Be warned, dear reader: discussing the rationale behind the Downtown Raleigh Alliance mentioning hipster 128 times in its 109-page retail strategy will tax the strongest of minds. It calls for a real herculean effort. Why? Because the search for answers requires something that is anathema to all of society: taking the hipster very, very seriously.

I know this may be difficult, as you’re used to years of content universally trashing these people with the sort of contempt once reserved for Bush administration officials. Roll with me on this. Let’s start with some background.

Adbusters #79 investigated the mores of hipsterdom, and concluded how as an amalgamation of all previous sub-cultures, it ultimately became superficial and devoid of meaning (There were some good snark bits as well. My favorite: The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks.). While a great expose, this is the quote that stuck with me:

Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion.

A precedent for how corporations put this theory into practice is Nike. A shoe company that hides behind the First Amendment after being sued for false anti-sweatshop ads would be the last to have cred with progressives. You’d think. The scourge of anti-corporate skaters in the 1990’s (I remember, I was a skater boy), Nike re-branded itself in part by hiring anthropology PhD students to conduct ethnographies on skaters. Study the people who hate you! Figure out how to be cool enough to sell them shit! (I’m sure the Vice spreads helped) The end result was the Dunk, a shoe you MAY have heard of.

This isn’t meant as some kind of jeremiad against capitalism. I’m not a graduate student. Reading these articles at first made me sick, revolted, but then I realized corporations have been doing this kind of shit for centuries. Who am I to get super butthurt just because it’s now happening in my neck of the woods?

I’m trying to illustrate that marketing to the unmarketable is real, as in, people are making a living off trend-spotting. And there’s no hiding from a retail consultant.

They trained an eye on downtown and watched.

They did their homework.

It’s over.

They figured you out.

It’s all in here: how bitter you are over the death of Kings, how you’re apt to hit up Slim’s when it’s too “Raleigh Times-y” on Hargett, how the Rockford’s the only place you’d be caught dead at on Glenwood. Name-dropping Jackpot in the report like it’s old news.  They even went through the trouble to suss out the subtle differences between hipsters and what they call “yupsters” (aka a hipster with a degree who has to work for a living) for marketing purposes.

The report outlines precisely what appeals to the fickle hipster, how to hew business marketing towards them, and where in downtown it would be most feasible to do so.

You might be tempted to call bullshit on the choice of hipster as the coveted retail demographic, but that’s not the point, now is it?

DRA wanted the hipster $$$$ and they are going to get it.

One day soon, when you spot that AMERICAN APPAREL: COMING SUMMER 2011 sign on Wilmington St., try and act surprised. Apparently it’s all you’ve ever wanted.

*Congratulations for making it this far. My gift to you: the PBR takedown

image via latfh