From an outsider’s perspective I realize that this video, shot over a few days during last April’s Totally Awesome Fest, probably makes Ypsi look like some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare, but I find it really quite beautiful.
I specially love the footage of Patrick and his crew walking single-file through downtown, behind a wheelbarrow full of free pancakes. If there’s ever been a more beautiful image filmed in Ypsilanti, I yet to see it.
A Totally Awesome Film from Adam Wright on Vimeo.
[The above film is the work of Adam Wright and Ian Sargent.]
14 Comments
This is what the future will be. It won’t be Mad Max. It’ll be small bands of people making noise, sharing pancakes and picking through salvaged clothes.
If I’m going to make it in the dystopian future hellscape, I’m going to need to start saving up for a beard transplant.
Beard transplants, if you’re wondering, appear to be a real thing.
http://nypost.com/2014/02/25/hipster-wannabes-forking-over-thousands-for-facial-hair-transplants/
I really enjoyed that.
Insufferable hipster nonsense. I’m still not sure if the people in the film were actors or not. I just find it hard to believe that so many can act so completely inside their stereotype. Vegan, gluten free pancakes? Tell me this is self parody. Tell me this level of douchebaggery does not exist here yet.
It’s real. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
I’ve also seen what real hipsters look like, and these aren’t them. Real hipsters wear tight pants and vests. They have funnier facial hair. These, if anything, are a 50/50 hipster hippie hybrid.
As for the fact that the pancakes were gluten free and vegan, I don’t see it as being a stereotype. I think that was just a reflection of them being good people and trying to accommodate any dietary restrictions they might encounter. Everyone can eat gluten free vegan pancakes, so why not make them that way. Maybe it’s not what Ayn Rand would have done, but I think it’s kind of beautiful.
I don’t see why vegan gluten-free pancakes are “douchebuggery.” They’re pancakes. Jesus, are you people going to hate each other over pancake recipes?
Eating a vegan, gluten free pancake is like spitting in the face of our founding fathers.
I assure you MurrayJane that they were not acting out any stereotypes. I had the pleasure of meeting all the people in the film during TAF and they are some of the most genuine and welcoming people I have ever met. I don’t see how offering an open environment for creative expression, meeting new people, and the disbursement of free pancakes qualifies as “douchebaggery”. It seems to me that the real “douchebaggery” lies with someone who is intolerable towards the way another person lives their life when it doesn’t affect others in any negative way. Why does someone eating vegan pancakes offend you? Why does having fun making art and handing out free food have to be a “hipster” thing to do? It’s that kind of attitude that create stereotypes. This is just something people have fun doing, and that’s it. Live and let live.
The pancakes are not the issue, the pancakes are incidental. What should annoy people about the pancakes is that they’re used by these people to have a self indulgent parade for themselves through town.
Vegan and gluten free are buzz words for this hipster movement, but what is inherently hipster about it is using any trivial thing to engage in public whimsy. Who has time to be whimsical? Certainly not someone with a real job.
Wow. Since when was anything whimsy considered hipster? Hipster always meant exclusiveness and pretentiousness to me. Secondly, who are you to judge the motives of people you don’t even know? You have no basis for your accusations. The statement that someone with a real job has no time to be whimsical makes no sense either. A real job takes up 8 hours out of the day. You sound unhappy.
Almost everyone I recognise in this video has jobs. These events take place in the evenings and on the weekends, when people do things for fun. There are a good amount of people in the community, who, outside their jobs (or for some lucky ones, as their jobs) make art / music and share it with the community. It’s great.
So what if other people are self-indulgent? It doesn’t hurt anyone. Why not save your hatred for people who actually do harm? By the way, not everyone is gluten-free for whimsy. I tried it, since I was having joint problems; it didn’t help, so I stopped it. But it was no big deal, just cutting out a few foods.
TAF seems to be a positive alternative to the dominant culture in Michigan, as displayed in the classic documentary short “Memorial Day 2000”
http://youtu.be/nYGDnXF8xV0