Adventures in Editing: Omara

In the third issue of Pilvax, I had a chance to work with one of Hungary’s most esteemed Gypsy painters, Mara Olah—known more commonly as Omara. Originally, Omara was supposed to supply the occasional line drawings that we use to break up the text of the stories and poetry. Due to a printer’s error, two of her drawings came out faded and blotchy. Because we deal with such a limited print run, I was able to convince Omara to hand-draw the original illustrations directly into the magazine, making a unique work of art out of each copy. So, on a summer day, with two plastic Spar bags filled with magazines, Pilvax co-founder Aaron and I set out for Omara’s small country house, a few hours outside of Budapest.

With no street name or address, the house would have been difficult to find but for the fact that she was well known around the village. Omara greeted us by the gate of a trailer-sized abode, a woman approaching old-age, with a few missing teeth, trailed by a flurry of black hair. She led us into the house, warning us to avoid the well-sized pit in the front room. Before we had time to get comfortable, Omara insisted that she needed a shower. That was fine with us, though it turned out that Omara’s shower was a cold-water pump in the open air, out back. Aaron and I waited, avoiding looking out the window. Omara returned, wearing a towel, hair loose, looking refreshed if not a bit wild. Now it is your turn, she insisted. Our turn? For what? For a shower. Not for the last time, I would pretend not to understand Hungarian.

Still in her towel, Omara gave us a tour of the small house that she was building herself, by hand. The pit in the center of the floor? That would be the swimming pool. With almost anybody else, you would think they were joking. But one thing was clear to us early on: if Omara wanted to dig herself a swimming pool that took up half a room in a two-room house, that is what she was going to do.

Before we discussed work, Omara proudly showed us her press clippings: pictures of her with visiting foreign dignitaries, Hungarian celebrities and politicians, an article in Népszabadság, that emphasized her great love of taxicabs (Omara only traveled in taxis, not by train, never by bus). Then she told us it was time to go to work: but not at home. Only in a restaurant. Not to worry, she had already called a taxi.

Before arriving the inn, Omara had the cab stop at a green-grocer’s to pick up a watermelon. She loved watermelon, and chose the largest one. Now, you would think that an old gypsy woman walking into a restaurant with her own watermelon in tow would be an unwelcome surprise to most Hungarian waiters. But, no, the unflappable country waiters dutifully brought out plates and sliced up Omara’s melon for her, free of charge. Being one Hungary’s most illustrious painters has its benefits.

So, with colored pencils, we began to illustrate our 200 Pilvax’s, each of us contributing to the final result. Not much conversation transpired during the work; Aaron and I sipped beer, Omara slurped watermelon.

In her dealings with the waiters, and with us, one thing became clear: Omara was very conscious of the fact that she was Roma—playing it up for her audience, and using it to excuse herself from the mundane constraints of decorum. It seemed to be as much a tool as a part of her identity. Or, perhaps it wasn’t her ethnicity, which somebody like me – white, foreign – is so prepared, even eager, to experience. Mabye Omara was just an authentic artist, living by inner, constantly changing dictates.

Either way, there was obviously a lot more to Omara than a cartoonish, eccentric Gypsy woman. Early on in our visit, Omara had given me a painting. It was a deep-blue portrait of a beach-side house, dedicated to her daughter. The child-like subjects appear to inhabit a ghost world, indistinct and elegiac. Like her illustrations, it is a bit disturbing, and full of sorrow. It hangs on my wall, but it is not pleasurable to look at. But still, like any good painting, it seems to convey some truth or feeling that cannot be articulated with words.

The illustration job took longer than we had anticipated, and after the sun had fallen Omara announced she was too tired to continue. We had only made it through half the magazines, but editorial concerns had been set aside early on. It was obvious that we were indebted to the sloppy printing job—I think Aaron and I both fell a little in love with Omara that day.

Aaron and I took a room in the inn, and somehow Omara would make her way home. She had already refused money (though it was clear she didn’t have any of her own) and we were miles from her house.

Omara, how will you get back? I asked.

However God wills it, she said, gazing up at the sky. Then, after a deep breath, looking sage and oddly alluring, she intoned: call me a cab.

Matt Henderson Ellis is a freelance manuscript editor and author coach working with writers who publish in print and digitally.

