History as Seen Through the Lexicon of the First Hipsters

Image via No Exit Press

Before our current obsession with the rebel/conformist pack known colloquially as “the hipster,” there were other hipsters who from the 1920s to the 1950s honed their own look, affectations, and language. Not sure if it’s the fact that time gives everything we have lost a patina of fondness, but the series of phrases of hipster speak in Straight from the Fridge, Dad by Max Décharné from No Exit Press (the third edition just came out) is engrossing and reminds us of so many things that once dominated the psyche of the last century. Many of the phrases are linguistic expressions for sex, drugs, crime, and drinking. But the phrases also call to mind that they were born in a time period when the world was nearly driven mad by the threat communism, when Chicago was known as a center of mob crime (forget the political launchpad of the first African American president of the United States), when Arizona was the first state to carry out an execution by lethal gas in 1934, and when pay phones were the best method of incognito long distance communication. These events brought about following corresponding examples of hipster slang:

To be embarrassed, or to be red was to have a face like a Russian flag.

A coffin was a Chicago overcoat.

Gunshots were Chicago lightning.

Being sent to the gas chamber was sniffing Arizona perfume.

A snitch or an informer was a Dime Dropper, because the person would put use pay phones to relay information.”

Many more examples can be found on The Guardian website.

via ‘Vomit on the table’ and speak like a 1950s hipster | Culture | The Guardian.