*insert tale of artsy young white hipster living in brooklyn here*

well, what can I say about Lucky that hasn't already been summed up in the "first world problem" memes, or this "hipster survival guide to new york city" list?

"MOVE TO BROOKLYN, THIS IS WHERE IT'S REAL! BESIDES YOU'LL GET TWICE THE SPACE AT HALF THE PRICE!" 
-miranda, friend living in bushwick. yawn.

this above statement makes me cringe for numerous reasons. i for one, spent two years living in brooklyn as well, but spent each day of that time thinking about my newfound hike in class privilege, graduating from hampshire and moving right to new york. i was now the first of my family who lived outside of baltimore, and it both thrilled and confused me. was i gentrifying, living next to families who have been in nyc for generations? did it make a difference that i was black? on the surface, yes, as i didn't stand out in flatbush. but i, too, was a part of a "wave", and i had to be conscious of this and accept it. hence, it even made my blood boil to watch communities transform, rents soaring through the roof, new coffee shops and sushi restaurants springing up, with no one seeming to hold themselves accountable for the shift happening. enter...Lucky.


it made me laugh that a white twentysomething female artist living in brooklyn can be so pretentious that she puts, as her introduction, just how lucky she was that they got an Ignatz award for telling the mundane details of her life. i was hoping after this introduction that the details expressed would actually be of jolting, hilarious difference -- you know, a starving artist who falls down a sewer and sues the city...or perhaps becomes a 200 foot tall monster and eats the students at NYU...you know, anything but the typical story. the one that reads like gabrielle bell's.

i found myself writing notes for the dialogue that contained more expletives and insults than actual analysis -- "artist/model, can't handle temp work, OR modeling? living in williamsburg? TYPICAL" (pg. 8), "WHY IS SHE SO DRAMATIC?" in response to her new room, and its silence, "like a harsh light cast on the shambles of my life" (15), and "GAG ME", after reading Tom's profession: I'm just working at a film company -- I own a restaurant in Boston..." (21), and finally, "SO MANY ENTITLED AWFUL FUCKS!" (23). Seriously, it made me more annoyed than anything else. Every time I tried to analyze Bell's usage of heavy black space versus white outlines in each chapter of the book, I was overtaken by thoughts of rapid gentrification of new york city, and gabrielle and her friends being the agents of such clueless displacement of other folks. of course, her story takes place gradually, in the early 2000's, just when neighborhoods like williamsburg and bushwick became the latest craze for the post-college trust fund baby who couldn't afford to live in manhattan.

i was, however, left with a sour taste in my mouth with every whiney page. how often does one have to move around from place to place? at what point does it become a neuroses, a picking at the scab to soothe everything you're dissatisfied with? all of Lucky #1 was spent trying to sort through tom's night sweat and apparent tear filled depression for not having an apartment. but, it is unclear what his background is -- particularly his class background that enables him to keep putting deposits down on one bite-sized apartment after another. (much like tom, you don't get a sense of gabrielle's class background, either.)

does he really own a restaurant in boston? does he not? of course, these things don't matter if you're a hipster, because you're trying to give off the impression of really, really broke, or really really rich, depending on who you're trying to impress (see #6 in hipster survival guide). for the white twenty-something hipster, class is never transparent; it doesn't need to be, your loft bedroom for $2000 a month speaks volumes to the true story.

why do hipsters always sees themselves as so atypical, so nuanced, so edgy that they have to shut themselves off from the rest of the world to gain inspiration? (why is that the first message we get from the book?) i guess it's only fitting that gabrielle is in the line of angsty, cynical, socially awkward cartoonists whose dry sense of humor and recounting details and dialogue somehow takes her very, very far in life. her illustrations scream out lonely, jaded, empty artist, who fills the space in her frames with, well, not much at all, aside from white, minimalist outlines. in the deep, "dark days" of her life, the frames are just that: filled with black streets (56-57). it seems that in recounting the mundane details of her life, she glazed over one very important one: her insane privilege and entitlement.

nevermind that on these streets she is earning a living, hustling her comics to passers by, and is not being kicked off the street like every other street vendor, for knowledge of a loophole in the system. this should just happen for her, without consequences or struggle, right? in this time, she gets insane criticism from a rather insane passer-by, who makes sexist comments about female comics, and anti-Canadian sentiments. instead of analyzing how this situation affected her, in the next frames, her table and comics are seen crashing down the steps, into a black hole, or so it seems. tom comes to her rescue, and reassures her that she is a good person (63). i'll just come out and say it: it was really, really difficult for me to feel sorry for her, because i knew that her life was going to be ay-okay. after all, she did make it a point to highlight that she got an award for the story before it even began, didn't she?

in the next scene, she's in tompkins square park, with her crunchy granola, new agey friend andy. i've never seen a park so dark and grim, the people as silhouettes of themselves. as they eat their vegan brownies and avocado gazpacho, gabrielle attempts to find deeper meaning for the itch in her life, the trapped hole of loneliness, only to dismiss andy's advice on how to gain inspiration. she does, however, go to yoga class, only to carry the same internal warfare with her. the second frame on pg. 74 says it all as she walks down the steps, the blank, puzzled, worrisome stare on her face. in a failed attempt to show gratitude for her place in life, she juxtaposes herself sitting next to a homeless person sleeping while waiting for the subway. this is just another day in new york, right? everything still sucks, right? *yawn.*

the story moved so swiftly through each book that i couldn't get much of a sense of her character, outside of the angsty artsy hipster archetype. since her life was presented in seemingly crucial snapshots, i decided to highlight a few more WTF moments, in a more brief fashion:

1. (pg. 24) ALL of the dialogue at the lesbian performance art show, particularly "I DON'T IDENTIFY WITH THESE PEOPLE! IT IS WRONG TO BE GAY/ ESPECIALLY TO BE A LESBIAN! IT 'S WRONG TO EVEN SAY THAT WORD!"  *blank, blank stare*

2. i just...don't even have words for the "pretending to fuck shit up for the camera and look like a rambunctious New Yorker...but not rambunctious enough that you get arrested" story (pg. 33)

3. her breaking rule # 7 on the hipster's guide, and working in the Bronx with 5th graders. just downright painful. so, you're trained as a waitress, but you go to the Bronx and do "crowd control" of youth of color?you use terms like "unruly" and "troublemakers" to describe them, and say elitist art school bullshit things like "they need to master realism before they attempt minimalism"? COME ON. totally unchecked classist, racist white entitlement.

i guess the title Lucky really does say it all, doesn't it? I can't wait for this discussion in class. who-hoo!