A few of their choices make the cut while a handful make us wonder how they’ve been in New York this long without learning anything. (Like The Blind Tiger on Bleecker. That place is right near me and always smells vaguely of fart and frat, artisanal beers be damned.)

Full list with our commentary after the jump. (With their commentary here.)

1. Su Casa (404 Sixth Ave.)- They like it because there’s no cover and alcohol is served in large quantities. We like it because it’s located over a Qdoba, which means it’s classy.
2. The Blind Tiger Ale House (281 Bleecker St.)- This group of distinguished night life mavens calls The Blind Tiger “The Happening Bar.” See “fart” above for our rebuttal.
3. Eva’s (11 W. 8th St.)- Great call. The cheap as hell vegetrian food makes it worth braving the thoroughly icky looking facade.
4. Milon (93 First Ave.)- Another legit suggestion. Eating at Milon is like sitting inside a particularly ridiculous Christmas tree that is having a seizure. (Yes, in this scenario Christmas trees have seizures.)
5. Ost (441 E. 12th St.)- If you want to keep your coffeehouse “studying” a little closer to campus, Think on Bowery and Bleecker isn’t as packed as the clusterfuck that is Think on Mercer. That said, awesome $3 hot chocolate may be worth the extra blocks.
6. C.O. Bigelow (414 Sixth Ave.)- Don’t bother unless you’re a girl looking for makeup. Or a guy in need of eyeliner– we don’t judge.
7. Aldo (700 Broadway)- Their go-to spot for “Stylish Accessories.” Really? Because that sounds like the worst idea ever. Aldo’s fine and everything, but Topshop, H&M and maybe even Forever 21 are all better for the same-ish price.
8. Warehouse Wines & Spirits (735 Broadway)- Never will I say a word against this emporium of cheap alcohol. (Mostly because never have they carded me.) Get in the cash only line, hold your breath, cross your fingers, and pray that the dude at the register will be too distracted by your cleavage to notice that you look like you’re 12.
9. Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore (716 Broadway)- Close to campus and chock full of things actually worth reading, this place is pretty cool. Also try BookBook, which just opened at Bleecker and Morton. They magically have really low prices on half their stock.
10. Jivamukti Yoga (841 Broadway)- We remain loyal to Yoga To the People on St. Marks. Crowded though it may be, it’s $0-$2 unless you’re feeling generous. You can’t really compete with that.
11. IFC Movie Theater (323 Sixth Ave.)- John Krasinski was there the other night talking about “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men,” his new movie. The place is worth stalking for that alone.
12. Ray’s Pizza (465 Sixth Ave.)- Meh, we could take it or leave it. The $2.75/slice price tag is really the main selling point. Instead, get together a group of similarly lost freshman friends and round the corner to John’s on Bleecker between Morton and 7th Ave. You can’t buy it by the slice, but you’ll want a whole pizza anyway.
13. Sing-Sing Karaoke (9 St. Marks Pl.)- Embarrass yourself all night long for less than you’d pay elsewhere. Good deal.
14. Ace Bar (531 E. 5th St.)- Admittedly, we have no idea about this one, given that our staff is weirdly devoid of sports bar enthusiasts. Check it out and tell us what you think.
15. Gracefully (28 Ave. A)- Ohmygodsogood. (They sell sandwiches, by the way.)
16. The Sunburnt Cow (137 Ave. C)- While we’re not sure we’d really call this a “Pickup Spot,” we do love the Australian accents those bartenders are sporting.
17. Cooper 35 (35 Cooper Square)- The best possible place to let people know you’re an NYU freshman without wearing an NYU ‘13 T shirt.
18. Sweet Revenge (62 Carmine St.)- Their suggestion for a budget date. Cupcakes are all well and good, but we’ve got a few much better ideas.

Vanessa: Did you know you were going to Finland to busk?

Emilia: Well no, I planned to go to Finland and find a job. I didn’t get to do as much writing during the school year as I wanted to, so I brought my typewriter to Finland hoping I’d get some crap job and then use my free time to write. But then I couldn’t find a job so I had to make a good decision.

Vanessa: Why Finland?

Emilia: I didn’t want to stay in New York for the summer because I didn’t have enough money and I was thinking, if I’m going to be paying rent and living on my own, it might be nice to do it in Finland. And I’m half Finnish, so that helps. I didn’t really want to go live at home with my parents for the summer so I just kind of picked up and moved there in hopes that I would… get a job (laughs).

