New bohemianism: beards, pickling beets, Fleet Foxes, rye...

Or just people going about their everyday lives until a self-styled critic decides it's a trend?

"Aw mom, beards again?"

http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2004/SHOWBIZ/Music/01/07/music.edie.brickell.ap/story.edie.brickell.ap.jpg

You know something isn't isn't really new if somebody has to stick "new" in front of it to remind you.

Normally, I'd be defending the concept of sociocultural trends against Dan M.'s usual skepticism, but in this particular case, I can't get on board. I mean, I don't see a "new bohemianism" in 2008 any more than there was one in 2002 or 1993 or 1985.

Also, Dan M OTM

xpost Yeah, like New Zealand! (I kid)

I live in Austin, wear a beard, dislike eating beets (and haven't encountered anyone talking about pickling them), have a vague knowledge that Fleet Foxes are some band, and don't have a clue about what you're driving at with the word 'rye' - whiskey? bread? grass?

Or just people going about their everyday lives until a self-styled critic decides it's a trend?

-- dan m, Wednesday, 9 July 2008 20:05 (4 minutes ago) Link

I hear the ILX collective hivemind exploding as one. Who will be around to pick apart that particular trend?

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/fitzjcr/images/stories/billybulletin/2006-01-24-tramp.jpg

Beards can get fucked, the rest I'm all for.

No, wait, nu-folk can get fucked too.

i hate when people say they "wear a beard" like its a fucking scarf or something

suggest alternatives. "have a beard" sounds like it's a pet.

hate when people say they "wear a beard" like its a fucking scarf or something

yeah, it's not like they take it off before bed and leave it with their wallet and keys on the dresser or something.

"Have a beard" is not categorically different from "have a pierced ear" or "have a bald spot."

I've been shaving every other day for the first time in my life. I kind of miss having a long beard, but I was starting to look like a roadie for My Morning Jacket.

I prefer "grow face" as in "that guy grows face."

i think beards are just swell and i like rye and pickled things
what is a fleet foxes tho

sing songy folk band from Seattle

"Have a beard" is not categorically different from "have a pierced ear" or "have a bald spot."

-- jaymc, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 4:21 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i wear a bald spot

the only thing i know about them is that they have the duchess & the duke opening for them on tour.

xpost.

Wait - is pickling beets a band?

Have/Wear beard. Hate Fleet Foxes.

"too lazy to shave"

Also that first bit is a just a tad petty, jmc. I don't disagree that those concepts exist, I just think that far too often they are formed with little to no precision, scientific rigor, or real understanding of more than the critic's own experiences. Then again, you've already heard me say that 9000 times. xposts

pickling beats.

I prefer pickled turnips.

Dilly beans are the BOMB. My mom's been on the sharp edge of that trend for ~40 years.

have a beard just SOUNDS fucking stupid

i don't think i've ever had a pickled beet. they can't be worse than pickled eggs.

You just haven't had the right pickled egg yet!

grow face!!! omg

how are these bohemians different from hippies?

bohemians have better drugs

I like pickled radishes thanks to the Koreans, those famous nu-bohomeians. And picked garlic thanks to the Spanish tapas place on Grand St, which, ditto.

they aren't dirty like dirty, awful, stinking hippies are.

xpost. what que said.

http://www.toadking.com/6x9=42/itisamystery.gif

I ain't aware of too many beets. I know what I know and I don't know these *Fleet*s.

Guys, let's just talk about food, okay? How do you think they get the attached end of pickled garlic cloves so perfectly rounded? It looks like it was tumbled, mine never look that smooth.

"got a beard"

I don't disagree that those concepts exist, I just think that far too often they are formed with little to no precision, scientific rigor, or real understanding of more than the critic's own experiences.

That is probably true, and I wouldn't argue with you on that. I think maybe where we differ is that despite all of that, trends are awfully fun for me to think and talk about.

