What is the world's hippest city?

http://cif.rochester.edu/~xm/lol/hippicks-chk.jpg

Also, Don so OTM, only I'd say it's more than 90%

i live there!! omg wtf

as for, full of hipsters, well, thats such a nebuluous and problematic term anyway, and, as dom said, most people criticizing hipsters are hipsters, except no, i'd go further than that and say that most criticizers of hipsters, are wannabe hipsters, possibly.

anyway, in this second category, i'd go for one of the US college towns that gets mentioned all the time, where the popn is quite small, but it draws in a lot of people. i dont really think there is a uk equivalent to that, so maybe a very heavily dominated university city, like Leeds perhaps

Houston?

I guess 'hip' is for white people

He pegs DC as the third most bohemian city, but only the 26th coolest, perhaps because it's America's most scientific, professional and talented city. I think this describes well what I like about it.

Other than that; are the usual answers Olympia? Athens?

Topeka, Kansas

how were these stats measured? i'm curious to know what the criteria of coolness were.

Salt Lake City seems to have a lot of hipsters (OK punks) probably because there are just so many white kids in town and every family of 12 has got to have at least one rebellious "black sheep".

The least hip major city in the US has got to be San Jose, even though it would probably score high on the Richard Florida rankings.

Lawrence, Kansas is a cool midwest college town though, but I really wouldn't want to live there.

are big cities inherently hipper than small ones? vice versa?

number of bands without bass players should figure in somewhere. or bands with nothing but bass players. or bands with violas/cellos instead of bass players.

-- spittle (ptu...) (webmail), May 18th, 2004 1:57 AM. (spittle) (later) (link)

PROVIDENCE RI TO THREAD!!!

Trustafarians actually make up one of the smaller groups here. And they mainly keep around the UNCA campus, buried in the woods.

What we have a lot of: real hippies, punks, street kidz (homeless or not homeless), transients, weirdos. And the indie fuq population is less corny than most.

another vote for berlin

Yeah, the indie crowd here isn't quite so Matador/Drag City as it was, say, in Dallas.

this was my point exactly

No offense to Drag City or Smog (both of which I like), but that whole indie country gothic thing doesn't play quite so well when you're already in Southern Appalachia. Like, "..and I see a darkness"... Yeah, no shit. Tell it to Pretty Polly. You wanna see some darkness, come up the holler motherfucker.

I very much disagree with this:

Seriously, the \"hip\" area is pretty much the same in any city, same kind of shops, cafés, bars etc. \"Hip\" is as globalized and homogenized as McDonalds.

A lot of cities, esp. in the US, have a tiny 'alternamall' for students, with one aromatherapy store, one indie record store, one club with faded 90s decor, a bookstore that stocks the Utne Reader plus a few zines with blotchy purple graphics, an art gallery with some nasty squatty daubs, and a shop where you can buy sort of 'pink' and 'punk' clothes. (I'm thinking of places like Atlanta and Cleveland.) 'Hip' in these places is threadbare, and bears almost no comparison to the almost endless hip you'll find in Berlin or Tokyo.

However, in big and hip cities it's not cool to be seen to be trying too hard, so you'll often see more self-conscious hipsters in smaller towns, especially around the art college (ie Glasgow, Rekjavik, etc).

In terms of 'dandies as a proportion of the population' I think Tokyo has it.

With a view to extending the Richard Florida boho index technique, I'd want to ask:

How many Thai restaurants are there? Are there official signs in the subway system to the Gay and Lesbian Centre? Are there more art galleries than you could ever visit in one lifetime? Does the average concert involve a brass instrument and two laptops, with the brass instrument on no account being played for notes? Are fashions deliberately ugly 'to discourage the weak'? How many Japanese are to be seen (if outside Japan)? Do hipsters live in the immigrant areas (ie Kreuzberg in Berlin, Flushing in NY)? Have you seen someone in the last 24 hours who just stunned you with the pretentiousness of their garb?

Tokyo scores rather low on immigrant areas (there's really just Okubo, an Asian immigrant area), stressing that hip in Tokyo is really pretty genteel. Berlin scores low on the Japanese index (there are very few Japanese here, compared even with Paris), and is in some ways a surprisingly provincial city. The unremitting hipness here may be a sort of over-compensation for these perceived weaknesses. London is too slutty, and too terrified of the class implications, to be truly 'dandy' or flamboyant (hence the automatic suspicion there that anyone hip is a trusty). And so on. I think if it was all done scientifically by UNESCO it might well turn out to be Hong Kong or something.

but, lets say the hip=trusty assumption is a fair one for london, i dont think its the same in manchester. perhaps in a country that is not so unicentred as britain, things are different. but then, thinking of france and sweden, perhaps not

Honorable mention should go to St Petersburg, from what I've heard.

NB: artists = painters, sculptors, musicians, playwrights etc
hangers on = journalists, PR people, etc etc

-- Baaderoni (fabfon...) (webmail), May 19th, 2004 12:13 AM. (Fabfunk) (later) (link)
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well we do love us some krums!

(sorry)

Where IS that cool?

Bangkok is clearly the hippest city then. (Sydney comes a close second, it's practically impossible to eat anything that's not Thai there now.)

The Thai restaurant index comes from David Brooks and his Red America v. Blue America theme:

'Different sorts of institutions dominate life in these two places. In Red America churches are everywhere. In Blue America Thai restaurants are everywhere. In Red America they have QVC, the Pro Bowlers Tour, and hunting. In Blue America we have NPR, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and socially conscious investing. In Red America the Wal-Marts are massive, with parking lots the size of state parks. In Blue America the stores are small but the markups are big. You'll rarely see a Christmas store in Blue America, but in Red America, even in July, you'll come upon stores selling fake Christmas trees, wreath-decorated napkins, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer collectible thimbles and spoons, and little snow-covered villages.

'We in the coastal metro Blue areas read more books and attend more plays than the people in the Red heartland. We're more sophisticated and cosmopolitan—just ask us about our alumni trips to China or Provence, or our interest in Buddhism. But don't ask us, please, what life in Red America is like. We don't know.'

'I'm not going to profess to possess any sort of wisdom following my collegiate career. The first two years - lamentably dubbed 'The Really Dark, Dark Ages' - were spent in video-game-and-nap oblivion, a purgatory I escaped only with a trip abroad and the subsequent realization that a world existed outside of my dorm room, albeit a world with far fewer Fruit Roll-Ups per capita.'

http://cif.rochester.edu/~xm/lol/ianjon.jpg

http://home.rochester.rr.com/rrours/

http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/nbh/2011/10/31-39/Is-Annapolis-a-hip-city.html

Is Annapolis a hip city?
Published 10/31/11
Is Annapolis a hip city? Please tell us why, and where the hipsters hang. Or let us know why it's not hip.

One of the things I hate about the otherwise excellent Lonely Planet Guide to London is the way it keeps recommending places as having a 'mostly hip young crowd/clientele'

This is a big factor in Berlin's cultural atmosphere. You don't have to have rich parents to walk the walk here, and you don't have to work and just walk it in your spare time. It's pretty key.

really want to move from london -> berlin. friends there have all moved and become successful and happy

i love this city, but man, up at 6. sort life out. bike to work. work. back home at 7. make food. have beer. have cigarette. work in the studio till 1 or 2. crash. wake up. repeat. somehow i fit in girlfriend/friends/gigs/family/reading/meditation blah blah blah

i know, oh woe is me etc, but fuck me, living like this is tough.

xpost what's wrong with that!?

Presumably it's so you can avoid them