Caution: Swarming Hipsters.
From Silver Lake to Wicker Park, from Williamsburg to the Mission District, from Portlandia to Austin and on the industrial outskirts of every college town in between, these annoying hipsters are everywhere you turn. You stand by and sigh as they slouch and smirk in their skinny jeans and perfectly tousled hair, grilling the barista on whether or not their $4.50 coffee is Certified Fair Trade (meanwhile, they have no problem paying $5 for a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon).
You can’t escape their entitled whines: guys with scarves and designer sneakers grumble about the infrequency of their unemployment checks as they tap furiously on $2,000 MacBook Pros; girls with shaved temples and tattooed sleeves loudly mock their boss’ fashion sense in one breath and wail that no one takes them seriously in the next. Their haughty blogs clutter the internet, their bumptious mugs crop up on TV.
And now the gnats have infested our passion.
On pre-fab café racers they zip around, oblivious and/or indifferent. They race through parking lots, pass on the right, split lanes perilously and make rights on reds without envisioning a stop, all the while checking themselves out in rearview mirrors and storefront windows. Taunting their parents’ insurance deductibles is sport to these insufferable imps. It used to be that biker gangs gave motorcyclists a bad name. These days, it’s all we can do to keep from swatting at the maddening horde.
The hipsters’ rides of choice are an eclectic mix, as it’s almost impossible to be cool if you’re on the same bike as thousands of other riders. Our informal polling brought up dozens of bikes appreciated by hipsters, and we’ve distilled them down to an easy-to-digest 10 choices. Plus a bonus pick, as we can’t be hip if we just stick to the rules.
