Archive for 'Streetflava'
What’s a hipster?
Posted on 10. May, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
What exactly is a hipster? The term seems to be thrown around a lot recently, but is there a clear definition of what this creature is?
When Lorena arrived to New York City from France last August, she’d never heard of hipsters. And when she asked, she got vague, often contradictory responses: Hipsterism is a lifestyle. No, it’s an attitude. No, it’s a pseudo-attitude. Hipsters are penniless creative types. No, they’re just rich kids pretending to be. Hipsters are environmentally conscious. No, they pose as tree-huggers but shop at Wal-Mart.
She was confused.
This video attempts to de-code the hipster for the clueless foreigner, like Lorena. In this piece, she invites viewers along for the journey as she hunts for the meaning of the term “hipster.” This quirky piece takes viewers around the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where they are guided by an “accidental hipster” blogger. It also incorporates the voices of the Journalism School’s own Prof. David Hajdu, as he delves into the term’s jazzy origins.
According to Wikipedia…
Hipster (also referred to as scenesters) is a term frequently used to refer to a subculture of young, recently settled urban middle class adults and older teenagers.
Usage of the term reappeared in the 1990s and persists to the present. The subculture is associated with independent music, a varied non-mainstream fashion sensibility, and alternative lifestyles. Interests in media would include independent film, magazines such as Vice and Clash, and websites like Pitchfork Media.
Hipster culture has been described as a “mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior. Christian Lorentzen of Time Out New York argues that “hipsterism fetishizes the authentic” elements of all of the “fringe movements of the postwar era—beat, hippie, punk, even grunge,” and draws on the “cultural stores of every unmelted ethnicity,” and “regurgitates it with a winking inauthenticity.”
Others, like Arsel and Thompson, argue that hipster signifies a cultural mythology, a crystallization of a mass-mediated stereotype generated to understand, categorize, and marketize indie consumer culture, rather than an objectified group of people.
Now you kinda know.
Super slow-mo stupidity
Posted on 20. Apr, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
Shot with a Phantom Flex at 2500 frames per second, destruction always looks cool in super slow-mo.
About that petrol price
Posted on 04. Apr, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
Some economic analysts are predicting even more hurt as we approach the second half of the year. Perhaps there’s another way?
Metalheads: Beware the rise again of Metal
Posted on 26. Mar, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
MTV may have you believing that the world of music is all sugar-coated Nicky Minaj trash or a manufactured Lady Gaga track that is nothing more than an ad, creatively driven by esoteric symbolism and vaguely disguised as a music video. But the truth is that music subcultures still thrive outside of the corporate TV industrial complex.
One such subculture is metal. And the popularity of it has never been stronger. Driven by the fans, for a while now we’ve predicted that metal is long overdue a mainstream revival. One day. we’ll be right.
Photographer Jörg Brüggemann traveled to Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Switzerland and the USA to shoot pictures of heavy metal fans for his Gestalten-published Metalheads:The Global Brotherhood. via
Peter Weyland’s 2023 TED Talk
Posted on 22. Mar, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
As one of the comments suggests – if this were a presentation from 2023 – surely this guy would be speaking Chinese?
The Inverted Bicycle Shop
Posted on 19. Mar, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
The more things go commercial and impersonal – the more bespoke, niche and authentic business practices stand out and grab our attention.
The Inverted Bicycle Shop is exactly such an excellent example.
[thanks Jason and Shane]
Right now – this is what we feel like doing
Posted on 15. Mar, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
[idea courtesy of @andUnion]
Lessons from Taiwan: Business opportunities for a developing country
Posted on 12. Mar, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
Taipei's CBD
I was told by an American businessman that had been attending the Taipei International Bike show in Taipei for the last two decades, that 10 years ago he used to feel sorry for the people of Taiwan. They lived in squalor, worked very hard for nothing and had very little hope of ever getting close to the living standards of the West.
Just last week, we attended the very same show in Taipei. We were there on a scouting mission. An opportunity to meet some of the people we have been dealing with for months now. What we found was a very progressive first world city that collectively has progress, innovation and prosperity as its core focus.
