We’re kind of hipster, not that we care

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This article was published 21/04/2018 (3017 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Prepare to become extremely excited, Winnipeg — or not — because we have scored a coveted spot on a recently published list of the most hipster cities in the world.

According to the International Hipster Index, Winnipeg is the 279th most hipster-friendly major city on the planet and No. 14 out of 27 Canadian cities rated for their hipster-ness.

Q: Is that exciting, or what?

A: No, not if you’re a hipster, because getting excited means that you care, which is not a hipster thing to do.

The index, which is generating headlines around the world, was created by researchers at MoveHub, a hip website that provides information to people when they are looking at moving from one house to another.

MoveHub’s index (movehub.com/blog/the-hipster-index/) ranks 446 cities across 20 countries using five key indicators of “hipsterdom.”

“Our new, improved, alternative Hipster Index combines five data points: the number of vegan eateries, coffee shops, tattoo studios, vintage boutiques and record stores per 100,000 city residents,” the website explains.

“Combined and weighted they produce a Hipster Index score out of 10 for each city. To prevent inflated numbers — and preserve our sanity — we excluded cities with populations below 150,000.

“We looked at 446 cities across 20 countries. That’s 2,834 record stores, 7,772 vegan eats, 14,588 tattoo studios, 15,549 vintage boutiques, and 93,203 coffee shops covering a combined population of over 200,000,000 people. Serious. Bloody. Business.”

The question is: How should Winnipeggers feel about being the 279th most hipster city in the world, not to mention the 14th most hipster-friendly city in Canada?

I personally don’t have a clue and that is why I asked the experts at MoveHub how we should feel about our hipster rating.

“Given the study was of 446 cities, almost perfectly indifferent. You’re not terribly hipster. You’re also not not terribly hipster,” MoveHub researcher/writer Fred O’Brien explained. “Even in Canada you manage to fall squarely in the middle of the pack. Of course, that may just mean you haven’t been discovered yet, which would make Winnipeg very hipster indeed.

“That said, out of the five data points we used, Winnipeg’s best showing was comfortably in the density of record stores. You’re fifth in the country for that, which is pretty groovy.”

Pretty groovy, indeed, Fred. But before we dive even deeper into the statistics we need to take a minute to ponder the precise definition of a hipster.

If you self-identify as a hipster, you are definitely not a hipster because you are trying too hard to conform. If you don’t self-identify as a hipster, you might be a hipster, but you might be a lot of other things, too.

When I pointed out that hipsters don’t like being called hipsters, here’s what Fred replied, via email: “It’s a vague term I agree, but fair. In a nutshell hipsters are 20- to 30-something self-styled bohemians who all inexplicably look alike. A lot of the culture revolves around sustainable produce and grassroots culture, with some pretension thrown in. That’s what it looks like from the outside looking in. I’m not a hipster myself, I swear.”

We hate to make sweeping generalizations, but you can typically identify a hipster in the wild by several key traits, including:

• They tend to favour hairstyles that make them look like 19th-century oil barons, despite the fact they are not 19th-century oil barons;

• If they consume coffee that is not organic or made from beans that have passed through the digestive system of a wild jungle cat, or drink beer that is not from a local, artisanal craft brewer, their hipster hearts will stop beating;

• They tend to wear slouchy wool caps and lumberjack-style plaid shirts, despite the fact they have absolutely no idea which end of an axe should be used for whacking a tree;

• They enjoy indie and alternative music, but they enjoy it ironically.

In a sincere effort to figure out Winnipeg’s status in the hipster community, earlier this week I dropped in at the extremely popular (and reportedly hipster-friendly) Thom Bargen coffee house on Sherbrook Street, where everyone was so busy making coffee they didn’t really have time to chat.

Co-owner Graham Bargen kindly contacted me later via email and explained that the term “hipster” itself is not overly hip or helpful.

“As for us being a part of anything ‘hipster,’ I’d have to say we must be redefining that (albeit dead) term,” Graham wrote. “Our average demographic is so diverse we aren’t easily put into a category. A solid 50 per cent of our weekend customers are over 45. And besides students, we are mostly frequented by families. Our Kennedy (Street) location is mostly corporate offices.

“So we are happy to play a part in the new movement of specialty coffee. But a ghostwriter shop? Not so sure we are aligned.”

The most hipster city in the world? Brace your hipster selves for a shock, because the winner was Brighton, a seaside resort community on the south coast of Englan.

Brighton has 37 vegan restaurants and cafes, 125 coffee shops and nine record shops per 100,000 people, meaning they have the best access to vintage tunes in the world.

In something of a shocking upset, Brighton squeaked past Portland, the legendary hipster haven in Oregon, by a margin narrower than a hipster’s neck beard — one 1,000th of a point.

The top-ranked Canadian city was (pause for dramatic effect) Victoria, which ranked 88th in the world overall — despite the fact, in this columnist’s opinion, its residents spend most of their time complaining there is nothing worth listening to on the radio and not noticing the traffic light has turned green.

In ranking No. 14 out of 27 Canadian cities surveyed, Winnipeg — home to the Jets and roughly nine months’ worth of winter — was narrowly edged out by Kitchener, Ont., home to the Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest, the largest celebration of all things Bavarian outside of Germany.

As hip Winnipeggers, we can take comfort from the fact that we rated ahead of Ottawa, Edmonton, Hamilton, Quebec City and Toronto, but it’s hard to know what to make of the fact that our hipster-ness falls short of the cool mecca of Regina, which ranked fifth in Canada and 203rd in the world.

For the record, the least hipster city in the world, coming in at No. 446, was Gelsenkirchen, a city in western Germany famous for a lovely zoo that features (seriously) polar bears.

Sounds pretty (bad word) hipster to us, not that we’re judging anyone.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca