Review and Giveaway : Street Boners: 1,764 Hipster Fashion Jokes by Gavin McInnes (ends 6/6/2010)

Okay, I'll admit it, in my more youthful and "way too much time on my hands" days I would sit in front of my computer and occasionally check out the Vice Dos and Don't (some content may be NSFW)... and, you know, I might have found some of the commentary slightly entertaining (not necessarily funny) . That was at the height of the nu-rave era and now that those times are gone, maybe I just don't "get it" anymore. Not that I was ever nu-rave (I wasn't).

"Fifteen years after founding Vice, Gavin McInnes has poured his creative juices into a new endeavor: StreetCarnage.com. Growing in size and influence at an alarming rate, the site's main feature is the new and improved version of Gavin's "DOs and DON'Ts," now tantalizingly called Street Boners.

These Boners have been polished and compounded into a book that takes the best of the site and adds hundreds more gems! With 1,312 photos, hilarious captions, and a harsh new rating system-from one to 10 kitten faces-STREET BONERS makes sure no glorious fashion statement goes unnoticed. Innocent citizens are either damned to hell or relentlessly exalted into heaven. Chloe Sevigny, Debbie Harry, Fred Armisen, and Tim & Eric also contribute their scathing wit to the book, and the end result is a New York fashion bible no bathroom should be without."

I found Street Boners: 1,764 Hipster Fashion Jokes sort of confusing. On one hand this book totes itself as a street fashion bible ala FRUiTS but here's the problem with that: the photographs in this book aren't good enough to justify that title. Many of the photographs are overexposed, amateur (and not in a pseudo-artsy way), slight grainy, and quite tiny. In fact, some of the "joke" captions that went along with the images were sort of hard to understand at first because the photographs were too small to immediately figure out what was even going on.

Thus, this book might be exactly what it claims to be, a book full of hipster jokes. A large percentage of the "jokes" seem to convey a desire of the author to maintain an ounce of indie credibility and "punkness" while embracing trust fund kid apologetics and famous hipster pandering. This makes the commentary both sad and funny in a "Oh Mr. McInnes, we're laughing at you, not with you" sort of way. But that is the ultimate ironic point after all, McInnes knows we're laughing at him, and he likes it. He likes it a lot. So much that he built an empire out of it... and then wrote a book.

What I do like about this book is that whether it is or isn't a fashion bible or even a book of jokes, it's unabashedly a tribute to the times. It's a tribute to the trash talking, anonymity of the internet era. The commentary in this book is the same type of commentary people are posting online behind other people's backs or saying with a cupped hand to a friend's ear. It's the same commentary that we're all LOLing at as we post online but then claim to find totally unfunny in real life as we shake our heads in disgust.

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Hachette Book Group was generous enough to offer THREE of my readers their very own copy of Street Boners: 1,764 Hipster Fashion Jokes by Gavin McInnes! Please note that this book does contain foul language and some nudity.

*To enter all you need to do is visit tell me your fashion icon or a moment where you had a fashion disaster.

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This giveaway will end on Sunday, June 6, 2010 at 11:59 PM PST. Open to US readers only. Good luck!

Giveaway winners: Dawn, Benita and Liza (annoymous)

**I was sent a copy of Street Boners: 1,764 Hipster Fashion Jokes for review purposes and allowed to post my thoughts at my discretion. I did not receive any monetary compensation for this post. All opinions expressed here are mine.**