"I think [Huey Lewis and the News's] undisputed masterpiece is "Hip to Be Square," a song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it's also a personal statement about the band itself." -Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), in American Psycho.

I own a pair of socks with lobsters on them. The lobsters are small and red against a North Atlantic deep blue. I bought them because they were fun. I bought them because I imagined my friends enjoying them while we sat around a dinner in East Hampton, sipping on Gin and Tonics and discussing the current issue of The Atlantic. I bought them because they were on sale at J.Crew.

Socks should not define who you are. Perhaps they give a glimpse of the inner psyche, the off-beat quirks of who that person is. But they should not represent you alone. There's much more inside than a few stylized sea creatures roaming around your feet.

Brooklyn is more than a borough. It's become a state of mind. An adjective. A beacon of the alternative, much like Haight-Ashbury in the 60's. More distinctly, the section of Williamsburg has become a breeding ground for the much maligned lifestyle choice known as "The Hipster". Make no mistake, this is not Colonial Williamsburg, an error I made on my first trip. Expecting to see a late 17th century Virginia farming community, I instead watched as a junkie shot up heroin near the end of the subway platform.

I was invited to Brooklyn to attend a craft fair my friend had a booth in. She'd been touring the New York Metropolitan area with various shows, and I'd blown them off long enough that I decided I'd better attend this one or fear I'd wake up one morning to find a knitted felt horse's head with sequins (always sequins) for eyes, sitting at the end of my bed. Unfortunately, this meant a trip out to Williamsburg.

There is only one train from Manhattan that'll get you to Williamsburg. It's called the "L", though I'm sure the fact that it rhymes with "hell" is not mere coincidence. Descending the staircase into the station at Union Square, I barely noticed the stares. I was too busy talking with my girlfriend about our recent trip to Iceland, that the dangerously skinny and translucently pale mid-twenties man's gaze never caught my eye. We waited for the train, and hopped in. Luckily, we found a seat and made our way through the darkness to what I assumed would be a lighter world on the other side.

There was no accompanying record scratch. There should have been. It would have been appropriate and straight out of an episode from Saved by the Bell. Instead, we were greeted with the most disdainful and quiet looks I've ever received in my life. The populace of the car looked at us as if we'd just brought a baby octopus on board and took turns anally raping it while holding a gun to its head. (Do octopi even have anuses?) We were greeted this way, not because of anything we said, but by what we were wearing. We'd made the mistake of shopping at places where the clothes haven't been previously worn and the staff isn't required to have their elbows pierced. We shuffled uncomfortably in our seats and hoped it would be a quick ride.

Bedford Avenue bisects Williamsburg, slicing through the neighborhood so distinctly, one expects to see halved coffee houses and used record shops in the fillet of brick storefronts spreading back from the street. It is crowded. It is moody. It is austere, like a Pennsylvanian mining town. The sidewalks are lined with men in skin-tight jeans and ironic T-shirts. The women wear stockings and shirts with just enough holes in them to wonder if they were purposely manufactured. And one thing is clear, I wish I could hide the little man on the horse holding the polo mallet screaming out from the upper left side of my chest.

Walking down the street in a straight line is a near impossibility. The sidewalks are lined with people selling everything from comic books to underwear. Gone is the need for tables to peddle one's goods. Why use a platform when you can simply drape your wares on the sidewalk itself? Signs were fashioned from torn notebook paper and black magic marker. Light posts were flecked with advertisements for guitar lessons, lost kittens, pottery classes, and hookah lounges. It occurred to me that, it seemed these people were trying very hard to be very lazy. As if, in their fighting of apathy, they became the very thing they fought against.

As with anytime we venture more than two blocks from one of our apartments, my girlfriend needed water. A bottle of water. Preferably Volvic of Fiji. So we made our way into a quaint (read: not recently painted) coffee shop to seek out the beverage.

We said nothing. We did not joke. We did not laugh. Nothing. Instead, we were asked by a patron who probably owned a pet ferret, and I quote, "Who the fuck are you supposed to be, Jimmy Stewart?" Instantly, I grabbed the fucktard by his skinny tie and used my other hand to cinch his tuft of well-waxed hair and I proceeded to bash his head into a bulletin board advertising yoga lessons.

This, of course, only happened in my mind. You see, I am developmentally retarded when it comes to physical violence. Also, I was sure this man had at least two communicable diseases. No, I didn't destroy his inner artist one head plunge at a time. Instead, I laughed it off with a "Right..." and continued on. He laughed, not with me but at me, and left us alone.

Once out of the shop, and with some strange "earth-friendly" water that I'm sure was poured from a faucet into the bottle some 30 seconds before, we headed to McCarren Park.

Technically in the Greenpoint section, McCarren Park is what the Allspark is to Transformers. It is from this which all hipster life germinates. Still greeted by looks so sinister, I made a mental note to donate money to the Rosa Parks foundation when I returned home, we headed into the park to attend the Craft Show.

I enjoyed this. I truly did. My friend has some great stuff, and a lot of what people had created was truly impressive. But the plague of tattoos and piercings that accompanied my visit made me question how people who strive to be so unique end up becoming nothing more than conformist. I grew angry at these people. Angry for the looks I received and the comments thrown my way. (There were several more, which will go unmentioned for fear my mother reads this and/or we have any Ayn Rand fans.) The anger, however, quickly grew to delight at one simple realization:

These people were a joke.

All of it was. Their rampant displeasure with people who were unlike them was what caused them to rebel in the first place. Their hatred of snobs lead them to become snobs themselves, turning their noses up at people who listened to the "wrong" music, or wore the "wrong" clothes. There was no meaning in what they were doing. Instead, they've cobbled together snippets of past counter-culture and combined them into something devoid of all meaning save for style and attitude.

Returning on the train, instead of keeping my head down, I looked around at the assembled masses of people looking exactly alike in their black and white torn clothes. I held my head high, judged them accordingly, and smiled largely upon remembering Banana Republic was having a sale this weekend.