“The hipsters came down to Bevo
they were looking for some irony to pay full price for over the Internet but tell everyone they bought it at a thrift store steal
They were in a bind ‘cause compared to hipsters on both coasts, they were way behind
And they claimed to want to keep it real.
So they came across this new bar on Morganford and thought it was hot
One of them jumped around in his skinny jeans and said “All She & Him fans, let me tell you what…
It’s true we sneered at this neighborhood for years, I was guilty of it, too
But this place has PBR cans and I want to look studiously disheveled with you.”

A few years ago, some hipster chick asked me which Schnucks I went to, Gravois or The Hill.  “Neither,” I said, and she gave me a Look.

“The Schnucks on Loughborough is closer to me,” I answered, and her look got scoffier.

When she and other hipsters heard I lived in Bevo, their response was always a curled lip and “That’s Little Bosnia.”

“Well,” I’d say, “only since maybe 1999, but you moved to the city three weeks ago, so I guess you’re the expert.”

It’s true that I live a 5-minute walk from the house I grew up in, and that I have the same ZIP that I had before I moved out of my parents’ house.  Some would call this the opposite of progress, but I’ve actually lived in different time zones and came back because the rent was so cheap.  Until recently, all the hipsters moved to South Grand.  People like me were priced out of there long ago, so we stayed in Bevo.  Clunky, ugly, increasingly Eastern European Bevo.  Which was fine with me.

Then the Steitzes and Robin came to visit, and after crawling around City Museum for a few hours last night, we went to some cousin’s birthday thing at the Silver Ball Room.

South Citians, you know this place.  It’s that old dirt bar at Morganford and Itaska.  Right across from that auto body place.  Just south of the old Church’s Chicken.  Before you get to Delor.  It was the old man hoosier bar, and then the Bosnian bar, and as of one week ago, it’s a hipster bar.  They have pinball machines there, too, but those are secondary to wearing fedoras and topsiders with black socks pulled to mid-calf.

Yeah.  Fucking jesus, hipsters, really?  My grandfather wore that outfit because he hadn’t thrown away an article of clothing since 1949.  Oh, and those glasses you’re wearing over there, terribly dull and idiotic girl using anti-fashion-as-personality?  My mom wore those in the eighties.  You don’t buy those at the optometrist, you buy those at the dollar store.  I heard you complaining about how crappy they were because you couldn’t see anything.  That’s because you need real glasses, not fake glasses that make you look “quirky.”

We’ve come a long way, Bevo.  A short while ago you were sneered at by the hipster contingent, but now they’ve begun to colonize that foreign no-man’s-land between Tin Can and Lemmon’s.  It’s only a short while before they re-name some strip of places where there has always been business a “business district,” because we all know a neighborhood doesn’t exist until they come sniffing around.

I don’t mean to knock a new business that does well, and I felt bad about bitching so much to Robin, who was only here on vacation.  And, okay, fine, the Australian owner’s niceness made up for the bartenders’ inability to work while carrying on conversations.  And the jukebox was excellent.

But hipsters, I’m serious.  You all have got to make up your minds about what you’re going to dismiss and what you’re going to suckle on like leeches.

And don’t claim that you discovered this place.  We were here all along.

And please stop dressing like hobo grandparents.  It’s just really embarrassing.