If Everyone Is Hip . . . Is Anyone Hip?

Once an outsider's rejection of the mainstream, the attitude has become mall friendly and marketed as everyone's mode of the moment

Even if it's hard to take pity on people who expect to pocket several million dollars, you have to admit the organizers of Woodstock '94 have a thankless job. In more ways than one, the first Woodstock was an impossible act to follow. By bringing together 400,000 people who forever after thought of themselves as inspired outsiders present at the creation, the concert became a high-water mark of a tendency that had been building in American culture for decades. In the years right after World War II, there emerged from the bohemias of San Francisco, New York City and a few...

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