Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.08.2012, Qupperneq 10

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SUPER JEEP & SNOWMOBILE TOURS
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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12 — 2012 Atli Bollason's hipster piece in our last issue sure provoked a lot of reaction
from our readers. It seems like 'hipsterism' is something they care deeply
about. Fancy that.
Remember the asy-
lum seekers
who stowed
away on an
Icelandair flight
to Denmark last
month? Well, Icelan-
dair has decided that it is going
to sue the refugees for damages
incurred by delaying the flight for
four hours. Advocacy group No
Borders protested the decision,
contending that Icelandair was just
making life harder for people who
already don’t have it easy, and that
the two suspects neither damaged
property nor assaulted anybody.
Icelandair spokesperson Guðjón
Arngrímsson said they would re-
view Icelandair’s decision. No word
yet on any developments there.
As long as we’re taking a trip down memory lane, re-
member Páll Scheving Ingvarsson,
the head of the Merchants’ Holiday
festival on the Westman Islands
who said that rape crisis prevention
groups cause more problems than
they solve? The guy who told once
such group, Stígamót, that if they
wanted to take part in the festival
they’d have to buy tickets like
everyone else, despite the festival
being a bit infamous for sexual
assaults? The guy who caused a
shitstorm of calls for his resigna-
tion? Yeah, he quit. That is, he isn’t
going to go after the position next
year. He said that the protests had
“taken their toll,” and will now have
to grudgingly go back to being just
the managing director of a fish
meal plant and a member of town
council.
Good news for all you non-car-driving people living in
the capital, the city wants to make
Reykajvík a “dream city” for cyclists
and pedestrians. This will include
the creation of new bike and walk-
ing paths throughout the urban
area. The project itself is going to
cost about 2 billion ISK and expect-
ed to be completed in 2013. That’s
not soon enough for anyone who’s
actually tried to bicycle through a
far more car-friendly downtown.
— Continued —
Continues over
NEWS IN BRIEF
NEWS IN ICELAND
EARLY AUGUST
While my experience in Reykjavík for
the last three months has been mostly
positive, one part about the city makes
living here tiresome at times. It’s what
many likely consider a banal task of daily
life as a semi-hygienic human: doing the
laundry.
I've compiled below what I feel is
quintessential information while con-
sidering washing the whites in Reykja-
vík. I beseech all tourists to peruse this
column.
Option No. 1: Don't
Yes, just don't do your laundry while
here. For the grungy, Reykjavík's weak
laundry culture says, "Wear those un-
dies another week or two." For the semi-
hygienic, it's time to step outside your
comfort zone. Seriously, laundry can be
such a pain, it might be better to relive
the college days of wearing yesterday's
shirt again, or making those jeans last
the whole week. We've all been there.
Maybe it's time to revisit.
Option No. 2: Do, but at your
own risk
Maybe I've been spoiled by my coun-
try's enormous laundromats, admittedly
less-than-glamorous places at times, but
nonetheless bearing an appealing sort
of seediness. Laundromats serve logi-
cal purposes: a cheap place for the un-
gentrified to clean dirty clothes, and in-
cidentally a venue for illegal exchanges.
Either because rejecting the Ameri-
can notion of laundromats is a collective
act of patriotism, or because Iceland-
ers have a secret clothes-washing club
where foreigners aren't allowed, public
laundromats basically don't exist in
Reykjavík.
Well... Except one.
The denizens of downtown Reykja-
vík will tell you the same thing. It's what
I've been told at numerous tourist infor-
mation kiosks, from passers-by on the
street and slurred at by drunks at bars.
"The Laundromat Cafe."
Sadly, though, this place is something
of a poser. The machines here are Swed-
ish, and less than dependable. At times
there have been two washing machines
and one dryer operable. When there are
three people ahead of you for the washer
and two for the dryer, you can spend up-
ward of four hours doing a single load
of laundry.
In America, we call a place two wash-
ers and a dryer "a room with an extra
washer," not a laundromat. Not to men-
tion at 500 ISK (~3.86 USD) a wash, and
100 ISK (~0.76 USD) per 15 minutes of
drying, it's the priciest laundromat I've
frequented, but perhaps a necessary evil.
