Erstellt am: 5. 5. 2011 - 11:54 Uhr

Today's Webtip: The History of Hip

A short and very incomplete history of the hipster.

Divinecaroline.com (for some reason or other) put together a little history of Hipsters. Most likely spurred on by the now mainstream phenomenon of hipster hate, they dug out some history books and tried there best to follow the family tree of alt-cultures that morphed out of the 1940's jazz scene.

They do a fair job of providing a quick background of the very early days, but drop the ball around the seventies, making a massive jump from Hippies to the current rash of iconic ironics.

It's a shame really because it means they missed out on the whole art-school/rock experimental fun, totally ignored the jazz, swing and beat revivals, forgot about at least three rounds of Ska scenes, and just generally look like ignorant wombats. But that's what makes reading the article fun. I'm still working on my list of things they missed, but I think I might have a pretty good idea of where to go for more info and less snark.

Rama

Hipster Counter Culture Through the Decades

A Brief History of the Counter Culture is a much better timeline with less depth but better snark.

And for anyone who thinks old-school is anything before 1999, it might be worth checking out Evolution: Bohemia and Historical Change. They take it all the way back to the early 19th century.

But for me, nothing beats A Biased Timeline of the Counter-Culture, a work in process on that ancient cyber-hippie hangout TheWell. It's a raw data dump with all sorts of facts and dates and an almost painful layout that will make it unreadable for anyone but the dedicated historian of alt-culture history.

And the pic? That's Paul Verlaine.