Shoreditch Hipsters vs Soho Hipsters

One haunts Brick Lane while the other rules Berwick Street. Street food, record and vintage shops line their way. Hipster barbers cater for hipster facial hair for a hefty premium and added beard oil. However, this clash of East meets West shows some clear differences. Who is the more original? Who would win in a fight? Are they tied to their place or do they roam and are they here to stay?

Hipster Dress

The Shoreditch hipster is your traditional stereotype. People like Ricki Hall have become celebrities just through this look and lifestyle. Naturally, this is the archetype of check flannel shirts, skinny jeans and oversized jackets. Hefty boots are popular for trekking round the remote corners of Hackney. Tattoes are essential. Designs vary between somewhat desperate attempts to find four-letter words that haven’t been inscribed on a thousand knuckles and remain safe for work should they have to resort to a proper job.

The Soho hipster draws more on the past of the area, more refined and less rugged. This is a more androgynous direction that Hoxton lumberjacks- loose drapery and tight trousers. Stretched ears are more for this metropolitan image. In reality, they could easily be confused with Soho’s traditionally fashionable society, unless they then go home to Guildford. Expect unusual styles based on eclectic influences that they will no doubt tell you about for a good few hours.

Hipster Food

Brick Lane is bagels and street food.  Classics like falafel wraps are challenged by more so called ‘cutting edge’ versions of burgers. Trust us that with the history of the burger, any way you think to change it has already been done. For finer dining and brunch, what could be better than a permanent popup within a Hackney warehouse? Bistrotheque is a restaurant that should really signal all that is wrong with London trends, but we secretly love it.

Soho is much the same with few resorting to the Montague Pyke Wetherspoons. The Breakfast Club regularly has a qeue. Hipchips Ltd is literally a crisp cafe corrupted by trans-Atlantic yankee talk. For the more athletic Hipster Rapha is a cyclng cafe within a bike shop. Fortunately, much of Soho’s trendy haunts tend to be more of the unthinkeable ‘mainstream’ appeal than specifically ‘hipster’. This goes for chocolate cafe Said and Cahoots 1940s underground train bar!

Sleeping

The Shoreditch hipster can quite happily bunk down in Hackney or Bethnal Green on their salary. Some even achieve the dream of a loft-style factory apartment. Plenty will share a house and face the friction of conflicting egos.

The Soho hipster tends to either have a background beneficial to supporting a local abode, or is only a daytime Soho hipster. Of course, if they manage to get a media-based role in Soho then they are happy commuting in providing they are on the Northern line. Maybe they are really a Brixton hipster at the weekends?

Drinking

Shoreditch is the home of craft beer. A 330ml tin will set you back about five pounds, worth it for the ultra-manly graphics. It’s not their style to just pay three pounds extra and get a cocktail. There are classic venues like the Dolphin in Hackney or more recent additions like Looking Glass, an Alice in Wonderland cocktail bar in Shoreditch. Wherever it may be, expect bare brick or whitewashed walls and old furniture found on the side of the road.

Soho on the other hand still maintains historic pubs and venues. The Dog and Duck of George Orwell and Rossetti remains a popular choice. However, they do also have a Brewdog. Graphic bar in Golden Square is a gin palace with regular gin events and socials. You can’t hear anyone over the chart music so you have to really like your cocktail in a paint tin.

 

Stewart Vickers @VickHellfire

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