Reader: Lower Highland is too established to attract the hipster, PBR crowd

A hipster neighborhood may have hip restaurants, but hip restaurants do not a hipster neighborhood make. And when Forbes recently included Lower Highland in its list of "America's Hippest Hipster Neighborhoods," the party as already over, one reader suggests:...

By Patricia Calhoun

October 1, 2012

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A hipster neighborhood may have hip restaurants, but hip restaurants do not a hipster neighborhood make. And when Forbes recently included Lower Highland in its list of "America's Hippest Hipster Neighborhoods," the party as already over, one reader suggests:

Says thespot84:

HOLY SHIT IT'S A GUY ON A BIKE BUT HE'S NOT INVOLVED IN A BIKE RACE! CALL THE HIPSTER POLICE!!!

Someone please adequately define hipster for us and then we can actual begin to figure out where 'they' are. From the Forbes article:

"Merriam-Webster somewhat vaguely defines a "hipster" as "a person who is unusually aware of and interested in new and unconventional patterns.""

So based on this, a hipster is anyone in Denver who doesn't like texmex.

If anyone actually read the Forbes article, Forbes judged 'hipness' based on coffee shops, locally owned businesses, farmers markets, and walkability. Beyond those metrics, to put Lower Highland and Williamsburg or Silver Lake (and let's be real, Silver Lake is so yesterday, it's all about Echo Park now) in the same article is complete poppycock.

If hipsters are anywhere in this city, and I think they are, I'd focus more on River North, South Broadway, West City Park, and Cap Hill. The fact of the matter is that Lower Highland is simply too old, too established, and too expensive to cater to the PBR crowd.

What do you consider Denver's hippest hipster neighborhood today? And if you're a LoHi business, the LoHi Merchant meeting runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. tonight at Little Man Ice Cream.

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Patricia Calhoun is editor-in-chief of Westword, the alt-weekly she co-founded in September 1977. She’s been inducted into the Colorado Press Association Hall of Fame, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia Hall of Fame and the Colorado Restaurant Association Hall of Fame. She’s also received dozens of local, state and national awards for writing, including first place for feature writing and first place for column writing with the Society of Professional Journalists. Patricia is a weekly commentator on Colorado Inside Out, PBS 12's public affairs roundtable, which has won two Emmys.

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