I was in Bushwick about a week ago, the new hipster neighborhood now that Williamsburg is too expensive. In my neighborhood an hour away, I'm often called a hipster, and I've just dismissed as the norms not knowing what dark fashion is or that they call "HIPSTER!!!" to anyone who doesn't walk around wearing a Yankees hat. That I'm a gentrifier "taking over" their neighborhood even though they live in new condos/historic houses and I live in tenement housing with all the immigrants.
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| taken at the block party |
But the hipster gentrifiers have taken over Bushwick, bringing vintage stores, art galleries, foodie restaurants and bars, and their trust-fund dollars. This would attract a lot of goths, and there were a lot of goths. Nu goths, not traditional. I saw a lot of tattoo necklaces, pentagrams, unif shoes, big circle sunglasses, wide-brimmed hats, H+M. You know the look. I'm not judging...I personally like the look. But here I am in THE hipster neighborhood (for the block party, so maybe they are also commuting for the block party) and there are a bunch of people who are called, sometimes derisively "hipster goth." The 2 local vintage stores have a witchcraft section with spell candles, crystals, tarot cards. There's a full-blown occult bookstore that has goth events (I went to a tea-leaf divination workshop a while back. They still don't have a whole lot of inventory, but I wish them the best.)
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| an altar at the occult shop, catland |
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| wands at the shop |
Goths everywhere. It was at one of the pop-up music shows that I realized that everyone around me looked like a "hipster goth" or nugoth. I didn't want to creep too much and take photos of everyone's outfits, but I'll share these:
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| In front of me: pentagram, check; sea of black, check; wide-brimmed hat and pleather on a 80+ day, check |
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| sea of black continues to the left, with very 90s-looking plaid/tattoo necklace, guy in a metal t-shirt |
What do you think the band lineup was? Post-punk, followed by goth, followed by more post-punk? Nope. It was indie electronica, followed by something surf-indie (which I loooooooooved), and then something that was kind of generic indie rock. So...hipster bands. Which I liked. And so did everyone there.
There's a lot of talk on whether or not you have to listen to "goth" music in order to dress goth. The answer is, clearly, that people are going to wear whatever they want and listen to whatever they want, and no one's dumb opinion on the internet is going to change that. They're going to go buy some crystals and have an altar because it's cool, go to a divination workshop because its fun. It's really a great time to be "alternative" because it's pretty much mainstream. People in my age group would have been calling everyone a poser cause there wasn't any "goth" music playing. Personally, I'm glad that people entering the scene live in a post-everything world, where you can do no wrong. It's done nothing but revitalize the community. Anyone who's pushing back on the "new goth" just hasn't gotten over their own insecurities, imo.
lol so, basically this post was about how I finally went out of my apartment and saw some goth people. BIG NEWS!!! I need to stop working on the weekends.
