The Thousands

I have just finished interviewing Gavin McInnes at a bar on 14th Street and truth be told I am pissed as a fart. I had two tequilas beforehand to build up courage, then whiskey after it started. I couldn’t work out how to catch a cab and now am at a place somewhere south of there, at 5.30pm, drinking the worst coffee I have ever tasted. Why am I so drunk? I don’t know! Was I afraid to meet him? Yes. For one thing, what do you wear to an interview with the guy who invented DOs and DON’Ts? Probably not a t-shirt that will cause him to ask why you don’t shave under your arms.

No matter. It is now too late for that. Here you have it – an abridged discussion with Vice founder, now the sculpted beard behind the site Street Boners and TV Carnage and author of the book Street Boners: 1,764 Hipster Fashion Jokes - out this week. Regardless of what I say in this state, it really is hilarious, even educational – including an illustrated history of hipsters, input from people such as Chloë Sevigny, Debbie Harry and Fred Armisen, and fashion advice from Gavin, whose dick is only human.

I think a lot of people say your name wrong. In Australia.
I know. I don’t get that. It’s phonetic! There’s a double ‘n’, which makes the ‘i’ a hard vowel, so it’s ‘McInnes’.

Yeah, well they all say ‘McGuinness’.
I don’t understand that. McGuinness is a whole other name, in fact my grandfather in Scotland (I was born in Britain) was a bookie. And no-one would trust an Irishman. In Scotland they’ve got a real Catholic versus Protestant thing, which is still going strong. His name WAS McGuinness and he changed it to McInnes because that’s a much more Scottish name. But now it’s being changed back against his will and he’s spinning in his grave like a little top with a tweed hat on and a fucking shitty suit.

So do you feel liberated by the ten-point kitten-head scoring system now, with the Street Boners, compared to the binary DO versus DON’T ratings you did in Vice?
Well it is a very sophisticated concept, you know. To just write someone off is not fair. And the example I often use is some guy who’s doing great – like me right now. Right? Breathtaking. But what if I had a fedora on? Am I now a DONT? The whole thing’s gone? That seems too harsh. Right now, clothing-wise (I don’t know how my hair is, but) I’m basically an eight. Not my looks – I’m obviously not attractive – but fashion-wise I’m an eight. If I had a fedora on, I don’t go down to a four! I think I should go down to a 6.7. And then, the second I take it off – BOOM! – back to eight.

So, you’re much happier with the kitten heads?
Yes. Plus, it keeps reminding people not to take themselves too seriously. It’s just a fucking joke at the end of the day. [A couple walks past the window.] Look at the calibre of chick you can get in New York. If you’re an ugly little man. The odds are in our favour.
I didn’t see her from the front…
Well she’s what you think she is. Pretty good.
She’s got a ribbon in her hair.
Yeah, she’s put together. And he’s like, what, a two?
He’s probably really funny.
He better be.
Or maybe he has a computer skills.
He better have. He better be able to hack into your car and reverse your mileage without you even knowing. That’s the level he better be at.

Do you think that funny writing is the same thing, in some ways, as angry writing?
No I think they’re totally different. I think with angry writing, like when I write about politics, I’m just really indulging myself because I have a soap box. But I’m not really an authority on it, and it’s something I shouldn’t do. It’s like Sean Penn going to Venezuela or something. I mean…opinions are like assholes. People like to fuck them.

I do think angry writing is totally self-indulgent ranting. And the way I think I get away with it is by choosing a subject that’s not common. I don’t understand why somebody wants to say, ‘Obama rules!’ or ‘George Bush is a dick!’ That’s been covered. It’s not exciting. It’s like Nelson said, from the Simpsons, ‘If nobody’s getting mad, are you really being bad?’ Yeah. I could see in Bart’s face, when he said that, something like an epiphany moment. ‘Woah.’ The penny dropped. And that’s me too. I’ve never felt closer to Bart. I had the exact same face. And the same crown hair.

I read a tweet today that was ‘Don’t wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig enjoys it.’
[Laughs] Yeah!

It makes me think about the people who Tweet terrible shit – like that person yesterday who said ‘Isn’t Street Boners just a major ripoff of Look At This Fucking Hipster?’
You know what’s scary about that though? I scoffed at that risk earlier on. And now, with ‘Look At This Fucking Hipster’, I keep hearing it again and again. They did this pathetic pamphlet – it’s just DON’Ts and DON’Ts – shitting on people, shitting on people – which is not how it works.

