractive, slick and legible alternatives to the over designed watch, Ziiiroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gravity and Mercury, are now available. The Gravity and Mercury have taken Ziiiroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lofty goal of stylish utilitarianism from concept to reality. The watches function without any of the markings of standard analog timepieces, instead using a continuously rotating combination of two rings to make temporal distinctions. A new, interesting to tell time. Definitely a stunner if you ask us. Go get it!

$175

SUPRA SKYTOP Supra has become a rising star in the skateboard shoes arena. With its superb material and distinctive design, shoes of this brand are increasingly popular not only in the United States domestic market but also in markets all over the world. Among the various product types, Supra Skytop shoes are an important constituent of this famous brand. Once worn by some all-star athletes, musicians and celebrities on various occasions like games, concerts and parties. Supra Skytop shoes have become a symbol of the elite lifestyle.

$119.99

dec 2011

TECH GAME

iHOME BOOMBOX Not content to simply mimic the looks of an oldschool, cassette-powered system, the iHome iP4 Boombox borrows the general shape and attitude of classic systems but belongs squarely in the 21st century, thanks to its subdued monotone design*, modern technology like SRS TruBass DSP, a flexible iPod/iPhone dock, four-inch carbon composite woofers and one-inch tweeters, an auxiliary input jack, backlit buttons, a five-band graphic equalizer with LCD display, and a decidedly low-tech FM radio.

$200

MUGO MP3 PLAYER Mugo is the first limited edition designer MP3 player and USB flash drive. It brings function to collectible toys by seamlessly integrating an MP3 player and USB data storage to this palm-size platform toy. It’s so simple in fact that it doesn’t require any cables or software and works on both Mac and PC. The flash memory drive can hold up to 500 MP3 songs or 2GB of data storage. The best part is actually navigating through your music as all the controls are under your thumb. By pressing the ‘faceplate’ you can control all the of the Mugo MP3 playing features. It’s like an iPod Shuffle but with a more stylish edge.

$60

LYTRO CAMERA And you thought your DSLR was advanced. The Lytro Camera is an all-new type of shooter called a Light Field Camera that captures the color, intensity and vector direction of the rays of light — 11 million of them, in the case of the Lytro — and then uses powerful software to substitute for the internal pieces of regular cameras and also add incredible new capabilities, like the ability to focus the photo after you’ve taken it. Yeah, that’s what we said.

$500

dec 2011

MIND GAME

fla

tk society www.suprafootwear.com

Over here at COPYPASTE we love musicians who are willing to shun convention and adopt bold new paradigms when it comes to music creation, production, or distribution. Or those who simply take risks with their music. Greg Gillis (aka Girl Talk) is one such musician. Known for his masterful musical mashery, Girl Talk â&#x20AC;&#x153;has turned the cutand-paste process into a jams-packed jigsaw puzzle.â&#x20AC;?

dec 2011

based around the idea of appropriating pop music and culture, so I wanted to pick a name that was sort of glossy and over the top that would challenge the stiff underground of electronic music. SP: So there’s not one specific meaning to the name? GG: It’s so many different things… Boardgames, books, previous bands. It just sounds like some Disney band name and that’s the kind of vibe I wanted in the early days.

With the release of his fourth album, Feed the Animals (available through Illegal Art), Girl Talk continues his remix magic, in this case combining over 300 samples. Curious what songs were used? Click here. As if his peculiar art form wasn’t unique enough, Gillis went ahead and endorsed the Radiohead model, by selling his album online with a name-yourprice system. The young fellow has been rather busy lately what with his new role as the unassuming rockstar. Check out his tour schedule on Facebook to catch him live. Greg was kind enough to let us pick his brain for you for a few minutes. Sandra Possing: For the sake of any readers who might not be familiar with your music, let’s start with the basics. Girl Talk. Where did you get the name? Does it have a special meaning? Greg Gillis: When I started doing laptop music, there was a theme in Pittsburgh, and even internationally, of people doing live electronic music at the time and I thought that some elements of it were stiff, stoic, very borderline academic… I was cool with that stuff, but I kind of wanted to challenge it a bit. I knew I was gonna do a project

SP: You used to be a biomedical engineer. You kind of did the double life thing for a while – nerd by day, badass DJ by night. What was that like? GG: It was pretty crazy. I never told my coworkers about what I did. I’d never considered myself a DJ in the traditional sense and it would’ve been hard to explain the performance, just cause it was such an underground thing. They were an older group and they were cool but I didn’t want to go in there and be like ”Look, I have a band called Girl Talk, where I play computer and rip my shirt off, and remix pop music on the fly and jump on top of people. It would have been too much to push on them. And in the early days of the job, it was like I’d always done Girl Talk since 2000 but it was something that was never intended to bring in money or be a career or anything like that so when I used to work there there was just really no point in telling them. It was just something where I’d make records in my free time and play a show once a month or something like that. So once it got very big and started taking off, it was at the point where it was too late to explain to them. You know what I mean? I would have loved to have told to them at that point, cause it turned in to me playing shows every single Friday and Saturday. You know, jumping on a plane and coming back and doing work Monday through Friday. But, it was like 3 years into the time that I was working that job so I didn’t want to be like ”Look, btw, I forgot to tell you, I have this thing called Girl Talk and I happen to be selling out shows now”.

