Philadelphia, Meet Your Future

That analysis, though, ignores what generally happens to the natives when the money hits a dead-end neighborhood. I ask Sweeney if he thinks about the people who will be affected (read: pushed out of Fishtown).

Sweeney: "Do I? Yeah, I mean, like, they're my people, that's my family. A lot of whom have probably moved out of Fishtown in the last 15 years. But my mother and my stepfather still live in the same house I grew up in. They're ecstatic about it. Their property value shot through the roof. What's happening is a good thing."

Okay, then. It's pressing 3:30 in the morning, back at Joey's loft in NoLibs. Once again, there's smoke in the air. Joey's showing me the old jukebox in his living room that used to be his Fishtown grandfather's. For once this night, I actually recognize the music playing, if only from my parents' favorite oldies stations: "Crimson & Clover," "12:30 (Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon)", and Maxine Nightingale's "Right Back Where We Started From," Sweeney's all-time favorite song, which he says makes him cry every time he hears it. Ruth's here, and so is the dog Charlie, and so is some statuesque guy who's apparently toured Australia with his band, and his girlfriend, resplendent in a canary-colored Donna Reed dress. We're drinking more beers, and the conversation moves along a familiar arc — Northern Liberties, New York, Philly music. And all of a sudden I'm reminded of a conversation Joey and I had earlier, when I asked him about the meaning of hipster.

"When people talk about this stuff they're generally talking about artists and creative types, and the thing about artists and creative types is throughout time they've never gotten done all the things they said they were gonna get done. But that's people — I don't really think that's indicative to any sort of social strata. … For me, it's hard to stick up for hipsters. It's hard to bash hipsters. It's hard to say I am a hipster, and it's hard to say I'm not. Any different person will ascribe a completely different meaning to what that is."

Just as it would seem any different person can ascribe a completely different meaning to what — or rather who — Joey Sweeney is. A nerdy, quiet, almost gentle presence in public, who retreats to his keyboard to rail against others' ability, taste, intellect, body size and personal appearance. A "Fishtown boy" who flashes his hardscrabble roots like a badge but labored to erase the accent. The hyper, über-alternative media guy subsidized by a rich developer. And yet, for whatever else Joey Sweeney might be, not one person I spoke to ever called him fake, or a phony. For it is, in fact, the paradox — the inconsistency — that seems to define him. That he can contain all the contradictions — that he keeps right on rolling along because of them — just might be the real meaning of this elusive hipster thing. Or at least Joey Sweeney.

Dan P. Lee last wrote for Philadelphia on the death of Ellen Andros.