Skin Care, or: the Metro-sexualization of the Budapest Male

Not too long ago, I wrote a post entitled the Hipster Conquest of Budapest, which delineated the susceptibility of local youth culture to overt and covert marketing strategies developed in the West. There is a flip-side to that story, however. Marketing is not entirely a social evil. There are instances where persuasive marketing can be a force for good (to my mind, Obama ran a marketing campaign as much as a political one–but that is another story). Take , for instance, the feminization of the average–typically Hungarian–urban male, disguised in the cloak of the metro-sexual: a marketing dream term if there ever was one. In evolving male conditioning about gender, where feminism failed in Hungary, marketing triumphed. Over the past ten years the average Budapest male is more attuned, whether they are conscious of it or not, to their feminine side.


There are several forces at work behind this transformation, and not all the usual culprits: the apparel and cosmetics industries, and mass media. I am thinking of role models, from the utter worship of ambi-sexual clothing horses like Freddie Mercury and football stars Ronaldo and David Beckham. And given that local men were already indulging in habits that would widely be considered overly feminine anywhere outside of LA (the double cheek, man-on-man kiss, and rosé wine spritzers); coupled with the lack of imaginative home-grown fashion, and adding unbridled acceptance of capitalism and mall culture, the territory was ripe for a metro-sexual revolution. Indeed, some of the change came from within. Take the Hungarian hip-hop band, Belga, who routinely, royally, and amusingly skewer macho behavior in their songs and videos. (On a digressive note: Belga also manage to consistently create original and entertaining Hungarian hip-hop. Not to mention, they smoke, live). Or the first openly out politician Gábor Szetey. Even Hungarian skinheads are more fashionable than ever, sporting their Lonsdale hoodies and Fred Perry logos. It absolutely delights me that working-class Hungarian skinheads are saving up 25,000 forints, around 130 USD, to sport a Fred Perry polo, along with 150 USD Doc Marten’s. The Magyar Gárda too, though far from the Magyar-Práda, are quite fastidiously dressed in their black Fourth Reich uniforms. Hitler’s tailor’s would have been proud

A change of attitudes is harder to verify. Correlating the drop in incidence of spousal abuse with the sightings of pleasingly colorful summer scarves, would be both speculative and irresponsible. But one thing is for sure: gay men are more comfortable coming out in Budapest, and have been doing so in legion; and showing their consumer muscle with the opening of numerous gay-oriented clubs and bars, and–for the first time in the country’s history–enfranchising themselves politically. This, in the eyes of anybody who believes in human rights, can only be a good thing. And don’t doubt that the marketing of gays to a straight audience has had a lot to do with that. Not everybody may cop to having a gay friend in Hungary, but everybody has seen Queer Eye for the Straight Eye. Just one more debt that will go unpaid by the straight world.

If we need any more evidence of the metro-sexualization of the local male, we need only look at the average cosmetics store, where there are a wide variety of colognes, and men’s skin-care products available, not to mention male cosmetics. These days the bald goon at the club door smells of winsome CK One and businessmen smell-test soap at Lush. I don’t want to harp on Hungarian Emo any more than I already have–it exists for a reason–and one of these reasons may very well be a rebellion against the expected standards of male behavior. (That, or the CEOs of all the hair-product companies got together in a dark room, scheming to leave no hungo-hairsyle unperfected without gel, spray or mousse.) As if this wasn’t enough proof, there is now a males-only day spa–because, you know, us men just need some alone space when nurturing our wellness.

The confluence of this might be the summer scarf–so aggressively pushed by Zara and H & M as the must-have summer accessory. Let’s face it, nobody, male or female, really needs a summer scarf, unless you are susceptible to hickeys. (Though, that kind of defeats the point of getting a hickey in the first place.) Summer scarves are gratuitous fashion, designed only to move more product off the shelves of the large department stores. Conversely, it does fly in the wind as a kind of liberating flag–that attitudes can change, albeit slowly, certainly slower than fashion. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.

I can’t prove, scientifically or otherwise, that marketing has done more to affect male behavior patterns than feminism in Hungary, but this being a personal blog and not a news-source, so I don’t feel particularly compelled to. But change for the better is afoot. It will not come without struggle or resistance, and backlash–but I am sure the marketers will devise a strategy to neutralize and sell that too.