I'd say that if someone was wearing that hat/scarf number this week in LA, they'd be warm, regardless of bohemian or otherwise.

x-post.

Cultural trends of the lifestyle sort suggested here (in a throwaway fashion, just cos I was interested if anyone would take it up, or it'd be dismissed as bullshit, which is fine) never have precision, scientific rigor etc. They are often about the critic's incestuous little circle (whether describing yuppies in 86, or electroclashers in the 02), and pointedly ignore 99.4% of the population. Doesn't mean that they shouldn't be found interesting, or that there's no such thing as a zeitgeist. I was most interested in whether there was any cross-pollination between newspaper polls that talk about gas prices / unemployment / greenhouse gases, and style / lifestyle choices amongst 20/30 something urban dwellers. If not, fine.

EVAAAAAAAA

I dunno, I feel like a lot of the time people talking about trends are magnifying some relatively not-that-big thing in their own circles, whereas most of the buzz I keep seeing about the back-to-the-land types of today seems to be coming from people who don't qualify for the "trend" in any way and might not even KNOW anyone who does.

Besides, it's already over: the Times reported on it.

The only kind of farming that's bohemian is failed farming.

i don't know, i think going "back to the land" is something urban dwellers fantasize about? i sure do.

i've never seen anyone pickling beets. i've known people with beards all my life. my dad drank rye. so calling this a "trend" is kind of absurd to me. it's like asking about this "trend" where people get progressively older until they die.

words i hate: zeitgeist

that's only one word

it's one of them german two-wordy words though

several of my friends/acquaintances seem to be on the road to being business-minded, non-industrial farmers for realz and they are not annoying bohemian losers obsessed with a trend

tho i have been known to ask them to please stfu abt farming etc, if only b/c i don't really want them to move away from town

i am way too city to go this route full-time

i sure do.

I think that really just means you need to get out of the city. :)

xp with rrrrrobyn!

http://www.hi-arts.co.uk/default.aspx.locid-hianewnwi.Lang-EN.htm

The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams
Back
08 July 2008

A while ago, on an impulse, a quixotic seizure, Tilda Swinton rented a ballroom in an old Victorian stone building in Nairn in the North East of Scotland, a seaside town where Chaplin used to holiday and which has a balmy microclimate and vistas across the Moray Firth to the Black Isle, Cromarty and Sutherland.

The ballroom is called Ballerina. In the 60s and 70s Pink Floyd, The Who and Cream played there. The ballroom in nearby Elgin was called The Red Shoes.

After renting the Ballerina, Tilda emailed Mark Cousins to ask if he’d help her put on a film festival in it. And she asked her architect friend Colin Cawdor if he’d oversee the refit. As quixotic as she, they both said yes. Tilda took Mark to see the place – they were making a wee film about being 8 1/2 and falling in love with cinema – and he loved it and so, together, they dreamt up a festival of beanbags on the floor, that would run 8 1/2 days, that would be a 6 out of ten on the grunge scale, that would serve home-made cakes and fish finger sandwiches, whose tickets would be £3/£2, and that would transform the Ballerina into something like a ghost train.

I'm almost amazed enough by that article to start a thread.

whereas most of the buzz I keep seeing about the back-to-the-land types of today seems to be coming from people who don't qualify for the "trend" in any way and might not even KNOW anyone who does.

I guess the thing I find most interesting about Paul's thread idea, though, is the notion that an actual "back-to-the-land" trend can also be manifested in superficial ways, like listening to Fleet Foxes or ordering rye at a trendy cocktail bar. (Although rye seems to be more like a standard hipster fetishization of old-timey things.)

the quixotic seizure jumped over the lazy dog

Although rye seems to be more like a standard hipster fetishization of old-timey things.

i think people just like the way it tastes.

I think that there is a significant divide among people I know, between those who are REALLY focused on profit-driven jobs (sales, mostly) and those who are focused on other things, including non profit driven jobs, family, liesure activities, etc.

