Last Saturday night I went into the Coffee Bean on Sunset and Fairfax and noticed a group of blue-suited Russian men smoking by a table where their friend was playing a young blonde woman in chess. The blonde wasn't wearing any makeup and her hair was pulled back kind of severely but she was pretty and she had that look, that SoCal look (or SoCal Russian look). Quite a few people were staring at them, because people have nothing to do but stare when they sit in the Coffee Bean, or because it is unusual to a young woman locked in pitched chess battle with some old Russian businessman dude. Two young guys in their twenties wandered over and watched from close range, too close. One was a white boy with shoulder length boy band hair and distressed fashion jeans with button-up shirt and a designer leather jacket. The other was an afroed light-skinned black man with a DJ aesthetic. They stood over the game and watched, smiling, as the young woman eventually lost. She shook the hand of the businessman and his Russian friends and took off.
Then the white boy sat down. A timer appeared and they played speed chess. Ah, I thought, so the Backstreet Boy considers himself a chess prodigy. He lost, eventually, but he played well and fought hard. Then the African American dude sat down. I think he beat thte businessman. Then I left.
Sunday they were there also. The young woman came up to their table wearing high heels and white hot pants, fully made up. Her hair was in one long rope, Lara Croft style. The short shorts were so short that pretty much everyone outside on the patio was staring, which is saying a lot for LA. "Ah ha," I thought, "You make your assumptions cuz this woman here will smoke alla yo asses in speed chess!" It was so weird to see her and her young friends dressed like this. It was like they were a family of genius aliens and they were dressing up like Sunset Strip-going humans in order to fit in. This was the intelligence they had received from reconnaissance. This is what humans wore at the coffee shop. This is normal.
So weird. But cool. I love these kids, who have chess battles with old russian dudes before they hit the club and get trashed...Which is it? They are good at chess. But then they are hipsters too.
The are Chipsters.
7 comments:
So are they right: geekiness has now faded as a social stigmatizer? It is about freaking time. What will Hollywood do to stereotype kids now?
Maybe it's the Russian thing, but upon reflection, I think the kids may just be a reincarnation of Deee-Lite, with the blonde girl as Lady Miss Kier and the light-skinned guy as DJ Dmitri? As a test, you could hum "Groove is in the heart" and see if any one busts a move.
I am absolutely impressed that you know their names.
Deelite was fantastic and shouldn't be written off. They were ahead of their time, like Jamiroquai, or behind their time, depending on how you look at it..
Poor Jamiroquai.
(a) I loved Deeelite.
(b) Jamiroquai, who lives and flourishes in the passionate hearts of my two sons, is also apparently still kind of a success in the U.K.
There was an interesting piece in the New Yorker this week about what pop flourishes in the U.K. versus the U.S. Some very funny lyrics from a duet by Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue, which included rhyming "sodomy" and "probably."
That was a very interesting article, actually. I liked the stuff about Natasha Beningfield (?)'s litany of self-help platitudes.
I actually have a DVD with a Jairoquai video on it from last year. It is mas o menos.
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