"What kind of beer do you like?" "Heineken." "HEINEKEN?! FUCK THAT SHIT, PABST BLUE RIBBON!

Ah, it arrived just in time: The Hipster Handbook by Robert Lanham. Because this weekend I’m going to this All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, which is like a Mecca for Hipsters. I’ve been twice before and every time I felt hopelessly normal. Aaaah, what to wear, which beer to order, which bands to see?!?

I don’t think I ever heard the term Hipster before I spent a semester at an art school in Boston in 2003. But I sure got to know it there; plenty of Hipsters were attending the Art Institute of Boston and loads of them would gather at night in a nearby dive called the The Model to drink PBR’s. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what made these people stand out, until one day I found The Hipster Handbook in a bookstore. It had nice illustrations by Bret Nicely of all the hipster looks, their hairdo’s and their accessories (ranging from cigarette and beer brands to tattoos). It has a glossary of the Hipster slang (which I suspect is a little outdated now – are deck and fin still ‘key words’ for Hipsters?) and lists of their favorite music, movie stars and books. And at the end of the book there’s a quiz that helps you determine whether you’re a Hipster or not through questions like how you would name your new male French bulldog, how you prefer your armpits to smell, which font you would chose for your business card and whether you have margarine in your fridge (Hipster answers would be Kit or Jimmy; naturally musky or unscented; you have no business card; false). I must say it proved to be bizarrely accurate and it has been very insightful, ever since I’ve been able to spot a hipster from miles away.

Just before I left Boston I bought the book for a friend of mine and I have always regretted not getting a copy myself. The ATP festival triggered my memory of the book (and with it the fond memories of my time in Boston), so I ordered it online for just £0.67 (!). Of course I would never use it as a source book on what to wear and what beer to order. Although I do check most of the boxes on the Hipster music list (Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Stereolab, Public Enemy, Stan Getz, The Kinks and so on), I now check quite a lot of boxes on the Symptoms Of Hipster Depreciation list. And "as a Hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat", I am simply "too fat to be a Hipster".