Those in the former tend to have flashier cars and wardrobes, and tend to engage in more expensive and "going out" centric activities. Those in the latter tend to cook at home more frequently, dress more for comfort than latest style, be a little less spendthrifty...

I don't know. I'm currently out of work studying to take my bar exam. So, I'm forced to be spend thrifty, I dress for comfort because the rest of my life is a ball of stress, and I cook at home because I'm always here. This all could change once I am licensed and arguing for other people for profit.

I would like to go back to The Land
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2323/2273787242_ea09b5338c.jpg?v=0

Its a shame that a venerable and respected beverage like rye whiskey is pigeon-holed because its percieved as trendy.

Can't we save that lable for shit that involves fruit juices or sugar-rimmed glasses?

haha yeah it's funny b/c i've been out to 'the country' a few times in the past couple months and tho i loved it, each time i felt an increased sense of alienation - because 'the country' just like the city is in fact full of annoying people despite its pastoral image. the city, or this city, seems to mitigate the annoyances, for me.

i think i am just going to leave the pickling of things up to other people btw

xpostsxposts

Can't we save that lable for shit that involves fruit juices

me and my greyhound say fuck you!

standard hipster fetishization of old-timey things.

Old-timey things like chamber music?

like chamber pots?

xp My pomegranate-tini says, well excuuuuuse me.

That's it, no more flush toilets for me, it's all about the fashion chamber pots from now on.

i don't want to meet the hipster with a chamber pot fetish. christ, if you thought the Rainbo smelled bad BEFORE...

Just kidding, I don't drink pomegranate-tinis. Unless they're half-price.

"Pffft, yours is tin? I've got the original porcelain."

i pee into a buffalo skin sac which i proceed to pour on the mint in m backyard. NITRATES

laurel drank a pomegranate martini last week! i saw it!

Dan, you just don't get it: the tin sounds WARMER, more REAL.

xp: yes, and it was half-price!!

Oh, alright. Greyhounds, margaritas, screwdrivers and gin&juice don't implicate the trendy frufru drink label.

Neither should rye.

thank you barkeep!

Gin and juice, you say? Like, say, LIMEADE?

bearded hipsters running vodka lemonade stands while playing acoustic guitars

sounds like a bad sitcom on the cw.

I have a beard, I pickle beets (they're delicioso!), have never heard Fleet Foxes (sound like something I would hate, from what I've read), and I prefer wild turkey to rye (cue ZZ Top's Driving While Blind). I also drive a prius.

I do all of these things because they are new and hip and trendy and not because they're like fun or anything duh

Bearded hipsters drinking gin and limeade while singing Pavement songs on a Brooklyn rooftop.

beard also recent edition because before now I couldn't really grow one and I was home with my baby daughter for 7 weeks and thought "hey you know what fuck shaving". now I look like Captain Nemo.

Bearded hipsters drinking gin and limeade while singing Pavement songs on a Brooklyn rooftop.

that sounds pathetically similar to my early 20s.

That sounds pathetically similar to my er........July 6th.

i think people just like the way it tastes.

Undoubtedly, but how do you explain its recent resurgence among the young urban demographic? A lot of people suddenly decided they liked the way it tastes?

Old-timey things like chamber music?

No, more like whatever Grandpa was into: thrift-store pants from Sears and Roebuck, smoking out of pipes, Tony Bennett LPs, etc. Unless you know hipsters that are into Hadyn and Mozart.

Undoubtedly, but how do you explain its recent resurgence among the young urban demographic?

it's recent? like i said, i've always known rye drinkers.

I went on a date once with a young Brooklyn type who dressed like an Amish man and was an up-and-coming shaped-note composer. That guy is seriously so far ahead of the curve he might be a genius.

