on the N

And now, week on week, I see more hipsters in Astoria.  His and hers hipsters, sitting on the N train, he knitting a scarf in the drab colors of desert fatigues, she listening, through her cap - same color - to music from her headphones with a pink skull on them.  Lonely 30-something girl hipsters, tapping keys on cell phones with stickers on the back.  Lonely dude hipsters, straight but twee and blinking back ironic tears, waiting for the train to take him to....  My God, where do they work?

Who are they?  Why are they in my neighborhood?  These are Hard Questions.  But perhaps I can deduce the unknown from the known.  The known: where are they from?  This we know.  They are From Brooklyn.  A very particular part of Brooklyn.  Perhaps that's all I need to deduce why they are here - Brooklyn rejected them.  These are the offscourings of Brooklyn, redeemed to credible identity as hipsters only by exclusion from their peers, against whom these were too bright, too sunnily ordinary.  Excluded by their Brooklyn peers, who saw in them, not what we see in them, but what they see in us.

Ah well, live and let live, I say.  Welcome, failed hipsters!  But, just you turn Neptune Diner ironic - just you even try - and I'll steal your yarn, ball to skein.