Are Hipsters What We Used to Call…

 
“kept kids”?

Thirty years ago, that was the term that trendy New York City publications like New York used to describe young college grads who earned very little money, yet who were were living in overpriced neighborhoods, which only a few years ago had been working class, but had been gentrified—Park Slope, Brooklyn, aka “Dyke Slope,” to many of its lesbian denizens, the Lower East Side, etc.

The “kept kids” were not paying their own way, their parents were. In other cases, they were sharing their digs with roommates. In many cases, they were kept and with roommates. Even back in 1985, New York was an extremely expensive town, even the “outer boroughs” (every borough but Manhattan).

Nicholas Stix