Matt Henderson Ellis is a freelance manuscript editor and author coach working with writers who publish in print and digitally.

The Case for László Sárközi

Some day you will be able to talk about László Sárközi without having to mention that he is a Roma (and one of the very few Roma poets publishing in Hungary today). But now, for better or worse, he is burdened with that mantle and all the expectation and associations that come with being a gypsy writer in post-communist Central Europe.

Pilvax was lucky enough to be the first literary review to publish Sárközi in English. But getting Sárközi in print proved to be a challenge. For starters, he is not an easy man to find. I had to go through an intermediary, who kept promising me Sárközi, but whenever we were supposed to meet, the writer was indisposed. I finally did catch up with him, at a private writers’ canteen in Pest. He could only manage to make a scrawl on the publishing agreement as his writing hand was mostly unusable due to an incident that was either a bar fight or a slip on the pavement (the explanation was vague, as was about everything that came from Sárközi’s mouth). The second time I met him, he was in a hospital near Marczibányi Tér, where he was recovering from another mysterious accident, which left him slightly crippled. When offered cab fare to attend a reading of his work, he declined, preferring to take the tram. He did show up at the reading though, along with a gang of thuggish guys who tried the patience of just about everybody around them. Later I was informed that they were his former residents of the orphanage he was raised in.

There are many stories surrounding Sárközi and talking to him in person did little to distinguish the truth from the mythologizing. I know he was raised in an orphanage, and was discovered and mentored by the infamous Hungarian poet György Faludy. It is also said he was homeless (unlikely – there are relatively few homeless gypsies in Budapest – they tend to squat or live communally). What is for sure is that he is forever getting in accidents or otherwise injuring his body, his place of residence is constantly changing, and anybody seriously interested in contemporary Hungarian poetry knows his name. Sárközi may be obscure as a person, but his poetry blossoms in gorgeous imagery and is chiseled and rigorous in style. He is a genuine talent, and perhaps a genius. And, what he has made for himself in this life, he made through the craft of poetry, which is unlikely for a person of any race.

Below is a portion of László Sárközi’s Inner World: A Sonnet Wreath, expertly translated by Andrew Singer (the entire fifteen sonnet cycle was previously published in Pilvax Issue 3).

I. Night

I walk the valley of green and silent dreams
and still don’t know where I will be tomorrow;
my moods propel me, they drive me far,
anticipating night, craving respite.

Nightfall is a scaly wound, and then
night’s well holds the moon – a brave warrior’s fate
in shining armor; recoiling to die again.

Down endless streets, new streets run
and where this movement ends, I’ve no idea.
I straddle the border-stone, gazing at naught.

Cold flash, and yellow lamp regards me,
light glints off blue-musted cobblestones:
with ten thousand solitudes, the night caresses,
where a black moon renders every shadow brown.

II. Beggar’s Sonnet

Where a black moon renders every shadow brown,
from a dirty cardboard box a beggar coughs,
his dog poking him – “Leave me, it still hurts so…” –
and eying his master in a Faithful Zen Ring.
The dwarf shifts cannily; no one cares;
he is crawling now on backward-facing knees;
now he throws his cup pugnaciously down:
dawn’s anger recoils on marble walls.
So I wandered by with pocketed hands
and spat into the beggar’s jolting cup –
may the rest be veiled and then forgotten…
but neither of us turned lighter from it.
I’m wretched: good intention has died in me.
My twenty-nine years are just a giddy game.

III. Facing Eternity

My twenty-nine years are just a giddy game,
one day I am ornate; the next I’m plain,
an endless whirl of good and bad design.

My life is like a dream – it comes to naught,
realizing absurdly the weight of the grave –
nor is the stone’s perfume enjoyed in moss.

Whatever I build is in vain, for windmills
and dusty lips are rumbling from the past,
for all is fleeting that once was joy:
the once-shining diamond shall be as ash.

My light fades, morning falls to night –
Once you regaled the evergreen dark
Pandora: a box forever opened, as
I go on – shivering, wounded by light.


About the author: Matt Ellis is an author coach and manuscript editor at Word Pill Editing. Have a look here for an affordable Manuscript Critique.

