There is a great organization started by a 25-year old University of Colorado grad named Brooke Stern. The organization is named S.O.U.L. (Supporting Opportunities for Ugandans to Learn). You should definitely Google the amazing story of this young woman and how she started a philanthophic drive to help underprivileged school children in Uganda. This is not a blog about her organization nor is it a pitch to get you to donate (although you should, if you can). This is the story of what it is like to be forty, Black and uncool in a crowd full of earnest 25 to 35 year old hipsters. This is the story of my Friday night as The Undercover Hipster Brother.
The above picture is a cellphone snapshot of a special art auction and raffle benefitting S.O.U.L. that I was invited to attend. Ryan Snyder is one of the board members and he and his partners thought it would be a great idea to hold a silent art auction to raise money to buy more solar computers for Ugandan schools. You can read more about the concept here. My connection to this whole thing is that I work with Ryan's sister, who put the event together, and I am all about trying to increase opportunities for African children, no matter how small the gesture might be.
What's funny is that I probably hadn't been to something like this since I was in my mid-20's. Unfortunately, Tracy couldn't make it because of work commitments, so I had to wander stag into the LoDo loft space that was hosting the auction. I didn't know what to expect, but I was happy to lend my support and to buy a raffle ticket with a chance of winning an iPad2. Besides, there are many worse ways to spend a Friday night, right?
Ryan's sister is a sweet gal with a real passion for charitable causes (she spent a month in Calcutta herself helping the underprivileged) and she was a gracious host, but when you have over a 100 guests and you're responsible for putting the whole thing together, you certainly don't have a ton of time to spend with little old me. So after a while I found myself adrift in the Domain of the Hipsters. What's funny is that just a couple of nights previously I had watched an episode of ABC's Happy Endings, a very funny show with what I fear is a dim future that had just done an episode making fun of--tah dah!--hipsters.
So this was fresh on my mind as I wandered amongst the bright eyed twentysomething gals with their low cut blouses, skinny jeans and four inch heels and their twenty or thirtysomething mates, with their five o'clock shadow, untucked Arrow shirts with loose cuffs and distressed jeans; their gazes looking appreciatively at the art for sale, but not TOO appreciatively, lest they be revealed to be not as cool as everyone else who exchanged banal chit chat over wine or microbrews while occasionally expressing their concern for "the plight of sub-Saharan Africa" and smugly noting that they were happy to "do their part, however small" as they looked down their noses at the t-shirts for sale and the art they weren't bidding on.
I drank a little too much wine and at one point I realized I was leaning up against a wooden post, staring for far too long at a photograph of a smiling young Ugandan girl when an older couple (by older, I mean about my age) noticed me, took pity on me and then introduced themselves.
Dave and Lisa from Boulder (oh, really?) were their names and believe me, I was glad after a while to have somebody to talk to other than Ryan's sister, because one of the loneliest places on Earth is to be a single, middle-aged man in a loft full of too-cool-for-the-room hipsters. (Another one of the loneliest places on Earth is to be an intelligent thought looking for the same inside of Sarah Palin's head. But I digress...)
Turns out Dave's dad was a diplomat and he's lived all around the world--Egypt, Kenya, Jordan--and Lisa was his girlfriend of six years and they were feeling just as lost as I was. It was good to chat with them for a while. Apparently, Dave got out of a recent trip to Egypt just two days before that country went all a-Twitter and kicked out Mubarak. Between the three of us, none of us won any raffle prizes, but I must say I had a fairly good time. On the way out, I said goodbye to Ryan, Ryan's sister (I'm protecting her name, but I'm not sure why) and walked past a group of hipsters, two gals and a guy, who were milling around at the entrance. I heard the guy say, "My friend who works at the gallery said there was going to be a deejay. I don't think there's a deejay." One of the women responded, "Well, we should still check it out, right? There's drinks and I think there will be African children dancing and stuff." The second gal, trying to be funny, I think, said, "God, I hope they don't let the children drink." With that, I wandered off into the night, $10 t-shirt in hand, feeling like I had "done my part, however small," but thinking that next time I get an invite for an event like this I might just write a check instead. The undercover hipster returned home, kissed his wife, threw on his pj's and went to bed.
Here's to African children dancing and stuff. Peace...
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