Hipsters

Hipster. Its a word that gets thrown around a lot these days - and not in a good way. Self-confessed dag Samuel Johnson embarks on the first (skinny) leg of his global odyssey to discover what it really means to be a hipster - and if it means anything at all. After some street level research where Sam learns that no hipster enjoys being called one, Sam investigates the quirks of hipster fashion with Melbourne vintage clothing guru Jeremy Valentine. Having noticed that a full beard is an essential accessory for any hipster male, Sam heads to London where he meets former fashion magazine editor Ekow Eshun for some razor-sharp insights into why fulsome facial hair became so popular. Then it's straight to New York to look into another defining badge of the hipster: tattoos. In the chair with veteran tattoo artist Mat Moreno, Sam hears some strong opinions on the ill-considered ink sported by many hipsters and goes away with a memento that will take laser surgery to remove.

Samuel Johnson pedals deep into the hipster world with an investigation of their ride of choice - the now ubiquitous fixed gear bike. What's the appeal of a bike with no gears or brakes? Sam will need nerves (and thighs) of steel to find out. After being schooled in the origins of fixie culture by some veterans of New York's bike messenger scene, Sam is taken for a riding lesson in the downtown traffic. Afterwards, Sam tries to catch his breath with a relaxing sandwich but can't find a cafe that isn't plastered with intimidating words like artisanal; foraged or locavore. So he decides to learn what they actually mean. Fortunately locavore means pretty much what it sounds like and he only needs to go as far as Brooklyn, where he discovers a pizza parlour that grows its ingredients on its roof. Sam's investigation of hipster eating then takes him to Berlin's Kreuzberg where he unearths the origins of the paleo trend and discovers that eating brains really does his head in.

Selling everything from bespoke burritos to artisanal soap, businesses operated by and for hipsters are now everywhere - and they're often owned by smart, young hipsterpreneurs. Sam wants to discover if this term means savvy exploiter of trends or cool kid who got lucky. Suspecting it's a bit of both, Sam travels to Los Angeles where he meets some food truck owners who have used a combination of street smarts, social media skills and culinary innovation to go from fast food to Forbes Magazine in a few short years. Sam returns to Australia for a deeply committed exploration of another fast-growing product and every hipster's tipple of choice: craft beer. After some preliminary research at Sydney's Young Henry's Brewing Company, Sam goes on a field assignment (bender) at Mary's Bar, where he discovers that hops, sadly, equals hangover. In need of relief, Sam gets a red-eye to Melbourne where he sorts himself out with a lot of very strong, very confusing coffee: single origin, fair trade, pourover, cold drip - when did the cappuccino become so uncool?

Beer labels, café menus, pickle jars - most products targeting hipsters look like they were hand crafted by rural artisans deep in a mountain commune. Keen to understand the reasons behind the prevalence of rustic, old-world branding in the hipster world, Sam seeks guidance from Roberta Ronsivale of renowned New York branding and design consultancy MUCCA. Observing that a lot of hipsters dress like rural artisans from mountain communes, Sam flies to Melbourne to discover if hipsters genuinely do fear the future or just really love the feel of tweed. A retailer who exclusively stocks workwear and luggage manufactured to century-old specifications helps Sam find out. Sam then tackles the touchy subject of gentrification: its all very well for hipsters to love old vintage stuff, but what about the old vintage communities of their increasingly expensive neighbourhoods? Thereés nowhere better to explore this relationship than back in Brooklyn - where Sam meets author and activist Kevin Powell, who is staunchly anti-gentrification and staunchly anti-hipster as well. Sam concludes the episode in Detroit, a city decimated by financial ruin that is now actively encouraging hipsters to return and transform its derelict spaces in an effort to revive the city.

Keen to further explore the hipster's love of things of the past, Sam travels to Tokyo, the so-called Empire of Retro. Sam meets some key players in Tokyo's vintage underground and discovers that in Japan, hipness is not about borrowing the best bits of past subcultures - its defined by all-out commitment to your chosen style. Wondering why this kind of fixation would be seen as - let's be honest - a bit manic in the West, Sam returns to LA to meet music writer Simon Reynolds, who literally wrote the book on retro. This leads Sam to investigate hipster music: whether it's acoustic freak folk or purist analogue House, hipster musicians definitely aren't shy of plundering the recent past. Sam meets LCD Soundsystem's Nancy Whang and young Australian bluesman Steve Smyth and asks them if musically speaking there is nothing new under the sun. Checking his Instagram feed, Sam has an epiphany: if hipsters don't like the future, how does the hashtag fit in? Sam heads to London to explore the dark side of social media with celebrated author Susan Greenfield and finds out why many hipsters are now checking in to digital detox camps: no smartphones allowed.

Feeling that the Western hipster has become a parody of itself, Sam travels to a place where the word hipster is just beginning to gain traction and he can pretend he was into it long before everybody else: China. Sam learns that the idea of the hipster doesn't really exist in China - instead there is a movement known as the cultured youth. Sam sets out to meet some of these people for himself and find out if the stakes are higher in China for those who choose to set themselves apart from the mainstream. This leads Sam to question if hipster as we know it can actually be considered to be a genuine subculture: what has it contributed that we will remember in two decades time? Salad in jars? Sam returns to Detroit to meet pop-culture expert and author Bruce Conforth to get his take on what might come after the hipster. Sam goes on to investigate normcore - an anti-fashion trend that (at the time of production anyway) is tipped as the next big thing and conveniently for Sam, is pretty much identical to how he dresses anyway.