Aging Hipster, Waxing Nostalgic

I’m in New York this week for the Independent Filmmakers Conference, which is being held at the Fashion Institute until Thursday. Because of the conference, I’ve had to spend most of my time in Chelsea and only briefly have had the chance to set foot in my former neighborhood of Williamsburg. My friends and I brunched at Juliette (because the waiting list for Egg was too long) and made a few obligatory jokes about the neighborhood.

For the uninitiated, Williamsburg is the place that one magazine said hipsters would annex as a capital if they were to secede from the nation. People have said a lot of things Williamsburg and all that it represents, and I’m sure that academic circles will be dissecting the myth of the hipster in a few years, if they have not already done so. In the meantime, some people have made a damn fine living commoditizing that elusive hipster cache: Urban Outfitters, Vice Magazine, Hipster Runoff and so forth.

I used to live in Williamsburg. I loved living there so much that I never wanted to leave and used to tell people that Williamsburg was my boyfriend. I said this because the Williamsburg that belonged to me was more than a pair of skinny jeans, sideswept bangs and a bad hangover. It was not about the so-called trustafarians who gave the hard-working kids in the neighborhood a bad name.

Williamsburg was about music and art, as well as the community that came together as a result of these creative pursuits.

Todd P, a local concert promoter, had a penchant for throwing indie rock shows in abandoned warehouses, vacant lots and other alternative venues. When I heard that noise-rock band Lightning Bolt were playing one of Todd P’s underground gigs, I knew that I had to go.

The Lightning Bolt show took place in a giant auto repair shop located in the part of Bushwick that had escaped gentrification. To get to the performance space on the upper floor, which was actually a giant auto repair floor, my friend Jay and I walked up a giant uphill driveway that snaked up the side of the building. It was a typical Brooklyn summer night, and we were drenched by the time we got inside. The place had no air-conditioning and precious little ventilation. We stood sweating next to hundreds of other eager music fans waiting for the Rhode Island-based band that would leave our ears ringing.

When the band began to play, the crowd moved forward and began moving to the music. Some people crowd surfed, and others just thrashed around. The stage lights were pink and yellow, and the rest of the room was pitch black. I hung back and met a boy on a bike named Nate, a guitarist who later befriend me and encouraged me to buy my first record player.

There was a Popeye’s near the venue. I remember fried chicken and damp biscuits. Someone said they shared an apartment near the car repair-turned-music venue with a member of the band Au Revoir Simone. The band was on tour, so he thought it would be okay if we came over to hang out.

My friend Jay and I came to the show alone, but at the end of the night, we somehow ended up with a large group of people on a rooftop. We all lay down on the steps with our beers and looked at the stars. Nate and I played a vigorous match of rock-paper-scissors; I won. Over the course of the evening, we debated the merits of vinyl versus digital, acoustic versus electric, and New Williamsburg versus Old. I found out about some new bands, like Bear Hands and the Harlem Shakes. We also talked about all sorts of other things that must not have been that important because I can’t remember them. At 6 am, I left the apartment, bought a bagel from the corner store and went home.

It all sounds a little banal to me even as I write this. So we went to a show, we had some fried chicken, and we stayed up on a rooftop talking and listening to records. We’re neither the first to have done this nor the only ones who have done this. Yet for some reason that night was one of the most vivid memories from my time in New York. It’s as if took a picture, turned up the contrast and kept only the warmth in the photograph. All the remains are hazy colors and sounds.

I think that all of us have memories like this and that the music, along with everything else we remember, becomes very personal. We tease the indie rock hipsters, along with other groups like the Deadheads, the hippies or the fans of John Petrucci, because we want to believe that our memories are special. It’s hard to accept that a different backdrop and a different soundtrack could produce the same poignancy and the same nostalgia. Does the fading photo mean a little less when it is also owned by someone who has nothing in common with you?

* * *

This song reminds me of Williamsburg. I would listen to it as I walked from brunch to one rock show to another. It was also, much to the annoyance of my colleagues at work, my ringtone.

Artist: Land of Talk
Title: All My Friends
(Streaming live audio below via Ryspace.com, an excellent NYC music blog.)