I’m sitting in the Mecca of San Francisco hipster coffee shops -  Ritual Roasters - waiting to meet a friend for dinner. Among the assorted specimens of over-educated white irony is a a skinny dude with a mop of blonde hair, tight tight black jeans, and dark-rimmed glasses. He and his low profile digital watch have both been carefully vetted as authentic nerdy.

Unexceptional, you say, until I tell you that his hands are busy knitting a light blue scarf. Between his deft needlework he dips into some vegan bean ‘n rice concoction that’s sitting next to his ball of yarn. I didn’t know hipster men knit.

Not that I think they’re sexist or that men shouldn’t knit. But hipster masculinity is already a delicate balancing act.  Their witty unconnectedness, apathy, and coke-soaked frailty already stretches traditional archetypes of manhood. Knitting?

Funny enough, I think the knitting works for this fellow. Maybe I should knit.

or not.