Oh, you just mentioned your dad. I don't go to places like the Violet Hour or anything, but I've gotten the sense that rye is becoming trendy, and I'm assuming that's why Paul mentioned it. For instance.

i still don't even know where the violet hour is but i'm imagining i must walk past it every day coming back from the train.

Seriously though in some ways we're making a mountain out of a molehill here (on ILX? surely you jest). Everything -- EVERYTHING -- gains and loses popularity as markets change and people's tastes cycle around until most people have forgotten about something and it seems fresh to them. I don't know if it's exciting, really, I think it's just...life.

oh fuck, i know where it is!

xpost.

and now that i know it seems all the douchier to me.

It's where Mod used to be. There's no sign anymore, though: I think they want to make it like a speakeasy or something.

The people making pickles and raising goats etc are actually more "normal" in terms of the history of the world than we are, getting our lowest-common-denominator processed foods off of store shelves. Depending on how big a lens you use, moving OFF the land is probably the more shocking trend.

invididuals drinks it because it tastes good. groups drink it because its trendy. /sociology 101

There's no sign anymore, though: I think they want to make it like a speakeasy or something.

yeah, thats where i was thinking it was. that boarded up door/speakeasy concept is fucking ridiculous. it's not like they're hiding anything considering there's always a cluster of people smoking on the sidewalk right in front of the place.

I find the implication that people rejecting urban consumerism in various ways is in itself some kind of uber-trendy-urban-consumer-choice oddly paradoxical

all this thread has done is make me want to go out for a cocktail after work.

I'm going grocery shopping after work and making dinner in the house of a crazy hippie person who gets her all her food upstate and agitates for food policy reform.

Then we will go out for cocktails.

i want to go somewhere i've never been and order something complicated that i probably won't like anyway.

i want to make up some bullshit beardo trend and write a book about it and get paid

oh goddamnit that's fucking brilliant.

get in line man

i want to make up some bullshit beardo trend and write a book about it and get paid

Oh sure, write a couple of half-decent message board posts and you think you're Bill Buford.

jesus has a new ride: beardos driving benzes 2002-2008

i think i'll follow one around and write a field guide to beardos.

Oh sure, write a couple of half-decent message board posts and you think you're Bill Buford.

fffft. "half-decent," yeah right. also i think you mean david brooks?

chicago kevin i am suing you for beardo infringement

how soon we forget "bedpunk", ILX

what they eat, their mating rituals, how they interact with each other, what their natural environment is, etc.

xpost go ahead and sue, nothing from nothing is easy.

Considering that I just finished Heat, no, I think I meant Bill Buford. I could have said "Malcolm Gladwell" but I actually kind of like him.

but Heat is about kitchen workers, and cooking and shit, not bullshit trends is what i meant

xp But neither Buford nor Gladwell do the kind of broad trend-theorizing that Brooks does.

Buford is just good reportage on subcultures (food industry, soccer players, etc.); Gladwell is basically doing pop social psychology.

Yes, and books about kitchens were already a bullshit trend when it came out.

look, I don't know if Bill Buford is in Fleet Foxes or has a beard or is an Uncle Tom or what, but I hope we can all get behind beets, pickled or otherwise, because they are awesome.

Oh well, never mind, next time I'll try to make my throw-away references more on point. I've actually never heard of David Brooks, probably because his kind of thing irritates me and I forgot it immediately.

i'm with jaymc here. but i haven't read gladwell or brooks because they seem ultra douchey.

xpost--we agree on david brooks! he is a total booger eater

And obv. I meant to say "soccer fans," not "players."

I think Buford is kind of a booger eater, too, which is probably why he came to mind.

yeah he was really into Mario in that book, wasn't he?

this marks the third time today i've read the word "booger".

xpost- fourth.

I think he's really into himself, when you get right down to it.

hence the booger eating

booger eating is totes the new hotness

He does the whole self-deprecating thing that everyone else does, but unfortunately he seems kind of to be missing the point -- he should be more self-deprecating about being a small-hearted asshole who thinks of himself first, and less about things like a lack of athletic prowess or physical coordination.

pickled boogers?

the right thread for this song...

