Is Brighton really the world's most hipster city?
Hands up, I’m a hipster. I gain my creative superpowers from my beard, drink so many cortados I bleed the stuff (flat whites are so 2017), and have a tattoo of every animal I brutally ate before becoming a flexi-vego-tarian.
Said nobody, ever.
There is a scourge on society, and it isn’t hipsters. It’s the people who bother thinking or talking about hipsters.
For the group doesn’t exist. Have you ever met anybody who identifies as a hipster? Of course you haven’t. It’s just a way of businesses, journalists and everyday sneer-merchants to label vaguely nonconformist people. If you have met somebody who identifies as a hipster, they aren’t a hipster at all because they’re trying to conform with a group.
So making an index of the world’s “most hipster cities”, as relocation specialists Movehub has just done, and thinking it will engage so-called hipsters is equivalent to rounding up “the best restaurants for skinflints” or “top hotels for fusty poshos”.
Which is a shame, because the research is genuinely quite interesting. The study rounds up the world cities that have the most vegan restaurants, coffee shops, tattoo studios, vintage boutiques and record stores per 100,000 people. In other words, where to visit or live if you like places with a bit of personality and an independent streak.
Brighton and Hove came out top of their poll, just, with a "Hipster Index Score" just one thousandth of a point higher than Portland, Oregon in second place. Salt Lake City, Seattle and Lisbon make up the rest of the top five.
The Hipster Index | by movehub.com
The next highest ranking UK city is Manchester, in 27th place, with Edinburgh, Belfast and Glasgow shortly behind. Luton is officially the "least hipster" town in the UK, the research suggests. The Bedfordshire town comes 421nd out of 446 entries in the list.
Where wins what in the hipster stakes?
Vinyl shops
European cities lead the way when it comes to vinyl shops. Brighton came out top of this list with 9.142 record stores per 100,000 residents. Bordeaux came in second (5.747), followed by Haarlem in the Netherlands (5.631), Porto (5.608) and Zurich (5.077).
Paris and London have high numbers of record stores, with 96 and 94 respectively, although their populations mean they emerge with a low index ranking.
Vintage boutiques
Portugal has the top two spots in this list; Lisbon and Porto have 78.022 and 68.501 vintage shops per 100,000 people. In the US, Florida dominates for vintage boutiques, with St Petersburg, Miami and Tampa all featuring in the top ten. Brighton, Manchester and Edinburgh have the highest perctange of vintage shops per capita in the UK.
Portland coolest city in the world
Vegan restaurants
The American northwest dominated in this category. Portland came out top with a massive 118 vegan eateries, with Seattle coming in fourth and Spokane, Eugene and San Fran also ranking in the top 20. Victoria, Canada, performed well in this category and for record stores, but finished 88th in the list for its shortage of tattoo parlours.
Coffee shops
Australia performed well when it came to coffee shops. Gold Coast, Geelong and Melbourne ranked first, second and fourth for coffee shop density, with Brighton and Portland making up the rest of the top five.
However, Australians don't drink the most coffee per capita. Finns grind their way through 12kg per person per year, according to stats from the International Coffee Organization (ICO).
Tattoo capitals
The top 22 cities for tats are all in the US, with Las Vegas topping the list with over 29 studios per 100,000 people - or 186 in total. Not a huge surprise, since 40 per cent of Americans between 26 and 40 are inked.