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It just would have seemed too weird. So ya, I didn’t tell them. So it was like a steady year of that where I basically had like a hidden personality. It was nuts. I’d sit in a cubicle all day on Friday then run to the airport, fly out, and then be signing autographs for playing the computer 4 hours later. It was very bizarre. SP: How did they react once you told them? GG: Um, I never told them. When I left the job, I basically… I didn’t lie to them… But again, I planned on eventually doing engineering work again – that was my first job after college. So I wanted to not break the ties with them, I didn’t want to be a weirdo. So, I told them that I felt that if I stayed with the job then I might be there until I’m like 50 with kids. And I was worried about taking advantage of my youth and I wanted to travel the world. Which, you know, was kind of the truth, but I didn’t really explain the music thing to them. But since then, I’ve had a lot of coworkers hit me up on Facebook and see like a thousand photos of me shirtless sweating on people. But they were cool with it. I knew they would be. It’s just kind of an awkward thing to tell people. SP: Do you miss it? You day job – sitting in a cubicle? GG: Uh… no, not at all. I mean, with the music thing now, I really feel like I don’t have a job. I just, you know, do what I would be doing anyway and somehow I’m living off it. SP: Would you say that your engineering experience has influenced your music.

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GG: Ya, I mean I think… I think it’s the nature of going to school for 4 years to study something like that and then getting a job. I have no traditional musical training, and I’ve always been obsessed with and passionate about music and it’s kind of been my main thing forever. But, basically, in approaching this project with the computer, I had to come up with an alternative solution for making music. I knew I wanted to remix pop music and things like that. I had no idea how that would go down. You know just the nature of this project, where its very meticulous, and you’re working on small elements – somedays I’ll work for 10 hours on like a 30 second segment and then that goes on to influence a much bigger picture – I think that definitely relates to the world of engineering. SP: So you’re using analytical, detail-oriented part of your mind. GG: Ya, just kind of getting down and working on the small chunks and focusing on the small little bits that will piece together to solve a bigger problem. Not that there’s necessarily a problem but, you know, in the case of music, like a goal. SP: If you weren’t doing what you’re doing with music or if you weren’t doing engineering like you have in the past, what else could you see yourself doing? GG: Oh man, I don’t know. I mean, I did ok in high school, studied, did well in every subject. I kind of picked engineering randomly, so… I think I’ve always been good in math and sciences, so I think anything related to that like just straight up biologist or something like that which is kind of related. But, outside of that world, I have NO idea what I would do. Maybe… professional basketball player? SP: Are you good at basketball? GG: Ya, I used to hoop a lot. Not anymore. I don’t get enough time. My game is kind of sad to me. I was thinking about this… It’s probably the first time in my life where myself 10 years ago would totally kill myself now, and that’s always just a sad thing. SP: You obviously have a lot of music or have access to a lot of music, given your style. How do you obtain your music? Do you still buy albums, download stuff off of iTunes…?

GG: I’m excited about that stuff. But I’ve never done that. My friends are telling me about Pandora – that seems cool. I don’t really read music blogs or anything like that. I’m pretty low key when it comes to exploring stuff on the internet. SP: Where do you see the music industry going in the next couple years? It’s obviously changing. GG: I don’t know. I mean, I think the obvious answer is that CDs are going to be dying out at some point. I think there’s a chance that vinyl will still live on just cause the format’s a lot different whereas the digital audio quality on a CD vs a wav file or a nicely compressed MP3 is very similar. So, I don’t really know, but I think it’ll be interesting. I still feel like my friends and I go to the record store and buy albums because we have, you know, this moral code ingrained into our minds to support the music industry. It’s also like a nostalgic thing that I will never drop just cause that’s how I grew up listening to music.But, you know, 10 or 15 years from now when there’s a bunch of kids who grew up just used to downloading music for free, it’s gonna be a whole different world. I can’t imagine them ever being excited about buying CDs, which is fine. I’m gonna stick to my ways. I’m gonna buy CDs until they stop being made. I’m pumped about CDs, but simultaneously I’m excited for that to die off and ultimately it’s just gonna change the reason people start bands, change people’s positions at

GG: I primarily buy CDs. At any point in time I usually have about 50 mp3s on my computer, so I don’t have a digital music collection. I usually download songs to hear them or if I have an idea for something I want to try out I’ll download it and hear that song then I’ll usually delete it after I’m done with it. So ya, it depends what I’m buying. I keep up with a lot of underground releases and independent releases. In that case I’ll go to the local indie retailer. Then I also buy a lot of just mainstream music released on majors and I love going to Best Buy and just dropping a ridiculous amount of money, and coming home and opening up the packages and sitting around listening to CDs. So, ya I primarily buy CDs. I still buy some cassettes and vinyl and things like that when I can. But I’ve been an active CD buyer for the last 15 years now. SP: Do you ever poke around the internet to find music? Do you listen to Pandora, or use any social music sites?

records labels, change all that in ways that I could never even articulate.Just the way we understand being in a band 10 years ago vs. 20 years from now will be a lot different. You know what I mean? I grew up seeing, like, Nirvana or even like Guns’n’Roses or something like that. Rock music – even as a kid you just knew it as this huge industry. You pour in all this money to these guys who are millionaires and then they produce a bunch of millions for you. And that might change, you know what I mean? I don’t know if that’ll be the case anymore. I think right now is a great era for touring musicians. It’s so easy to get exposure via the internet.

