Buddha's Belly

Sitting on a train from Vienna to Budapest with a colleague who also dabbles in food writing I arrived at a revelation: it is much more mentally healthy to approach restaurant criticism in Budapest with a generous, if not naïve, spirit. You are bound to enjoy yourself and your meal more. My colleague’s attitude towards even some of the most odious, philistine establishments in the city was one of a Zen-like acceptance and appreciation. He was even quick to praise a late-night establishment that has a policy of charging 2,000 forints should you happen to vomit at your table (I guess this happens enough there that they actually need a policy). As a result, he is rarely upset or disappointed.

Unfortunately, I know too much about how restaurants operate to keep his level of sangfroid. For instance, I know that restaurateurs can recoup a bundle before the place even opens by taking under the table cash – in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars – just to sign on to sell a particular line of beer or tobacco. I know the shysterism management directs against their staff to either siphon off their tips or wages. But, ultimately, the buck stops with you, and wait staff, in some cases, are forced to cheat you if they want to make a living at their job. The list of tricks employed is long and varied, from watering drinks to reselling leftovers, to adding a gratuity charge without specifying it as such.

Further adding to my cynicism about dining in Budapest is the sloppy, erratic service. The examples of bizarre service have almost nothing to do with the exclusivity of the restaurant. For example, at Klassz, one of Budapest’s best, the waiter arrived after about twenty minutes, took my date’s order, then walked away as though I wasn’t even there. At a worker’s lunch canteen, the counter help literally yelled at me because I ordered a beet salad with a vegetable stew, two items that are traditionally not coupled, according to local eating traditions. Wary of that, the next night at Ellátó, I asked the bar staff what side went well with the entree I had ordered, only to be chewed out again because they are not “a fancy French restaurant where things like that matter.” Other dining slights have included being shortchanged 10,000 forints at Pata Negra, being denied a glass of water during the longest heat wave in recent Hungarian history at Bamboo Sziget, and having the waiter pour himself a glass of wine from my bottle of Pinot Noir at BORlaBOR. More endearingly, at a now-closed eatery, a waiter offered to pick the pork from my bean soup when reminded him I had asked for a vegetarian dish.

I am not sure how my colleague would have handled these situations. I tend to complain, shoot dirty looks, up and leave, then write nasty things on chew. Hence, the list of restaurants that I actually frequent is surprisingly low. It has gotten to the point where I am afraid to revisit a restaurant I actually like because service and quality of food are so erratic in this city. So, next time, instead of a date, mabe I will bring along my pocket-sized Buddha, to remind me that cynicism breeds cynicism, and it is also OK to come to a meal with an open mouth and mind.


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

Guitar Heroes

There is a line in Szomjas György’s film Kopaszkutya where the singer of a struggling rock band, in their dilemma as to how to reinvent themselves, asks “OK, but who should we sound like?” This seems to be the first and foremost question in the minds of local pop musicians. Old school band Bikini answered that question for themselves in late-eighties video for their single “Legyek jó” (Be Good): everybody in spandex and a mullet. So what you get, in this delightfully cheesy take on life behind the Iron Curtain, is an admixture of Outfield, Mr. Mister, and Duran Duran.

It is easy to mock Bikini (trench-coats with the sleeves rolled up is never a good look), but in reality, "Legyek jó" was a fairly bold video. Instead of the subtle coding that many musicians under Socialism used to express their disdain for the authoritarian government, Bikini went for a balls-to-the-wall representation of dark government forces keeping down the little guy (who is clearly ready to rock). You could make the case that this is a far more daring protest song than anything Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, or Rage Against the Machine put out, considering the freedoms those artists enjoyed and the monetary gain that resulted from their rebellion. What could Bikini hoped to have gained? Pretty much the same thing that the band in Kopaszkutya wanted: a following big enough to support themselves, and, most importantly, a public venue to play in. Kopaszkutya’s venue was a rock club in Kőbánya, Bikini’s was their own country, without fear of censorship or arrest. And by using the language of Western consumer culture (videos, rock music, fashion) to express themselves, it was a double affront to the reigning regime. True, Solidarity was well along in catalyzing Poland’s defiant stance towards the Soviet Union, and Hungary was always the most permissive of the regimes, but still, nobody knew for sure that Gorbachev would back down, and the freedom of the media was far from tested (if anybody can enlighten me as to how this video was broadcast or distributed, please do).

