Are you thinking about moving to the beautiful, culturally rich city of Copenhagen but are worried that there aren’t going to be enough people who look and act like a Fox News talking head’s conception of what a “hipster” is? Well, you can rest easy: some company called Pandox is building a hotel or hostel or something in the trendy neighborhood of Vesterbro called Urban House, and judging from the video they put together to promote it, the city is full of enough “life afficionados” (read: assholes) to cover the entire earth three times over:
Hilariously, the video is titled “What is Urban House” but fails utterly to answer that question—in fact, it could actually be a joke in the vein of Nathan Barley or Portlandia. Except Urban House is a real place, a real structure that is currently in construction and will open in March 2015 unless the earth swallows it up in a fit of rage. When Urban House goes into business, Vesterbro will finally complete its transition from buzzing city enclave to actual, real-life Instagram filter.
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To see what the future of that neighborhood will look like, we went through the video frame by frame in search of enlightenment.
00:00 – The first 30 seconds of the video were presumably storyboarded at a meeting in the kind of cafe where the menu is just a clipboard and yet, inexplicably, Eggs Benedict still costs $16. Here is what those brunchers brainstormed that day: a bicyclist riding in slow-motion on a frigid Danish day; a voiceover in an obscure Australian/British accent that sounds like what would happen if a motivational poster learned to talk; people making creative hand gestures in boutique restaurants with high ceilings.
00:07 – “You are different, like us,” we are told, while looking at a Scandinavian girl sitting on a train and texting.
00:11 – Here’s the token non-white person, followed by everyone’s favorite empty phrases—”creative melting pot,” “ethnic chic,” and “buzzing with authentic vibes” all make an appearance. Note the graffiti in the background here. That’s very hip.
00:25 – “Wassup, player!” this girl’s don’t-give-a-fuck-peace-sign-and-a-bicycle-pose seems to say. “Just stopping off here to do an #ootd shoot before whipping up a batch of gluten-free muffins. By the way, don’t hang out here too long—after 8 PM this street is basically just trashed dudes on vacation trying to pick up transgender Thai sex workers. Peace!”
00:30 – This is a commendably ambitious chapter in the Urban House saga. In under 15 seconds, the narrator informs us there will be a smorgasbord of “quirky cafes,” “original microbreweries,” “neighboring fishmongers,” “local art galleries” and even “buzzing sustainable restaurants.” I can’t wait to be like the owner of this disembodied hand and drink a sustainably microbrewed locally sourced beer while eating a potato (?) and smelling the fish art or whatever.
00:49 – Next, we’re told that we “don’t do fashion—we do style,” and are presented with the most convincing embodiment of the statement these guys could think of—a dude wearing a trucker hat, bombarding our poor eyes with two dense sleeves of tattoos. He also has two massive cans of (presumably sustainable) beer that he is apparently just drinking on the pavement, because street fights don’t start themselves.
00:55 – The video continues with some shots of basketball hoops and that Scandi chick being unique on a train again before we’re told that Copenhageners are—wait for it—”life aficionados.” Yup, real breathing connoisseurs who are, like, totally into pumping blood through their veins.
01:08 – “Labels are for other people,” we’re told. Apart from the label “life aficionados.” That’s a different kind of label. Then there’s some slow-mo hair-flipping by a woman in a tube top.
01:11 – How do you do, fellow kids? Anyone want to “get radical” and “pop an ollie” down on the bench outside the park? Haha no I’m not a cop! Hey, anyway got any “ganja”?
01:30 – And then this, one final word crime which sounds more like advice your brassy friend gives you after a bad breakup than a tourism slogan. The highlight of this whole section is the graphic treatment at the end—using a font that was probably literally called “MTV in 1994.”
It sounds like a wonderful hostel where all the unique, buzzing people of the world can go on vacation and bask in their lack of labels while leaving the rest of us blissfully alone.