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Hipstercrite Life

Hipstercrite Life, Thirty-something, Writing

My blog died & then it came back & I thought I should write a post

Last week I realized my site was gone.
Kaput.
Sent to the graveyard of neglected blogs.

I contacted my hosting company, Bluehost, who said, “Sorry you missed a payment and your blog is gone-gone. Like, we totally put it on a row boat, set it on fire, and pushed it out to sea.”

Upon hearing that my blog was dead, a calmness washed over me.

I wasn’t angry or sad–I was mostly stunned.

I’ve had this blog for at least 12 years (I’m too lazy to see when I started it) and losing it felt like a little piece of me drifting into the ether. It is the digital record of my early days as a single, emotionally loud twenty-something assistant living in Los Angeles who moved to Austin to become a writer. It chronicles my slow evolution from working three part-time jobs seven days a week to becoming a working professional to meeting my partner (who I’ve now been with for 8 1/2 years) to writing a movie with him to becoming a full-time writer. The blog is also my repository of pop culture ramblings, (more…)

September 16, 2019 by
Hipstercrite Life, Travel

Pittsburgh: Not the Next Hipster City (And Maybe That’s a Good Thing)

Many moons ago, I wrote several articles that went mini-viral about the next hipster cities.

(Side note: Looking back at those articles, I want to barf.)

One of the cities I included on my next hipster city list was Pittsburgh.

Though I had never been to Pittsburgh, I had been seeing many articles about the Rust Belt city’s renaissance. (Barf X 2 that I wrote about a city I had never been to.)

I never would have imagined that five years later I would actually live in Pittsburgh.

So here I am–a Pittsburgher.

I now have a much clearer window into the city, and I can tell you: It’s not the next hipster city.

And maybe that’s a good thing.

Heinz Lofts in former Heinz factory

Pittsburgh is crumbling.
And it’s progressing (slowly).

There is a slew of empty storefronts.
But Google is here.

The air quality is some of the worse in the country.
But the area has made strides since the days when (more…)

March 5, 2019 by
Hipstercrite Life

13 Habits for Living a Perfectly Fine, Average Life

First of all: I’m not an expert on anything.

Except for maybe Jeff Goldblum, The Clash, salad bars and the undying love between Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.

Other than that I’m a human being just getting through life.

My life is not perfect, but at my core I’m a happy person, and I believe that many small yet positive habits I’ve developed through the years have helped me stabilize that core. I’d like to share those habits with you, but I don’t want you to think that I think I’m an expert.

We have too many influencers vomiting their truths as fact, and subsequently creating a false paradigm of how one should live their life. It’s unhealthy and stressful; their message implies that you are not living properly, and that if you don’t post a staged photo of yourself laughing while casually getting squirted in the face with a water hydrant you are somehow unhappy.

I don’t want to add to that stress.

You can take or leave what I’m about to tell you.

These habits (more…)

January 28, 2019 by
Hipstercrite Life, Thirty-something, Travel

Tap, tap: Is this thing still on?

Oh hello! Longtime no see, friend.

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve written here, and I’m currently sitting on the couch, bloated after eating an entire pizza, and thinking, “Maybe I should check in, see how everyone is doing and let them know I’m bloated on pizza.”

So, friends.

How are you?

Me? I’m bloated.

But other than that I’m ok.

I mean, my grandmother died this year.

Any of you who have hung in here with me know I thought the world of that ol’ broad.

A good cry sneaks in every day, particularly when I see a Golden Girls-branded anything (Grandma was my Dorothy) or smell garlic. Shit, pretty much EVERYTHING makes me think of her.
Mothballs (the sweaters in her armoire).
Crumpled tissues (she used to stuff them in her sleeves and drop them everywhere).
Shoulder pads (the woman LOVED them).

My beautiful grandmother.

Grief is a very, very strange thing. Sometimes you can joke about (more…)

December 3, 2018 by
Hipstercrite Life, Thirty-something

The Secret to Enjoying the Internet: Pretending to be Your Cat

I love my cat.

I love my cat in the way that most childless 30-something women do: whole-heartedly, unconditionally and a little creepily.

When I look at my cat, FatFace, a former feral with three teeth and mouth herpes, my heart bursts with pure joy. There are no cats cuter than my cat, I whisper to myself. Every pose she makes is pukingly cute and therefore must be photographed and shared online. In attempt not to overload my friends who look at me with great sadness in their eyes, I decided to create an Instagram account for FatFace from FatFace.

But her account was also born out of the bloody aftermath of the 2016 election. Tired of participating in and watching poop slinging from both the left and right and everyone in between, I decided that losing myself in the blissfully ignorant personality of my apolitical cat was a better place to be than the hell we humans had created for ourselves. The more I masqueraded as my cat and the less I added to social media (more…)

May 31, 2018 by
Hipstercrite Life, Pop Culture, Writing

Photos my Grandfather Took During WWII

My beloved grandmother passed away recently, and my mother and I have been going through old photos. We rediscovered photos my grandfather took while stationed in Africa during WWII. Here are some of my favorites.