Top 5 Expat Traps

5. Relationships. Hungary may seem like a bachelor’s paradise at first blush, but the reality is much more complicated. It is true that any number of long-term relationships and marriages spring up between expats and locals, but there also seems to be a disproportionate amount of break-ups, infidelity, and co-dependence. When so much around you is foreign, it is really easy to cling to somebody who can navigate that web. The real test of the relationship’s value seems to be in the dynamic change that occurs outside the context of this country.

4. Cadism. The sleazy cousin to the above. Despite the sad-sack expats lined up at the bar of certain local establishments, is relatively easy to carouse in Budapest, so much so that it becomes a viable pastime for those with any talent for it. But this ultimately turns into a hollow pursuit, even for the most lascivious of us.

3. Cynicism. With so much corruption and negativity around, it is easy to become infected by lowered standards and expectations. But dreams never get downsized, no matter where you escape to, and if you are not going to make it as a writer or artist in the West, it is equally unlikely that you will make it here. The result is a blaming of the crass commercial forces that dictate to whom the spoils are granted, rather than honest self-appraisal.

2. Alcoholism. “When the morning comes twice a day or not at all.” That Uncle Tupelo line rings harrowingly true if you have ever seen the sun rise from inside a kért for a few consecutive mornings. It is always easiest to look at the next guy and say he is worse off, because there is always somebody worse off hereabouts. Lots of factors conspire to make alcoholism particularly easy to fall into in Budapest. First, drinking is an acceptable part of the social culture of Hungarians. But equally dangerous is the lack of real diverse English-language entertainment. Film, theater options remain limited. Bars are just the most convenient, cheapest form of play-time activity.

1. Stasis. What day is today? If you can’t answer that question then you probably need to check yourself. Most boho expats fall prey to this condition at one point or another. Stasis enables all the above, which is why it is number one. I know people who are repeating word for word the same grandiose plans they had when they arrived to Budapest so many years ago, without having taken few, if any, steps to accomplish them. It is just simpler, and probably less psychically damaging, to talk. And because you can create a bubble around yourself here so easily, you can live in a state of suspended animation, without having much meaningful contact with your native community. Unfortunately, time does not stop, and when you come up for air, friends have started families, bought houses, made something of themselves. Then again, there are those who travel here precisely not to make anything of themselves. And in this success-driven, globalized culture, that goal is at least a little applaudable.


-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.


Matt Henderson Ellis is a freelance manuscript editor and author coach working with writers who publish in print and digitally.

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Suffix It: A Book Review

“It should be against the law to mock somebody who tries his luck in a foreign language.” So begins Chico Buarque’s novel Budapest. It’s a winning opening line, both disarming and knowing, especially when read by somebody who has tried to learn Hungarian, “the only tongue the devil respects.”

To learn a foreign language, especially one so different from English as Hungarian, takes a certain leap of faith, a willingness to participate in a mode of expression that appears to have been rearranged and, in many cases, dissected and reassembled. It takes a similar leap of faith to enjoy Buarque’s novel, in which stories unpack themselves like Chinese boxes, and realities and narratives are constantly shape-shifting, challenging and undermining whatever presumptions the reader has already anchored themselves to.

The story begins when the Brazilian narrator’s plane is waylaid in Budapest after a bomb scare. As a ghost-writer and linguist, he becomes immediately enchanted with the Hungarian language and Budapest itself. On the most simplified level, the story follows the path of the narrator, Jose Kosta, (Josef K?) on his path to fluency in Hungarian, after breaking with his wife and falling in love with his language teacher. But nothing is so easy in Budapest, as Kosta observes of the language, “he had no way of knowing where each one (word) began or finished. It was impossible to detach one form the next; it would be like trying to cut a river with a knife.”

Like Budapest’s körút(s), the language is circular: base words are stacked with suffixes and prefixes that hang off them like weights on an unwieldy barbell. The characters’ destinies run the same circular route: histories, texts, and relationships bleed into each other until the reader is not sure if Kosta can be trusted as a narrator, or if he is the narrator at all.

