Fun with Find/Replace
The Washington Post ran an AP story this weekend on the spate of beard-cutting attacks in an Amish community in Ohio.
The piece was significantly more amusing, though, after swapping “hipster” in for “Amish,” and various north Brooklyn neighborhoods in for the rural Ohio areas where the attacks actually occurred.
BROOKLYN — A hipster woman whose husband’s beard was cut by members of a breakaway hipster group said Thursday that the family isn’t pressing charges as a means of revenge but rather to get help for the people in the other settlement.
Arlene Miller said word spread quickly of such an attack in Williamsburg last month and the family was wary when several men came to their door late one night last week. Unbeknownst to Arlene Miller and her husband, Myron, a similar attack occurred just a couple of hours earlier in nearby Greenpoint.
“Normally the hipsters try to stay out of court. We believe in, ‘brother against brother shouldn’t go to court for revenge,’” Arlene Miller told The Associated Press from the family’s home in north Brooklyn. “But in this case this is not for revenge that we’re doing this. This is so these people can get help.”
Miller, 46, also said the beard cutting, apparently meant to shame its victims because of the high esteem in which hipster beards are held, is unheard of.
“It’s messed up. It’s some bizarre stuff,” she said. “I’ve never heard of it, and I think I can safely say it never happened in the hipster community.”
Press Release of the Day
Hi,
Thought you might find this of interest..
Some media outlets have reported that 2011 will hear the death knell of hipster culture, which has more than peaked. However, with some mainstream lifestyle products, the denizens of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, continue to be awkwardly glamorized and invoked in branding. First Gap introduced skinny jeans with a Williamsburg name-check, and now Camel cigarettes has launched Williamsburg Bridge–themed cigarettes, priced at more than a dollar cheaper than a regular pack.
The promo material, ripe for parody, describes the experience of smoking a pack as being “…about last call, a sloppy kiss goodbye and a solo saunter to a rock show in an abandoned building …”
And the biggest surprise? They at least appear to be a hit among locals in the Williamsburg area, with bodega owners selling out in their first week of stocking them. But not so fast…
“This smacks of a PR stunt,” notes Neil Alumkal, Founder of Stuntman PR, a Williamsburg-based agency who, themselves, specialize in viral marketing and publicity stunts. “The local hipsters wouldn’t be caught dead with a pack of these Camels — even ironically smoking them.” Click here for more, and feel free to contact me if you’d like to chat with Neil further on the topic.
So: Hipsters can see through PR stunts like Williamsburg cigarettes. But editors of publications read by hipsters can’t see through PR stunts like this e-mail?
The House of Lunatics
Bills proposed since Saturday’s tragedy in Arizona would allow guns on the House floor, enclose the House chamber in a plexiglass shield, ban guns from a 1,000-foot radius around any national politicians, and ban threats against political figures.
By the time the week is over, I expect to see some bees that shoot lasers out of their eyes deployed along Independence Avenue.
And then there's this.
“Let’s say you have a home in Aspen and you’re supposed to have a business dinner for 30 there on Friday, and you’ve promised your 8-year-old you’d go to his baseball game, and then the house manager in Aspen quits, and your 8-year-old is crying to go to the baseball game,” she said. “It’s a high-end problem, but the stress is the same either way. And I can help you deal with that.”
Once we finish purging the news of all war and violence metaphors, can we agree to never, ever quote Barbara Reich again? That means you, New York Times!