UGG Course, Hip Needs City!

Follow, follow, follow the origins of UGG. They came from the sheep herders of Australia stuffing wool in the toe of their boot for warmth, not inner-city folk, to surfers and American superstars. UGG even has its foot in politics, "...international trademark dispute that ensnared politicians, reshaped fashion and hobbled a national industry to shape global one," according to a New York Times article.

The gotta-have-it UGGs are not so hot with everyone though. Pamela Anderson apologized for being naive, read about on peta.org or in People magazine. What is functional for a farmer has the fashion potential to blow up, and then blow away.

What is left when the hipness cools off? Links, lots of links to popular magazines and information to get in the know. The same magazines that stimulated the growth will initiate its demise. Who stands in the corner and whispers in Pamela Anderson's ear? Perhaps that person is the actual source of hip, an incognito figure from the country with some great insight to a new product, movement or idea.

That product, movement or idea has surely been delivered from the countryside by the skeptical to the reporter predator looking to feed the masses fresh-new-hip snacks to consume. Look at the time, place and founders of Time Inc and People magazine in relation to the subjects in Leland's "Hip: The History". After the 1920's, "The publishing, entertainment and advertising industries, once scattered around the country, were now concentrated among the new skyscrapers of Manhattan," (p.77) The city searches out hip and then publicizes the crap out of it until common knowledge kills the hip vibe and takes the individual color out of it.

There are those that focus on the eternal qualities of hip like Rolling Stone. Then others still that shake it down to the local level of hip like our own Boise Weekly and the emerging community-level Caliper. The point of these three examples is the steady drop in number of advertisements. However pleasant the absence of retail ads may be, it is not a bad idea financially to include them but what is the price of doing this?

Uh oh! Starting to feel a contradiction coming on. Hip needs the city to launch it, sell it, and as evolution would have it either kill it off or let it live on forever. But if less advertisements are more hip to a reader how can that statement be true? Perhaps it is not one or the other that stands alone as hip but both as extremes. Does hip exist at extremes, at opposite ends of a scale, with mediocre and naive in the middle? If, "hip flourishes during periods of technological or economic change," (Leland p.61) then is Caliper online able to make the list since it is only a click away?