Last Night

When my cousin the revolutionary or I see a white person turn our direction after getting out of the subway instead of heading up the slope, we still notice. But there have been more and more of them lately, and we haven't even lived here that long. And everyone else has been seeing at least two white people in the neighborhood every day - my cousin and me. We're the gentrifyers as much as anybody.

Anyway, last night our friend Erin (name changed for total anonymity) dragged me away from my Friday-night couch session to go to some random show which, it turned out, was at a venue in my neighborhood.

Now, Erin either can't or won't acknowledge how his own behavior fits in to the standards of society. This makes him awesome to hang out with because in addition to not judging himself, Erin is happy not to judge you.

Erin is also a total hipster, right down to hating all other hipsters. So the funniest moment of the night was when Erin's outfit, which consisted almost entirely of clothes stolen from his friends, led a photographer from Spin to take his picture (photos should be online on Tuesday).

The show, Oh My Rockness' March Radness, was a complete and total blow-out. Awesome. Emphasis was first on volume, but music value was a close second, unlike a lot of the loud music I've heard lately. With my extremely limited musical knowledge, I recognized a Franz Ferdinand influence. Erin called it Indie Noise, which seemed pretty accurate. The crowd was mostly young and white.

The next morning, Erin and I went back to the Lycium. Erin bought a cup of coffee, and we noticed there were a bunch of families with little kids, probably around five years old, running around the massive dance floor we'd been raging on the night before.

My first thought was that this was very impressive from a logistical point of view, because I was sure we'd trashed the place seven hours before those kids showed up. My second thought was that it was about the most quintessential Park Slope scene I could imagine.

So white people are flooding Gowanus, self-hating hipsters are going to obscure clubs there for Sparks-sponsored parties, and Spin is taking pictures, leading to the question, WTF?

Is Park Slope becoming hipster central? Or was this a flash in the pan? Maybe the Park Slope hipster revolution already happened, and the fact that I'm noticing it means it's already ended? But how to explain the sheer impossibility of so much hipsterdom happening at once? But hipsters in Park Slope? It's just too crazy to be true.

In journalism, three makes a pattern. I'm heading to South Paw tonight to check out Dr. Dog at another friend's recomendation. Her hipster credentials are also good - implacable style of dress, address in Williamsburg. If I see all the same people again that I saw last night, I'll be that much closer to calling Park Slope for the hipsters.