Allston Is for Hipsters, Says a Magazine About Financial News

There’s something deliciously ironic about Forbes Magazine, ranker of billionaires and “a leading source for reliable business news and financial information,” naming Allston/Brighton as America’s 18th “Hippest Hipster Neighborhood.” In fact, that irony tastes so delicious, we might just wrap it up in some vegetarian substitute bacon, nibble at it with disdain, and then chase it with a hand-rolled cigarette. Then we’ll head to an Iron and Wine non-cover band show dressed in our flannel onesie as we recite Fouc– no you’re right, when Forbes is rounding up the “hippest hipsters,” it’s time to be done with this hipster joke schtick. Sorry. Back to Forbes.

Anyway, yes, Forbes, seems to have strayed from its beat, pairing with NextDoor.com, to rank U.S. neighborhoods based on a range of quantifiable hipster stereotypes like the number of coffee shops, the frequency of farmers markets, and the percentage of residents who work in artistic occupations.  Here’s what they have to say about Allston-Brighton:

“Blue collar meets college hipsters,”remarks Lawless, of this diverse Boston enclave. Brighton Ave is home to a selection of restaurants, bars and clubs catering to the large student population. New England’s biggest food truck festival manifested in this neighborhood as well.

Suffice it to say, by the time word of your neighborhood’s hipsterdom has trickled all the way up to Forbes Magazine, the jig is up. The hipster, such as he even exists as more than a cultural relic of the last decade, is a notoriously elusive creature – defined as much by what he is not (i.e. willing to acknowledge he is a hipster) as by what he is. Like a bat in his cave, the hipster screeches and flees from the light of discovery. The great big beam of exposure Forbes is aiming straight into the heart of Allston has by now, we imagine, forced a scattered diaspora of hipsters in search of some other neighborhood lucky enough not to make the list.

So Boston, if you see a poor sap wandering about this evening, listening wistfully to Joni Mitchell on his Sony Walkman, please do give him a home for the night. It’s getting cold out there, and one can only get by for so long burning one’s vintage copies of National Review (collected ironically) for fuel. You can point him toward Somerville in the morning.