by JULIET WATERS

Before you read The Hipster Handbook by Robert Lanham, take the test at the end of the book to see how deck (latest hipster word for cool) you are. Reading the book first is fin (the opposite of deck).

I am one point short of deck - in the “precipice” category, but comfortably far from “poseur.” Points were lost for liking the Strokes, brushing with Crest Gel, and admitting that the last two movies I saw had explosions in them. But one of the “11 clues you are a hipster” is that “You have refined taste and consider yourself exceptionally cultured, but have one pop vice (ElimiDATE, Quiet Riot, and Entertainment Weekly are popular ones).” Counting the Strokes as my pop vice won’t do. I concur they’re poseurs, but I’m a chipper (hipster word for slut) for a juicer (man with undeniable sex appeal) with a jewfro (a hipster hairdo, like Albert Hammond Jr.’s). I resolve instead to listen to Guided by Voices twice for every time I listen to “This Is It.” (Hopelessly nerdy but genius GBV is in the hipster canon - though “If you are a guy and own them, then absolutely anyone on the planet can kick your ass.”).

Explosion movies, I decide, is the vice that actually makes me deck. At the end of a long, gruelling week as a book critic, the last thing I want is more character development. I want shit blowing up while the frados (ugly guys who think they’re good-looking, e.g. Vin Diesel, Leonardo DiCaprio) scurry. Still, I’m humbled that I didn’t just say, “Fuck your lame test,” and vault straight into the category above deck - punk rock.

I don’t really need this test. I lived a decade on the Plateau (listed as one of North America’s Hipster indigenous zones). Then I moved to a neighbourhood that was once a nice place for bipsters (blue-collar hipsters) and now complain bitterly about gentrification, though I am of course part of the problem (another one of the 11 clues that you are a hipster). My toddler’s stroller sports a Vice sticker (an official hipster magazine).

According to the handbook however, having a baby is never deck, and trying to hipsterize strollers is definitely fin. Babies don’t give a fuck about strollers (“For all they know it’s a shopping cart with some cardboard on the bottom.”). Thus I am back in the precipice.

So what about Lanham, is he a hipster? He claims to be the author of a women’s erotica trilogy, to have a great body and to often drive shirtless in his Camaro. Hipsters never admit to being hipsters, thus he obviously is. Other clues: hipsters always make lists with 11 things. Ten is too mainstream, and 11 is très Spinal Tap. Lanham is editor of FreeWilliamsburg.com, an online monthly run out of the hipster section of Brooklyn, and the title is a way of complaining bitterly about gentrification. Finally, he knows his stuff. Not just the basic types of hipsters, the music, the movies they watch, the books they read, and the beer they drink. Real insider stuff like, “Similar to Eskimos, who have several words for ‘snow,’ hipsters have many terms for receiving a check from their parents.”

What kind of hipster is he? At 31, you could call him a Maturing Hipster. The book bears a striking resemblance to The Preppy Handbook, an ’80s phenomenon that few young hipsters would recognize as one of the founding hipster texts. It was here that the trend of viciously parodying any supposedly cool lifestyle that threatened to become mainstream began.

Does this mean it’s over for hipsters? What about the kids who have so innocently adopted the lifestyle? Ah… fear not. For being and remaining a hipster is about living in the precipice. Never quite admitting to being hip, but never far away.

Or you can just not give a fuck about the lame test. But first you must look deep into your heart and ask yourself, “Do I really want to be using Rogaine on my mohawk?” :

The Hipster Handbook by Robert Lanham,
Anchor, pb, 169pp, $14.95