The Ten Percent Nation of Hipsters.

It really didn’t all hit me until the slow burn of the weekend faded into the Monday morning hum; the jokes of what seemed to be lurking on all of our collective urbane minds. These were the stories of some mentally unstable Korean girl with a penchant for tattoos and hirsute affairs, grifting her way into the hearts and minds of mid twenty somethings across the streets of New York City. I spent the better half of Friday night with my friend Ashley trying desperately to fit the word grift into every other sentence, mesmerized by the concept.

Its the stuff of legend now. The street style hustle that has evolved into some tapered elegance. This pile of shit that we all worship; effortless chic wrapped in tar and resin stained saran. Fumes and earthy smells the only pheromones that one can identify their kind with, collected together in backyards, basements, clubs and art galleries. The devil you know and the devil you think you know.

Here in this halogen nightmare that paints the murky acres of midnight a bright institutional orange, we greet the pavement and potholes with little or no consideration of gravity or momentum. We drown in countless aluminum cans, swimming in our own heads for a time that slips into zero hours, that grifts our very pocketbooks and constitutions so willingly. We piss away our worries in the alleyways and scrawl our names in the concrete, desperate not to be forgotten. We pose in any number of mobile photo booths, hoping to capture the fancy of anyone who will lavish praise on our imperfections. We pray that our moment will transcend, embraced by the slick gloss of an unattainable photoshop filter. A digitally edited existence that drops frames of regret pounding in our skulls on a Sunday morning. While our kin silently rouse themselves to worship and forgive themselves, we sleep soundly the deadest of dreams, secretly hoping we never awake; infinitely adrift on the shores of Quiddity.

As my friend Vincent Dermody so eloquently put it one late night in the bite sized SMS from somewhere halfway across the city: ”May you get to heaven a half hour before the Devil knows your name.” Because thats what we are. We are demons posing in the garments of angels, draped in pastels and lens flare. Every single time the eye is cast upon us, we hope and pray no one sees exactly who we really are. How frail and diseased we are within and outside. How utterly vapid our thoughts and prayers are in the light of the darkest black hole.

I grew up listening to Public Enemy just like any number of people my age. Some of us took it a step too far. We got entrenched in the ideology somewhat similar to some of my friends who got wrapped up in the skinhead resurgence of the early nineties. But when I say ‘we’ I really only mean myself. As there was never really any sort of self inclusion that I could ever achieve with an organization such as the five percent nation of Islam. Various offshoots varied in their tennets. But it was clear as day for anyone that white people had a lot farther to go on the road to atonement for the sins of the father. And I so desperately wanted to be that.

Accepted into the pyramid scheme. A follower of the followers. Led into the abyss with a purpose no matter how inane and ridiculous. Legends and scrolls touting Elijah Muhammed talking to aliens. Desperate proof of meaning above the mundane. The rock star scientology that was far less perverse in ways and far more damaging in others.

And there lies Griff in the center, practicing with due diligence his WuShu moves and militance. A million miles away in a parallel dimension, lies his alter ego Professor Grift equally as driven and woefully misguided. Shining in his ignorance with Satan on his side, sure of everything and aware of his kind. Segmented into a percentage and waving his flag high emblazoned with judeo-christian sacrilege. Sigils and sign posts warped and misinterpreted by a million neurotic minds writhing in hive against each other.

The elephant in the room is now acknowledged. The truth is so bare and glaring that it causes disgust in those sickened by the perversity and awe in those who want something to worship. A place to belong and to loathe. The ten percent nation of hipsters. Devil music, Satan rock, Hedonic techno, and white noise. Pure chaos and magic, unadulterated and ugly. Misfits with skeletons and skulls, fucked by circumstance… and those who love them from afar and mimic their wounds as best as they can. The new Dionysus mutated and hacked to pieces to reveal secret beasts and codes… and more intricately beautiful lies.

A new line of grifting and a con game never whispered into the ears of mortals before complete with the same old conceptual song and dance. But for the moment… lets forget all that… and let me tell you a story. Its a story about the summer of 2009. About the streets and asphault, the sweat in the flow of traffic, and the taste of tobacco stained lips marred with the afterimage of doom. About the days we have left, god forbid… how many few we have.

About the time we got to heaven before Satan knew every little faded detail on our birth certificate… and when he asked us to cut a deal accordingly

Let me tell you or rather show you the difference between what we told him and what the others divulged under the bright lights and humidity of the overexposed street corners.

I promise you its going to be the stuff of fucking legend.