On a more atomic level, there are some wonderful details in "Legyek jó". First is the representation of the police as mini-skirt wearing, anti-Bond-girl vixens, constantly sharpening their long red fingernails. Apparat-chicks, anybody? It is not just Bikini that has pulled back the Iron Curtain to reveal a burlesque show: look to Elton John’s “Nikita” (made in the same time period) to see the sexy side of Socialist repression (Elton John looking no less silly than Bikini, something like Truman Capote in his fat phase, if Truman Capote was a swishy Bedouin). Also, there is a wonderful truth is the real enemy in "Legyek jó": bureaucracy. The video begins with the singer about to knock (police?) files down like dominoes, and ultimately, the authority figure drowns in his own paperwork. It is not a very sexy target, but telling and real to anybody who has had to navigate the preposterous amount of bureaucracy needed to accomplish almost anything legally even in post-bloc Hungary.

Ultimately, it seems Bikini has been lost to the ages, which is a shame. I wonder if local bands, who are still asking “Who should we sound like?” shouldn’t also ask, “Who should we emulate?” It would nice to see the pop world make good on at least some the daring of Bikini during that tumultuous period.

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.

Erről Van Szó!

Last week’s post got me thinking about some of the strange, beautiful, and funny Hungarian words I have come across. I have compiled a brief, but by no means comprehensive, list of my favorites, in no particular order. For a guide to Hungarian pronunciation check here.

megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért: means because of your holier-than-thou attitude, and allegedly the longest existing Hungarian word, though I seem to remember a word that has to do with cabbage that is similar in length. Anybody dare to count the suffixes here? Ten?

pitypang, pünkösdirózsa: flower names are great in Hungarian. Dandelion and peony respectively.

vízicsikó: means seahorse. Of course, when translating seahorse into Hungarian for two young new students, I made the mistake of calling it a vízicsikló, which roughly translates as a sea-clit.

csecsebecse: one of the first words I learned in Hungarian, and I still get a kick out of saying it. Csecsebecse is the collective term for knick-knacks. Say it out loud, it's fun!

link alak: lazybones, good-for-nothing. Well understood in these parts.

ölni: Hungarians have few homonyms, but the ones they have are very telling. This is the verb for killing as well as the noun for one's lap. Ölel means to hug or embrace: dangerously close to the verb for killing. In the same category is paradicsom, which means both paradise and tomato.

arcátlan, szemtelen: literally faceless and eyeless, but both mean obnoxious or insolent.

lurkó, rajkó: the first is a street urchin, the later a Gypsy street urchin.

palimadár: a sucker bird, or just a sucker. There is one hatched every minute, I’m told.

csaj, csávó: slang adopted from the Lovári Gypsy dialect. Girl and boy respectively.

házisárkány: literally, a house-dragon; figuratively, a woman who is overly dominant around the house. Also in this category is the papucsférj, or slipper husband, a man who is henpecked. The papucsférj is quite the opposite of the házisárkány, but somehow they get along well together.

smárolni: slang, means to make out.

kolbászolni, lekenyerezni: two verbs created from food-related base words. Kolbász is sausage, but to kolbász, means to wander around. Kenyér is bread, but to bread somebody down, is to bribe them.

Elefántcsontpart: Even the Hungarian announcers at the last World Cup got a kick out of the translation of the Ivory Coast: literally Elephant Bone Coast. Even better: elefántcsonttorony, which is an ivory tower, or, an elephant bone tower. If that is not evocative language, what is?

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.

