21 instant-cool recipes for young, disillusioned Amerika:
(POLAROID: Chase S. Gilbert)
1. Be able to quote Bukowski, Kerouac or Sartre with relevance and context. Start with their most obscure (but equally acclaimed) work.
2. Repeat: The Velvet Underground, the Smiths, Sonic Youth.
3. Scribble onto your own Converse sneakers with post-punk mottos like ‘Kill Rock Stars, ‘Kill All Artists,’ ‘Kill Yr Idols,’ ‘Black Flag,’ or ‘OBEY.’
4. Bring Magic Hat or Brooklyn Lager to the party. Domestic microbreweries are cooler than generic imports. If you’re under 20, bring red wine - you’ll seem intellectual and illusive.
5. Smoke American Spirits, or Nat Shermans knowing that some self-conscious football player with damaged self-esteem’s gonna quietly consider you a ‘dirty hippie.’
6. Read Pitchfork.com, but tell everyone that you think it’s just hipster guff.
7. Like everyone, but need no one.
8. Match expensive studio headphones with your entirely mainstream iPod.
9. Be creative but not pretentious. Clove cigarettes and black berets are for Magnetic Fields’ songs.
10. If you’re rich, create interests like train hopping, urban survival techniques, buy a junker of a car and look into biodiesel conversions.
11. If you’re poor, become the token pauper at glam hipster record-listening parties. Consider hobbies like graffiti, body art, and smoke Lucky Strikes.
12. Don’t dye your hair black unless you really mean it.
13. Either write bad poetry in blood, or drip candle wax onto your arm. Let everyone think you’re weird until they realize that weird is different enough to be cool.
14. Always support the dark horse, whether it be an unlikely pop singer or the uncouth boy in the corner who everyone neglects. Let your defense of them be vague, quirky and unaggressive.
15. When quoting your favorite movie choose two classic name-droppers and one unexpected 80s or 90s kitsch piece: American Beauty, Harold & Maude and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
16. Love + admire your parents. Everyone expects the opposite.
17. Be able to intelligently debate subjects with your teachers. Other kids will equate you with revolutionaries like Che Guevera or Rosa Parks.
18. Learn how to roll a joint, especially if you’re a girl and especially if you don’t smoke dope. Never call it pot, by the way. It makes you sound like an after school special.
19. Support a political or social cause without being known exclusively for it.
20. Replace ‘awesome’ with ‘rad.’ Use language that has history, irony and can make you memorably unique.
21. Find a punk-related poetry reading and join a political protest. Tell people it was ‘mind-opening’ or ‘visceral’ but don’t elaborate further.