Really the thing holding it together is that you’re giving an honest opinion, whether it’s good or bad…
Right but also praising people. Just shitting on everyone is EASY. Edward de Bono has a book called Six Thinking Hats and one of the hats is ‘Black Hat Thinking’. And black hat thinking is just ‘this sucks, this sucks’. People need it sometimes, but it’s the easiest hat to wear. And, you know, commenters do it anonymously, and it’s the easiest thing you could possibly do. The problem with that world is there’s not a lot of glory in it. It’s easy, but it’s stepping on ants.

I mean, I was gettting my hair cut the other day and I told the barber what I do and he wasn’t familiar with Street Boners but he goes ‘You ever heard of Look At This Fucking Hipster?’ He was actually doing a straight shave and I grabbed the razor, jumped up and I slit his throat…like that…and then I said, ‘He attacked me! He attacked me!’ And now it’s in the courts. (Any ambiguity and you’re not going to jail.)

What a waste of time.
What, murdering him? It only took about ten seconds. I mean, it was wrong. It’s not something I’m proud of. No but there’s a thing I’ve been obsessed with recently – the sort of DIY punk mentality of ‘Don’t claim anything, just make it. Everything is for the group, we’re all a team.’ And to want to claim it and write your name on it is shallow and sad and vain and all that. This happened with Crass, this punk band. Penny Rimbaud, the singer (your namesake), almost died recently in a motorcycle accident and he thought, ‘Shit my name isn’t on any of my songs. What’s my legacy?’ And what happened with Crass is that they never claimed it, and all these people are selling Crass shirts, and they’re getting paid. So, it’s a nice notion – that you shouldn’t claim things as your own and say ‘That’s mine, I started it’ – but if you don’t someone else will. So I’ve changed my mind about that.

I wanted to ask you…in Australia, the idea of identifying as a hipster – you wouldn’t do it. Whereas here, hipsters have been victimised by everyone from the New York Times to Gawker, and in some ways hipsters have started to fight their corner.
No but to say they’re in a corner implies that they’re in the ring. Real hipsters are between 18 and 25, they’re not ON Gawker, they’re not part of this debate. They’re waking up at 6pm and getting wasted. So I’m sure it’s the same in Melbourne. I just think that the people who criticise them here are a little more obviously bitter and sad than they are in Melbourne maybe? Because New York is very unforgiving. If you’re over thirty – as a woman – you’re done. You saw that guy with that girl before so… And also, if you’re over thirty as a male at a club it’s instantly sad. Whereas I think in the rest of America you can stretch it out a little bit longer.

Or maybe not. New York is for the rich and the young. And when you’re not those two things you get on your blog and you bitch about hipsters. Now the thing you said about hipsters not wanting to identify as hipsters…that’s ALWAYS been the way. Mods didn’t say ‘Hi! I’m a mod.’ Punks didn’t say, ‘Hi how are you, I’m a punk.’ You’d say, ‘What are you?’ and they’d say, ‘I’m an individual’ or make up some name. Because they knew, as soon as you identify yourself you’re vulnerable to criticism.

Does it freak you out that if I Googled you it would actually say ‘Gavin is the Godfather of hipsterdom’? Because in a way you’ve become the spokesperson for this thing that doesn’t really have spokespeople.
I mean originally I would think ‘Fuck that’ and I wouldn’t even put ‘hipster’ on the front of the book. Because it’s obviously a way for thirty-something journalists to organise things. But then I think, well if someone like Joe Mande is gonna come along – the Look At This Fucking Hipster guy – some drama geek who looks like a meerkat – if he’s gonna come along and start getting paid…in a sense you HAVE to cater to this oversimplification. Or else you get lost. And someone else jumps in the driver’s seat. So, FINE I’ll put hipster on the front of the book. And FINE I’ll explain what a hipster is if you wanna know.

