Would you like coffee with your Evil Subway Eye?

On a recent morning as my train crossed the Manhattan Bridge and I gleefully anticipated filling the seat my mark was about to vacate, a small subway drama unfolded across the car.

To set the scene, I was at the end of the car, facing a very "local" man sitting down in the right seat of a two-seater next to the train door. A young hipster was standing next to him drinking a cup of coffee.

I was reading my New Yorker across the car when I suddenly heard the local man exclaim, "Whaddaya think this is a f***ing cafeteria?" The hipster looked like he very much thought that this was definitely not a cafeteria, and that he was about to get his ass kicked. He apologized softly as the local guy mopped the 5 drops of coffee off his shirt. The local guy continued to grumble about how the hipster ruined his shirt (which if you ask me, the coffee stain was an improvement) and flashed the uncomfortable looking hipster the evil subway eye.

You may think at this point that I'm extremely uncaring about the plight of the working man and am an advocate for hipster rights, but you're wrong. I think that hipsters are a next step in the evolution of the annoying girls with big bangs with whom I went to middle school who became the annoying partiers I went to college with who drunkenly pulled the fire alarm at 3 AM on a Sunday morning. I'm a big fan of local Brooklynites, especially the ones who have been there since before Brooklyn became "hip." I love listening in on their conversations at the local laundromat. Their lives are so different from mine, somehow more "real" and less plastic than my own burgeoning yuppie existence.

But in this case, I had to pity the hipster and turn my evil subway eye to the local guy. I mean, really, it's 8:00 in the morning, and we're all a bit annoyed to be schlepping into work. Could you cut the guy some slack? And the subway looks in no way like a cafeteria! I mean is that really the best disparaging remark he could come up with? And seriously, his shirt looked like it was purchased circa 1985 and, as I mentioned above, the coffee was really an improvement.

In my view, you've gotta feel bad to the hipster trying desperately to get his morning caffeine boost so that he can face another day of his youth, knowing all the while that 25 looms like a large gray cloud over his head. That one day, dressing in corduroy pants, plaid shirts, jaunty hats, slouching and badly needing a haircut will no longer be a viable option. That he'll have to grow up, get a haircut and perhaps do something more productive with his Saturday afternoons than hanging out in Williamsburg discussing the greatness of Iron and Wine and experiencing the existential angst that only comes from wearing a jaunty hat and sipping over-priced microbrews.

Though perhaps equally angsty and yet ultimately thrilling was the hipster's nearly-averted early morning ass kicking drama that I observed. Ah, commuting! still better than the Metro red line in DC.