Bloomington: Catalyzing the inner hipster

If there's one group of people I have always chosen to scorn rather than to try to understand, it's hipsters.

Up until now, I have lived only in San Francisco and Berkeley. Both places are havens for Pabst-swilling irony junkies. As a native San Franciscan, I have spent a fair amount of time being a snob about this, railing about the gentrification of the Mission District and sneering my way down Valencia Street. You know. As I do.

Arguably, complaining about this makes me a hipster by default, but I like to think that I don't actually take myself that seriously. To quote Ellie on some episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation that happened ages and ages ago, whatevsies. None of this mattered when I was in San Francisco, because when I'm in San Francisco, I'm not too fussed about labels and what people think and such.

Nothing says "hayseed" like stunning fountains.

Enter: The Midwest. I am now in the Heartland, which I now know (or decided) is called the Heartland because it pumps all kinds of people and corn through the arteries of the United States, creating huge clots in places like San Francisco and... I don't know, what other cities are there? New York or something. That big one in SoCal that we're all scared of. (Just kidding?)

San Francisco may be a drop-off point for hipsters, but this whole region is their spawning ground. And I'm beginning to understand why they happen.

Firstly, Bloomington is a nice place. The people are nice, there are relatively few drunks on the street before nightfall (read: one, ever), and the housing prices are ridiculously low. The campus is lovely, and Indiana U has, from what I understand, a good set of general systems and professors and classes and such.

Here are some less thrilling things that I have noticed in the past two weeks:

Shel Silverstein wasn't kidding around.

1. This place is not meant for pedestrians. Sidewalks tend to a. end or b. fail to exist on a majority of streets. We had a particularly spectacular adventure on our first day in which a shuttle dropped us off one block away from our hotel and we had to drag our luggage across fields and construction zones and a bypass in order to get there. I'm still cleaning the pollen off of one of my bags, bless its little zippered heart.

Complicating the issue is how infrequent the buses are. There are nine bus routes in Bloomington Transit, and over the summer, at least one of them doesn't run. Others come once every forty-five minutes. Do you see my problem?

My inner pedestrian rages. Here I am, trying to get around without guzzling all the gas in the world, and what do I get for my troubles? Probably Lyme disease or something.

God should know better than to stand between
me and my Doritos at this point.

2. I'm a little uncomfortable with the fact that there are, um... inspirational books on display in the middle of CVS. I've never had a problem with books like Know Your Bible or Amazing Grace or Horse Tails from Heaven before, but there's something about having them purposefully shoved between me and my cough drops that really unnerves me. It's not a religion thing. It's just... books in my CVS. It looks wrong, somehow, like someone just left it there.

I dislike disorder in my drugstore. I like separation of church and state. And I really like when there are no horse books with deep philosophical messages in the space where I buy my nail polishes, if that's all right with everybody.

Also, I miss Walgreens. Nowhere else seems to have that super cheap Jordana brand makeup that I like to use because of aforementioned super cheapness.

What does this have to do with hipsters? I guess there's a lot less cohesiveness in this post than I'd hoped. Anyway.

3. These. Stupid. Crickets.

ALL DAY EVERY DAY BUZZING LIKE IT'S A FREAKING ELECTRICAL STORM AND ALL I WANT TO DO IS TAKE A NAP AND WHY CAN'T YOU ALL JUST BE NORMAL AND SMALL AND ONLY COME OUT AT NIGHT AND IF THE WINTER KILLS ME AFTER ALL AT LEAST I KNOW IT WILL TAKE YOU DOWN WITH ME

 Anyway, I'm turning into a hipster. And it's hot. And we all know that San Franciscans are biologically ill-equipped when the temperature exceeds 65 or goes below 50, so my brain's half-gone. Hug hug kiss kiss.