Hipsters: Scourge or Irrelevence

droid

Well-known member
Ah - but most cafes, restaurants etc combine food with heat or some other form of non-readily available form of energy to create the final product. Even toast and tea require something you probably wouldn't carry around on your back.

The cereal cafe is barely one rung above a newsagents, hence scorn at the cafe prices.
 

comelately

Wild Horses
My girlfriend still hasn't got over the way that people will tolerate paying several pounds for a pint in a pub, and having to stand up to drink it.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps

God, what a load of crap.

A cafe that sells bowls of cereal for up to £4. 50 does not seem to be something that majority of Tower Hamlets residents would particularly want for their community.

Really? Have you asked them? Like, all of them? And if it's true then they could always, you know, just not go there.

The Cereal Killer cafe is a legitimate target for protest as a symbol of the invading hordes that have taken over Shoreditch, driving up rent prices and driving out ordinary people who have lived there for years.

"Invading hordes" "driving out ordinary people"? Oh, the irony. Does the author not consider that the white (ex-)cockneys who now live in Essex and Kent, and the Jews who've moved out to Hendon or Stamford Hill, might think in much the same terms about the Bangladeshis who now make up most of the Brick Lane area's population? Granted, they may well have left in part because of property depreciating rather than inflating in value, but the effect is the same.

Yes hipster businesses aren’t the actual problem...

"...but I'm going to cheer on mob violence against them anyway". Fucksake.

Edit:

Blaming large-scale social problems on unpopular people with funny beards and attacking their businesses in retaliation is a time-honoured tactic, tbf.

Great quote, duly stolen.
 
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comelately

Wild Horses
Really? Have you asked them? Like, all of them? And if it's true then they could always, you know, just not go there.

You seemed to lose it a bit here. It's hardly a major leap of faith is it?

I find the whole thing a bit weird, but noone died or got hurt did they? The cafe was open the next day.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
You seemed to lose it a bit here. It's hardly a major leap of faith is it?

It's just a stupid thing to say. You could equally well argue that no pubs should operate in the area, because most people there are Muslims. The presence of a café charging a large mark-up for a bowl of cereal does not stop anyone from eating cheap cereal at home, any more than the presence of pubs requires everyone who lives there to drink alcohol whether they want to or not.

And what narks me particularly about some of the rhetoric going on about this "demonstration" is that, yet again, it's from people who fancy themselves as revolutionary socialists cheering on what is really little more than the fascism of the mob. It's like the riots four years ago when you had teenagers burning down a carpet shop in Croydon and various keyboard warriors were acting like this was striking a brave blow against the NWO.
 

comelately

Wild Horses
the fascism of the mob.

Isn't that a fairly ludicrous piece of rhetoric?

I mean you're essentially utlising a number of anarcho-capitalist 'internet libertarian' rhetorical lines, and ignoring the wider point about the 'latent violence' of capitalism in favour of mocking some of the less careful rhetoric.

As it goes, Cereal Killer is a tourist destination more than a place for regulars. The fact they have a 2nd branch in Camden is telling. Personally why you'd go there rather than ChinChin Labs or something...good is quite beyond me.
 
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trza

Well-known member
I never understood craft beer either. I mean every single place has to have a craft brewery, and they cant ALL be good.
 

trza

Well-known member
When you look at the amount of capital necessary to start brewing beer, then compare it to the investment needed to buy some boxes of cereal, beer is way more expensive to get started in. Plus it takes days or weeks to make, then you have the local licensing in every city or town.

Does the cereal place have a scalable qsr or franchising model in the works? All of its ingredients look to be dirt cheap, and all breakfast is insanely low cost. If they can get people walking in every day of the week, not just weekend brunch they could do something.
 

comelately

Wild Horses
When you look at the amount of capital necessary to start brewing beer, then compare it to the investment needed to buy some boxes of cereal, beer is way more expensive to get started in. Plus it takes days or weeks to make, then you have the local licensing in every city or town.

Does the cereal place have a scalable qsr or franchising model in the works? All of its ingredients look to be dirt cheap, and all breakfast is insanely low cost. If they can get people walking in every day of the week, not just weekend brunch they could do something.


I dunno - I think they're selling an entertainment experience rather than a nutrition thing. I can see some existing chains jumping on the bandwagon though.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Isn't that a fairly ludicrous piece of rhetoric?

No, I don't think so. What's happened is a bunch of people have decided that there is a Problem, that some identifiable group of people is responsible for, or at least culpably represents, this Problem, and that they are therefore a justifiable target for orchestrated violence. Sound familiar? OK, I accept no-one has died or - as far as I've heard - been seriously injured, but that doesn't make the impulse any different in kind. And people did die in the 2011 riots, in London and Birmingham.

I mean you're essentially utlising a number of anarcho-capitalist 'internet libertarian' rhetorical lines, and ignoring the wider point about the 'latent violence' of capitalism in favour of mocking some of the less careful rhetoric.

As it goes, Cereal Killer is a tourist destination more than a place for regulars. The fact they have a 2nd branch in Camden is telling.

If you want to protest at the "latent violence of capitalism" then there are surely more appropriate targets, in London of all cities, than a small independently owned café? Oh, but they've got a second branch already! They're clearly poised to become the next McDonalds! :rolleyes:

And if people come into TH from outside to visit this café, is it unthinkable that ehy might spend some of their money in other local businesses while they're there?
 

comelately

Wild Horses
No, I don't think so. What's happened is a bunch of people have decided that there is a Problem, that some identifiable group of people is responsible for, or at least culpably represents, this Problem, and that they are therefore a justifiable target for orchestrated violence.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that people were targeted. I mean spraying 'scum' is regrettable imo, but this conflation of property and people definitely has fascist overtones to it.

If you want to protest at the "latent violence of capitalism" then there are surely more appropriate targets, in London of all cities, than a small independently owned café? Oh, but they've got a second branch already! They're clearly poised to become the next McDonalds! :rolleyes:

They picked a target that was known, had been touted by the media as a beacon of gentrification (publicity the owners ate up) and had low security. This whiffs of whataboutery.


And if people come into TH from outside to visit this café, is it unthinkable that ehy might spend some of their money in other local businesses while they're there?

I'm not entirely sure what your point is? A few probably grab a drink at Brewdog?
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite

I dunno - I think they're selling an entertainment experience rather than a nutrition thing. I can see some existing chains jumping on the bandwagon though.

It's obviously a daft novelty for people with nothing better to spend their money on rather than some sort of amazing advance in catering.

On the other hand, targeting it clearly has more to do with the fact that hipsters - with their funny beards and their silly clothes and their silly bikes and their daft novelty cafes and their generally-not-looking-and-acting-like-everyone-else - make easy hate figures than it does with any particularly useful critique of gentrification.
 

comelately

Wild Horses
Remind me to get a mob of people to come and chuck shit at your house some time when you're at home.

To what end?

I mean yeah I wouldn't like it, but my house would be the target & not me. I dunno, that might be a subtle point to you but I think an important one.
 
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comelately

Wild Horses
The thing is that, all jokes aside, people aren't going to do that to my house because I haven't trolled the universe with a cereal fucking cafe.
 
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