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GIRL TALK’S DISCOGRAPHY Secret Diary Unstoppable Night Ripper Feed the Animals All Day

2002 2004 2006 2008 2010

Granted, there’s so much stuff out there, it’s hard to get noticed because right now there are probably more bands than ever, more projects, but simultaneously you can do something weird in 2008 and be noticed on the internet if people take to it. It’s in the people’s hands rather than the mainstream media. So that’s exciting how you can continually grow like that to the point where… I don’t know what major labels will do or how they’re gonna hang on twenty years from now, but I’m sure they’ll come up with something. SP: So, on that same note, obviously the way that artists are distributing music and the way the fans are consuming the music, that’s all changing very quickly. Is that why you decided to release your new album online with a set-your-own-price model, the Radiohead model. GG: Ya, I mean, the label that puts out my stuff, Illegal Art, threw the idea out there. I thought it was great, you know. If we had released that album just as a CD it would have been a major delay, which is frustrating because it’s something I work on for two years. It’s exciting to just see it, to piece this thing together and to finish on a Tuesday and put it online on a Friday. And outside that, I just want to acknowledge that if we did release this on a CD, then some kid’s gonna buy it, rip it, put it online and immediately everyone on a file sharing network can get it for free. That’s just the reality of music now and I think that’s a great thing. I’m excited for the music to be spread through the internet. So it seemed like, why play dumb about it when you could just be upfront about it and acknowledge that reality and say to people ”Look I know you can get it for free, go ahead and take it for free if you really want to, or if you wanna pay us that’s cool too. I think pay-what-you-want model was novel enough that a lot of people were excited to be a part of it. A lot of people were hitting me up and telling me ”Greg, I paid $15 for the album!” SP: Fans are much less patient than they used to be. They want their music how they want it and when they want it. They’re not willing to wait so you might as well cater to that.

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GG: Sure, ya. I mean, I’ve only been really living off music for the past year and a half and I don’t want people to lose their jobs at labels and I like the idea of musicians being able to live off that. But, that’s also very foreign to anything I knew to being involved with music. All of my friends’ bands and my bands, Girl Talk when it first started… it was never like ”Man, I hope I can live off this”, it was just ”Let’s create music and get it out there to as many people as possible.” And when you take money out of that equation it’s like… right now is a beautiful time. You can get your music exposed to so many people. SP: And that way it’s more genuine too. GG: Ya. And even financially too. I see a lot of indie labels thriving, via merch etc. I always think about the project I’m doing now in terms of the bands I was into when I was in high school and going to someone like Kid 606, or going to see Pavement, or The Jesus Lizard, or anything like that. Just thinking about the size of shows that they played versus the size of shows that I play or any of my contemporaries play… the audience for underground music is enormous right now comparatively. That’s a very cool thing. SP: So, last question. It seems like you’ve been putting out an album about every 2 years – ’02, ’04, ’06, ’08. Should we expect your next album in 2010? GG: I’m not sure. The last two albums were kind of like cousin albums for me. Both of those I worked on as one cohesive whole so it’s not like I work on individual songs. I work on one 15 minute piece of music until I feel like I’ve accomplished what I wanted to accomplish meaning that I don’t know if I’d be able to replicate that again. I’d like to mix it up again at some point. Kind of break out of that mold. It’s intense to dedicate two years to one … and then be stressful and you know you’re kind of putting all of your eggs in one basket. I’d like to fool around even , maybe put out an EP or put out some individual songs on the internet, just kind of break the tradition of what’s been going on. I work on music every day and I have no idea what it’s gonna go toward. When an idea comes out it just exists and right now I have really no view of the future beyond this month. SP: One more last question. What do you enjoy more, doing live shows or working in the studio? GG: It’s two different things. The live show is instant gratification. It’s fun. It’s in your face. It’s like the payoff. And working in the studio is more like a long term relationship where it can be really miserable and grueling and tough but at the end of the day it’s very satisfying. SP: So if making an album is like having a long term relationship, is a live show like a great one night stand? GG: Absolutely

skytop www.suprafootwear.com

rob carney

dec 2011

123klan arE DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATION superstars. the two founding artists scien and Klor design for streetwear labels everywhere. Rob Carney finds out why they HAve become so synonymous with cool.

“Every little girl dreams of working in fashion, and that’s kind of what happened to me. not as a top model – that’s too boring – but as a graphic designer.” Klor, the female founding half of the enigmatic French design house that is 123Klan, wouldn’t have it any other way. With roots in graffiti, over the years the company has sideline into one of the world’s most recognised illustration and design pairings. With big-name clients including Adidas, Stüssy, Zoo York, Carhartt, Vans, Mighty Healthy, Johnny Cupcakes, 5 Years Clothing, nitraid and Rated Rookies (the list goes on) 123Klan has worked for anyone who’s anyone in streetwear. “There are no brands in the world that aren’t cool,” says Scien, the other half of 123Klan’s founding pair.“It all depends on the relationship between the designer and the brand. If both sides can understand each other, the possibilities are endless. Every project is different and can become very interesting.” So, what’s 123Klan all about? “123Klan is still, and will always stay, before anything else, our posse of graffiti writers,” Scien is quick to tell us. “Today, there are seven in our Montrealbased studio.” Specialising in branding and new trends, the team carries out projects in design, logos, character design, art direction, creative consulting, photo shooting, video, and so on. “Our approach stays the same as it did from our first tag made on the street: we can apply or impose the 123Klan style on just about any medium.” And how true that last statement is – from illustration to graphics to the big-name streetwear and apparel shown on the following pages, the company is a creative force to be reckoned with. Some of their biggest collaborations have come about from brands seeing their designs on their website, and approaching them for work: “We’re quite lucky that way,” says Klor. “The fact that they come to us because they like our style establishes a trust between the client and ourselves. Most of the time we have total creative freedom to work on the collections, which ends up giving the best results because we have no boundaries.” dec 2011