Gladwell isn't bad in individual doses, but after a while you realize he's kind of shticky (everything's all "humans make choices that are counterintuitive!"); plus, I sometimes feel like the artful construction of his essays disguises the fact that his arguments aren't always built on the most solid foundation.

http://www.luminomagazine.com/2004.10/spotlight/nerds/images/booger/booger1.jpg

I'd never heard of Bill Buford before. Thanks guys!

Not the drummer for Yes, then?

curtis armstrong, like steve buscemi, makes any movie he's in better just by him being in it.

i don't want to meet the hipster with a chamber pot fetish. christ, if you thought the Rainbo smelled bad BEFORE...

I knew a hipster with a chamber pot, it didn't smell but I had to kneel to piss because I had drunk aim and didn't want to splash all over her bedroom. I didn't feel too bohemian.

jaymc, would i like the fleet foxes? they are playing here for free on friday.

i don't know about beets, foxes, or rye, but this shit just sounds like urban kids that know how to camp

or are you talking about tripsters?

wait, i don't care

http://www.rivbike.com//

^^^ i know plenty of dudes who subscribe to these guys' philosophy, which would appear to be whatever it is you're talking about. they're just called "retro-grouchy." or telemark skiers.

http://remote.lohudblogs.com/files/2008/02/mose1.JPG

Beards, beets, Battlestar Galactica

http://remote.lohudblogs.com/files/2008/02/mose1.JPG

rockin chin scrub

Can I cross-post to several days ago and say that I like the semi-archaic "wear a beard" construction? It refers to a stylistic choice, like wearing your hair down or wearing your trousers loose. If we were really awesome we could even try and use "wear" and "have" differently, to denote this: i.e., if you live in the woods and don't care either way, you have a beard; if you woke up one day and decided you'd look snappy with a beard and proceeded to grow one, you wear one.

P.S. I realized the other day that Fleet Foxes have some really terrifically constructed lyrics! Or at least one song ("White Winter Hymnal") suddenly jumped out and I noticed all the stuff going on with sound and internal rhyme and whatnot. It looks way worse on paper because the internal rhymes are all emphasized in specific ways, but:

I was following the pack
All swallowed in their coats
With scarves of red
Tied 'round their throats
To keep their little heads
From falling in the snow
And I turned round and there you go!
And Michael you would fall
And turn the white snow red as strawberries
In the summertime

^^ this is just really well put together, the general images, the set-up with colors, the internal rhymes and assonance and alliteration ... so now I have this increasing respect for Fleet Foxes, who aren't always doing the most interesting thing in the universe but are really quite good at what it is that they're doing.

that is terrible

i only count one example of alliteration ("from falling", and maybe strawberries and summertime???) unless I'm missing something huge

ilx prac crit club

and where's the assonance, nabisco, where is it??? is it internal?

i only took one poetry class ever

"their throats" = I guess that counts as alliteration

why would anyone ever say 'wear a beard'??
unless this is a british thing to say, in which case, carry on being british or whatever

follow/swallow

Tied round Their Throats

their/there

etc.

it's not bad -- i'd have to hear it though. i guess i should go to that free concert tomorrow?

not many internal rhymes, but lots of assonance

lots of "rr" sounds

i understand yr point re construction and internal rhyme but blargh

yeah i think the strongest part about those lyrics is the imagery and the imagery is not. . .that great

edie brickell to thread.

And I turned round and there you go!

this line doesn't fit well into the verse... it seems to me...

crunk foxes

I think the free concert is tonight, Am.