In one phantasmagoric sequence reminiscent of Victor Pelevin (who I have brought up before in this blog: he is the ‘thinking man’s’ Murakami), a night of drinking turns into a potential ménage-à-trois, then morphs into a game of Russian roulette, then a robbery, then back into a night of drinking. Buarque stays with the scene only long enough for us to think we have a grip on its reality before he pulls the rug out from under our feet. Buarque, a composer and writer, wisely keeps his actual observations and use of Hungarian to a minimum (which led me to suspect he doesn’t actually speak Hungarian, though perhaps he simply doesn’t want to confound the reader further with its utter strangeness). But then he floors you with an occasion description like the following, “Seeing Hungarian in words for the first time, I felt as though I was looking at their skeletons: ö az álom elötti, talajon táncol.” Or “I couldn’t distinguish the words, so I knew it was Hungarian.”

In the same way every New Yorker inhabits a different city, with its own individual, constantly changing landmarks and signifiers, Kosta’s Budapest is not to be taken too literally: he employs made-up names, cigarette brands, street names, literary societies, and hungaricum (perhaps accidentally-on-purpose referring to Tokaj wine as Tajok wine). We know to take it all with a grain of salt when Kosta is both ghost-writing poetry for a has-been Hungarian poet and correcting locals on their grammar. Kosta’s Budapest is not my Budapest, just as his story, in the end, is not even his story.

Because of Kosta’s occupation as a ghost-writer, ownership of the text is a theme that is constantly returned to throughout the book. Indeed, a writer for whom he has ghost-written a book uses that very book to seduce Kosta’s own wife away from him. Like Jim Crace’s Genesis, and to a lesser degree, Arthur Philips' Prague, or even better, like having a friend from out of town come visit, it is a thrill to experience Budapest through somebody else’s eyes, to see it reinvented, even if that invention does not conform to your own. Budapest is a pleasing, occasionally perplexing read: like the Hungarian language, it is potent and fluid, but then again, so is nitro-glycerin.

Matt Henderson Ellis is a freelance manuscript editor and author coach working with writers who publish in print and digitally.

The Hipster Conquest of Budapest, or: Teenage Lobotomy II: It Came From Within!

This is a continuation of post The Hipster Conquest of Budapest, which can be found below.

Of course I was just funnin’ ya with that Ramones video, because there has been no force more powerful in the appropriation and reselling of youth culture than MTV. Thanks to its far-reaching, Vans-shod tentacles, kids here can see exactly how their counter-parts in the West are dressing; and H & M, plus any number of fly-by-night mall boutiques, fall all over themselves to cater to those dictates. It is a nifty closed-circuit for sellers: MTV brands the look, the labels that sell the look advertise on MTV. It is win/win for all involved, and has globalized fashion trends (to wit: these people have a lot of Hungarian wiggers to answer for – I hope they sleep well at night). Couple the perpetually replenishing cool-factor of rock (and all its sub-genres) with the visual stimulus of MTV and, as that Vampire Weekend song goes, the kids don’t stand a chance. And countrymen, let’s not fool ourselves that post-bloc youth are aping our style because it is ‘American’, it is because MTV is American.

To call kids who comb the images on MTV for fashion cues ‘fashion victims’ would not be too far off target. But youth everywhere are a marketer’s dream. They come to the game with open minds, and deep identity insecurities. Basically, kids would buy the dirt from under their own fingernails if you could figure out a way to sell it to them. Which is why – in Hungary, at least – hallways and even classrooms of schools are prime advertising space for youth-oriented products, a nefarious little practice that has raised objections in about zero quarters. It is not just the usual suspects like Coke getting in on the action. Because ‘cool’ marketers know, when something takes here, it takes big: Green Day, for example, the only thing that both my second graders and high-schoolers could agree upon. (Green Day themselves were only too happy to benefit from their unlikely success in Eastern Europe – nice fifty dollars a pop ‘punk’ show, boys).

But the youth market sought by MTV and kids who have appropriated hipness are not the same thing. MTV is cool, or at least what passes for cool. Hipness is harder to nail down, and should be harder to market and, thus, to market to. Take Tisza trainers, for example. For those that don’t know, Tisza is the former state-owned brand of athletic training shoe that was sold under socialism. These days, under the guidance of a young entrepreneur, they are hundred-dollar a pair, high-design sneakers that are so omnipresent on the first generation of youth not to know socialism, that they are almost a cliché. They are not only a great product, Tiszas are cool – but they are not genuinely hip. Should kids start collecting vintage Tiszas, that would be hip. Hipness is all about indirect consumerism: building an identity from consumer artifacts of the past (whether it is your nostalgia you are indulging in, or somebody else’s does not seem relevant). For example: cowboy shirts (plenty of those here, these days), Star Wars figures, Members Only-style windbreakers, cartoon-character lunch boxes, or, say Def Leppard tee shirts. Star Wars figures are nobody’s idea of cool, but if presented in the correct ironic framing, they are very hip.




