Was wondering if anyone can relate to this. Before the internet, college hipsters seemed to have a small set of very narrow and predictable interests in those few years before they put on a tie and joined a big company.
My point of reference is the late 1980s in upstate New York and nearby areas, male students. Before I went to college, I spent a lot of time visiting these places to help older brothers of friends move in and out of dorm rooms, and the same stuff kept turning up over and over:
VHS copies of This is Spinal Tap, Blade Runner, Faces of Death and random David Lynch and Bruce Lee movies.
Reading material - Kerouac, Vonnegut, William S. Burroughs, The Last Days of Christ the Vampire (or similar “blasphemy”), anything about “existentialism” or legalizing soft drugs. Noam Chomsky, Ayn Rand, Abbie Hoffman. Anything about central american rebel groups and Irish nationalism (especially if one wasn’t ethnic themselves). Ironic Curious George souvenirs.
Music - Negativeland, Sonic Youth and Fugazi (I still don’t know a single song of those bands but they were everywhere), Frank Zappa, random records by The Doors, Rush, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. Bonus points for a bad quality live tape from an obscure place.
Does this ring a bell for anyone? Was it very different for female students?
Ah yes Arjuna34 I also remember all those others you mentioned. Funny how those relatively few things spread like wildfire. Another thing I forgot was the books of Harlan Ellison and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Not too sure if anyone really bothered to sit and read these books or if they were mostly for show.
I kind of remember that the female students back then would have been big fans of Anne Rice and Patrick Swayze but maybe I’m wrong.
And I don’t know what a hipster even is, to tell the truth. I just thought it was anyone who doesn’t wear a tie or a uniform.
I had a T-shirt with this image on it. I traveled to the mall and back, I think. I had no idea I was a hipster.
The “before the Internet” part of the OP is ironic. The Internet certainly existed in the late 80s, and in my experience, the guys that the OP is describing are the ones who were actively using it. And then exploiting it by starting ISPs, going on to develop the whole WWW thing, and bringing it to the masses. Some still don’t wear ties.
That’s true - my suite had most of the things listed so far, and we were using email (even BITNET), online chat, playing MUDs, FTPing files (later gopher and Archie), etc.
Also, in addition to Escher, throw in some Mandlebrot plots.
Mr. Bill posters
in the glare of cheap torch lamps
GNR Skull and Tophat Ceramic Bongs and homemade beer bongs made with radiator tubing or garden hose, duct tape, and large gas or oil funnels. Kegs of Geneesee Cream Ale (because it was cheap).
That list of things is related to nerds, dorks, geeks, and other socially shunned types, not hipsters. Hipsters listened to world music, wore woolen things made in Peru, contantly protested things on the quad, and had questionable hygiene practices. That also played frisbee, went hooking a lot, and were associated with heavy marijuana use. They were often members of the Dmocratic Socialist party and they carried signs that said things like "All women are potential rape victims - all men are potential rapists. They had posters of Bob Marley and tried to copy his hairstyle.
I was in college in upstate NY in the mid-90s and I, and friends, had several items on your list - David Lynch, Faces of Death, Fugazi, Sonic Youth, Doors, Floyd, Zep, Vonnegut, Rand and Chompsky (yes, yes, I know). Internet was faily minimal for me when I first started in 95, but became prolific afterwards. Prior to college it was all BBSs for me, and then I think I did a year with no internet except at library, then some minimal dial up for another year, and after that it got good (starting about 97). Anyway, I wouldn’t consider myself a hipster, then or now, by any stretch of the imagination.
Violent Femmes were huge at that time… a phenomenon in the college scene. Their first album was released in '82 and went platinum ten years later… That must be a pretty unusual feat?
I never heard hipsters ever used as a genre other than by people over 50… There was no such thing as a “hipster” back then… it almost seems derogatory and something my Grandpa would use.
I realize hipsters weren’t a subculture of the eighties, but hipsters and hippies don’t really have much in common beyond scruffiness and soft drug use, and you’re describing a very stereotypical hippie.
