In the city of Harrisburg, there is an ongoing battle about who’s who. Historically, it’s consisted of skirmishes based on politics, socioeconomics and race.
However, in the past two years or so, those typical lines of division have been marked by the arrival of new participants—hipsters.
A figure of controversy and confusion, the hipster embodies many of the issues the city has been fighting about for a long while, yet not until recently was there such a particular character to point to who symbolizes the conflict.
The hipster is commonly defined as a 20-something, white, suburban, middle-class person who transplants to a city to live a Bohemian life free of conventional impositions.
The term is a throwback to the 1940s, but its modern usage was coined in the 1990s and, since then, has become a common term, sufficiently overused and not well understood. Urban areas across the nation deliberate on who the hipster is and what it means to be one.
In fact, the idea that hipsters have arrived in Harrisburg actually signifies that this is a real city.
While almost every other city has been debating hipsterness for the past decade (this is central PA after all…things seem to land here long after other places have been there, done that), Harrisburg’s debate has really revved up in the past year.
Like the word gentrification, it’s been increasingly thrown around—not always appropriately—especially in discussions on the capital city’s economic development. To many born and raised, long-lived here Harrisburgians, “hipsters” are the token menaces of their society.
Before the perceived Harrisburg hipster invasion, the fights of progress were rooted in issues of entrenched politics and struggles for power. For some, former Mayor Stephen Reed was a man of vision. For others, he was a neglectful ruler. Under Linda Thompson, the bouts became more overtly about race and money. Always, it’s been about insiders and outsiders.
Knowing this, I’ve become more and more concerned about hearing the word “hipster” in Harrisburg. Simple research shows that anywhere the word is used, it tends to invoke disdain. It’s often used pejoratively, referring to someone identified as young, white and well off, with a “too cool for school” gait bedecked in skinny jeans and witty T-shirts. It’s a stereotype, and, like all stereotypes, it’s unfair. Yet at the same time, there’s always some truth to it.
I’ve been worried that in our small, fragile city, the hipster would be the scapegoat for the growing pains of Harrisburg’s reconstruction. I’ve also been worried that the hipsters are ignorant of this city’s history, politics and true troubles.
The battlegrounds of Midtown, the Broad Street Market and ballots are being riddled with the word. Hipster. The “us” and “them” are no longer loaded yet ambiguous terms of this city’s war. Now, the hipster has sufficiently become the “them” to those looking for someone to blame for the discomfort of change.
What is a hipster of Harrisburg? Are they the ones hanging out in the coffee shops and walking the streets during 3rd in The Burg? Are they those people with beards and oversized glasses who love craft beer? Does this mean anyone who fits that description is one of “them?”
That seems to be what’s unjustly happening in Harrisburg.
Unjust as it may be, that doesn’t mean the “hipster” doesn’t exist around here.
In a thought-provoking 2012 essay in the New York Times entitled “How to Live Without Irony,” Christy Wampole builds off of the general definition of hipster as the white millennial subculture group migrating to America’s cities. She defines “the hipster” as someone who lives in an irony that is characteristic of a life of comfort and one of choices. The hipster can be ironically clever because a life of relative privilege has permitted such contemplation. This becomes apparent not just in attitude but in aesthetic, as well.
In juxtaposition to those who live in irony are those who don’t. She writes that those who live non-ironically—the opposite of the hipster—are “very young children, elderly people, deeply religious people, people with severe mental or physical disabilities, people who have suffered, and those from economically or politically challenged places where seriousness is the governing state of mind.”
This highlights what, I think, is the ultimate tension of having the hipster in Harrisburg—this place is almost too complicated for such irony as the hipster embodies.
Harrisburg is the quintessential place of economic and political challenge. It is where people have suffered for generations.
The fact, though, is the hipster—or any influx of youth, energy and culture—can help boost this city.
Yet problems arise when anyone, whether hipster or other fleeting label, arrives in Harrisburg and neglects to acquaint themselves with the trials and tribulations of this place.
If people who live here don’t make themselves familiar with Harrisburg’s past and potential, then its problems will remain.
Ultimately, in order to quit the battles, we have to agree that anyone, no matter who they are, is welcome to fit into the Harrisburg community as long as they don’t think they are solely the community.
Tara Leo Auchey is creator and editor of today’s the day Harrisburg. www.todaysthedayhbg.com.