In the tipping point (an overused buzz word these days, but applicable here) of hip in Budapest, something interesting happened: Csendes Art Bar. Few locals and fewer expats know about Csendes, but it represents the first real home-grown expression of Hungarian hipsterism that I have encountered. What trips me up about Csendes is that it looks like no place in Williamsburg, Silver Lake, or Wicker Park, but you could set it down in any of those locales and it would not be out of place. It is only imitative in its aesthetic, not in its actual style. It is totally Hungarian, but hip to the gills. For starters, there is virtually nothing in Csendes that is new. It is a shrine to ironic comment on childhood. Virtually every decoration (or installation) uses a cartoon character, scavenged doll, or old movie poster, not to mention, a vintage Tisza trainer bag; plus they did something I have never seen a bar or café in Budapest do before – they kept the name and a portion of the old sign of the business preceded it – the Csendes Étterem – and incorporated it into the design. Needless to say, it is also pretty great place to have a beer on a Saturday night.

In the States, way back when, hipsterism began as an organic set of values (of the beat generation), then changed into a lifestyle, then finally evolved into a fashion pose that could be appropriated by media and corporate interests, and sold back to the youth market by the likes of Urban Outfitters, Capital Records, and eBay; whereas the Hungarian hipsterism has worked in the opposite direction, from a mediated style sold to the youth market over the airwaves, to something more organic, and authentic feeling, that is at least attempting to defy being sold to. They do tend to do things in reverse here. Optimistically, there will also be a set of values that will bind this community together other than coveting new/vintage KISS tee-shits, but perhaps that is hoping for too much.

This embrace of consumerism, without buying anything ‘new’ that is the hallmark of hipsterism, must be a conundrum for marketers who had it so easy with Hungarian youth ten, even five, years ago. But they didn’t clock all those credits in Ivy League psych-departments for nothing. One way to get their dollar, at least in Budapest, is to create new ‘vintage-looking’ clothing. There is plenty of that, in used clothing shops and department stores alike. Another way is to brand something as cool so persuasively that you can sell the mere logo, like they do with the Vespa bags. This all leaves me nowhere in terms of my own black bag. What the hell, I might as well chuck it all and buy that black Ramones official diaper-carrier bag – my own checkered soul was sold long ago: some hipster kid is probably cutting it up into Kockás Fülű Nyúl sock puppets by now.


-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.



Matt Henderson Ellis is a freelance manuscript editor and author coach working with writers who publish in print and digitally.

The Hipster Conquest of Budapest, or: Teenage Lobotomy

Anybody who knows me knows I carry a black book bag, basically, at all times I’m clothed, and sometimes when I’m not. They tend to last a year or two before the strap or zippers break, or holes wear through the bottom. Budapest, it is no secret, is about the worst place to be if you need something both specific and basic, such as knee socks, contact lens fluid, or, perhaps, a black shoulder bag. No problem: I know the drill. Hit every Iguana, Alter-Ego, or alt-rock haberdashery until something turns up. Only this time, nothing is turning up. Sure, there are plenty of black bags, but the trend (and there is no bucking trends, not in this city) is for shoulder bags with Converse, Vespa, or Nightmare before Christmas logos. I am making due without until I am next in Vienna.