“Because we spent too much money shopping, we thought that if we actually worked for them we could get trendy clothes for free,” Scien laughs. “Since we also get paid to do it, it’s a win-win situation!” And what’s the best thing about designing for, and collaborating with, these companies? “Getting sneaker packs or other goodies by mail,” Scien admits. “But hey, not all brands are that generous; then again, our wardrobe is already pretty full.” Klor agrees: “Knowing the next trendy thing before everybody else means we can play it pretty well when we go out,” she grins. “We have no limits,” says Scien enigmatically, talking about the potential limitations of designing for fabric. “But the client can choose his own. Sometimes our humour isn’t well perceived, and some take it the wrong way, or way too seriously – which is ridiculous in streetwear, or even with creativity in general. But you have to respect the brand image every time.”“When we create a visual for a brand, we often have to wait at least a year before we can finally hold it in our hands because of the production process, sample validation, photo shoots, communications and sales,” says Klor. “It can be quite frustrating to finally receive a product that has lost its freshness to us, but is ‘brand new’ on the market. ”According to Klor, 123Klan doesn’t adapt its style when designing for apparel.“There’s no difference whatever the medium,” says Klor. “Adapt, improvise and dominate, such is the 123Klan motto.”

agency] U-Dox, which was in charge of the End 2 End project for Adidas and Foot Locker,” Scien recalls. The project was a collaboration between Adidas and some of Europe’s most influential graffiti artists, making 123Klan the ideal choice. “The brief was very open, so we pretty much had creative freedom,” Scien remembers, before highlighting just how much influence the two designers now have. “At first, Adidas had planned for other colours, but we weren’t satisfied with them so we ended up picking the final ones.” It was as simple as that. “Our clients often approve our designs right away, or the changes are quite minimal,” Klor continues. “However, that requires an effort on both sides – the brand must respect our graphic style and must approach us for our originality. At our end, we owe it to them to try and understand and visually represent the brand’s state of mind the best way that we can. In the end, time, trends and people will determine how successful the finished product will become.”

“ Adapt, improvise and dominate, such is the 123Klan motto.”

123Klan’s typical approach to completing a product design brief – for a sports shoe, for example – begins with meeting everybody involved in its making. “For Adidas, we had a workshop that united everyone,” says Scien. “It was very interesting to talk with the shoe designers at different stages in the making – printing limitations, stamping techniques, and so on. All of this information expanded our creative possibilities for this medium, being able to play with the material and transparencies.”One Adidas brief completed by 123Klan was to design a Decade Low shoe to be sold exclusively in Foot Locker stores. “We were approached by [creative

dec 2011

Bringing the discussion back specifically to shoe design, Klor continues: “Designing a shoe is just as complex as a toy. There are a lot of complex pieces, but you can already get a global idea of the final product in every angle on the template. What’s interesting to us in terms of design is mostly to make a piece that people can wear in the end – something that can easily match their wardrobe.”

“Just like when you work with sneakers, you have to think about creating something that people can actually wear while staying original,” says Scien, now discussing T-shirt design, a field with which 123Klan is very familiar. “You’ve got to be good in all the aspects and neglect nothing,” he continues. “Concept, design, type, tone and, of course, colours. The line between cliché and what will become a trend is quite thin.” One hugely successful T-shirt project was a range 123Klan created for New York-based menswear label Mighty Healthy. “Mighty Healthy ordered two mascots,” Klor recalls. “One of them represented a cheeseburger mayor – symbolising the success of American fast food, which is also in total opposition to the brand name.”

For the other, 123Klan drew its inspiration from the first New York/ Irish gangs. “The idea behind that was to express that at Mighty Healthy they are quite hard-headed. They never give in unless to impose their quality on all,” explains Klor. There were no colour limitations on the project as far as the designers were concerned – in fact, they state they love working with limited colours “simply for the visual efficiency of a logo, but also because it enables us to match the T-shirt with the hat or sneakers,” they say in unison. Klor continues, giving some valuable advice for anyone working for a label such as Mighty Healthy: “Before you start anything, you have to find an idea that will correspond to the brand’s state of mind. You then have to translate that idea into a design, then simply retouch it until the visual works on a T-shirt. Finally, try out different colour combinations, always giving the brand as much emphasis as possible.” A long-standing working relationship with skate/streetwear giant Stüssy has been a real delight for Scien and Klor. Ever since Paul Mittleman – Stüssy’s visionary creative director – approached the company in 2004, the collaborations between the two have been flying out the door.