Vanessa: Explain a little bit about what exactly you were doing. My roommate asked me what busking is, so let’s go from there.

Emilia: Busking is a British term. It basically means a street performer, but I prefer busking to street performer because street performer could make me sound a lot more pathetic than I hope I was. Basically I would take my typewriter out to the streets and write poems and stories for people for “donations” on the street. I usually did it in front of one restaurant.

Vanessa: How did you go from jobless to busker?

Emilia: Well, I’d been searching for jobs for about 2 weeks and I couldn’t find anything. I was basically sitting alone in my apartment, drinking beer and realizing, I’m not getting out of my apartment so what’s the point of living in Finland? I’m not making any money, and I’m not getting any writing done because I was so worried about getting a job. So I basically hit three birds with one stone by getting out, and writing, and making some money. I went out one day, called the owner of the restaurant and asked him if he would mind and he said he didn’t care, and so it just…worked. I made some money, and people started getting really into it, so I kept doing it.

Vanessa: I guess there wasn’t really such a thing as a “typical day”, but try to tell us what a day might look like.

Emilia: Well usually I’d wake up in the morning and then since I didn’t have Internet I’d go to some Internet Café, and then I’d grab my typewriter, go to the restaurant, and I would sit on the ground right outside. They had a terrace and so I would sit outside in front of the door and the people on the terrace could hear my typewriter. I had a sign that I made out of a Cheerio’s box. I would never be like, “Hey, do you want a story?” I’d always just sit there and have something in mind that I wanted to write because then the ding, and the typing, would get people’s attention. Then usually somebody would be curious enough to come get one.

Vanessa: That’s really interesting that the typewriter played an actual role in the process. If it were a laptop it wouldn’t have been the same thing…

Emilia: Exactly. Yeah, that was basically the biggest part of it, because I think if I were writing them by hand then it wouldn’t have been as much of a spectacle, and everyone knows that good street performers cause a spectacle. So the noises, and the fact that I was sitting on the ground with this little sign and everything, I think that kind of just caught people’s attention while they were having a beer outside.

Vanessa: So how did the actual process of writing work?

Emilia: That’s part of the reason why I did it at a restaurant, because then people could ask me for a poem and sit down and have lunch or have a beer or something like that, while I was writing, so it’s not like they were waiting impatiently for me. Most of the time it would only take me about 10 minutes to write a story or a poem. These aren’t Nobel Peace Prize winning pieces of literature or anything like that.

Vanessa: Did you ever get writer’s block?

Emilia: Well, I mean, on occasion, but it would only last a few minutes because I knew I had to do it. So there are some [poems] that are just absolute crap and I know that, and I’m sitting there selling it to them, thinking, “Oh my god this is the worst poem I’ve ever written in my life,” but they liked it, and that’s fine.

I mean the poetry I was writing was really, really, cheesy, you know, rhyming couplets most of the time. I’m not ever going to claim to be a good poet…my stories I’m a little bit more proud of. But that’s what people in Finland were really liking because not only do they not normally write in English, but it is kind of kitschy on it’s own.

Vanessa: What was the standard donation for stories and poems?

Emilia: My suggested donation was 3 euros, because I didn’t want to charge too much, since they don’t know how good of a writer I am. So my base was 3 euros but most people gave me more than that, just on a tip basis. Some people would tip 5, some people gave me 10. So some days I’d make really good money and some days I wouldn’t.

Vanessa: I read on your blog that some people tipped you in champagne! Did you get any other interesting tips?

Emilia: I got tipped in booze and food mostly, if it wasn’t money. Then there was this one Finnish millionaire who tipped me [a lot of money], and I didn’t know he was a millionaire at first, he just gave me all this money, and then I later found out he was a millionaire and that’s why he could just tip me that much!

Vanessa: When you say you “later found out,” does that mean you kept in touch with some of your customers?

Emilia: Yeah, definitely. One of my first customers, she loved it so much she’d come back every other week for a poem. Now she and I are friends on Facebook, and she’s this really awesome 60 year old woman, and she throws these parties in Finland that are 50 and up only, so if you’re under 50 you can’t get in.

And then another guy, who was also a customer of mine from the first day, he ended up contacting the newspaper, so that was the reason why there was a newspaper article about me. So a lot of these people actually turned into friends.