*As far as I can tell, these were all taken by my grandfather. I’ve tried to verify the accuracy of the photos as best I can. These photos were snapped with my iPhone, hence the added fuzziness.

This is my grandfather Carl. He was an airplane mechanic in the Army Air Forces during the North African Campaign of WWII. During the war, he had a pet monkey named Jocko, he was stabbed and he contracted malaria. Those were the only things he shared with my mother. He died in 1974, before I was born.

This is him with one of his favorite planes, 1943. (Possibly a B-25?) *I* wonder why it was his favorite…?

Here he is in the beginning of the war with some of his Army mates.

Here’s another. Grandpa is in the lower left corner. 1945.

Army mate working on an A-20. (I think (more…)

March 6, 2018 by
Hipstercrite Life, Pop Culture, Thirty-something

Why More Millennials Should Invest in Cryptocurrency

First, let me get this out of the way: I’m not a financial advisor. I’m just a gal who started investing in cryptocurrency and has learned a thing or two.

In early 2017, when cryptocurrency began taking off, I decided to take the plunge. I got in when the values were already somewhat high but before they got redonkulously high.

Because of my investment early on, I’ve made a nice profit in six months that I’m really proud of.

Why am I proud?

Because I am not a money person.

It was only a couple years ago that I was able to start saving for my retirement. However, I don’t know squat about stocks and I have no large assets besides two X-files Barbie dolls and more pillows than any human could possibly need.

When I decided to start investing in cryptocurrency I told myself three things:
1.) Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose 
2.) Understand that the bubble could burst tomorrow 
3.) Don’t get all weird and sell your two X-files Barbie dolls and blankets to (more…)

January 4, 2018 by
Hipstercrite Life, Pop Culture

35 Ways to Find Happiness From Someone Totally Unqualified

Follow these easy tips and you’ll have your shit together in no time.

I’m not an expert on anything, except for maybe naps (they’re really, really good for you), but because I’m a Writer on Medium, I’m actually an expert on everything and today I’m going to share with you 35 foolproof ways to find happiness.

  1. Stop being depressed, first and foremost.
  2. Stop dating bartenders.
  3. If you are a bartender, stop being one.
  4. Stop buying recycled toilet paper. (This is more so to make your butt happy.)
  5. Stop looking at your phone all of the time.
  6. Stop perusing the Internet all of the time.
  7. Stop comparing yourself to others.
  8. JUST.
  9. STOP.
  10. DOING THINGS.
  11. OK?
  12. Take a nap.
  13. Polish off a bottle of red and take a five-hour nap.
  14. Polish off a bottle of red and put Purple Rain on the record player.
  15. Wait, don’t. When you realize you can’t dance or sing like Prince, you’ll fall into deep funk. (Trust me.)
  16. Those $45 crystals aren’t going to work. Buy the $5 crystals. (more…)
August 27, 2017 by
Hipstercrite Life, Writing

Should We Punch Nazis?

Let me start off by getting this out of the way:

  1. I’m a liberal, an activist and a pacifist
  2. I’m also Jewish
  3. However, I admit that I don’t know the correct answer to “Should we punch neo-Nazis?”
  4. Therefore, this essay will have more questions than answers
  5. And it’s not about the ethics of punching a neo-Nazi, or if a neo-Nazi deserves to be punched or not (they do), but rather a study on whether or not punching them is the best method to bring about positive change
  6. P.S. I hate neo-Nazis

Inlight of the events in Charlottesville, I’ve seen a large uptick in support of punching neo-Nazis.

This support is coming from thoughtful, intelligent thinkers I respect on the left and it’s got me questioning whether or not we’ve arrived at violence being the only way to achieve peace.

But as a pacifist, writing the above sentence makes me cringe; it feels like the ultimate oxymoron.

How can violence be the answer to peace?

We hold up our non-violent leaders — Martin (more…)

August 16, 2017 by
Hipstercrite Life

Please Remember: Love Will Outnumber Hate

Words have escaped me lately.

This is, in part, due to the rapid fire of unfortunate, heartbreaking, terrifying events that have plagued America recently. Like many others, my brain is in a frenzied state and is having difficulty keeping up; every day is a fight not to go down a path of self-preservation numbness to what is going on. I know that inaction is not the answer, but damn, some days it just feels so unbearably hopeless.

The other reason words have trickled out of my brain, through my ears and down to the ground is because I’m tired of being told how I’m supposed to think and feel by the online masses in times of turmoil. As a writer on the web, I do not want to pretend I’m an expert on individual emotional reaction to catastrophe; I will not tell you how you’re supposed to act right now.

But with that being said, there is one thing I want to share in hopes of providing comfort, and as a reader, please feel free to take it or leave it.

During these times when I feel (more…)

August 14, 2017 by