For those of you who don't know about the Greenpoint Tavern, known across the hipster kingdom as the "GPT," I'll try to paint a little picture. It's really quite miraculous that the place is still apparently owned and run by some old folks, although I wouldn't put it past a couple a enterprising hipsters to get daddy's investors to buy the place out then hire the old staff in order to keep it 'kitschy.' But as it stands, there's a stately old dame manning (womanning?) the house in her fall-themed pumpkin sweatshirt and orange sweats, along with a couple of wrinkled gents hooting and farting away in one of the booths near the front. The decor is decidedly seasonal; it's oppressively seasonal. In fact it looks like the fucking harvest festival sale at Target: Glowing plastic jack-o-lanterns, pastry paper acorns dangling from the ceiling, wicked-witch-on-broomstick, etc. And ostensibly at least this is not the work of a hipster's plot to make the place seem 'authentic.' Like I said, miraculous.

But maybe not, because when you take a look at old Connie whippin' up those $3 styrofoam buds around midnight, her smiling face lit by the refraction of 100 pairs of Weezer specs, it might occur to you that the Greenpoint Tavern has figured out the hipster formula, at least for a select few slithering species. I can hear Connie's strategy meeting right now: "Sure, let em have the goddamned jukebox, the little bastards, but the tap beer and the decor is mine." And really, the tap beer and decor is the same: Golden. Connie and those two old boobs really are running to show if for no other reason than this: The formula is way too fucking simple for a couple a hipsters to manage. They'd have their buddies' shitty paintings sprawled above the bar inside a month. Most bars think they need to get some tight bitch in hotpants behind the bar, poppin tops with her cootchie, that kind of thing, to attract the hipster crowd. And sure, that would work if we were talking about your average crowd. But we're not. We're talking about the kind of dude who walks in, sees old Connie there yankin' that tap, sets his scrawny little flannel-clad elbow on the bar, a $20 perched in his claw, and thinks to himself, "This is so authentic!" Next thing you know, he's got half a dozen syrofoam cups stacked in front of him and Connie's counting her dough, figuring out how many wisemen to buy for the nativity scene this year. Christmas is coming, after all. And I personally think old Connie must have stumbled on this fucking thing by accident. Hell, she's got flair! And she's no dummy. She saw the goofy fucking look on those faces when the first few hipsters popped in on the way to their lofts, she knew when they started asking where she got her sweatshirts, the plastic reindeer, the strings of chili pepper lights, little smartasses. But she can take their snide questions because she knew the formula, and she knew she was in a unique position to push it forward simply because she was not one of them, she was authentic, which is their trap. So instead of turning the place into a bistro she just kicked up the price of beer by a dollar and threw up another neon light in the window. And walla!

Next Time: There are lots of different kinds of hipsters. This is something you and I know already, but I'll try and flesh out some of the different hipster species. And what better place to do this than the Greenpoint Tavern on a Friday night?