A shining success story and today's lead front-page feature.
"Somerville worries it’s growing too hip; Trendy bustle brings uncertainty about city’s essence" by Beth Teitell | Globe Staff, August 23, 2013
As the city seeks to reinvent itself — the mayor says his “branding experts” won’t let him utter the word “Slummerville” — it has made such progress that a previously unimaginable situation is emerging: the city is now concerned about becoming too cool....
And yet, with Ana Sortun and other prominent chefs flocking to open new restaurants in Somerville, the pending opening of Green and Orange Line stations, a Yelp Wordmap showing frequent “hipster” mentions in reviews of Davis and Union Square establishments, the development of “luxury” apartments, events like decentralized music festival PorchFest, and the recent appearance of Brooklyn Boulders Somerville, a rock-climbing club, the scene has become so intense the hipsters themselves are worried.
“I’m part of the problem,” K. Adam White, a 27-year-old wearing a plaid shirt, facial hair, and multiple ear piercings, said as he hung out in Union Square on a recent evening. “I’m even an engineer.”
The precise definition of a “hipster” is hard to pin down. Cartoonist Dustin Glick’s “theory of hipster relativity” holds that there is “no such thing as a hipster on its own. A hipster can only exist in comparison.” In one of Glick’s cartoons, the guy with tattoos and a bicycle considers the guy standing next to his own gin still to be a hipster, and that man in turn sees the musician Kyp, from the band “TV on the Radio,” as a hipster, and so on.
But in general hipsters are known — and admired or mocked — for riding fixed-gear bikes, wearing suit vests and thick glasses frames, adopting hobbies like chicken raising, and affecting snobbery for microbrews and a general more-ironic-than-thou attitude.
Coming from the pot media isn't that a bit like hollering black kettle?
Whatever they are, they’re amassing in Somerville....
Take that, Cambridge....
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Joe Curtatone: Hizonner the hipster
Wow, it even deserved an editorial.
I $uppo$e the jew$paper is hip to the $elect few it is $erving the$e day$, but I'm tired of the playful in$ult$ born of $upremaci$m and the general agenda-pu$hing of the $tatu$ quo or anything that advance$ certain $pecial intere$t$.
Related: DNA test casts doubt on Somerville man’s guilt, judge rules
That was from a while ago, and is what prompted this draft.
Also see: Somerville Schools in Lockdown
Maybe I will go get some breakfast then.
Where's a hip joint to eat because I'm really feeling hungry?
UPDATE:
"Officials deem 3 Somerville fires as arson; $15,000 in rewards offered" by Jarret Bencks | Globe Correspondent, August 20, 2013
Three house fires in Somerville in recent months have been deemed arson, and three others are suspicious and remain under investigations, officials said Monday.
Rewards of up to $15,000 are being offered for information that leads to an arrest or arrests in connection to the fires. The state is offering $5,000 and the city is offering $10,000, Mayor Joseph Curtatone said in a press conference at the Somerville Police Headquarters Monday afternoon.
“We will spare no resource or expense to apprehend any perpetrators of these events,” Curtatone said. “We are not taking this lightly.”
There have been nine house fires in Somerville since June 27. Three of them have been determined to be accidental. Officials would not say which of the other six had been determined to be arson or describe what led to that conclusion....
Investigators are asking that anyone with information about the fires call the state’s arson hotline at 800-682-9229.
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