Alpena, Michigan: Looming Permanent Home for Hipsters?
Depressed to hip to gentrified. That’s progress in America, where wealth waxes and authenticity wanes.
Hipsters discover economically depressed towns. They find cheap commercial buildings in these marginalized areas and start off-beat businesses. If enough coalesce, a hipster culture emerges. It attracts wealthier people who, like fat people who eat too much food because their diets aren’t providing enough nutrition, spend more and more money to get the spiritual or aesthetic sustenance that Madison Avenue can’t provide. Gentrification emerges.
Depressed to hip to gentrified. That’s the process.
Alpena, Michigan is doing it differently. It’s jumping from depressed to gentrified, mostly bypassing the hip stage. But not entirely. Hipsterism is part of the gentrification.
And I suspect its successful re-emergence as northeastern Michigan’s economic and cultural hub depends on it becoming even more hip. Unlike other communities whose cutting-edge hipsterism is ruined by gentrification, I think Alpena is well-positioned to make the hip part of its permanent appeal.
