They are part of Melbourne’s signature, forming the urban fabric that sets this city apart from the rest of Australia. The Melbourne hipster is an ubiquitous statement that is at home on our streets as much as any other local icon.
Bushranger heritage
Melbourne’s colder climate lends itself perfectly to the cultivation of the ubiquitous hipster beard that boys around town have embraced with gusto. After all, Melbournians can claim Ned Kelly and his bushranger beard as their own.
They’re everywhere
There are hipster havens to be found all around metropolitan Melbourne and it’s rare for any suburb to have escaped the hipsterisation trend. You’ll be sure to find a corner milk bar turned hipster hangout even in the most unlikely locations from as far north as Coburg to way down South in Hampton.
Inner city boho
Fitzroy is surely Australia’s hipster-central – a destination known for its proliferation of polka dots, high cuffed demins, top knots and custom bikes. This once run-down underworld enclave inner city suburb is now the playground of a new breed of boho.
Where milk crates matter
Tattersalls Lane is home to Section 8 and its sister bar, Ferdyduke. This, and neighbouring city lanes, is the natural habitat of the city’s card-carrying hipster crew. This is where shipping containers, milk crates, pallets and cyclone fencing form the parade ground of Melbourne’s hipster elite.
Tagged and tested
Graffiti art is key to Melbourne’s success in the hipster stakes. It seems that everywhere you turn, there’s a mural, a tag or a tagged mural! So identified is graffiti with Melbourne’s reputation as the capital of cool that local Councils are commissioning walls of it, hoping to hop on the hipster bandwagon.
A done deal
Coffee coffee coffee. It’s the drug of the hipster generation and no place deals it quite as good and as often as Melbourne does. Of course every drug needs its den and they are to be found in all over Melbourne
Trucks and tacos
There’s a phenomena that fits hand in glove with the hipster movement that Melbourne has embraced in epic proportions. The whole food trucks idea has borne a hipster frenzy whereby hipster entrepreneurs get their hipster mates to create hipster food to sell to hipster customers, all from the back of funked up truck. The idea has taken Melbourne by storm and where these trucks go, hipsters follow.
Tatts are total
Tattoos to hipsters are what cars are to hoons. They signify a certain status in the gang and the louder and more customised they are, the greater your ranking amongst the tribe. It’s all about the wow factor and with Tattoo Parlours now as ubiquitous as organic juiceries in the hipster hot-spots of Melbourne, it’s no wonder Melbournian hipsters have overtaken all other in Australia as number one.
Coiffure chic
Hair is king in the world of the hipster. Melbourne’s hip hairdressing salons and grooming barns are brimming with those desperate to out-coiff each other and attain an elevated position on the hipster scale. Whether it’s a luscious beard on a bloke or a study in asymmetry on a hip chick, the streets of Melbourne teem with hipster hair-chic.
If you want an Australian experience that you’ll not find in another place, you’ll want to see the Melbourne hipster it its natural habitat. Melbourne laneways, Fitzroy bars, Collingwood cafes or Brunswick pubs are where you’ll find them.
(Feature image: Roberta Givoni)