I was relieved when you posted that ‘Hating Hipsters‘ article on Street Boners.
The ultimate irony is, ‘The kids today!’ (fist in the air). That’s what’s defined cool since the 1940s. In the ’50s, with Bill Haley, all the parents were like, ‘What IS this music with the HIPS?! Don’t you like big band music? Don’t you want to hear the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B? How can you LISTEN to that? There’s one guy singing, there’s no horn section, what is the matter with you?!’ Then today, they get into criticisms like, ‘You’re so shallow, you don’t care about anything.’ I WANT young people to be shallow. I want them to only listen to music and care about fashion because their politics are fucking retarded. Have you ever heard a 20 year old tell you about the military industrial complex and the Zionist occupational government and all that shit? Get them away from my fucking ballot box. They’re retards. But they are good at music and fashion because both those things are ultimately about fucking. And who wants to fuck more than an 18-25 year old.

[drink ordering pause]

What’s the funniest Street Boner or DO you’ve ever done? I mean I can tell you which one I think is the funniest…
‘Nice purple track pants, you fat bitch‘?
No.
Oh good – because that was twelve years ago.
The Prime Minister of hand jobs.
Prime Minister of hand jobs? Oh yeah!
I think it was funnier than Humpty.
Oh good! You know someone got a tattoo of that Humpty one. Yeah. That’s really the goal of comedy and these pant jokes, to inspire someone…you know. He obviously got the tattoo because he looks at that and he remembers being unflappable. You know, ‘stop worrying about shit’.
It’s a philosophy!
Yeah! ‘Don’t worry about it.’
But I think, for chicks, Prime Minister of hand jobs was the one.
Oh yeah, she was dressed super classy but kind of slutty.
She had gloves hanging out of her pocket, and pinstriped pants, and a perfect arse.
I think that was in Britain. The purple track pants one was years ago. Probably ’99, but somebody sent me a picture of a kid. Like two parents holding a kid’s hand. And it was a cold day and she had purple trackpants on and a sort of puffy coat. And she was honestly under three. Sometimes I get that – like someone will send me a picture of a homeless man with a pizza in his mouth (actually I did that one) but it’s such a HACK joke, to make fun of someone with severe mental illness. And it’s definitely not relevant to fashion. To be dying of alcoholism isn’t ‘so last year’. Anyway, I was a little bit annoyed, so I wrote, ‘Nice purple trackpants, you fat bitch. What are you, the Michelin Man?’ And people just fucking loved it.

I was actually pitching HBO a long time ago. I was with David Cross and his manager (the managers come to pitches a lot – they don’t say anything, they just remind you if you forgot to say anything). And his manager goes, ‘Hey also, the DOs and DON’Ts could be a big part of your show.’ And I go ‘Yeah yeah!’ Now, HBO – think of the transgender lesbian and gay community yearbook staff: uptight, they’ve got clipboards. They don’t like any jokes. If you said the word ‘cunt’ in the HBO building, an alarm would go off and sprinklers would go and you’d be asked to leave.

We say the word cunt all the time in Australia.
Not at HBO you don’t.
It’s not even a swearword in Australia.
Oh it’s a big deal in America.
Like we say, ‘Hey, ya cunt!’ That’s like saying hello. It’s a friendly thing.
Yeah right, it’s like asshole. Like ‘C’mon you fuckin asshole.’ Asshole can even be endearing, like, ‘You fuckin asshole, get over here.’
Exactly.
Exactly. Anyway, so I said, ‘Yeah, yeah! We’ll do something like…there’ll be these fashion critiques and it’ll be just little kids, like a little girl, and I’ll say, nice purple trackpants you fat BITCH.’ And I just saw the colour leave their faces and I knew, then, the show was gone. So you gotta watch it with that joke. I don’t even get it to be honest.
There’s some levels to it.
But I’m trying to think of a real zinger from recently.
I’ll tell you my favourite from the book? There’s a slightly overweight lady in a corset, and it says ‘Finally we have the technology to turn muffin tops into stomach aches.’
Oh yeah! (laughs). It’s a weird game, you know, doing thousands and thousands of jokes. I mean I guess that’s what all satirical writers do. But you overlap yourself again and again. Which goes back to marijuana, why I think so many comics and comedy writers smoke pot.
I think a lot of my friends who are funny smoke weed.
I don’t like smoking it too much because you can’t get outta bed in the morning. And I work 9 to 5 now.
I tried drinking in the morning. I think it helps.
Well it does. But I have two kids you know, so you can’t work at night. But what I do is – I’ve got this recorder on my phone. So I come up with these ideas stoned at night and transcribe them. Like, ‘How bout this for an idea? The gay pride parade. No homos. It’s for gay shit, like Crocs, the Friends box set, roller-blading. One of the signs is ‘Couples therapy – it really works!’. There’s a guy with a yoga mat and he’s like ‘Sorry! I get in great shape and I feel good about myself!’
‘I’m on the vegan diet!’
Yeah, like, ‘We renewed our vows, I don’t care if you don’t like it, we’re madly in love.’ And like the guy with the Crocs goes, ‘Sorry, they’re comfortable – I love them!’ Gay pride.
People don’t like the word ‘gay’ used that way though.
It’s a parody of how naive you were when you were a kid and you said shit was ‘gay’. When I was seven years old everything was ‘gay’. And I didn’t know what a homosexual was. I barely knew what a vagina was.