Vanessa: So the restaurant didn’t really “get it” at first. Were there any negative reactions other than that? I feel like in New York you might get in trouble with the police or something for not having a permit?

Emilia: No I mean, I asked the restaurant owner if I could sit there, and he was like, “Yeah,” since I was sitting outside the restaurant technically it’s not his property. So he was like “Yeah, it’s not my property,” and I was like, “I know I just don’t wanna piss you off.” Everyone at the restaurant was really good to me: they would give me a free meal here and there, they’d give me a discount if I ordered food. I remember one day I just literally sat down and they brought out a bowl of strawberries and whipped cream for me. If it was cold they brought out a blanket for me, I could always run in and use the bathroom if I needed to. That’s why it was really perfect to do it there, because I had everything I needed.

Vanessa: Do you have any advice for someone who would want to do something unconventional for next summer, or maybe even right now? I feel like many NYU students get bogged down with the idea that they need to get a job in New York, or an internship. Do you have anything you would say to that?

Emilia: My advice is that you should just try and think out of the box, especially in this job market. Everyone at NYU gets internships, everyone has good shit on their resume. But, I put busking on my resume, and in the last 2 interviews I’ve had they’ve asked about it. Right now, it’s better to have something that stands out, I think, more than just having your average internship.

Vanessa: You said you probably won’t be able to busk now that you’re back in New York. Would you have wanted to?

Emilia: I just think New Yorkers have already seen everything, so they’d be a little bit more jaded to seeing a girl with a typewriter on the street. You know, they’d be like, “Oh, what a hipster,” or “Oh my God, she’s charging $3, that’s such a rip off,” or some shit like that. So I just don’t think it would work as well. I’ve contemplated doing it, but my typewriter actually just broke recently, so now I’ve gotta get it fixed before I do anything with it anyway!

I’m not picking on the author, and I agree that it’s time for all of us to officially retire the keffiyeh (except for Justin Timberlake, who inexplicably pulls it off really well). What I am arguing is that condemning “hipsters” and their lifestyle choices is just as big an oversimplification that ignores the subtleties of the culture as, say, wearing a symbol of Palestinian solidarity as a fashion accessory.

Because just what about American Apparel is “hipster” anymore? For that matter, when exactly did riding your bike or eating vegetarian food become as iconographic of “hipster subculture” as PBR and these guys? I went to Misshapes (more than a couple times), and I don’t ride a bike or drink PBR especially. Do I still count? Ms. Smith Student says that “trends cycle through hipsterdom like wildfire on acid,” which actually doesn’t make much sense, but I think I see her point. And I’d like to take it one step further—there are so many facets to “the modern hipster” that there is no such thing as hipster anymore.

Seriously. Maybe at one point, only a select few could pull off the American Apparel hoodie, but at this point it’s become so ubiquitous that it doesn’t mean anything at all. Sorry, Dov Charney, but your brand lost its “hipness” around the same time you could fake your own Polaroid online. Which isn’t a bad thing!

But I think, with artists like M.I.A. and the widespread resurgence of the Converse sneaker show, “hipsterdom” is no longer a subculture. It’s a style. And confusing the two undercuts whatever otherwise acute insight you may have into the matter. Nobody can seem to define what a “hipster” is anymore besides what s/he typically wears—but when everyone else is wearing, say, that same pair of leggings from Urban Outfitters, it’s safe to say the style has gone past that of a mere subculture.

Even our friend from Smith College doesn’t quite know what a true hipster is. “To clarify, when I say hipster, I don’t necessarily mean the 70 percent or so of Smith students who have an affinity for the aforementioned look. I too sport American Apparel. I mean people who truly subscribe to the subculture as a full-on lifestyle,” she says, which is the only time in the article she attempts to define “the subculture” any further. But the author doesn’t explain what that “full-on lifestyle” entails, and I’d challenge anyone to offer an adequate explanation that doesn’t involve reciting the Hipster Bingo board.

What I’m saying is that, yes, I do think we have witnessed the death of hipster subculture. Its oft-derided superficiality has, like most trends, crossed over into the mainstream. There’s nothing left to brandish, either fashionably or ironically. The clothing is the same, but there’s nothing uniquely “hip” about American Apparel anymore. To wit: the company is now in the news for exchanging lawsuits instead of style tips.

Or am I still a dirty hipster because I like The Knife?

Originally posted at Jess and Josh Talk About Stuff