ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies different fusions of fake and real in a variety of gentrified environments, illustrating how contemporary urban 'real-fake' places practise staged authenticity. It shifts the discussion towards 'hipsterised places', where industrial heritage traits and cultures, including symbols of the working class, slow anachronistic crafts processes and vintage products, have been appropriated and repurposed. The chapter positions staged authenticity within Lovell's process of 'real to fake to real', exploring how vestiges of the life-story of gentrified places are grafted onto the present: urban memoirs traced over present scenes by historical prompts such as the Stonewall Sign. It explores the 'gentrifying gaze', which fits into the category of 'cooler authentication' by valuing original and repurposed heritage in a heady combination of commercial nostalgia. The chapter traces different forms of staged authenticity in the urban environment from gentrification and hipsterisation to festival market places.
