Letters to the Editor

Re: Streeter, hipsters

There is what I believe to be a huge mistake in your latest Gazette, the issue released Friday, Oct. 16. The question in the Streeter is exactly the same as the previous issues and my friends and I had to play Jeopardy with it trying to figure what the question was!
Also in the Oct. 9 to Oct. 15 issue of The Gazette, the feature regarding hipsters was way too deep. I was raised by immigrant parents and my father worked 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. everyday. I do not dress or act like a “hipster”. I am really against the fact that it is supposed to portray a culture representing people from a low-class background. Although I do appreciate the comments on how their culture is representing a more artistically inclined one, which is quite true, but unfortunately many of these so-called “hipsters” are just people taking on a certain fashion sense.
Also on the issue of the keffiyeh, ever since the article in The Gazette last year, my Palestinian friends and I (not a Palestinian) have had a problem with it. Of course I don’t speak for everyone. Regardless, I believe the scarf is not supposed to represent any nation or political party. It is merely traditional Middle Eastern headwear. Heck, my grandpa back in the Middle East wears a red one while he is farming just to protect him from the sun, not because he supports this or that. Men in the UAE wear it as part of a traditional outfit, you know those guys that wear this white cloth with the red coloured headwear. It’s so common in fact that the Iraqi insurgents you see on TV wear it too, and older Middle Eastern men just wearing it while sitting in front of their house drinking coffee. The scarf is also worn by Iranian, Lebanese and, yes, even the Palestinian protesters with each group supporting their own respective cause.
But is it exclusively Palestinian and left wing? No, it is not.

— A Dalhousie Engineering student

The Streeter question last week was indeed wrong. The correct question was: “In honour of next week’s Halifax Pop Explosion Music Festival, what’s one thing you’d blow up in Halifax?”