The Hipster Handbook.

an archeological dig into early-2000s culture.

This week’s Vinyl Diary entry is more vinyl-adjacent with a circuitous take on the theme of this newsletter with a culture-defining book.

I hope you don’t mind.

Last month, I released my second novel Somewhere in Hollywood, set in L.A.’s Silver Lake neighborhood in 2004. Writing a book about the past requires some major revisiting to get the tone right. It took me four years to sculpt the story while rummaging through the cobwebbed corners of my memory and leaning into the pop culture of the era. That meant listening to !!!, Postal Service, The Shins, and early Animal Collective records. I rewatched The O.C., which I was actually an extra on for most of Season 1. I hated it then, but now in my 40s, I get to see things like this and smile at my younger self, who I remember was absolutely miserable on this day.

To continue getting into the 2004 groove, I rewatched films like Garden State, Secretary, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, American Splendor. And at my mom’s house, I unearthed old Polaroids and dive bar photo booth strips, groaned over tossing my Vice back issues with their hilarious (and totally evil) do’s and don’t column before perking up that I still had this…The Hipster Handbook.

This was a funny little book that carried a push-pull charm where it was cool to act clueless about it, muttering, “I think my friend might have it” while squinting off into the distance. But at the same time, it spoke to us high-school weirdos who were now paying rent, working first jobs, and had found our people. We were the teens spinning Pavement, flipping albums over to see the record label insignia (if we didn’t already know it), loving the movies Welcome to the Dollhouse and Kids over multiplex smash hits starring Freddie Prinze Jr. So, when we hit our ‘20s and found like-minded weirdos, it made all the teen angst worth it. There was alcohol, there was freedom, there was vinyl. There was also a lot of sex happening because connecting over Entertainment! by Gang of Four is foreplay for us rock nerds. That, and we had a book we pretended didn’t existed.

But seriously. As dorky as it sounds, I do love the fact that a physical book with actual pages was our cultural “cool” touchstone and not videos of people talking fast and/or jumping around. The book didn’t rot the mind, strain the eyes or swallow whole days. It just made us feel like complete and total shit when we didn’t catch every reference before going back to pretending we didn’t know what the book was in the first place. A vicious cycle.

Now for some context for anyone who might be lost, wondering what the fuck I’m going on about. Published in 2003, The Hipster Handbook is a satirical guide to the hipster lifestyle taking off in the bohemian enclaves of major cities. A riff on The Official Preppy Handbook from the ‘80’s, it’s a snarky how-to, as well as a social archeological dig into the niche social tribes of people possessing certain tastes and attitudes, set apart from the mainstream drift. Written over twenty years ago, it misses the imagery synonymous to today’s hipster culture. So, we hadn’t yet hit the craft beer scene, the old-fashioned barbershops, or latte art. Faux-hawks hadn’t yet been hijacked by frat boys, so it’s included in the book without irony (although, we can argue the entire book is ironic). And we’d have to wait another 15 years for the grunge revival, so Doc Martens get a laugh as being painfully passé.

The book is then carved up by personalities, sorting hipster breeds by their preferred cocktails, smokes, music, and hairstyles. My Virgo eye appreciated the tidy columns defining what’s cool (J.D. Salinger and Vespas) versus what’s not (bars with dartboards and green apple martinis). There’s also a glossary featuring slang I've never heard anyone use, which feeds its tongue-in-cheek bent with the writer obviously fucking with all of us to see if saying "Deck" or “Fin” would take off. It didn’t. It all leads up to the book’s standout feature: a multiple choice quiz.

This fucking quiz.

It was limited in 2003 with Vans not being a sneaker option, but now in 2025, it’s impossible to do, since things like electric cars didn’t exist yet, the magazines that are supposed to define a type are no longer in print, and the last of the funny late-night talk show hosts have since retired. But that’s okay because the results are brutally anticlimactic. If you were expecting an appraisal of just how cool you were with a full-throated explanation, The Hipster Handbook basically tells you to go fuck yourself, and boxes your entire being into a word from their made-up glossary, while remaining faithfully on-brand. You gotta love the consistency.

What was all in good fun then is now merely an artifact of a lost era that I’m not decreeing is better or worse than today; it’s just different. A time when a $20 bill got you sufficiently buzzed, let you tip the bartender, and still have a buck leftover for the jukebox to sway with half-moon eyes to The Smiths. A time when hangovers were gone by noon, the boys actually had to call, and a digital heart-shaped button didn’t impact our emotions.

But we move forward and this is where we are. It’s not better, it’s not worse, it just is.

As for me, these days I’ve traded out the dive bars for my kitchen, and the booze for kombucha. But what’s remained is the records that I still sway to now with half-smiles remembering an age when pop culture felt definitive, and being a part of something meant being just a little weird.