Broadway

 


Welcome


This is the site about the haiku about the cool kids. Thanks for visiting. Here's where I try to answer any questions you might have, including, for instance:

What's a hipster haiku, exactly?

A hipster haiku sends up a piece of modern urban youth culture (or a nonurban/not-so-young derivative) in seventeen syllables of good-natured satire. There are plenty of people who like writing "Die Hipster Scum" on subway signs and t-shirts, and they are free to keep doing that, of course, but we'd like to suggest writing haiku as a gently-barbed alternative. The book Hipster Haiku provides several hundred thousand examples. Okay, a hundred.

Why haiku?

Because hipster sestinas are freakin crazy.

Where can I find more hipster haiku?

Here. And here. And here.

You could also swing by this haiku-friendly event if you're in the New York area:

Hipster Haiku Slam
8 pm December 4 at Stain
366 Grand Street, Brooklyn

What if I, myself, have written a hipster haiku? What then?

I have several suggestions.
  • Make a tshirt with your hipster haiku on it. Wear it around town. Look mysteriously off into the distance and shrug whenever anyone asks you what your tshirt's about.
  • Visit this page and post your haiku there, where others may see it and marvel at your cunning.
  • Keep it inside. Learn how to hide your feelings.
  • Have it printed on a beer cozy, for a lot less than you'd think.
  • Host a Hipster Haiku Slam at your friendly neighborhood bar or coffee place. That way, you and a lot of other people can get all that hipster haiku feeling off your chest.
What about that whole contest thing?

The contest was brain-splittingly awesome, and is over, for now. But here's where you'll find more information about the contest, the guidelines, and the incredibly funny entries people sent in from all over hipster nation.

Why might I like writing or reading hipster haiku?

  • Because you'd never call yourself a hipster, but other people might, and you have a sense of humor about yourself.
  • Because you think hating on hipsters is kind of bitter-bunny, but you admit they're still ripe for parody.
  • Because even if you're reluctant to define exactly what a hipster is or what they look like, you know one when you see one. Joan Jett: hipster A-bomb. Ashlee Simpson trying to impersonate La Joan in the video with the skater kids: so anti-hipster she makes hipsters vaporize on contact, like OxyClean with bangs. Mischa Barton in the Keds ads: not a hipster. The young woman knitting her own scarf on the subway, wearing a vintage cloche and two-tone spectator pumps on her way to Brooklyn: hipster.
  • Because to you, this experience rings with the clarion call of absolute truth.
  • Because you grasp the paradox of conforming against conformity.
Whether or not any of this is actually true of you personally, please feel free to prowl around, read through the site, and check out the book. Thanks again for stopping by.







 

Hipster Haiku
Siobhan Adcock
0-7679-2373-1
October 2006
$9.95

Pop will eat itself:
Hence, t-shirts with wry slogans
About wry t-shirts

Slow morning at work
I search Insound hopefully
For a new import

Your "neighborhoodie"
Sends a very clear message
Which is: "I'm new here"

Thanks, Aunt Polly. But
Chili's gift certificates
Are no good to me.