Tuesday, March 8, 2011

The pre-fab hipness of Camden

Zoomed over to Camden Market

stable statue swoosh

which once was a stable but since the 80's has been the stable for hip Britannica

bowler hat

yet it had the definite air of a well-established cutting edge, the commercially viable version of counter-culture, where hip is just another fashion to be followed and being alternative is a matter of hair color

green and pink

now as a 36 year old white dude who only thinks of clothes in ways of "Does it fit?" and "Does it smell?" and thinks a haircut is good if it doesn't require more than 20 seconds of work after a shower, i'm much closer to hip-replacement than to hip, but still, i was disappointed. I was hoping to feel very alien and old and out of it, overwhelmed by the new and the groovy. Instead, i was amused by the classics being repackaged in smaller portions

bad to the bone yorkie 2

and in tiny canine portions

bad to the bone yorkie

but at no point did i see anything new, which made me think i was probably in the wrong place. Hip London must be far far away from Camden, for Camden is as cliche as a stencil of a palimpsest. It is the blunted and bluntly commercial version of what might have been sharp and edgy 30 years ago.

So i still have no clue of what is hip. What i find odd is that we've had a major technological revolution in the last 15 years with internet and cellular phones, which has affected almost everything we do in daily life, but in fashion and in music, we seem to get rehashes of old. I don't know, but the coolest thing i saw in Camden was this guy

camden man

maybe 'cause his clothes didn't fit. And they probably did smell.

1 comment:

SeBiArt said...

you know - I agree - methinks the best part of Campden is the canal. How do you feel about East - as in Brick Lane and such?