For centuries, animals that humans captured or killed have been preserved as prizes—testaments to hale manliness and self-sufficiency, both of which are traits that today's young urban hipster lacks. Yet, young people have always found meaning in authenticity, and what's more real than the lifeless body of a dead animal? Well, the stuffed, taxidermied body of a dead animal. Or slaughtering that animal yourself. Or picking dead animals out of the trash in Chinatown. All of which are (still) ever-evolving trends for New Yorkers, yet eerily familiar to hicks and Midwesterners. We thought the taxidermy mini-trend was dying down, but it's not!

A daring Times reporter infiltrated the bedbug-ridden, crime-infested, lame-party-throwing McKibbin lofts in Bushwick. Was it dirty and gross like you might expect? Oh yes, very very much so. Also, saddest thing ever, there was a 61-year-old living there, with his wife. Unironically. Because it's the cheapest place in town. Where to begin? With the urine, I guess:

Both Hamilton and myself walked by Williamsburg's McCarren Park at different times this Sunday, during the hours of Opening Day Part 2 of the hipster kickball league that's been causing so many dramatic fights and epic letters. Everything seemed under control. But you'll tell us if any scandals or noteworthy scuffles break out, won't you? Comments like this, especially: "[The Kickball commissioner] IS kind of awesome. He asked me to spit his own beer in his face just so I could show him exactly how the guy from [rogue team] Prison spit on me." There's an entire season ahead of us. I'm listening...

Radar Online dug up the yearbook photos of Leigh Lezark (aka Princess Coldstare of cool-kid DJ trio the Misshapes), from her formative years at New Jersey's Toms River High! Yearbook shocker: she was voted "most changed since freshman year." [RadarOnline]

The bad seed of Brooklyn's hipster kickball league speaks! Even though it was reported so on their website, the team known as "Prison" isn't kicked out of Williamsburg's kickball league after all. "Just me," former kickballer Robert L. confirms. "I told [38-year-old Brooklyn Kickball commissioner] Kevin Dailey he was a fat fuck and to go sniff coke. Then pushed 2 people who surrounded me and threatened another guy. I can only apologize that jocks picked on people in high school!" There's more to the story: just like every punk show in high school, this one was broken up by... you guessed it, violence from a straight-edger!

Cool-kid DJ superheroes the Misshapes are DJing a Louisville party during the Kentucky Derby. Will Princess Coldstare Leigh Lezark wear a big floppy hat to the races, as is the custom? [Velocity Weekly]

Walking home past McCarren Park in Brooklyn last Sunday evening, I witnessed something that I felt must be important, some sort of cultural shift or at least an indication of the Way We Live Now. The park was swarming with people, young people, milling around, shrieking, and blasting music. They were drinking beers outside, which is illegal (for non-whites.) Some were chasing their artfully scruffy dogs. Most were dressed up in crazy little outfits with components from American Apparel, headbands and shiny leggings. The men mostly had beards and were skinnier than the girls, somehow. Suddenly, a ball flew through the air, very close to my head. Oh my God: this was it. This was the famed Brooklyn hipster kickball league, in action. Now a kickball league member informs us: "There was some sort of scuffle last night..."

This week's Modern Love, the column in the NYT's Sunday Style section, bucked a trend. It's supposed to be about modern love, duh, but it's usually about adopting babies and cancer. This week, it actually was about modern (text-messaging) luv, with an essay by a young woman about her awkward flirtation with a frustratingly immature but totally cute indie-rocker boy in Brooklyn. Title of essay: "Was I On a Date or Baby Sitting?" HEY OH! "I asked my musician friends what they knew about him. Joanna, a singer, summed him up: 'He's an indie rock dreamboat. His voice is transcendent and he writes lovely lyrics. He has a nice face, he has a kid and he tours a lot. He's a star in his world.'" Oh, perfect: the conveniently unavailable guy who "goes on tour" a lot. Of course, we'd all love to know who the dude is and what band he is in. Thanks to a tipster, now we know!

Like "cool," "hipster" is a multivalent word with no set definition but many different meanings. But from a real estate developers' perspective, if you live in Brooklyn, have read a Jonathan Lethem book or have gone to Studio B, you qualify. Sorry! Even so, no real hipster admits to being one. That's worse than saying you want to be cool. Which makes Home Buying For Hipsters — a monthly real estate advising meet-up with ties to the Corcoran Group — so perplexing. What tool would show up to their event tonight, which is aimed at a demographic no one would acknowledge being a part of?

Maybe it's just the effect of repeated, unending exposure, but Dov Charney, the self-described "Jewish hustler" and lech behind American Apparel, seems to get cuter every week. This weekend, the WSJ intoned about the company recently going public: "American Apparel is opening the kimono — and it's not necessarily a pretty sight." A totally fun WSJ video of Dov follows.

