Here at Milwaukee Record, we employ a sentient machine known as the Great Job, Milwaukee Bot to keep track of the city’s many appearances on dopey online lists, as well as any time a national publication deigns to acknowledges our pathetic Midwest existence. In the past, the infernal machine has brought us news that Rolling Stone likes Summerfest and that Travel + Leisure thinks we’re ugly as dirt. Today, in what will surely ignite the most heated and insufferable debate of 2002, the bot tells us that Bay View is the 13th “hottest hipster market in America.” beep-boop-beeeeeep…groooooaaaaannnn…

Yes, according to (who else?) Yelp and Realtor.com, Milwaukee’s 53207 area code is a “hipster haven” full of hipsters, hipster businesses, general hipsterness, and semi-affordable homes. “From dive bars to barbers, vinyl record shops to coffee shops, all kinds of businesses lay claim to the hipster name,” explains Yelp, oblivious to the What does ‘hipster’ even mean? It doesn’t mean anything! Stop saying ‘hipster’! argument brewing on the horizon. “Do a search on Yelp in any of these cities and you’ll find a wide range of businesses that could fill an endless number of weekends with the ideal hipster itinerary. There’s no limit to the perfectly lit social snaps and artisanal snacks folks in these markets can muster.” Lit, indeed.

For what it’s worth, Bay View is awarded a 96.4 “Yelp Hipster Score” (“measured by the normalized differential in hipster mentions on Yelp per reviews in each zip code compared to the city”) and a 85.6 “Market Hotness” score from Realtor.com (“measured by a composite score put together by ranking each area by median days on market and median page views per listing”). That puts it squarely between Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (#12), and St. Louis, Missouri (#14). Also, have you checked out Vanguard’s new menu yet?

Columbus, Ohio tops Yelp’s list, probably because of that (late) Don B guy who always sang the Batman theme. Top that, Bay View hipsters. beep-boop-beeeeeep…