Even when the machines are all op-
erable, making them accept your hard-
earned krónur can be nothing short of a
miracle. Seeking out an able-bodied em-
ployee is an option, but you risk the ma-
chine deciding to work spontaneously
before you can show him or her there's a
problem. Nothing like feeling silly while
cleaning your underwear.
Pro-tip: Your best bet is to do your
laundry in the morning or the middle
of the day. The later you wait, the more
likely people will be sipping brews and
cocktails upstairs while laundry ham-
pers queue up in front of the machines.
The only other option I've found in
this city is Reykjavík Backpackers, with
the word "LAUNDROMAT" profession-
ally lettered on its window next to other
services. Its website more accurately
reads: "Laundry services." Translation:
1200 ISK (~9.30 USD) for a staff member
to walk downstairs to the private wash-
ing machine (5 kg max, or an additional
1200 ISK) and dry it for you.
Choices are scant in Reykjavík. You
can pay an arm and a leg, risk losing an
entire afternoon to laundry duties, or
proudly tour Iceland in your musk-rid-
den garments. In the immortal words of
G.I. Joe, "Now you know, and knowing is
half the battle!"
In the last issue of Grapevine, self-iden-
tified hipster Atli Bollason recounts in
his article, “Confessions of a Hipster,”
his discovery of hipsterdom and then
defends hipsters everywhere. I agree en-
tirely that bickering and in-fighting be-
tween different social groups is incred-
ibly immature behaviour reminiscent
of high school, and that hipster hate in
particular has grown tiresome—if for
no other reason than the word “hipster”
itself has been thrown around so much
that it has lost nearly all meaning. But
hipster does have a definition, and Atli is
quite fortunately wrong about both what
being a hipster means and why people
don’t like them.
Atli cites ‘The Hipster Handbook’
by Robert Lanham as his basis for what
defines a hipster. Although Atli admits
that the book was “meant to poke fun at
hipsters,” he seems to have missed the
point of hipsterism. Hipsters are not just
people who like art films, or obscure
bands on vinyl, or are vegetarians—
these are all fine, wonderful things that
many, many people enjoy. Rather, hip-
sters are defined by a kind of sneering
elitism for enjoying these things; that
their particular tastes set them apart
from the common rabble. Rather than
taking part in a particular lifestyle or en-
gaging in and with certain forms of ar-
tistic expression for their societal benefit
or just for their own sake, hipsters take
part in these things as a sort of badge of
superiority. It is this distinction that de-
fines what a hipster is.
And this is why people dislike hip-
sters. Art is meant to be enjoyed by and
be of benefit to everyone. Liking certain
forms of art does not make you a better
person than someone else, yet it is pre-
cisely this attitude that is synonymous
with hipstertude, and is what people
take issue with. It is not, in other words,
enjoying obscure art and lifestyles that
makes someone a hipster or causes peo-
ple to dislike them; it’s pouring scorn
and ridicule over anyone who does not.
I agree that hipster hate has unfortu-
nately made it so practically anyone who
likes the things hipsters are known for
liking gets called a hipster—an unfair
appellation that is not without its own
elitism. This is why I think it’s too bad
that Atli has seemed to fall for the se-
mantic trap of believing that anyone who
likes these things is a hipster.
I said earlier that it was fortunate
Atli got it wrong, and I mean that. Atli
strikes me as a sincere appreciator of the
arts who does not consider himself bet-
ter than anyone else for liking the things
that he does. In other words, he isn’t a
hipster. He’s just a really cool guy.
Opinion | Byron Wilkes Opinion | Paul Fontaine
Reykjavík: The Launder-less
City
You Read This Article Before It
Was Cool Paul Fontaine responds to last
issue’s HIPSTER CONFESSIONAL
Byron Wilkes is an intern at the Grapevine.
@byewren Paul Fontaine is the Grapevine's Online News Editor.
@pauldfontaine
From the Hipster Handbook
(www.hipsterhandbook.com)
Definition of a Hipster
Hipster - One who possesses
tastes, social attitudes, and
opinions deemed cool by the cool.
(Note: it is no longer recom-
mended that one use the term
"cool"; a Hipster would instead say
"deck.") The Hipster walks among
the masses in daily life but is not a
part of them and shuns or reduces
to kitsch anything held dear by the
mainstream. A Hipster ideally pos-
sesses no more than 2% body fat.