When out-and-about, you’ve seen them. The Millennial hipsters who wear tee shirts sporting logos from rockers you saw in concert ‘back when.’ The beanpole, straight-postured young ‘uns who crowd Starbucks, Whole Foods, and in-the-moment restaurants and bars. Seeing them makes you wistful for your younger days when parents paid your car insurance and served free hot meals. At home, around a table covered with cloth.
Is that’s what getting you down, Bunkie? Clear-cutting a swath across your gut? Crawling in your craw?
Me, too.
No worries. We can become hipsters despite our advanced age. Holy crap! This g-g-generation even co-opted the alt-term of our youth: hippie, bending it with their expectations and cash.
Here’s 15 gotcha-back steps:
- Cash in your 401k and travel around the U.S. in a vintage Airstream (Winnebagos, like the couple I wrote in STASHES, are not hipster cool). Sell healing crystals, Buddha bracelets, and your own brand of organic hummus made from chick peas.
- Grow your own cannabis in hacked-in-half and decoupaged milk cartons lining the patio.
- Carry a ukulele everywhere you go, even if your rendition of “The Rainbow Connection” sounds more like a cat in heat. (Especially if that’s true)
- Be well versed in the divergence between IPAs and Stouts. (Especially if you are stout)
- Recycle EVERYTHING, including lint from the dryer that can be knit into socks. Or used to line the cat’s litter box.
- Enroll in yoga classes but make sure you take plenty of Gas-X before you pretzel stretch.
- Buy a used Prius—or better yet—get a gerbil-powered bike. Ha-ha-ha-ha!
- Get a Tattoo of your spirit animal inked on your shoulder. (Especially if it’s a shark)
- Stash some edibles in your fanny pack before heading out to a free music concert at the park.
- Learn how to pronounce quinoa.(keen wah) Learn to like it. A lot. Try vegan, but only when not near In-n-Out.
- Grow a beard and buy special wax for shaping it into a facial topiary. Or settle for a mustache like Kenneth Branagh sported in the movie, “Murder on the Orient Express.”
- Protest against social inequality, corporate greed, and Congressional baboons who meet in secret sessions to un-write the American Dream. (Hey, those were hippie ideals…guess we didn’t fix that crap)
- Take a class in latte art. Sip, not slug, the cup contents.
- stock up on plaid flannel shirts from Lands End and wear Doc Martens, so capable of hiding cushy orthotic supports…
- Learn Urban Dictionary’s initialized vocab. NASA is so last century, the space agency gutted by budget cuts.
Gotta go sip a lotta latte. Get back to me on how this worked…
Commencing facial topiary …. NOW! Trust me, GenXers go through the same pop culture appropriation frustration, but ultimately I want to give Millennials a big hug for staying so upbeat despite getting the economic shaft. If they want to wear a Joy Division tee-shirt, I say go for it. LOL.
Dude – thanks for your insights!