Brooklyn is built on the foundations of hipster culture — bricks of skinny jeans bound by the mortar of irony.  Here are a few simple measures you might take to assimilate yourself into this society of blatant douche-baggery.

1. Be over 30 and dress like you’re 8.

2. Listen to bands that nobody has ever heard of.  If you don’t know any, feel free to make one up by combining lesser-known animals with a mood, movement, or superlative.

IE: The Ibex Catharsis or Crestfallen Narwhal and the Avant-Garde Orchestra

3. Just be really ironic all the time.  Everything you do.  You should even look ironic.  Take step number one for example.  You dress like you’re a toddler and play with “My Little Ponies” because you’re 34.  That’s ironic (see: sad).  You might want to invest in a “feauxhawk.”  No, not a mohawk.  A feauxhawk.  It’s supposed to be a mohawk, but it’s not!  That’s so ironic, even Alanis Morisette threw up in her mouth a little bit.  Dontcha think?

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Well anyway, some time ago I purchased a single tomato in the hopes of using it for a few different meals.  Sandwiches, salads, etc.  So my sister comes over to the apartment and eats the whole thing, sans one pathetic slice, in one sitting.  It wasn’t even a usable slice that she left me.  I took the seeds out of the final slice and threw them into a pot of dirt, sarcastically insinuating that I would grow more tomatoes for the next time she came over.

Flash forward 3 months, and I have myself a dozen thriving tomato plants in one shitty pot that are in dire need of re-potting.   I created life by obnoxiously making a point.   And so it is that I’m bound to these plants — my children.  I need to re-pot them.  The fruits of my passive aggressiveness must live on.

I consult Google and do a search for “Clay Pot Store” in Brooklyn, NY.  The number one result is a shop in Park Slope called “The Clay Pot.”  Holy shit, what are the odds!?

So I march on over to Park Slope and sure enough there’s the place I’m looking for.  I walk inside, with a shit-eating grin spread across my face as I approach the counter.  The following banter takes place.

Clerk: Hello, can I help you?

Me: I’m looking for a clay pot.

Clerk: Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t sell those here.

I laugh.  She laughs.

Me: Seriously though.  I need a large clay pot.

Clerk: No, seriously.  We don’t sell those here.  You’d be surprised just how many people come in here asking for that!  (Laughs again).  But we do have pretty much everything else.  Kind of ironic isn’t it?

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Then and there I made the decision.  I’m officially moving out of Brooklyn.