When asked about how 123Klan Bandit-1$M, we’re free to print and retains its own identity while working produce in less than a month from one for a big brand, Scien is very direct: “It of our freshly made designs. Another was very beneficial to work with them,” advantage is that we have total creative he says. “First of all, because Stüssy freedom, we can control the quality of has great respect for the artists they the shirt and the print, and of course work with, but also because this get the most out of our money – even if brand knows how to take artistic risks. we print in very limited quantities.” The fact that our style may not be “Our plans for the future will stay the recognisable is not important. Stüssy same,” Klor continues. “From the is a client that buys a product – it is beginning, we’ve always tried to work not sponsoring 123Klan, just like their out our own style. We just want to be own clients are buying a brand first, different and original, but at the same more than a design. Our role is to put time have fun and be professional.” the brand first, as well as its values.” “Just like our approach, we always For any brand, the 123Klan approach try to give the best of ourselves in remains the same: “You have to come everything that we make, whether back with new ideas that stick to the that be a T-shirt, a video clip, sneakers brand’s identity every time, always or a toy. It’s quality verses quantity. making it better and trendier,” says There’s no better client than yourself, Scien. “In fashion, what’s been done because you have no-one to convince, once can’t be done twice.” and at the same time you’re investing One place where Scien, Klor and in yourself.” the five other 123Klan crew can really So what’s the best thing about push their own identity is through working in this competitive yet thriving Bandit-1$M, the company’s own industry – what makes it all worthwhile? T-shirt and apparel brand. “What’s It’s an easy question to answer, as it most frustrating when you work in this happens, and one that Klor cannot field is waiting for the product to help smiling at: “What satisfies us finally come onto the market. Often, the most is seeing someone happy to at least a year goes by between creation wear one of our shirts,” she says. “ and the time the shirt appears on a The rest doesn’t really matter.” shelf,” reiterates Klor. “With our brand,

dec 2011

123KLAN.COM SHOP.BANDIT-1SM.COM BEHANCE.NET/123KLAN TWITTER.COM/123KLAN VIMEO.COM/123KLAN

tk society www.suprafootwear.com

33 33

nam quan

It was halloween, and i was alone. My friend called and asked if I want to go to this newly-opened live music venue. There was no reason to say no, so we did. And that turned out to be one of the best decision I’ve ever made. This place – Lofly Hangar – was just amazing. It was filled with interesting, artistic people, the kind of people that I’ve been looking forward to meeting when I’m in Australia. And it was like that, I got tipsy with some beers, music just kept playing from 3 different bands, people shared interesting stories. And under such an atmosphere, I just couldn’t stop pressing the button to capture those beautiful moments.

dec 2011

â&#x20AC;&#x153; With loud music and friends, little stories floated beautifully in the air while people enjoyed beers and crappy wine. Life has never been so awesome.â&#x20AC;?

dec 2011

What he lacks in age, Nam Quan (b.1989) makes it up with his gift and passion. He is a Vietnamese photographer currently based in Saigon, Vietnam Picking up the first camera of his own in 2008, Nam has progressed fast to become a fully-employed photographer for Asia LIFE â&#x20AC;&#x201C;the most read English lifestyle magazine in his home town Saigon. His portfolio is full of high-quality works for many high-end bars, restaurants, resorts, corporates and boutique shops in Ho Chi Minh City and neighboring cities as well as multiple features works for Asia LIFE ranging from various social issues to different artistic side of the city.

namquan1989@gmail.com www.nam-quan.com

dec 2011

whitegunny tuf www.suprafootwear.com

dec 2011

jocko weyland

LOOK MA NO BRAKES when is a bicycle not like other

bicycles? To begin with, when it has no brakes, or at least no visible brakes, or possibly just a front brake. That means you can’t ride this bike very well on your first try, and certainly not very gracefully, easily or safely. The rear cog is bolted directly to the hub, so that whenever the vehicle is in motion, the pedals go around, making coasting impossible. This bike doesn’t have a shift lever or extra sprockets, and the chain is shorter and wider than on traditional bikes. There are no fenders, and the rear wheels are probably bolted onto the frame to deter theft. You slow down by reversing the pedals, or skidding, or doing a skip stop. And that’s just the beginning of the differences between your runof-the-mill 10-speed and a track bike, or fixed-gear bike — fixie for short — as it is also known.

dec 2011

Many fixed-gear adherents contend that their bikes are the ultimate and all others are pretenders. And these fixed-gear zealots are a growing presence on the streets of New York. Perceived by some as nuisances, or as troublesome, anarchist Dumpsterdiving punks who happen to ride bikes, they are occasionally reviled, but they are also the subject of curiosity and interest. Just as die-hard skateboarders 15 years ago stood on the cusp of providing a new lifestyle, so the fixed-gear bike culture could be the tip of something that nobody can accurately predict but something that is huge.

dec 2011

Riders of fixed-gear bikes are as diverse as bike riders in general. Messengers are big fixie aficionados, but more and more fixed-gear bikes are being ridden by nonmessengers, most conspicuously the kind of younger people to whom the term “hipster” applies and who emanate from certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn. You see these riders weaving in and out of traffic without stopping, balancing on the pedals at a stoplight and in the process infuriating pedestrians and drivers alike. In Williamsburg and points south of Grand Street, these bikes are legion. But they are fast gaining popularity, not just in those bastions of trend followers, and not just among 22-year-olds. Fixed-gear bikes are being ridden all over New York, by messengers, racers, lawyers, accountants and college professors — a diverse and not necessarily youthful cross section of the city’s population. They’re being ridden by people who work in sandwich shops and don’t know or care about gear ratios and bike history, and by people who have been racing these bikes for years in places like the Kissena Velodrome in Flushing, Queens, with its banked, elliptical track. They’re ridden by militant vegans who are virtual encyclopedias of arcane bicycle history, by thrill-seeking members of renegade bike gangs like Black Label, by shopgirls, street racers, Critical Mass riders, your aunt There’s also the phenomenon of city riders returning to fixed-gear biking’s roots and getting back to the track, entering races like the Cyclehawk Velo City Tour, to be held at the Kissena Velodrome on May 6. These disparate riders represent a rainbow coalition, a movement that’s about bikes as part of a way of life, as an identity. Although fixed-gear bikes can be seen as a trendy accessory, they also allow a mild form of rebellion against what many of these bike riders see as a wasteful and insipid way of life. Fixed-gear riders embrace the contrary notion of taking a different route. “We own the streets,” the spray-painted stencil reads. Not really, but fixed-gear riders are, in a benign way, promoting an alternative to accepted norms.