Gleaming and teaming Zara, Uniqlo, Armani, Mercedes Benz stores and other luxury brands share the busy city real estate market with side walk traders and family-owned businesses. They have a clean, super-efficient subway system, a high speed rail network, a city that works well and a collective mindset that everyone is working towards a common goal. A goal to be the world’s best place to have stuff made. It doesn’t really matter what stuff, as long as there is a market for quality products at a reasonable price that can be mass produced – they’re focussed on being ahead of that game.
They work hard- not just for themselves, but the collective good of the country and the future prosperity for the next generation. Sure it is important to make personal wealth, but certainly not at the expense of the collective objective of prosperity for all (perhaps a legacy of a socialist system) Just like us, they are a developing country. But unlike South Africa – they have a plan that everyone buys into.
We were invited to attend the show by the Taiwanese equivalent of the DTI. They host massive trade shows year round for every industry that exists in Taiwan. Their objective is to sell Taiwanese business to a global audience – and they do it damn well. They’re not about just talking about growth or economic development, they’re making sure that Taiwanese business has the very best platform from which to sell from, so that the citizens are kept employed and the country can grow. It’s not rocket science, but they stick to the plan.
So what are they doing right?
- They have a good plan.
They don’t try and do everything, they know their strengths and focus just on those. Sure they have tourism and the arts and things like that, but they’ll tell you about that after you know what they make.
- They have a government that drives that plan hard
Through the right infrastructure development and marketing strategy that government makes sure that the right people are able to do business in Taiwan and that they are assured of a manufacturing and infrastructure system that works efficiently.
- They have people that buy into the plan.
People work hard there. They’re too busy making stuff and money to phone radio station to complain about potholes, or corrupt officials. They may work a bit too hard, but that’s how they’ve managed to turn things around in just two decades. They work with the system provided and make sure that it works for them too.
- They execute that plan bloody well.
The Taiwanese don’t just talk about prosperity, they do something about make sure that it happens. Talk is cheap. They talk very little, but make sure all elements of the plan happen. When we arrived on the first day we were interviewed by a magazine that the trade ministry produces for the event. The very next day my interview [with photograph] was featured in the 30 page A3 magazine. They work hard on the platform and system to make sure business happens.
In comparison, South Africa has lost 440 000 businesses in just 5 years. 68 percent of all South African workers are employed by small business employing fewer than 50 people. Small business that is subjected to government red tape, a very much hands-off approach by our department of trade and industry, no plan and urban infrastructure and telecommunications that ensures that our cities are slow, expensive and not globally competitive.
We have a problem. A problem that with the right leadership can be solved. The proof of that lies in Taiwan and loads of other emerging economy cities like it. Our problem is starting to entrench and entrepreneur mindset of desperation in our small businesses. We don’t spend money freely here because we don’t have an economy where money flows freely. Economic prosperity doesn’t exist without people buying lots of stuff with cash.
Our country needs to wake up. We need to stop freaking out about that was shown on Carte Blanche and rather start solving the problem. It starts at the top. If there is no plan, no strategy, no execution and little result – then leadership with one needs to step forward. As citizens of a land with so much potential, why are we satisfied with a leadership that consistently under delivers. Other people would kill for what we have. Slogans like Inspiring new ways is like sugar coating a block of wood and expecting people to think it tastes good. Don’t come here with a silly saying that sounds like a second tier copywriter from an agency that was hot in 1997 wrote it – come with a bloody plan that works for the collective good of the people of this country.
For a Friday: It’s certainly not McDonald’s
Posted on 03. Feb, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
In a time where there’s a fast food ‘church’ opening on every street corner [yes, news this morning is that Pizza Hut will be returning to South Africa soon] – the allure of the old seems to becoming ever more powerful.
Prime Burger Restaurant, in Midtown Manhattan: For many of the guys that work here, the restaurant is like a second home – some of them have been slinging burgers, making shakes, and waiting on customers at this location for decades. Opened in 1938, the place hasn’t been altered since the early ’60s, and it looks all the better for it.
Here the waiters and workers of Prime Burger discuss their views on their chosen profession, and the unique nature of the place itself.
