You've been going to this spot for years with your friends. It's cheap, low-key, and always has a game of Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit you can pick up if you're bored. One day you notice something odd: all the locals have disappeared, only to be replaced by snarky 20-somethings with their iPads checking in on FourSquare and discussing how "over" this bar is (despite it being their first visit).
Sound familiar? It's called Hipsterfication, and it's happening all over America. Previously nice and affordable family establishments are being turned into free Wi-Fi zones where blase 20-somethings can whine about how South By isn't cool anymore and how hard it is to find a good graphic design gig on Craigslist. This is happening everywhere you go, thanks to the surge of social-networking platforms that allow hipsterati to know what locations are currently "trending," and attract kids with their promise of social accpetance like trendy bees to Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Luckily, you can now weed out the bars and restaurants who have begun to cater to hipsters, thanks to a new feature on Yelp.com. Under the "Ambiance" category, you can now find a label that says "Hipster:" a vaguely derogatory term that will probably dissuade only those who secretly identify as hipsters, as the group is by nature self-selecting in that it only defines itself in relation to not being a hipster. So if a bar is "Hipster" and you go there, you aren't a hipster. Get it?
Quite subversive on Yelp's part, we must say. So if you find your local drinking hole suddenly teeming with skinny kids listening to a that band that may or may not be the one who won the Grammy for Best Album this year (not like you remember), simply go into Yelp and add your review with the "hipster" checkmark. They'll be out of there before you know it.
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