EARLIER THIS YEAR, I wrote something for Seattle magazine, expanding on themes I’ve been exploring here about the new face of “hipness” around town.
For the sake of our out-of-town readers and others who missed the mag, here’s the uncut version of that piece (the mag didn’t cut much):
There’s a new definition of hipness emerging in Seattle, and it’s a lot more than just “Not Grunge.”
It’s a repudiation of the whole bohemian notion of an “alternative” to “mainstream society.”
The new hipness doesn’t oppose society; it wants to lead it. It doesn’t repudiate material wealth; it wants to use it more stylishly. It’s about dressing up, seeing and being seen, and making the scene.
For a long time, to be a hipster in Seattle all you had to do was proclaim your antipathy to squareness.
And that meant almost everything approved by our civic powers-that-be.
Squareness ruled Seattle, absorbing all anti-status-quo movements.
In the ’50s, regional Teamsters boss Dave Beck turned a once-militant labor movement into a force for conservatism.
In the ’70s, many local hippies aged into either docile Deadheads or domesticated professionals.
In the ’80s, Starbucks made the coffeehouse, that beat-era symbol of artful rebellion, safe for strip malls.
In the early ’90s, college station KCMU moved away from raw noise bands, toward more retro-country and ethnic acoustic music.
For every incarnation of squareness, an incarnation of hipness emerged in response.
Ultimately, that led to the anti-fashion look and gritty sound of the “grunge” scene, so loud and aggressive it could supposedly never be tamed by the squares.
The new hipness denounces that dichotomy of having fun vs. having funds.
It says you can enjoy a creative, active life without taking a vow of poverty; that you can earn a good income without becoming a dull homebody.
It’s fueled by waves of cyber-wealth, bringing in people with youth and money, and by real-estate inflation, scatterring many old-style bohemians out of town or into non-artistic careers.
A locus of the new hipness is ARO.Space, the one-year-old dance club at 10th and East Pike. The building used to house Moe’s Mo’Rockin’ Cafe, the old hipness’s most lavish (yet still funky-chic) rock club. It’s now a sleek palace of pastel colors and recessed lights, where DJs mix the latest subgenres of electronic dance music for gay and mixed audiences. The design’s fancy yet understated and reassuring, a spot for beautiful people to show off their good taste.
Under Seattle’s old hipness, gay bars were obscure, underground-cachet places (some didn’t even have exterior signage).
Under the new hipness, they’re the high-profile trendsetter spots, where straight people try to look good enough and dance well enough to fit in.
The ARO.Space formula’s worked so well that two similar clubs have opened within walking distance, Spintron and the new Vogue.
The old Vogue space in Belltown (previously a new-wave bar called WREX) was an old-hip institution done up in basic black, where two generations of rock and dance-music fans co-mingled (and where Nirvana played its first Seattle gig). The new Vogue’s a little less funky, a lot more chic, and all-DJ.
[Update: Since this was written, the new Vogue added Tuesday live gigs, a former tradition at the old Vogue.]
The owners of ARO.Space just opened the Ace Hotel in the Belltown building where the Seattle Peniel Mission and Operation Nightwatch used to be. Its stark, Japanese-inspired look of small rooms with hospital-white walls and futon-level beds got it written up in hot design magazines.
The magazines’ writers were aghast that something in Seattle was so understated, so clean, so (you guessed it) not-grunge. They apparently forgot what ARO.Space’s name implies–we make passenger planes here, so a few people here would know how to make small spaces slick-looking yet efficient.
Downstairs from the Ace is the new Cyclops restaurant. The old Cyclops (demolished in 1997) was a hip icon, serving tasty food at affordable prices to aspiring artists and musicians. The new Cyclops’s decor bears some resemblance to its homier prior self, but it’s a fancier place, serving fancier dishes at fancier prices to folks who loved the old Cyclops but can afford nicer fare now.
Establishments that served the old hipsters had to keep prices down, because their customers didn’t have much money and didn’t ever expect to. Even after “grunge” bands got big, many hipsters continued to believe nothing you ever did here mattered; lasting change or influence was impossible in squaresville Seattle; the most you could do was form a community of fellow outcasts.
The new hipness, despite its occasional lapses into shallow hedonism, at least thinks certain achievements are possible. It says high-energy music and contemporary art and design play big roles in vital urban life.
But will the new hipsters’ achievements prove worthwhile in the long run? That’s a topic for another time.
IF YOU MISSED last week’s wonderful live reading/event, there’s another promo for The Big Book of MISC. this Thursday, Aug. 26, 7:30 p.m., at the venerable Elliott Bay Book Co. Be there. Bring people with you.
TOMORROW: The latest in fun inventions and designs.
ELSEWHERE: Somebody else who thinks irony is dead, and who dares to say it without “air quotes”… A next-big-thing story about Internet radio notes that traditional AM/FM listening “among those 25 and under has plummeted 10 percent in the last six years…”
