If you live in the Bywater neighborhood of NOLA, you...hear the word "hipster" thrown around...five times a day. The same could probably be said for the Marigny, Treme, Bayou St John, Irish Channel and any other up-and-coming neighborhood...At first it was cute...

Last week, the President...talked about the need to repair the country’s infrastructure. Where better to start than in Detroit? By the standards of the banking and auto bailouts, the sums involved are small: the banks received seven hundred billion dollars; the auto companies eighty billion. Already, there are hopeful signs. The auto industry has turned a profit and repaid much of the federal monies. And hipsters and artisans aren’t the only ones moving in: firms such as Blue Cross/Blue Shield; Quicken Loans, an online-mortgage lender; GalaxE.Solutions, a tech firm; and the insurance company Title Source have also recently arrived. Americans of all ages are increasingly eager to live in urban environments: a smaller, rebuilt Detroit could eventually thrive. “I speak of new cities and new people,” Obama said last week, quoting Carl Sandburg. Here’s an opportunity to turn words into deeds.

If hipsters do acknowledge that something like a hipster exists, they will be glad to show you that hipsters exist “out there,” having nothing to do with themselves. Distance and irony are key concepts in understanding this outlook. Hipsters rarely passionately believe in anything, preferring cynical distancing.