My Other Car is a Rolls from IKEA

It appears that the economic downturn has affected even the very rich, who are now buying their wheels by bulk (but still pay extra for a plastic bag to carry it home in).

Second Cities

Once there was a dusty, grey city in the middle of a flat countryside, where almost anything went: prostitution was tacitly legal, white slavery was common practice, bunkos angled for your gambling money, tax-dodging was a local pastime, and corruption from organized crime reached the highest levels of municipal government. A hit could be put out on a rival for a pocketful of change, delivered by thugs who congregated around popular nightspots. Sound familiar? Welcome to Chicago before the turn of the twentieth century.

Of course this could also be modern-day Budapest. There are more general similarities between the two cities as well: both lie in the center of vast swaths of agricultural regions, both are waning industrial hubs, and both have experienced, at one point in their history, influxes of German and Polish immigration. There is a working-class feeling common to Chicago and Budapest, despite growing prosperity. More importantly, both cities wallow in their underdog status, and compensate with inflated local pride and grandiose architecture. In hearing how the daredevil Hungarian construction workers defied safety regulations in erecting the Megyeri Bridge, I couldn’t help but think of the perils of creating, not to mention riding, the first Ferris wheel, invented for Chicago as a landmark for the 1893 World’s Fair, or the completion of the world’s first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building on LaSalle.


Even at the most visceral level, upon arriving in Budapest for the first time, I felt it shared a kinship with my hometown. There was a gracious decay to the buildings’ facades, particularly in District VII and VIII, that harmonized with my memories of Wrigleyville and Uptown in the 1980s. It was gratifying to learn that a particular section of District VIII was referred to as Chicago, for its shady reputation and criminal element. And, lucky me, for the first several years in Budapest I lived on the outskirts of ‘Chicago’, observing the sleazier aspects of Rákóczi tér, and discovering, late one boozy night, a local speakeasy.

If you want to talk about vice in the USA, forget Vegas. Turn-of-the-century Chicago had entire blocks, neighborhoods, filled with nothing but bars and brothels, where girls from the countryside and from Europe were baited with well-paying jobs by the gangs of strongmen Johnny Torrio, Harry Cusick, and later, Al Capone. Even locals were not safe from the gangs that operated with impunity, due to large police and political payoffs: it was known that men sometimes sold their dates into prostitution from dance halls, or for girls to be kidnapped off the street and held captive. As we all know, institutionalized human trafficking has by no means disappeared; post-soviet trafficking must be one of the least policed abominations of recent times.

Other tactics modern vice seem to have been invented in Chicago, and perfected in Budapest. Chicago’s Mickey Finn was a saloon owner who was famous for baiting tourists and unsuspecting men with seemingly available girls, who would then drug their drink with knock-out powder. The men would wake up, sometimes totally naked, in an alleyway in the back, with no memory of what proceeded. Budapest's Váci utca, is home to any number of konzum lányok (drink girls) plying this trade, with scant notice from the law. And it is not just tourists who are targeted. Tales abound of expats having been slipped a Mickey Finn at such crime-neutral places as Cha-Cha-Cha, Sark Presszó, and A38 to name but a few. As for gambling: I love that card games designed to swindle unsuspecting Chicago gamblers were called ‘bunko’ games. For those that don’t know, bunko in Hungarian is a meat-head, or thug. I am not sure if there is an etymological connection, but there is definitely a shared spirit.

Everybody, naturally, sees associations where they choose to. I have heard Budapest referred to as the Bangkok, or even the Tokyo of the West. There are those who call it the Paris of Central Europe. Nairobi of the EU, anybody? Perhaps it is a touch of homesickness that causes me to see Chicago everywhere, even in the decrepit corners and seedier streets. That is fine: Chicago, and all its vice, daring, and pride, is an inextricable part of my personal history, and I bring it with me wherever I travel.

