A FiPS Glossary to New York Magazine's Twee Brooklyn Article

Illustration by Zohar Lazar

New York Magazine recently posted this article, titled "The Twee Party," and as near as I can figure, it has something to do with the intersection of the slow food movement and hipster culture.  You know, people clad in plaid shirts and beards who stand in their tiny kitchens stuffing shit into cans, trying to turn it into a business?

Anyway, here's a small sample of the piece:

"One afternoon last June, the quaint silhouette of a three-masted sailboat made its way into New York Harbor and pulled up at the Red Hook Marine Terminal. The Black Seal, a 70-foot-long schooner, had just completed a 3,000-mile wind-powered round trip to the Dominican Republic. There, it had taken on twenty metric tons of cocoa beans, mostly from La Red de Guaconejo organic-cacao cooperative, whose beans are said to yield chocolate with notes of “sweet pipe tobacco” and “Cabernet Sauvignon.”

I got about half of a paragraph into this six page article (six internet pages = the digital equivalent of a Dickens novel, by the by) before I realized: HEY!  This dude is making fun of these people who live in Brooklyn.  And then, I realized: HEY!  I am way better at making fun of people who live in Brooklyn than this guy is.  And then I realized: HEY!  I don't have plans tonight, so I could get loaded and write a FiPS post!  And then I realized: HEY! I'm only half-a-paragraph into this article, and I'm going to have to read the whole thing if I'm going to blog about it.  So that's what I did.  

Any-to-the-whoo.  I'm here to tell you, FiPSters, that reading this article was exhausting.  I kept reading it, and thinking, 'Wha? Huh? Who?'  It's one of those articles where you have to read the same paragraph three or four times to figure out what, exactly, the words mean.  So, because I like you, and because I'm really smart about words and shit, I have decided to put together a sort of glossary, which will aid you in your attempt to read New York Magazine's hipster foodie article.

These are not in alphabetical order, for what it's worth.  This is a FiPS glossary, so we're turning this shit on its head.  Deal with it, and thank me later.

The Black Seal, a 70-foot-long schooner:  This actually refers to a boat, and not to Heidi Klum's ex-husband.  I'm shocked that you thought of it that way, because that is racist, and WRONG.

Emersonian spirit:  This is a reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once noted that foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.  I adore anyone who adores anyone who adores Emerson.  If you invoke Emerson, it means that you're opposed to both (1) hobgoblins; and (2) little minds. We should get behind the guy they're quoting and buy his artisanal chocolate.

bean-to-bar chocolate-maker:  Pooping.

hand-sprinkling Maine sea salt:  Onanism.

cruelty-free dog food:  Most dogs will eat just about anything.  One of my pugs regularly comes back from his afternoon walk with a stomach full of sticks and leaves and napkins and gum.  This reference indicates that they just let dogs eat whatever the hell the dog wants to eat, just because it makes your pet happy.  This is a bad idea, ppl.  Stick to regular dry kibble, and ignore this guy.

hand-pulped toilet paper:  I have no idea, but I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

“reclaimed slate” cheese boards: If the slate were truly "reclaimed," they'd be putting it back into the ground, where they found it in the first place.  That's not what these folks are talking about, though.  They're talking about using old floor tile to make a cheese board.  Doesn't that make you wanna punch someone in the balls?  Yeah.  Me too.

bergamot saltwater taffy: That sounds delicious, actually.  I would totally buy that.

proudly hand-packed in Brooklyn:  A positive affirmation for gay hipsters who are into fisting.  Just as an aside, did you all know that there used to be a private gay sex club on 5th Ave., just south of Union?  Maybe it's still there, I dunno.  But it used to be kind of hilarious to stand across the street in front of Body Reserve on a Saturday night and watch guys furtively pushing an unmarked buzzer to be let in.

“Small-batch” Jam Stand:  This  is one of the poses they do at naked yoga.  It's sort of like doing a Japanese Ham Sandwich (which is a real thing in yoga, by the way), only with your grundle on display for all to see.  As in, "I twisted myself into a Small Batch Jam Stand, and held the position for ten breaths."

a role model to young black women:  Interestingly, this does not refer to Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks or The Oprah.  This is a reference to an African-American who appreciates candy bars costing $8.  

Choc-A-Doodle-Doo:  1. A type of granola you can buy in Brooklyn; 2. What I shout out when I'm on the toilet and have successfully pushed through an epic bowel movement.

packing a ukulele into your $130 Fjällräven rucksack, swinging by Bierkraft to pick up a growler of Flying Dog Raging Bitch Belgian IPA, and riding the G to Greenpoint to take part in a late-night hootenanny in a former stapler factory: See, the guy who wrote this article decided that the whole six-page monstrosity needed to radiate from one spectacularly-overwrought sentence that would jam in as many hipster stereotypes as possible.  So, that's what this is all about.

sublime amalgam of glass, rubber, and steel made by a German company called Weck:  Now doesn't that sound delicious!

beard oil:  female ejaculate.

mustache covers: Not entirely sure, but I think this might be referring to pubic hair.

leather footballs sewn from the hides of the grass-fed cows that were ground up to make your hamburger: This is intended to be a paean to the Native American Spirit.  You know, from back when they used every part of the buffalo, way before they opened Mohegan Sun. 

a lone guy in a hoodie holding a blow-dryer, heat-­sealing bottles, one at a time, in an unheated, windowless storeroom in Greenpoint. A reminder of why one must never drink during the first trimester.

a role in a Visa commercial:  A day job.

the Brooklyn Salsa Company had five flavors, one for each borough: 1. Manhattan -- tastes exactly like Donald Trump, if he were a salsa and not an asshole; 2. Brooklyn -- made from Gowanus Canal sludge; 3. Staten Island -- hair flavored; 4. Queens -- has real tar flavoring, with essence of airport; 5. The Bronx -- salsa that tastes like drugs, now with 10% real drugs!

home kombucha kit:  Syrup of Ipecac.  Blech!

Okay!  Armed with that, you should be good to go!  If you encounter any other perplexing words or phrases in the NY Mag article, please cut and paste them in the comments section, and we'll try to help you out.