They Lost Power Before It Was Cool to Lose Power: Why hipsters will always survive natural disasters
As you all know, the great city of New York was recently hit by Hurricane (aka Tropical Storm aka Heavy Rains aka Light Drizzle aka Did Someone Just Sneeze on Top of My Head?) Irene. When the news first started to break that a hurricane was headed straight for New York, I wasn’t that concerned. Being from Minnesota I am used to erratic, abnormal weather occurrences, and thus a bit of rain didn’t seem like anything to write home about.
Enter EVERY OTHER PERSON IN NEW YORK.
At work we had an emergency meeting about how to prepare for natural disasters like hurricanes where everyone traded their tips about dealing with such occurrences. Sitting in this meeting, I thought to myself, Well I’ve read all of the news reports, and seen the radars, I should be fine. Besides, my kitchen is full of wine and chocolate, I’m clearly prepared for the worst.
Soon enough, however, my co-workers started competing about who had the best hurricane survival tactics, such as filling your bathtub with water to be able to flush your toilet, stocking up on bread and peanut butter, etc. etc. My nonchalant severe weather preparedness soon turned to hyperventilating, sweaty-palmed, overwhelmed concern. My left eye started to twitch and I became unable to use the right said of my mouth as I stuttered about the sad state of my kitchen cupboards and lack of purified water. It became apparent to me that if this Irene bitch really turned out to be as bad as everyone said she was, there was a good chance I might spend the hurricane gnawing on stale potato chips and chipping ice out of my freezer to stay alive. As I sat in the conference room, my co-workers slowly moving away from my twitching body, I could see the headline: ‘Brooklyn Girl Is Eaten By Cat Due To Unpreparedness For Hurricane’.
Once I came out of what can only be described as my fear of death seizure, I sprang into action. I headed straight to the grocery store [the next morning] to stock up on non-perishable food items. When I got to my local natural foods store, I was perturbed at the difficulty I had in finding a parking spot for bicycle. It seemed that every other bicyclist in Bushwick had come to the natural foods store at the same time as me. After I found a spot to lock up in the sea of fixie bicycles (my single-speed being mocked by their brake-less wheels and handlebars), I hurried into the store to see what items I could scrounge up.
As I entered the store in my Saturday morning, pre-hurricane best (gym shorts and some mismatching t-shirt which I do not recall) I couldn’t help but notice the large amount of plaid shirts, cut-off shorts, and 70s style bicycle hats that laid before my eyes. In my current state I was willing to purchase whatever items I thought would keep from the plight of becoming cat food, be that cheez-its, chocolate bars, or multiple boxes of capn crunch. What I soon realized, however, is that apparently a hurricane is no reason to sacrifice nutritional value. Nay, let me rephrase that: a hurricane is no reason to sink below buying your twelve dollar loaf of bread that will go bad in two days and your obscure brand of beer that no one has ever heard of that the store didn’t even know they carried but you’ve been drinking since flannel came back into style. In fact, even though a hurricane is approaching, that’s no reason not to stand in line at the cafe in the grocery store for a soy latte and vegan veggie sandwich, extra hummus, no tomatoes. Unless they’re organic. Then totes throw those tomatoes on there.
I could not handle the amount of hipsters that I was in the presence of. In my perpetually panicked state I could think of nothing more than scrounging together some apples and oranges and seeing if the natural foods store carried some sort of healthier alternative to spaghetti-os. But as I looked around, the skinny guys and gracefully disheveled girls moving around the store were taking care to only pick up items that were organic, whole-grain, fair trade, locally grown, locally made, and a product they had never heard of before—you have to be one step ahead of everyone, even in severe weather.
My eye began to twitch again and all thoughts of grocery shopping left my mind. How could these Bushwick hipsters be so cool and calm when a spinning vortex of watery death was headed straight for us? How could they think of muesli and tofu dogs in a time like this? The hurricane hadn’t even made its way to New York yet and my world was crashing down around my feet, while the combat boot-clad feet of the hurricane-grocery-shopping-savvy hipsters in my midst floated effortlessly up and down the aisles. They put pita chips in their baskets as if their death, unlike mine, was not imminent. Round two of my fear of death seizures had taken my body by full force.
What is it about these quiet members of the hipster species that allows them to go about during a hurricane warning without the slightest bit of concern? Do they travel in packs via fixie bicycles to protect themselves from the dangers of the outside world? What magical elixir is hidden in their PBR that makes them immortal, unable to succumb to the effects of power outages and poor plumbing? I may never find the answers to these mind boggling questions, but as long as weather variances exist in the borough of Brooklyn, I will continue to study this mystical species until I may one day find an answer.
