Various Outsiders Views on Riding the Subway

We were visiting our friends live in Pennsylvania, about 45 minutes from Philadelphia and 30 from Villanova, their Alma Mater. "We describe you as our hipster friends," they told Ken and I. That seems inaccurate, I thought.

"Why do you think we are hipster?" I asked. Ken is currently trying to get back to his hipster roots, so I can almost agree with describing him as such. He is growing his hair and at that moment was wearing a t-shirt with skinny jeans and a Jason Mraz hat (which is a straw fedora from Urban Outfitters. I assume Jason Mraz wears this hat. However, this is coming from a girl who doesn't know for certain that Jason Mraz, Josh Grobin, Dave Matthews, and probably about two others are not the same person.) But me? True, I was wearing a bird shirt (also from Urban Outfitters), but this was recent purchase. I have since purchased two more t-shirts from Urban Outfitters, and am now the proud owner of exactly three t-shirts, but I mostly wear clothing from Anne Taylor, Loft, Banana Republic, or other like stores, and the recent influx of t-shirts marketed to girls 7 years younger than me happened within the last three weeks and could not have influenced my friends' impression or description of me.

"You guys dress cool, and you take the subway," they told us. I found this interesting, because the reasons they cited for us being hipster are the same reasons (minus "you guys cook!") that Caitlin, my 28-year-old sister who has a husband, a PhD from Stanford, a job at Google, and her name on her own mailbox, finds me and Ken to be very adult. (I think Caitlin is very adult for the reasons listed above, not to mention her car and the pool at her apartment complex.)

I am starting to get the sense that people who don't live or work in New York think that taking the subway is very impressive. I know that the subway system is intimidating; I grew up on Long Island and didn't really understand how it worked until I went to NYU, but what these outsiders don't understand is that I have to take the subway. I can't get around otherwise. But it's nice that it makes me look cool.