“ When you’re on a fixed gear, it gives you a higher skill level. You have to be constantly aware, always watching the road. You don’t just ride. it feels a little crazy.”

dec 2011

Anar chy in Motion

So what’s the big deal? It’s just a bike, right? On some level, yes. Two wheels, a chain, a cog, a seat and handlebars. But in the way that one of Marcel Breuer’s vintage Wassily chairs is just a chair that costs $10,000, the top fixed-gear bikes are just custom-made bikes that cost 10 times as much as a regular factorymade bicycle. The pinnacle of twowheeled transport, they are beautiful objects with simple, clean, strippeddown lines that make them look fast even when they’re standing still. “They’re the prettiest bikes out there,” said Gina Scardino, owner of King Kog, a store on Hope Street in Williamsburg that sells only fixedgear bikes. Indeed they are, with a modernist blending of form and function and a look that matches what they’re made for, which is going really fast on a banked velodrome track. But the question arises: Especially in this city, isn’t it insane to ride a bike that you can’t easily stop? By riding a bike that’s meant to be raced around a special track on the chaotic streets of New York, aren’t you risking life and limb? It doesn’t make sense. But that may be the appeal, and has been ever since the bikes appeared on the scene more than a century ago. Fixed-gear bikes have a rich past. Before the invention of the derailleur, the device that made multiple gears a reality, fixed-gears were the racing bike. The original Madison Square Garden, built in 1879 at 26th Street and Madison Avenue, was built for a velodrome. Races testing speed and endurance drew huge crowds, with the top riders among the sports stars of their day. The bike races at Madison Square Garden were all the rage around the turn of the last century. A velodrome circuit flourished around the country, with the best racers earning $100,000 to $150,000 a year at a time when carpenters were lucky to make $5,000.

dec 2011

Johnny Coast’s Coast Cycles sits at the end of a desolate cul-de-sac in the heart of Bushwick, Brooklyn, near the Myrtle Avenue stop on the J, M and Z lines. Mr. Coast, a 31-year-old with dreadlocks down to the small of his back, is a former squatter and current member of Black Label. Coast Cycles is not your typical bike store stocked with rows of three-speeds and road bikes, along with locks, water bottles and other doodads. It is an oldfashioned, one-person workshop where chickens wander in from the yard. Here, Mr. Coast builds two or three customframed bicycles a month, most of them fixed-gears, “tailored to suit a body’s dimensions, to an individual’s geometry and affording the maximum of comfort, design and style,” as he put it in an e-mail message. Mr. Coast, who works surrounded by Bridgeport lathes, jigs and blueprints, is a believer in fixies as a metaphorical extension of a squatters’ lifestyle that connotes, as he puts it, “living a certain way, subsisting on recycling, not wasting, finding liberation, freedom as a revolutionary act, like in a Hakim Bey sense, primitivist, spiritualist anarchism.” He laughs at the absurdity of a brand like Mountain Dew approaching Black Label with an offer of sponsorship, as he says happened last year, and is wary of exploitation of the fixed-gear bike culture by corporations that have little to do with biking. “I saw what happened to skateboarding and surfing and punk,” Mr. Coast said grimly.

Look, Ma, No Brakes

The dangers of a small world getting bigger were vividly illustrated a few months ago when a hipster wearing square-frame glasses wandered into King Kog. The store, which sells fixedgear bikes starting around $800 and going up to the thousands, also carries Jason Chaste’s Fortynine Sixteen clothing line, named for a gear ratio, and high-end parts like Sugino cranks,

Izumi chains, and Dura-Ace and Ciocc frames. “Um, I’m looking for a track bike,” the visitor said. “What’s your price range?” Ms. Scardino asked. “Three hundred dollars,” the visitor replied. “Hmmm, you might want to try Craigslist or eBay,” she suggested gently. When Ms. Scardino asked the visitor how he planned to use the bike, he answered, “I’m just going to be cruising around.” You got the sense that this wasn’t the place for him, but also that he might come back one day. As he put it when he left: “I like your shop. It’s neat.” At Bike Kill, an annual racing event sponsored by Black Label and held in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, nobody seemed worried about the issue of fixed-gear biking becoming too popular; everybody was having too much fun. Vehicles used in the event, held on a blustery autumn day near the Samuel C. Barnes Elementary School, included tall bikes (two frames on top of each other with a seat about six feet off the ground), bikes with metal rollers as front wheels, tiny bikes and BMX bikes (little single-gear bikes used for tricks) and, of course, fixed-gear bikes.

