A Very Hipster Weekend

If you want to be a hipster, this is how you should pass your Friday nights:

1. Find a friend that is at the same level or higher on the hipster hierarchy to be your comrade in arms for this weekend outing. I chose my good friend Amy, who is fantastically stylish, a brilliant creative writer and a film aficionado. She is also Asian, and as my friend Becky says"It's so hip to be Asian right now."

2. Replenish your hipster wardrobe by shopping at off the beaten path stores to set the latest unique fashionable trend (i.e. a vintage store, salvation army, D.I, or Urban Outfitters for a synthetic hipster look).

Plunder: Structured, faux snake skin purse and a velvet hat bedecked with feather

We went to Decades: one of the best affordable vintage shops. I desperately wanted this simple yet chic cream 1960's dress. Alas, it was too small. Luckily it fit Amy's tiny Asian body perfectly. Ah, to be a hip, tiny Asian.

3. Go to a hole in the wall restaurant that serves organic food and saves the world. For us, One World Everybody Eats fit the bill. When you go to this restaurant avoid showing elements of your character that contradict the easy going and cool nature of the hipster persona. For example, do not ask if there is liquor in the split pea chicken soup because it tastes suspicious. I know it is hard, you may have had past experiences in which servers accidentally give you alcohol, but overcome this paranoia that is not hipsterish and just eat the damn soup.

4. Go to an event that is obscurely highbrow (a good test of this is to ask yourself: would Matthew Arnold approve of this?) and has quirky elements that give it a slightly kitschy flavor - this is your cool factor. We decided to go to a silent Buster Keaton film with live organ music. *Notice the Buster Keaton film is the obscure highbrow and the organ music is the quirk*

5. Intelligently discuss the event. If you feel like the event was ridiculous, do not say so. Admitting this will destroy all your credibility as a hipster. If you cannot come up with an intelligent observation, do not panic; hipsters are by definition posers. In fact I'm sure your friends are struggling with the same conundrum. To keep up appearances, simply feign appreciation and speak about how the masses fail to be cultured hipsters like yourselves.

For example, "I thought the part with the umbrella was clever. The slow motion, which I did not realized was used as a film technique during the silent film era, exaggerated the physics going on to a Mary Poppins level. It also highlighted Buster Keaton's genius as a comedic contortionist. People really miss out on the peak of slapstick humor by refusing to see silent films."

If you do the following, congratulations you are on your way to being a hipster. Now don't tell all your friends of your success - admiting you are a hipster or calling yourself a hipster destroys the most important element of being a hippster: pretending to not be self conscious about being cool. Now you may wonder about my credibility to instruct you how to be a hipster when I've proclaimed myself a hipster and thus broken the cardinal rule of hipsterdim.

My reply? Exactly, Becky Hayes.