Marcel Winatschek

Portrait of a Familiar Creature

The Berlin hipster is not a figure of myth. He is real, and he is at a café table on Kastanienallee right now, cradling a pour-over in both hands, wearing a jacket from a brand that no longer exists, entirely sincere about everything—which is, somehow, the most unsettling detail. The type became a cliché so fast it lapped itself: first you laughed at it, then you were it, then you were laughing at yourself for being it, then you opened a concept store. What distinguishes the Berlin version from its Brooklyn or Shoreditch cousins is a specific relationship to scarcity—poverty as aesthetic choice, which resembles actual poverty quite closely until you check the trust fund.