Stopping on a Prayer

Mr. Coast was there, along with members of Black Label’s Minneapolis and Reno, Nev., chapters and members of other biker groups like C.H.U.N.K. 666, which has footholds in Brooklyn and Portland, Ore.; the Rat Patrol, from Chicago; Dead Baby, from Seattle; and the Skidmarxxx, from Austin, Tex. A lot of unwashed dreads, denim, leather and facial tattoos were in evidence, along with a carnivalesque assortment of voodoo top hats, orange jumpsuits, bunny ears, Mexican wrestling masks and a Pee-wee Herman doppelgänger waving from his Schwinn cruiser. There were copious drinking, including a contest to see who could

ride around in a circle while drinking a six-pack fastest, and the “Blind Skull” event, in which riders wearing big foam skulls over their heads pedaled until they fell over or ran into somebody. Toward 8 p.m. the drunken tallbike jousting began, with knights of both sexes armed with padded plastic “spears.” The only dissonant note occurred when a cassock-wearing interloper on Rollerblades with a motor attached was expelled by a Black Label member. “Get your motor out of here!” the biker yelled. That’s the cardinal rule. No motors. For environmental reasons. Or practical ones, recalling the West Indian messengers who pioneered urban fixed-gear riding in the 1980s, bringing their ingenuity to New York from the islands, where bikes that didn’t have much of anything on them to steal were a decided advantage. But pinning down what constitutes the fixed-gear movement gets complicated. After all, what does the insanity of Bike Kill have to do with someone like “Fast” Eddie Williams, who runs the bicycle-themed Nayako Gallery in Bedford-Stuyvesant, has published a book of photographs of messengers and competes in Alley Cat and Monster Track street races? Mr. Williams’s scene is the messenger scene, in which he has been a participant since the early 1980s, when he first encountered the West Indian messengers hanging out at Washington Square Park. “I saw them riding,” he said. “I liked how they maneuvered, stopped at a red light and didn’t step down. And I thought, ‘How do they do that?’ ” Mr. Williams got a Matsuri, a fast fixed-gear bike, and started working as a messenger. Twenty-five years later, he’s still at it, looking incredibly fit and younger than his 43 years. “Track bikes are not made for street,” he conceded, “and sometimes I need a hope and a prayer to stop short.” But he rhapsodized about their charms. “It’s like playing chess,” he said. “You think

Ine x p l i c able F i x i e F as h i ons

top tube pad

cards in spokes

the mag wheel

handle bars

brookes saddle

out your moves from a block away.” John Campo, the salty-tongued director of the racing program at the Kissena Velodrome, is another fixie aficionado. As with Mr. Williams, the fixed-gear lifestyle seems to be a healthy one; Mr. Campo looks at least 15 years younger than his 60. Biking isn’t his profession — he’s a jazz musician who has played with Miles Davis, among others — but it is undeniably his passion. Mr. Campo missed out on the glory days of the Kissena Velodrome, but he tells tales about the father of Vinny Vella, the actor who plays Jimmy Petrille on “The Sopranos,” racing at Madison Square Garden to win enough money to buy a scale for the pushcart he sold fish from, then earning enough to open a fish store on Elizabeth Street. Mr. Campo remembers all the Polish, German and Italian bike clubs, and he remembers Lou Maltese, a member of the Century Road Club who held many cycling records, including the 100-mile national record in a race from Union City, N.J., to Philadelphia.

‘A Zen Thing’

Far from worrying about fixed-gear bikes getting too popular, Mr. Campo yearns for them to return to the their prominence of a century ago, and he welcomes street riders to Kissena. “These kids are lovely,” he said. “They come; they win, lose or draw; they have a great time. This is an American spirit thing, to be free, to do what you want to do and express yourself in your own medium, like surfing or skating.” Surfing and skating are mentioned a lot in relation to fixed-gear bikes. Something about these activities prefigures much of what is going on today in the bike community. Surfing 50 years ago and skating 25 years ago were small, below-the-radar pursuits with their own rituals and secret codes and vernacular. Now they’re billiondollar industries, popular the world over. And in the opinion of many aficionados, a little bit of soul was lost along the way. Bicycling is obviously different; there are more bikes than cars in the world, and bikes have a longer popular history, not to mention the fact that fixed-gear bikes predate “regular” bikes. But something about the trajectories of surfing and skating from unexamined, semi-underground secret

dec 2011

It might sound kind of corny, but it’s a Zen thing, being one with the bike.” societies to blown-out cheesy “sports” could forecast the future of the fixed-gear bike. Surfing and skating retained some of their rebelliousness, in part because of the varied, unpredictable demographic of who is involved: 5-year-olds and 80-year-olds of both sexes, doctors and garbage collectors, law-abiding citizens and criminals. That makes the skating or surfing “movement” hard to locate exactly, just like the amorphous bike movement. Johnny Coast. Gina Scardino. Fast Eddie. John Campo. The menagerie at Bike Kill. It’s a broad swath. The group also includes people like Toni Germanotta, a 42-year-old owner of an art studio that serves the apparel industry. “When you’re on a fixed gear,” said Ms. Germanotta, who works in the garment district, “it gives you a higher skill level. You have to be constantly aware, always watching the road. You don’t just ride, and it feels a little crazy.” And it includes Kyle Fay, a designer for Urban Outfitters who is a relatively new convert. “You take the blame if you get hit,” he said. “It’s selfreliance, being responsible for yourself. It might sound kind of corny, but it’s a Zen thing, being one with the bike.”

muska

www.suprafootwear.com

Apple Evolution’s Icons Let’s take a look back on Apple’s history with many iconic hi-tech products that helped shape the world we’re living today. This is a tribute to the evil genius Steve Jobs whose vision really changed the way we live for good.

