Hipstercrite says

The new hipster cities of America: Who's emerging as the "next Austin"?

Hipsters sitting on a Detroit stoop.
Photo by Westpress
Musicians in downtown Asheville
Photo by Kathy McHenry
Chattanooga, Tennessee

Sometimes it feels like there is no place more hipster-plentiful than Austin, Texas. The city has become the poster child of what young creatives and entrepreneurs are discharging into this world. When you look up the word 'Austin' in the thesaurus, the words, 'old-timey facial hair,' 'your grandmother's eyewear,' 'college degree in food carting,' 'bee hive hoarding' and 'Which Wich eating' appear. It's true that there is no escaping the fauxhemian gorilla-whale that is running amok in our city.

But are other cities unscathed by the beast? Smaller, up-and-coming cities that are like how Austin was before 'we' showed up? Cities that hipsters can flock to now that other, older hipsters have crimped their style of being on the forefront of a burgeoning scene? The answer is yes.

Are other cities unscathed by the beast? Smaller, up-and-coming cities that are like how Austin was before 'we' showed up?

Forget Austin, forget Brooklyn, forget Portland, forget Silver Lake. What are the cities on the verge of hipsterfication right now?

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Chattanooga has been wooing the panties off the popular urbanite mag, GOOD Magazine, with tales of their new city-wide typeface and 'super green' VW plant. According to the online magazine, the city's new font, Chatype, was born from the coffee shop meeting of a brand consultant and typeface designer. The duo brainstormed about what it would be like for Chattanooga to be the most conceptually awesome city in America and — poof — Chatype was born.

GOOD also commended VW's new Chattanooga plant that turns paint waste into cement instead heading into landfills. To add to Chattanooga's green-like behavior, the city implemented human-race-eliminating 'smart lights' — LED streetlights that can respond to different environments and situations. These streetlights are controlled by the city's new fiber optic high-speed Internet that is also helping lure fleets of businesses and nerdies into this scenic Tennessee town. In addition to showing America it's the baddest mo-fo city around, Chattanooga was named one of NY Times 45 Places to Visit in the United States, along with its sister city, Space.

Asheville, North Carolina

Like Austin, Asheville is a live music Mecca featuring troves of young white men dressing like their grandfathers. But instead of finding collections of synths and keystars strewn across the land, Asheville musicians find themselves drowning in a sea of mandolins and banjos. One can often hear hipsters comparing who has the largest upright bass in coffee shops. There is always Nashville, New Orleans or Austin, but the inexpensive bluegrass capital of the world has slowly been earning its place as the Southeast's hipster hangout.

This town of only 82,000 has been a popular go-to place for performers such as Cat Power, M. Ward, The Mountain Goats, Broken Social Scene, The Avett Brothers and Band of Horses, with the latter two having recorded albums here. And if Asheville doesn't do the trick, you can always make the 5 hour+ drive down to Wilmington to search for an ear in a field and reenact your very own Blue Velvet.

Burlington, Vermont

Burlington has been known as a hippie city for a long time (Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream + Phish = Phish Food), but now that behaviors of both the hippie and hipster classes have begun overlapping, it's fair to say that this progressive city has been hipsterfied. With a population of only 42,000 people, Burlington exemplifies all the big city hipster traits in one tiny bubble — American Apparel, locally-sourced restaurants, local brew pubs, art galleries, old timey theater, delightful dive bars and, at one point, Occupy Burlington, can all be found within a few blocks of one another other.

When the hip aren't chowing down at the city's famed Farmer's Market or locally-sourced restaurants such as American Flatbread, they're hanging out at clubs and dive bars that will make you feel like you're in East Village circa 1978. Of course they get to these places via the city's popular taxi cab service, Green Cab, which boasts an all-Prius fleet. Vermont can also proudly claim the country's second ever Cartoonist Laureate with comic artist and Burlington native, James Kochalka.

Detroit, Michigan

What do young and creative urbanites love most in this world? Being on the forefront of a scene — what better place to do that than Detroit, Michigan, a city that's slowly bootstrapping itself up from the PITS OF HADES. Within cities that have lost everything, hipsters favorite second thing in this world emerges — ruin porn. Add a frosting layer of adaptive reuse and you got yourself one sweet hipster cupcake.

