Alternative culture

Alternative culture is a type of culture that exists outside or on the fringes of mainstream or popular culture, usually under the domain of one or more subcultures. These subcultures may have little or nothing in common besides their relative obscurity, but cultural studies uses this common basis of obscurity to classify them as alternative cultures, or, taken as a whole, the alternative culture. Compare with the more politically charged term, counterculture.

Visiting a popconcert in leather and Mohawk hairstyle on a horse with motor steering stem

Places known for alternative culture

The folloing places either are or have been historically known for their alternative culture scene:

• Camden Town, London
• Eel Pie Island, London
• Echo Park, Los Angeles
• Fitzroy, Melbourne
• Freetown Christiania, Copenhagen
• Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin
• Greenwich Village, New York
• Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco
• Newtown, Sydney
• Oamaru, New Zealand
• St Kilda, Melbourne
• West Queen West Street, Toronto
• Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

See also

• Alternative fashion – Fashion that does not conform to mainstream styles
• Alternative housing – Category of domicile structures
• Alternative lifestyle – Lifestyles perceived to be outside the cultural norm
• Alternative media – Media sources that differ from established or dominant types of media
• Bohemianism – Practice of an unconventional lifestyle
• Counterculture – Subculture whose values and norms of behavior deviate from those of mainstream society
• List of subcultures
• History of subcultures in the 20th century
• Underground culture – Alternative cultures that differ from the mainstream

Further reading

• The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't be Jammed, Heath, Joseph & Potter, Andrew, Harper Perennial, 2004, ISBN 1-84112-654-3
• The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, Frank, Thomas, University of Chicago Press, 1998, ISBN 0-226-26012-7
• Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler, essay collection, WW Norton & Co, 1997, ISBN 0-393-31673-4