Henry Rollins Comes Out Strongly Against Hipsters
In an exchange that could be called “heated” if not for all the awkward laughter, Henry Rollins and some hipsters got into it recently at a Lower East Side record store.
Rollins begins his anti-hipster tirade privately, quietly, almost idly, pointing out a couple albums and claiming they’re for an “elitist group of young people.” He’s being interviewed. He’s interrupted by a girl off-screen yelling “Henry Rollins is here?!” Visibly agitated, Rollins responds tersely, to the interviewer, “Here we go.”
We then hear the girl – and her friends – erupt in laughter, which Rollins immediately interprets as being directed at him, because “to these people, I’m kind of old and in the way, [and] am normal, and have sold out.” His interviewer laughs, obviously trying to passively quell what she can see is an escalating awkward situation.
“Get in the van man! Get in the van,” the off-screen girl yells, and here we can see something inside Rollins snap. He looks up from the CDs he’s thumbing through with the iciest of glares and begins to walk at a disturbing pace to the offending commenter.
“Oh, oh, I see, is this where the young elitist hipsters take on the ancient, dodgy in-the-way types?” Rollins says, now directly in front of the girl, who is sitting down, grinning and saying “No, no…no…I love your band.” Rollins is also grinning.
The awkward exchange goes on for another couple of minutes and takes on a few participants.
“Feel exhilarated?” he says to the woman interviewing him afterward. Then, in the car, later, “I knew that would happen. I could feel it when I walked into the store.”