It must be a great time to be a marketer: getting the cool kids to act as walking billboards for your products, and having them pay for the privilege. Of course, there is more to this whole scenario than just bags and logos. And not all of it is bad. Budapest has experienced, in the past few years, an amping up of youth culture and its youth-culture cool-factor. In other words, Budapest got hip. I had always taken comfort (albeit small) in the existence of Prague and Berlin, both cities magnetically drawing all the American hipsters off course before they could reach our humble town. Budapest has no heat, no buzz, and even less cool. And that is fine with me, and just about everybody I know. But what I didn’t anticipate is that hipster culture would spread like a virus, ignoring all boundaries of border and nationality. Hungarian kids got hip all by themselves. Well, not exactly. There was a ton of help from those who profit from their consumer choices. Local youth are sitting ducks for this kind of ‘cool’ branding, and have swallowed it whole. Their lives simply haven’t been the media blitzkrieg of that of the average American teen. Thus, they either haven’t developed the necessary defenses or haven’t been taught to see through the manipulation. And they tend to move in larger herds, whereas American teens have far more sub-sets of counter-culture to chose from. Hungarian – and youth of all over the post-Soviet era – are far more susceptible to 'cool-branding' than their American counter-parts, if for no other reason than we invented it. Or maybe they just don’t care. For whatever reason, it seems that the entire sub-22-year-old population is hip.

It is no great revelation that marketers love nothing more than a solid counter-culture with its own organically grown aesthetic: the more authentic and rigid the better. It is a brilliant trick, appropriating a sub-culture’s aesthetic, and then selling it back to them. I should learn how to do that. Take, for instance, punk rock. Ever heard of the Vans Warped Tour? When I was a teenager, Vans would have fit exactly nowhere into the equation of punk-plus-tour. Then came the almost overnight uptake of punk by American youth via the (major label, lest we forget) likes of Nirvana and their ilk. Whether kids like me, who helped create this sub-culture (by buying indie-label records, going to shows, reading Maximum Rock and Roll) were buying was irrelevant. Nirvana created a ‘mass sub-culture’, and one that demanded to be out-fitted. Too obvious? Forget Nirvana, let’s look at the Ramones: perhaps the coolest band of all time, and one of the primary forces in actually inventing punk. But that was then, this is now. The Ramones are no longer a band – they have cashed in on all that cool-band cache and have become a brand: and not in the way KISS is a brand: they have become a clothing and accessories brand. Ramones tee? check. Ramones belt buckle? check. Ramones scented candle: smells just like teen spirit! ok, check! Only, ask a hipster Hungarian kid which their favorite Ramones song is, and you will see just how hollow a trend it is. "A Ramones album? You mean, they make music too?" Can I get an ‘I wanna be sedated’? At least the kids know Nirvana was a band, not a fashion label.


But let’s imagine you are totally out of it, or just too young to remember when grunge ruled the radio waves and runways. How about Disney? Yes, even they are going for the hipster's pocketbook with a darker, edgier branding. Now that the kids who have grown out of their Little Mermaid backpacks have grown up, it is time to comment on the passing of that childhood phase with, what else, but more Disney gear. What hipster wouldn’t want a hip-hop-inspired graffiti Mickey Mouse baseball cap? I am this close to wanting one myself.

Hey: bad news for idealistic former punks, great news for the average young Hungarian hipster. Buying quirky things, creating your identity around some ironic pastiches of childhood is fun! You get all these funky anime dolls to collect, you can pierce yourself anywhere you choose, look cool in the eyes of your friends, and more importantly, your parents just don’t get it. And, let’s face it: buying things is fun, period. It might not be authentic individualism, but at least they think it is, at least they are trying, and that is nice to see. It is far more appealing than the drab beige or brown uniform of the Hungarian male circa 2000. Plus, all this has fueled a boom in vintage clothing shops, which has made clothing shopping in Budapest much more affordable and interesting. From a purely selfish angle, this hipster marketing triumph is good for the likes of me, as it increases my own choice as a local consumer. I, too, wear Tisza trainers, and have a Def Leppard tee-shirt, without ever having owned a Def Leppard album. But American and Hungarian hipsterism is different, and in a vital way. How so? Return next week for Part II of The Hipster Conquest of Budapest, or: Hey! Ho! Let’s Go (shopping!).

But, for now, a Ramones video, which I highly recommend not skipping. It will do you a power of good, and, for the time being at least, it is free.





-Matt Ellis is a free-lance editor for Word Pill, a service for writers of fiction and non-fiction.

Top Five Budapest Cafés for Writing

Since the tacky renovation of my favorite writing café, Angelica Kávéház, on the Buda side, I have made it my business to scout some other attractive places to sit for a few hours with a notebook and pen, or laptop. It is not easy. A good café for writing is one where you can find solitude while still being amidst a crowd (which is not entirely unlike a writer’s function in society). There should be noise present, but not invasively so. And, for me, there needs to be an unnamable sort of moldering in the air, the knowledge that writers before you have fearlessly taken up their task in the space you are sitting in, and others will come after. Every good café has a ghost or two.