A Craigslist ad advertises our favorite Bushwick loft space, the McKibbin lofts! Those kids are always up to something, whether fighting bedbugs or fighting the police. The ad, for the 255 McKibbin (248 are the ones with bedbugs) neglects to mention the building's lame "Sausage Parties, a recent flyer for which read, "Sausage Fest testosterone and PBR fueled nights on the town with lukewarm passion and a taste for the tepid. Come to 255!" For $2150 to $3000 a month, we'd like Champagne parties! According to the building's Wikipedia page, an apartment of theirs exploded in 2005. But those problems are easily overcome with a little catchy ad copy:

It's totally fun to point and laugh at Williamsburg as a post-collegiate paradise that takes kickball and Japanese sneakers way too seriously. However, keep in mind: when looking through these photos of last year's Brooklyn Kickball Dance, you may have the same realization I did: Damn, used to date that guy. Related: is the "Brooklyn Kickball" ankle tatto real?

Last week, we published the longest rant about hipster kickball in Brooklyn in the history of hipster kickball. It turns out that there's more to the story: BKKB co-founder Kevin Dailey, 38, has written a somehow more outrageous letter. This time it's a list of demands to Williamsburg dive bar Turkey's Nest, the closest bar to McCarren Park. (He was referred to as "Kev" in the previous screed.) Highlights and allegations? "What I make in one week of kickball is less than the margarita machine generates in one hour." Also, "Over those four years, kickball has made the Nest hundreds of thousands of dollars."

The competitive high-fashion t-shirt market is divided into those who believe their clever t-shirts mean something and those who don't. And, of course, those who don't care, but cultivate an aura of meaning as a marketing tactic, and also those who act too cool to care, but really do. Australian label Goat Boy sells its Princess Di t-shirt with the slogan "SHE'S DEAD, So get over it" for $49.95, so you know it's special (somebody buy one for Tina Brown, quick!).But they market that t-shirt with the slogan "IT'S JUST A FUCKING T-SHIRT." And with this "very violent" video, after the jump [via AdScam], of a guy wearing the shirt getting beaten up by an old woman. Which is appropriate on so many levels.

"I signed up with some friends to play kickball in McCarren (because running and drinking outdoors is fun!)" writes a tipster. "I was worried that I wouldn't be diehard enough for the people who normally turn out for this league, and Christ Almighty, I think I was right. The E-mail below is from a self-described "league vet" who needs to get a fucking life..." The email below proves that people have no idea how difficult it is to organize a Brooklyn kickball league these days...

Berliniamsburg: everybody's doing it! The European sister of Williamsburg is perfect for a perennial trend piece on the antidote to gentrification: you know, just chillin' while being a beatiful loser or an artist or a creator in Berlin. (Even me. I'm so going on vacation in two weeks!) And then T magazine tortures us with photos of two stylish musicians in a Berlin apartment to stab for. As it turns out, "What New York was in the 80s, Berlin is now," is a cliche, according to an interviewee.

You may think that George Clooney's girlfriend Sarah Larson is an innocent sweetheart, on account of how she is a former cocktail waitress now dating a rich celebrity with a few years on her, but you'd be wrong. Star tracked down secret photos that expose the real Sarah Larson as a girl who got drunk and wore bikinis. Amusingly, the photos are from Merlin Bronques' hiptard party/porn site, Last Night's Party. The real shame here is that George Clooney is dating a Blue States Lose target. [Star]

Vice Magazine, which was ironically abandoned by its target audience of dirty trendsetters at the exact moment it became popular, has finally discovered how to sell out IN SECRET. The new issue has an ad for BMW superimposed on the freaking cover itself—but it doesn't appear until you turn out the lights! As long as you don't read it in the dark, nobody will know you are bought and owned by corporations just like everything else in this rotten country, dude. This is a brilliant idea that may save the American print media and destroy the editorial/ advertising divide as we know it, and that's really all we have to say about that. [Media In Canada]

Angel Hess, the partially homeless Williamsburg dude/ artist who lives in an old purple truck charitably called "Purple 53," otherwise known as "that raggedy purple truck in the polluted lot across from the Turkey's Nest," wants to come visit your family! "Does anyone have friends or family in Alabama or Louisiana? I'm looking for some people to visit in Alabama or Louisiana," he writes today on Williamsboard.com. Williamsboard responds: "Get a job you fucking hippie," and then it gets worse from there. Well to be fair, Angel even hit Gawker up for money once! So maybe not the most gracious houseguest for your aunt in Birmingham. Decide for yourself; here's an inside and out look at his stylistic home on wheels:

[www.nytimes.com] Is organic farming just another hipster fad, or is it the solution to finally getting them out of Brooklyn. Discover in this article how rich kids use their parents' money to connect to the earth and follow their dreams. Find out if we can really blame Michael Pollans for the idea that, as one Billyburger put it, “Having a cool cheese in your fridge has taken the place of knowing what the cool band is, or even of playing in that band,”