RYE

http://i.timeinc.net/recipes/i/recipes/su/07/03/beer-rye-bread-su-1589348-l.jpg

http://www.bellewood-gardens.com/Rye%20Bread_1.jpg

I CAN TOTALLY SEE ROBIN PECKNOLD IN THE CRUST

butter churning is so hot right now

jordan's concert is tonight, the fleet foxes are tomorrow (the 18th)

Oh, I thought you meant in Chicago. It looks like Fleet Foxes are playing a free show in Chicago tonight, a free show in Madison tomorrow, and then coming back to Chicago on Saturday for Pitchfork...?

No matter how many caveats are given y'all pretend not to have sorted out the "lyrics on paper" thing, but I will continue to post bits I like in the full knowledge that everyone will have more fun going "god that's terrible," as if similar bands are doing anything better -- whatevs

The well-turned thing about the imagery is the red-on-white scarves/snow that it kinda suggests at the end may have turned to red-on-white blood/snow. The "there you go" bit breaks meter because it's set on a chord change. The follow/swallow is a nice internal rhyme that I appreciate because the unnecessary rhyme ("swallowed") is a better and more interesting word there than most alternatives. "White snow red as strawberries in the summertime" rolls around well in the mouth and adds a seasonal opposition to the white/red -- whatever, y'all, most everything in there locks together really neatly, if you ask me, but maybe I'm just being over-reminded of a scene in Les Enfants Terrible involving a snowball with a rock inside it.

Amateurist, they do a lot of harmony singing, which I think you might like. Some of the harmonies are interestingly constructed, some more conventional but still nice. (And it's mildly interesting to hear a band like this pay lots of attention to doing multi-part harmonies well instead of just scrounging other, lamer "roots" affectations -- they genuinely sound good singing their harmonies slow and a capella)

nah

;)

:/

The well-turned thing about the imagery is the red-on-white scarves/snow that it kinda suggests at the end may have turned to red-on-white blood/snow.

Yeah, I got that.

fully true tho that it works better in the ear than on the page, if that is the comparison, as i have just heard this on their myspace dot com

i saw these guys a bit before this micro-blowup and they were impressive -- the singing especially, yes. the songs were catchy and memorable hearing them once, live, so they must be doing something right and it's not surprising they are getting buzz. they were obviously going for that minor-key t-bone burnett style space-country and they nailed it. i always appreciate a band who orchestrates things well, and there was plenty of reverb and purposeful echo-y empty space instead of a lot of generic strumming with a pedal steel on top or whatever.

i should add here FWIW, i like these guys okay! their voices are great, songs are cool even if i don't care for their lyrics. but i don't care about lyrics that much.

basically these guys make me feel old
which i am cool with feeling/being! but not via them
haha
ha

if i was me as i was in 2000 today then i wld be all into this
and butter churning

it works better in the ear than on the page

now what'd I JUST say?

oh wait sorry i misread you, je suis desolee

d'accord

Quand on est ensemble...

oui, mais moi...

why would anyone ever say 'wear a beard'??
unless this is a british thing to say, in which case, carry on being british or whatever

He wears his whiskers long
She wears her hair in a bun
etc.

wears GROWS
wears PUTS

Yes, just like that classic song, "if you're going to San Francisco / be sure to PUT some flowers in your hair"

Um that's not the same thing at all!

Am I seriously going to have to get out a dictionary and/or copies of 19th-century literature to convince you guys this usage exists?

No, I'm just being a dick

Haha so am I, kinda. (Jay-Z says "wears her hair in a twist!") It's totally archaic, but I really do like the use of "wear" for styling decisions, including hair growths -- wear your jeans tight, wear your hair long, wear side-whiskers, wear a beard

wear your heart on your sleeve, wear your fingers to the bone, wear a point into the ground, wear out a welcome

i have just been french-english exchanging and in this talk often turns to discussions of the idiomatic and grammatically weird or archaic when trying to find correct translations - it is funny but also confusing because yeah maybe the wear a beard thing etc is right even if only nabisco and people in the 19thC use it

language so crazy

ok but if she has already put her hair in a bun she is wearing her hair in a bun.