New Starbucks clones, as well as old Viennese-style coffee houses, abound in Budapest. Some are opulent beyond belief (the New York Café), some are local-minded and packed with students (Praga café) but only a few are truly ideal writing spaces. It is worth pointing out that, at the turn of the last century, the city’s cafes were hotbeds of intellectual activity, and social clubs for the those involved in the golden age of writing in Budapest, when the famed Nyugat literary review published the work of Hungary’s most daring, innovative, as well as revolutionary (in the real sense of the world) writing–the writers known as the nyugatos. Those days are gone, but the writers who lived and wrote over a hundred years ago (Móricz, Babits, and Ady, to name but a few) are paid homage in one way or another at cafes across the city, which are quick to put on display any paraphernalia connecting them to this unique literary scene.

As for me-I write, live, and commit acts of minor revolutionary import, on the Pest side, and the list reflects that:

5. Café Eckermann: the only truly new space on my list, though its former incarnation on Andrássy was a regular spot of local artist and writers, including Esterházy Péter. Not many revolutions were started from that place, but more than a few drinking binges were. The new space on Ráday is one of the only cafés that can still actually lay claim to hosting a literary community: editors of the German literary review Harom Holló (Three Ravens) meet here regularly, and their review is available for purchase. Eckermann also offers great vegetarian and home-cooked food, as noted in my review on chew.


4. Puskin Kávéház: Nothing grand or spectacular here, but the Puskin has always been a wonderful spot to people watch, and be left alone (in a good way) by the wait-staff for hours. Its space is functional, but all the components come together well, and the coffee is very fairly priced. Frequently doubling as a gallery, up-and-coming Hungarian artists and photographers are chosen by a curator who knows what they are doing. This is a great fall-back café that stays open later than most others. Puskin, it should go without saying, is named for one of Russia’s greatest writers.


3. Uránia Café in the Uránia National Cinema: they invented the cliché ‘painstakingly restored’ with the Uránia Café in mind. The details on the vaulting and ceiling are worth a trip alone. There are surprisingly few tables in the large space, and they are set far enough apart that conversations of surrounding patrons diminish to nothing more than a pleasant babble. Plus, there is a choice table, but only one, on the balcony overlooking Rákóczi, for those who really want to be alone to work.



2. Művész Café: I have been going to Művész off an on since arriving in Budapest so many years ago. There is a faded, refined feel to the place; it is homey and well patronized by expats, though it also attracts its share of tourists. That they closed for renovations was cause for worry, but they reopened with no real modernizations; it still looks old, just a bit more polished. Művész is a Budapest classic, and good for writers who don’t mind overhearing the next table’s chatter, and can allow for interruptions from friends, as it is quite popular. Prices reflect the Andrássy location.

1. August Cukrászdá: Just when I thought I knew every good café or pub to go to in Budapest, friends over at the food/music blog Dumneazu turned me on to this classic café. Old and elegant without being ostentatious or stuffy, professional and deferential service, a few dark, shadowed nooks, and fantastic pastries, cakes, and coffee, it has everything a writer could want. August is a quiet, atmospheric, and intimate space, hidden in a courtyard off Rákóczi. It attracts mostly locals, as the tourist traffic is no doubt lured away by the near-by Café Central, which reeks of literary history, but is a bit too up-scale for my taste. August is great for those who like solitude and quiet within a public space, and like to write in long hand (I have yet to see a laptop there); which means, ideal for me.

Matt Henderson Ellis is a freelance manuscript editor and author coach working with writers who publish in print and digitally.

The Latest Fret of Collective Nouns Arrive

Collective noun designations recently approved of and released by the English/Hungarian Transliteration and Pajtásság Society.

1. A scold of néni(s)
2. A tiff of skinheads
3. A floss of poppy seeds
4. A bloat of lángos
5. A squabble of ticket collectors
6. A stumble of thongs
7. A jabber of waiters
8. A nettle of panhandlers
9. A scruple of tourists
10. A rubato of rioters
11. A blunt of riot police

Matt Henderson Ellis is a freelance manuscript editor and author coach working with writers who publish in print and digitally.