How I Became a Hipster

had fallen into conversation with the affinity marketer (beard, plaid flannel shirt, vintage work boots) in the lobby of the Wythe hotel in Williamsburg, a beehive of instrument-bearing musicians, nose-pierced locals and twentysomethings who use the word “ridiculous” in nonpejorative contexts. I guessed aloud, “So, like, if I buy a pair of shoes, then you’ll try to sell me socks?” The affinity marketer smiled and said: “Or maybe something bigger, like flooring. You buy a pair of shoes, I sell you reclaimed hardwood flooring.”

O, bohemia! There are several ways to react to a culture quake. You can meet it with befuddlement, perhaps wondering how flappers handled the thorny intersection between dancing in fountains and limited dry-cleaning.

You can put it on a pedestal by bringing undue optimism to the prospect of meeting Ernest Hemingway or some other expat after his seventh Pernod.

But maybe there’s another way — which is why, in early April, this middle-aged avowed Manhattanite checked into the Wythe and spent a long weekend trying to educate himself, canvassing Kings County’s artisan-loving, kale-devouring epicenter. “Brooklyn” is now a byword for cool from Paris to Sweden to the Middle East. It’s been strange to live across the river from a place that suddenly becomes a cultural reference point — not unlike having your dachshund become an overnight celebrity. Part of you wonders, Why him and not Aunt Barbara?

So I decided to embed myself among the rooftop gardeners and the sustainability consultants and the chickeneers. I wanted to see what the demographic behind nanobatched chervil and the continually cited show “Girls” could teach me about life and craft cocktails. I wanted to see what sullen 25-year-old men had to tell me beyond “Leave me alone during this awkward period of beard growth.”

First I needed to outfit myself. H. W. Carter and Sons in Williamsburg is full of flannel and cardigans and work boots for the younger set. When a scruffy,