New York in the 1960s: Plenty of Hipsters, Fewer Starbucks

Lower East Side from Django's Ghost on Vimeo

Look at that fucking hipster! Wait...where are we? When are we? As this clip of the East Village in the '60s -- posted on Neighborhoodr via Handsome as Fuck and supplemented with music from the Velvet Underground -- demonstrates, nerdy black glasses, smoking, ironic headbands, skinny jeans, and an overall certain retro-vintage style was popular a long time ago, before there were assholes like us to dub it "retro-vintage."

This is an excerpt from the 1968 film Last Summer Won't Happen, directed by Peter Gessner and Tom Hurwitz, and the footage is really pretty great in terms of giving a glimpse at old(er) New York while reminding us that the more some things change, the more other things stay the same.

But, then, since as we learned, hipsters really just came from cavemen, maybe no one can ever really own the term. Instead, we merely take care of it for a while, blessed to have it in our laps, until the next hipster generation is born. What will they do with our Starbucks?, we wonder. Also, did 1940s hipsters totally rag on the "inauthentic, just doing it to be cool" 1960s breed?

Only ironically.

[JDoll / @thisisjendoll]

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