NPR at Lucha Libre
By Katy Spindler

I've always been a little intimidated by urban hipsters: the boys with their black t-shirts, square glasses, and choice of spiky hair or luxuriant beards; and the girls with their reddish bangs, cute tattoos, and long skinny arms in artfully coordinated thrift store sweaters. I just can't seem to put that much energy into being cool. Now, I genuinely like many hipsters on an individual basis. En masse, I find them a little unnerving as though they're all trying to determine if my love of Magnum P.I. is ironic or not.

For instance, a few weeks ago I attended a midnight showing of Labyrinth at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago. The crowd reaction was grand. We sang all the songs. We hissed at Hoggle's antics. We gasped in amazement at David Bowie's impressive crotch bulge. Afterwards in the lobby, I noticed practically everyone in the place was wearing fake German army surplus jackets. I certainly had a fine time with them in the theater, but was my wholehearted enthusiasm mixing with ironic 1980s nostalgia?

A brand new source of enthusiasm for me is Lucha Libre. Lucha Libre is Mexican wrestling that relies greatly on masked heroes, over-the-top villains, and flying acrobatic leaps. My obsession started by watching television with my friend, Eli, who had grown up with Lucha Libre. I was transfixed. Delighted by our interest, Eli loaned my husband and me some of the Santo movies from the 1960s. They strongly resemble the Batman television show with Adam West. Il Santo never removes his silver mask, although he does frequently wear it with snappy leisure suits or cozy cardigans. He saves the world from vampires and werewolves via wrestling moves in warehouses with suspiciously large quantities of empty boxes. Once begun, such an appetite couldn't be sated; we started going to local shows.

My husband Knut and I were at one last weekend with Eli and his awesome girlfriend, Lauren. Our group consisted of one person of Mexican descent and three white people all screaming insanely. Lucha Libre matches are normally a family affair. People bring their children to watch the wrestling, eat some gorditas, possibly buy a few wrestling masks, and relax. Lauren, Knut, and I barely had enough Spanish between us to ask the way to the bathroom, but we gamely shouted stock phrases (which Eli nicely translated for us) and applauded vigorously after particularly fabulous moves or poses. We didn't exactly fit the fan mold, but people seemed to enjoy having us there to add to the general noise and atmosphere.

During the seventh match or so after Lauren and I had pretty much blown out our voices, a woman wearing headphones approached us and asked if we would like to be interviewed for NPR.

We readily agreed and adjourned to the quieter hallway of the gym hall to talk. She immediately asked us how we had learned about Lucha Libre, if we knew any of the wrestlers personally, what we liked about it, and where we lived. It began to dawn on us that we had been chosen because we were young white women screaming our lungs out in crummy Spanish in an almost entirely Latino audience. We nicely answered all of her questions. Yes, we began watching it on television. No, we didn't know any luchadors personally. We liked the acrobatics, the masks, the superhero qualities, and the general experience. She was visibly disappointed to hear we lived in the city. She probed us to make sure we hadn't snuck in from the suburbs. She thanked us and said the interviews would be up on the NPR site sometime soon.

We returned to our seats and hooted our way through a few more matches. The luchador Golden Star was unmasked after a particularly fierce fight with Yakuza. After that heart wrenching event, we gathered our coats and headed towards the exit. A man in an orange shirt, whom we recognized as the announcer, stopped us. He asked our little group if we had enjoyed the show and if we knew any of the wrestlers. We assured him we had lots of fun, but we didn't know anyone personally- He was very interested in the fact that we had found out about the shows based on an internet search and told us several times that he hoped we would come back with friends. Indeed we would.

It wasn't until I was home that it hit me. I was a young white person at a highly kitsch, possibly even irony-filled, event that was virtually unknown to vast majority of my demographic. Since it was an event that was clearly trying to draw in more persons of that same demographic, I may have possibly been at the cutting edge of a trend. And I gave an interview to NPR on the subject! And now I've written it up and contributed it to an online humor magazine read by well-educated literate young people!

Have I become a hipster without even realizing it?! Which way to the fake German military surplus store?

——

Katy Spindler still can’t quite believe that really happened. Link to the interview coming up soon on http://thoughtfulrabbit.blogspot.com.

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