Business

Stamm: Quit This Shinola Watches Are for Hipsters Nonsense

January 21, 2016, 7:36 PM by  Alan Stamm

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Although I recall when hepcat was a thing last century, Word Nerd Guild membership now qualifies me to referee 2016 slinging of hipster to describe, well, anything -- and one hot-button Detroit brand in particular.  

So with a Casio G-Shock on my wrist and a metaphoric whistle in hand, I call a time-out on using hipster as shorthand for Shinola customers. 

A visiting White House correspondent prompts the whistle for this tweet Wednesday:

That Bloomberg Business writer doesn't draw a personal foul because she may have been teasing Detroit or Shinola watch buyers or even the president she flew in with as part of the traveling press corps. And if you wonder, the shopper in chief didn't buy a watch at the West Canfield store because he has one, as he showed reporters when they asked.  


Our VIP visitor shows reporters that he didn't meed another Shinola this trip. (Facebook photo by Daniel Mears)

We shared Greiling Keane's tweet on social media as a discussion-starter debate-provoker, and got the type of restrained, reasoned, respectful responses that elevate online conversations among strangers.

"Are you seriously arguing that Shinola isn't a hipster operation?" asks MSU doctoral student Nate Smith-Tyge of Plymouth. "What color is the sky in your world?"

Michael Baxter gets personal (and gets it mostly wrong): "[The] Deadline Detroit writer probably has either a man bun, waxed mustache, obnoxious beard, skinny jeans, ten-speed or all of the above."

In a similarly constructive vein, Joseph Kasak of Farmington Hills posts at our Facebook page: "She nailed it and you know it. That's why you're mad."

Actually, Joey, we're more mystified than mad. Here's why:

  • A 2010 book, "What Was the Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation," said the phenomenon had peaked. "We have reached the end of an epoch in the life of the type," co-author Mark Greif wrote in New York magazine that year. "Its evolution lasted from 1999 to 2009.. . . . The mainstreaming of hipsterism to the suburbs and the mall portends hipster self-disgust. Why bother with a lifestyle that everyone now knows? . . . The attempt to analyze the hipster provokes such universal anxiety because it calls everyone’s bluff." 
  • Last summer in The Guardian, a London newspaper, fashion commentator Morwenna Ferrier wrote: "At some point in the last few years, the hipster changed. Or at least its definition did. What was once an umbrella term for a counter-culture tribe of young creative types in (mostly) New York's Williamsburg and London's Hackney morphed into a pejorative term for people who looked, lived and acted a certain way. . . . The word is now tantamount to an insult."
  • More recently, a September article in Columbia Journalism Review by contributing editor Ben Adler says: "The word hipster is supposed to refer to a specific subset of people. News outlets are instead just using it as shorthand for anyone who is under 40, has a college degree, and lives in or near a major city. This expansive categorization means the media calls people hipsters who are the antithesis of that term — clean-cut bankers on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, for example."
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Even Shinola watch customers, in other words.

But using "hipster" as a lazy reflex or purposeful poke isn't confined to journalists, as we see after daring to question the Bloomberg writer's quip or shot. 

Here's a sampling of tweets and Facebook comments by readers who feel the H-word describes Shinola's target market, followed by some who agree that the word is as fuzzy as a bearded bartender with a fixie bike and big glasses.   

Shinola = hipster, obviously

► "It doesn't get anymore hipster than Shinola." -- Suz James, Detroit 

► "If you pair [the] watch with sufficiently ironic T-shirt, it's as if you are in Brooklyn."  -- Erin Fetterman, Rochester Hills

► "It's a hipster watch. Hipsters like 'em . . . I'm sorry this is so hard for you. . . I hope things like this don't bother you so much in the future. Clearly some insecurities and defensiveness about the word 'hipster.' " -- Michael Bochenek, from three of 11 posts in Facebook thread

► "I don't think the definition of hipster means cheap.. . . Shinola is pretty hipster IMO" -- A.J. Farrar

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New York magazine ran this 2010 "obituary."

 

► "It's easy: Hipsters are like pornography. You know it when you see it."  -- Timothy Flannery

The word means anything and nothing 

► "To lump so many into one word is naive, lazy and insulting. Dig deeper."  -- Brendan Neall, Bloomfield Hills

► "Ask 30 people from 30 different cities to define the word 'hipster' and you'll get 30 different definitions. 'Hipster' is a dumb word."  -- Tommy Penner, St. Clair Shores

► "Hipsters are dead. It's an outdated name that means something different to everyone." -- Steve Neavling, Detroit

► "Yes, $500 'hipster watches.' . . . 'Hipster" has been bastardized to the point of meaninglessness." -- David Uberti, Brooklyn (from two tweets)

► "I'm no hipster and love my Shinola. I don't think being a hipster has anything at all to do with it. It's a nice watch." -- Kurt Mensching

"There is NO way I qualify as hipster. But this grandma loves her Shinola watch." -- Cynthia Canty, Detroit

 ►"The hipsters are the people that move in when gentrification happens. That’s how I look at it." -- Ben Franklin

► "It may be a hipster operation [at SHinola], but certainly not their customers. Hipsters rock $100 watches. They're not gonna drop the price of a low-end Rolex for a watch c'mon."  -- Joseph Jacobs, Hazel Park

► "I work very hard for my money! I reward myself by purchasing nice timepieces. I do not consider a Sinola a hipster watch." -- Jeremy Campeau, Melvindale



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