1999

iMac

1998

NewtonMP2000

1997

Powerbook150

1994

Macintosh

1984

Apple Lisa

1983

Apple III

1981

1977

1976

Apple I

dec 2011

Apple II

iPhone 4

2010

iPad

2010

Macbook Pro

2008

iMac

2002 2001

iPod

PowerMacG3

dec 2011

dan fletcher

WHO ARE THEY? HOW TO SPOT THEM? ARE YOU BECOMING A HIPSTER? ALL THE ANSWERS ARE HERE!

dec 2011

Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They’re the people who wear T-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you’ve never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don’t care. Annoying, yes, but harmless, right? Not to hear their critics tell it. Hipsters manage to attract a loathing unique in its intensity. Critics have described the loosely defined group as smug, full of contradictions and, ultimately, the dead end of Western civilization. Though the subculture is met with derision in wider society, hipsters have been able to eke out enclaves across the country, chief among them the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Williamsburg. But now even that is threatened. The hip have been hit with a double whammy of economic reality (more are struggling to pay rent as parental support dries up) and population changes (the carefully gentrified neighborhood is gradually being infiltrated by squatters inhabiting Williamsburg’s stalled building projects). Hipsterdom’s largest natural habitat, it seems, is under threat. 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 roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self.” As the first hipster generation aged, it was replaced by the etymologically diminutive hippies, who appropriated their fears about the Cold War but embraced the community over the individual. The 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. Such cultural mishmash is ripe for parodying. In 2003, author Robert Lanham wrote The Hipster Handbook, trying to codify the rules to hipsterdom, like “You graduated from a liberal arts school whose football team hasn’t won a game since the Reagan administration” and “You have one Republican friend who you always describe as being your ‘one Republican friend.’ “

breakdown of a hipster persona

Trust fund Vintage clothes Highend accessories Pitchfork approved music Apple products Unwarranted Self-importance

dec 2011

There’s also Hipster Bingo and, of course, Look at This F___ing Hipster.Chronicling hipsterdom’s extremes, the LATFH photo blog was a viral sensation, netting its founder, Joe Mande, a book deal in the process. Some of this ridicule is a bit unfair. As stores like Urban Outfitters have mass-produced hipster chic, hipsterdom has become a part of mainstream culture, overshadowing its originators’ still-strong alternative art and music scene. Those people, of course, no longer identify as hipsters, but they’re not the problem. The hipsters who will be the dead end of Western Civilization are the ones who add nothing new or original and simply recycle and reduce old trends into a meaningless meme. It’s for that reason that when Williamsburg’s hipster playland is in crisis, there aren’t many who are concerned. If asked to define what it is to be a hipster, one might be tempted to give a number of answers. Passion for obscure bands, obtuse fashion sense, cheapness masquerading as quirkiness or upper-middle-class white self loathing are all popular. In actuality, most of the culture boils down to judging. Judging items, activities, bands, companies, clothes, oneself and most importantly other people. If someone else is less savvy, cutting edge or knowledgeable than you, doesn’t that mean you are a better person? Hipsters must therefore strive at all times to stay a step ahead of everyone else. Worshiping the most obscure bands available and then dismissing them after they come out with their first LP is a good start. Successfully using the phrase “I was into them before...” is rumored to actually make a hipster’s penis larger. Hipsters also attempt to stay on the cusp of their perverted version of fashion. Are black framed glasses out? Try 60’s horn-rims. Does your friend have his lip pierced? Try cutting yours off. This isn’t about beauty or even basic hygiene. This is about looking like you traveled back from the not too distant future. A future populated by douchebags You may be wondering: isn’t all this ridiculous scrambling to attach oneself to the next big thing exhausting? Doesn’t it reflect a deep personal flaw that people would choose to relentlessly consume rather than attempt to create? Isn’t this a sad comment on the state of society that people would glorify this type of inane behavior? Well, that’s exactly what I’d expect someone who didn’t buy the In Rainbows boxset to say, asshole! Maybe you’d prefer Coldplay?

dec 2011

As much as hipster’s love irony, they have a pretty poor grasp of the concept. Not caring is cool because the individual ignores the rules to get something, usually laid. Hipsters of course can’t risk looking like they want something Hipsters ignore rules because they think it will make them look like they don’t care. There is no end result, just a continuous cycle of mediocre indie rock and scruffy looking dudes. By basing their actions on avoiding the mainstream, they are in fact guided by the mainstream. Assuming you’re not hitting the pipe too hard, you now understand the worst thing about hipsters: they don’t realize that they’re a big joke.

YOU MIGHT BE A HIPSTER IF YOU: • • • • • • • • • • • •

Indie music (obviously) Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller High Life Expensive Vintage footware Movies you wouldn’t have seen Ironic shirt or trucker hat Clove cigarettes Digital camera Totally Retro Mustaches Liberal arts degree Culture substituting textbook tattoos, Pitchfork.com Anything Ironically Lower Class

• • •

Photos from high school punk phase Sense of perspective everything mainstream

t oo mainstream

dec 2011

SUB SCRIP TION

dec 2011

1.800.copymag

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