Hipster

A hipster is a person who is strongly associated with a subculture that has been deemed "hip", or "hep." The term was used originally in the 1940s and 1950s to describe aficionados of jazz, and it eventually described many members of the Beat Generation, but its usage declined in the 1960s, with the advent of hippies. Since the mid 1990s, the word "hipster" has been redefined to refer to members of a different subculture. Modern hipsters are those devoted to ironic retro fashions, indie music and film, alternative comics, and other forms of expression outside the mainstream.

Famous hipsters

1940s and 1950s

For a comprehensive look at the Beat Generation of hipsters, see Beat Generation

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Actors, comedians, musicians

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• Steve Allen, comedian, jazz musician and songwriter, friend and sometime employer of Lenny Bruce as well as colabortor of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
• Mose Allison, singer, pianist, songwriter
• Lenny Bruce, comedian
• Lord Buckley, monologist, "The Bad Rapping of the Marquis de Sade"
• Al Jazzbo Collins, disc jockey, broadcasting from the Purple Grotto, hip lexicographer
• Miles Davis, jazz musician and pioneer of Bop, fusion and free jazz, recorded "Kind of Blue" and "Birth of the Cool"
• Sammy Davis, Jr., singer, actor, and civil rights activist
• Billy Eckstine, singer and bandleader
• Ella Fitzgerald, singer
• Slim Gaillard, musician, "The Groove Juice Special" and "Cement Mixer Puti Puti"
• Harry 'the Hipster' Gibson, pianist, singer of "Who put the benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?"
• Danny Kaye, comedian, singer, and actor who protested the Communist trials of the McCarthy Era.
• Gene Kelly, dancer, comedian, film director, moved to Paris to enjoy the Bohemian artistic freedom and refused to testify during the Communist Black listing of the McCarthy Era.
• Henry Jacobs, whose persona was Shorty Petterstein
• Mezz Mezzrow, jazz musician
• Ken Nordine, actor and creator of "word jazz"
• Frank Sinatra, singer, actor, producer and civil rights activist.
• Mel Torme, singer, actor and jazz musician
• Ethel Waters, singer, religious worker, actress and civil rights activist

Writers

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• Neal Cassady, friend and lover of Allen Ginsberg, beat poet and driver of Ken Kesey's bus Furthur on what was known as "The electric kool-aid acid test"
• Allen Ginsberg, Beat poet, friend and contemporary of Kerouac, who served as the face of both the Beats and later the early Hippies
• Jack Kerouac, Beat poet and author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums, which launched the "rucksack revolution" and brought the Bohemian atmosphere of San Francisco to the rest of America.
• Terry Southern, author of "Blood of the Wig", a hipster classic about getting high using a serum derived from the blood of a schizophrenic.
• Hunter S. Thompson, journalist/author

1990 and beyond

This is a non-exhaustive list of a few well-known hipster artists and celebrities of the 1990s and 2000s. Where works or biographical information are cited, this should be read as they key points establishing the figures in hipster culture, and not as an exhaustive bio.

Related Topics:
1990s - 2000s

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Writers and visual artists

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• Mike Allred, pop art-influenced comic book writer & artist (Madman).
• Wes Anderson, writer/director of Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and other films considered hipster classics. Often cited as a particularly influential figure in hipster culture.
• David Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and editor of McSweeney's.
• Robert Lanham, Williamsburg-based author of The Hipster Handbook and Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees and other Creatures unique to the Republic
• Seth, influential comic book creator, known for pushing the boundaries of the medium and for his extreme retro artistic and personal style
• Adrian Tomine, comic book author whose serious, introspective indie comics have proved highly influential and quite popular with hipsters

Film directors and actors

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• Vincent Gallo, writer, director and star of the hipster film Buffalo 66.
• Janeane Garofalo, comedienne & actress whose self-deprecating persona (and her fashion sense) have made her a role model for Generation X hipsters.
• Spike Jonze, skateboard photographer, noted music video director and filmmaker famed for his original imagination and influential indie-slick style
• Richard Linklater, his film Slacker depicts the proto-hipster bohemian subculture of the early 1990s.
• Christina Ricci, actress, appeared in many hip independent films like The Opposite of Sex and Buffalo 66
• Chloë Sevigny, actress known for her flamboyant fashion sense and for pushing boundaries in films like Kids and The Brown Bunny
• Kevin Smith, filmmaker (Clerks., Chasing Amy) & comic book writer, whose witty commentary tracks and speaking tours practically defined a certain self-deprecating, geeky strain of hipsterism in the late-1990s
• Quentin Tarantino, hyperactive and hyperarticulate director of Pulp Fiction and other stylish independent films

Musicians

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• Badly Drawn Boy, musician (The Hour of Bewilderbeast) known for his hipsterish irony, artistry and DIY sensibility.
• Beck, musician famous for repurposing music and styles of the past.
• Ben Folds, songwriter/musician noted for his hip wit and oddball career choices, such as producing an acclaimed album by William Shatner
• Ira Kaplan, musician (Yo La Tengo) whose musical and personal style was especially influential with 1990s indie rock hipsters
• Cat Power (née Chan Marshall), musician whose sincere-but-cryptic lyrics and famously unstable stage persona have influenced a generation of introverted female hipsters
• Elliott Smith, musician