This city has become a newspaper darling with stories of young artists, thinkers and entrepreneurs taking advantage of Detroit's low cost of living and real estate. The NY Times compares Detroit's rebirth (more like slow expulsion from the womb) to Berlin's rise and fall (and rise again) in the 1990s, and the LA Times insinuates that if up-and-coming artists want to be seen, Detroit is where it's at. Artists have been taking over abandoned warehouse spaces or homes and building them into studios or public art pieces — Detroit is the place to go if you're looking for street cred you really don't deserve.

Runners-Up

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Along the same lines as Detroit, Pittsburgh has also seen a renaissance with young entrepreneurs and artists in the past several years. In 2010, Forbes named the Steel City the number one most livable city in America due to it's attractive combo of low unemployment, low cost of living and high art and leisure ranking.

Baltimore, Maryland

It's no secret that this Chesapeake Bay city pumps out the hipster muses. Baltimore is the proud birthplace of John Waters, Ira Glass, Frank Zappa, David Byrne (grew up here) and The Wire. It also has that big deal industry city-turnerd bad economy/high crime rate scary place-turned artist haven thing going on (like Detroit and Pittsburgh) that young people love so much.

Richmond, Virginia

The Rumpus named Richmond one of the most inhabitable hipster cities for post-graduates (and it seems like every indie band I meet is from here).

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Check out The Hipstercrite update on this story and find out which city won the Best New Hipster City in a nationwide and completely unscientific poll.

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Red Light

San Antonio leads Texas on ending horse-drawn carriage rides by 2030

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Horses will no longer pull carriages on the streets of downtown San Antonio.

San Antonio has pulled off something that the rest of Texas has yet to do, but it didn't come without some contentious conversations. City Council has unanimously voted (with one abstention) to phase out the use of horse-drawn carriages over the next five years. That means by January 1, 2030, there will be none on the streets at all; instead, there will be electric carriages.

These plans have been in the making since 2022 — if not always at the same level of intensity — when District 2 Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and District 3 Councilmember Phyllis Viagran wrote up some concerns about the horses' wellbeing. A special session at the end of October 2024 hinted to San Antonians that the end for this practice was neigh — sorry, nigh — and the final vote was made on December 12. In addition to accepting the plan, it extended its timeframe by two years.

The initial proposal included worries about the horses' exposure to traffic and pollution, as well how their presence might exacerbate those issues for the environment at large by slowing traffic. It also raised concerns about the effects of standing or walking on hard surfaces for too long, or spending time in extreme weather.

At the December 12 meeting, San Antonians gave impassioned speeches about animal welfare — both to call attention to the need for better conditions and to defend the reputations and jobs of current horse drivers — but it wasn't the first time the council heard from the public about the issue.

In a prior city survey, 50,476 respondents weighed in. Of those respondents, 51.98 percent said they liked the idea to "Transition horse-drawn carriages to electric carriages and pedicabs and ban horse drawn carriages completely." There were alternative solutions listed, but respondents were less drawn to them.

A cultural divide emerged in the data and continued in the December meeting: some people avoided the carriages because they worried about the treatment of the horses, while others enjoyed them because of their historical echoes and living legacy. Many speakers in favor of the plan used this to form their argument, raising questions about history versus progress.

More tangible objections to the plan hinged on the businesses — specifically five companies — and jobs that would be lost, which was the main factor behind extending the adjustment period.

Discussions about the particulars of the electric vehicles are still to come, as confirmed in the discussion near the end of the meeting. Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez addressed concerns about what would happen to the horses, mentioning the Brady Hunter Foundation as a future partner in finding them rescue homes.

Some council members also brought up rhetorical questions about animal exploitation by groups like Sea World, the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, military and police forces, and even various groups in the Fiesta parade, although these did not come with a formal motion to pick the issues up.

This decision could have a ripple effect on other Texas cities. Dallas has recently considered a similar ban, but it appears to have stalled; Austin's attempts at a ban have been unsuccessful, but according to the Austin-American Statesman, only one operator is permitted to bring horses downtown. She declines to do so because the long hours are unfair to her and the horses. Houston does have horse-drawn carriages, and there seems to be little conversation about banning them.

Cities like Chicago and Salt Lake City have led the charge in the United States with some of the most prominent successful bans. Other cities around the world with bans include Brussels and Guadalajara, which both switched to electric models. Bans that have been around for years, like Guadalajara's and Prague's, still aren't out of the woods — people are still pushing back on the decision, so it sounds like San Antonio still has much work cut out for it.

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