Have you got an absolute NO for men?
Sandals.
What kind?
Sports sandals.
So like ones with the little straps?
Actually, any kind of sandal. Flip flops too. The only possible sandal exception I’d apply is if you’re literally IN Mexico and it’s 90 degrees and you have the sandals that have the sort of leather thing that covers the whole toe. And the toes are barely peeking out the bottom. And you’re a journalist, and you’ve been living there for three years. And you speak perfect Spanish, maybe we can talk. I’m not saying YES, but I’m saying that’s the one place I would be open to negotiation. Otherwise NO. No man toes. EVER.

There’s a real problem in Amercia today: men are under the impression that they’re gorgeous. And their bodies are beautiful. I don’t know who started this. Actually, I made up a theory just now. In the magazine industry, you get older, you have kids, you stop giving a shit. Whereas gays don’t have kids to hold them down so they’ll be editors of magazines their whole lives. It’s a career. THEY see the male body as beautiful from top to bottom. Maybe they have inadvertently brainwashed the American male into thinking that his toes are acceptable. And that his legs are gorgeous.

By the way, women don’t WANT you to do your eyebrows. No woman goes ‘He’s so fucking hot, his eyebrows are perfect. He has high cheekbones!’ They’re like, ‘He got in a fight in a bar.’ If you have a facial scar in Glasgow you are a male model. In fact. I considered getting one from a make-up store just so I could fuck two Glaswegian supermodels.

Recently you interviewed George Bush, but it was pretend. I feel like you would have had the nuts to actually do it.
I wouldn’t have the nuts?
No, you WOULD.
Oh yeah.
Do you have huge nuts or do you just do a bump before doing scary stuff?
I think that I’m genetically Glaswegian and that’s a pretty fearless genetic make-up so, yes, I technically have the balls. But I do get scared, especially about fighting and stuff because I’m so bad at it. I’m pretty insecure about how unbrave I am when it comes to fighting. I mean I’ve been in tons of fights I just always lose. I wish I was better at that but…um…listen, I think it’s your job if you’re interviewing someone – now I shouldn’t be saying this to you but – to fuck them over a little bit. Because so often people just do a press release for the guy. You could say to me, ‘Why are you so ugly? Why did you not pay enough tax in 2007? We have your W9′s here. Is it true that you made fun of Clinton Bedecki in fourth grade and stole his gym shorts?’

I don’t think I’m really a critic of yours.
You could say, ‘Why are you talking about Look At This Fucking Hipster? You call yourself an anarchist or a libertarian or I don’t even know fucking what you are – but he didn’t STEAL anything from you, he just did what you’re doing and got more publicity, or as much!’ It’s sort of like that Banksy movie. It’s brilliant, you have to see it. To Shepard Fairey and even Banksy I would say: ‘Sorry, Mr Brainwash hustled you! He went in there, he did what you’re doing, you endorsed him and he got rich doing it. He didn’t CHEAT. There’s no such thing as cheating, it’s the free market!’

It’s like we did this interview back at Vice and we pretended we were getting taken over by MTV, which some would say ended up happening for real. But the journalist lost his fucking MIND when he found out he was fucked over. And he calls the friend of mine who was pretending to be the head of MTV during the interview, and he goes, ‘So you understand that you have pretended to be the biggest broadcaster in the world? They’re the biggest broadcaster in the world!!’ And my friend goes, “Relax dude, it’s New York City. You got hustled.”

So feel free to pretend that you came up with that angry question.

Thanks Gavin.