By: Virginia Scripps
It’s the holiday season — time for those on the cutting edge of culture to find new ways to be discerning and eschew the mainstream in their personal style and gift choices. Here are a few counterculture trends to note if you’re in search of an off-the-beaten-track (yet highly curated) holiday. Check out these five ways to make this the most alternative holiday ever:
Popeye Magazine, Courtesy apronandbag.com
- Print Magazines
Although most millennials are notoriously married to their phones, trendsetters are choosing to leap back in time to an era where print magazines were relevant. Not just any rag off of the now-non-existent newsstand will do, though – you must go far afield to be a genuine indie magazine reader.
Titles such as Popeye are catching fire with the culturally next-year set. The magazine’s very cool cutting edge fashion tips and in-depth editorials will rocket you into the next dimension, even if you do not read Japanese, in which the entire magazine is written. Best of all, the magazine has no website, because having a digital presence would be way too predictable.
If Popeye doesn’t resonate you can always try Yippee Ki-Yay, a new print-only magazine for film fanatics and industry hopefuls (which also has no website.)
Courtesy Frugal Flier
- Alternative modes of transportation
It could be something very old school, such as taking a cross-country train home for the holiday (hence missing most of it) or rehabbing the dusty bike in the garage with an artisanal flare such as a basket fashioned from raw hemp fronds. It could be use of a “public fleet” vehicle — any car that is not owned by an individual but instead provided for the communal use by a company, city or state. However you choose to roll, in the sharing economy, it’s downright passe to drive your own car when you can just as easily commandeer a car that is, well, shared. Free modes of transportation you can drive without owning or even renting include Transfercar, where you deliver someone’s vehicle to the location you are going, or Waivecar, which provides you with a free EV vehicle wrapped in ads.
Courtesy Pixabay
- Flower Crowns
If you think this present idea is only for dudes, you are way too mainstream.
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
- Old school gold lighters
There’s nothing so counter-intuitive than a vintage or vintage-inspired lighter, because it screams analogue, and hints of things that are so not okay anymore. Like smoking. But whether you use your bulky gold lighter to do something hideous like smoke or to light up your aromatherapy candles or yoga incense, flipping up its gold cap and firing up the smelly kerosene flame is sure to feel very “Madmen.”
Courtesy Health Magazine
- Stores that won’t let you shop. Or donate the proceeds when you do.
REI was closed on Black Friday. Patagonia donated 100% of its profits that day to environmental causes. Netflix launched a snazzy One-touch “Netflix and Chill” button with one catch: you have to make it yourself. (Take an online step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to physically build the button, buy all of the materials needed, and get making.) It’s delightful and provocative when retailers and other brands make it hard or downright impossible to buy their stuff. It’s actually the kind of thing that indie holidays are made of.