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

Starvation: A Food Review

The best way to put it is that I needed a secular kind of Lent; a purging of toxins as well as an atonement for overindulgence. And when you write for a food website, and don’t object to the occasional 5 a.m. nightcap, Budapest is an easy place to overindulge. So, based on approximately no one's good advice or any worthwhile guidelines, I decided to go on a fast, an exercise that blurs the line between self-discipline and self-torture.

Day 1

Fasting should be all about not eating, but once you are deprived of food, it becomes all about what you are not eating. Morning is difficult, not because I need a lot of food when waking, but because my morning habits are fairly well-ingrained: coffee, food, writing, shower, writing, and chasing money for the rest of the day. But the simple act of removing food from the equation throws the whole ritual off balance. There can be no writing while fasting, and morning becomes nothing more than the after-math of sleep.

Words, however, over the course of the day, take on sublimated meaning. Brioche becomes a one-word poem, evoking something at once forbidden and essential. Saying Hungarian food words is particularly tantalizing: füstölt gomolya, körte, zsemle: scalloping out each syllable as though they might materialize from my mouth, and sate my hunger.

The city is a carnival of food smells: hot yeasty air from the bakery on Tatra, Subway Sandwiches (which you can smell from halfway down the block); and the carnal olfactory incitement of gyros meat roasting on the spit. The soap in the window of Lush makes my mouth water. Every fruit is a precious artifact: an object of desire. On the street, I split people into two classes: those who are eating, and those who are not. One thing is for sure; the world is a very unfair and cruel place without food. I would forgive anybody a crime who experienced this feeling after being overtaken by the smell of roasting meat. Hunger turns you outlaw.

The evening is spent thinking about food. You never realize just how omnipresent it is until you are deprived of it. Distraction through entertainment should provide some relief, but while characters in Victor Pelevin’s novel Clay Machine Gun feast on Soba noodles, I silently urge them on, to eat more and more, hoping their gorging on food turns into a pivotal plot point (but this being Pelevin, plot points are illusory as the noodles I was imagining). Rented films are not much help either: in Finding Forrester, canned tomato soup had never looked so good; and, of course, Diner is on TCM. Though exhausted, sleep comes slowly.

Day 2

Dreams exclusively concern food. Oddly, it is lencse fözelék that recurs during the night. Only later does the significance of the lentil occur to me. I enjoy meal after meal of it before I wake, instantly knowing I will have none on this day.

With nothing to chew over but thoughts, I acknowledge there is a sort of masochistic pleasure at work here. With that in mind, I wander over to Westend City Center and sit myself down in the middle of the food court for lunch rush. The sensory overload of the vivid colors, smells and sights, create a kind of synaesthesia, whereby the colors are full of flavor: it isn’t the food that looks edible, it is the colors. Even the orange food trays appear tasty. Smells, too, are painfully sharp in my nose. What a preposterous amount and variety of food we consume. But while food has gained meaning for me, it seems to have lost it for everybody else. It is like porn: an instrument of selfishness. People eat and eat, discarding piles of what they cannot eat, and leave. I watch for a while, then suddenly, something clicks, and the whole scene revolts me: who are all these people, with all their meals? The thought of food is disgusting. Appetite is a weakness. Eating is gluttony. I cannot watch any longer, and home I go.

The night brings nothing but loneliness and depression. As somebody who spends a lot of time by myself, loneliness is actually a fairly rare state for me. Sure, I have plenty of friends I could call: but they are all eaters. Hunger makes you isolate – hunger makes you profoundly alone.

After a fitful sleep, where my muscles ache, where I dream lucidly of food, I wake, shower, and am the first in line at the nearest étkezdé. I order lencse fözelék, and from the first spoonful, savor it patiently, gratefully, then return to the society of the living.

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.

Pretty Ugly America

This is a little off message for Mókus, but I was recently accused of looking down on Hungarians and asked why, oh why, don't I just pack up and go home if I find so much to fault. Well, this is what is waiting for me there. Besides, unless you can't infer from the thought, time, and interest-level that goes into my blog: I love this city.