Brick Lane: On Race and Hipster Culture

by Alok Vaid-Menon, ’13

The street signs of Brick Lane, a historically South Asian immigrant neighborhood, are in both Bengali and English. The street is alive with art markets, flea sales, and food vendors. Indian restaurants decorate the street with their tantalizing sweets and succulent, spicy fare. There are saree shops, mosques, ethnic grocery stores. Older brown men play karamon on the sidewalk, eating their samosas and stamping the ground in their Bata chappals with joyful exclamations of “Shabash!” 

I am standing in line for the American Apparel Flea Market. There are almost 100 people waiting outside of the door and all of them are White. They are the types of kids you’d call ‘individualistic.’ Yes, hipsters – those ironic, well-dressed, artsy types magnetized to American Apparel (even though it has become mainstream) — have colonized the streets of Brick Lane. In the alleys by the saree shops there are vintage and thrift stores. On the walls of the abandoned warehouses I see advertisements for underground parties and alternative bands.

The brown bodies walking on the streets stare at me suspiciously. The white bodies standing in front of me in line peer at me curiously. Both are surprised to see me. As a record store begins to blast new indie music from its speakers and the White, angst-ridden voices join the sounds of tabla and sitar I ask myself: What am I doing here?