N.Y. mag's culture guide takes readers on the road to hipness

The frustrating thing about hipness is that you can't try. Either you're hip or you're not. It's certainly not something you can learn from a book.<br><br>Ha - fooled again. If a how-to

Thursday, April 13th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

The frustrating thing about hipness is that you can't try. Either you're hip or you're not. It's certainly not something you can learn from a book.

Ha - fooled again. If a how-to on hipness existed, it'd be From AbFab to Zen (Paper Publishing/D.A.P., $24.95), a guide to pop culture compiled by Kim Hastreiter and David Hershkovits, editors of Paper magazine.

In a casual, conversational tone, From AbFab defines trends, celebs, even surgical procedures that have affected culture. Actress Parker Posey is "independent film's first darling." Voice mail is "yet another modern convenience that allows us to avoid talking to people." "Give face" describes someone (primarily transsexuals, says the book) with "an overdone, incredible, flawlessly made-up face."

Ms. Hastreiter and Mr. Hershkovits culled their data from the archives of Paper, which they launched in 1984 to document New York's underground art and culture scene.

"When we started out, it was very obscure, just a foldout poster, not even a standard magazine, and barely available outside Manhattan," Mr. Hershkovits says. "But what happened along the way is that this whole indie alternative culture we were tuned into became a much bigger thing."

The book was their way to celebrate the magazine's 15th anniversary in 1999.

"We'd always wanted to do a book, and we had so much great stuff in the magazine over the years," he says. "We had all these great images and photos. We came up with this hybrid where we could go back to our archives, but write new little tidbits."

Entries usually run a couple of sentences long, and each is accompanied by a photo.

The book has imperfections. It is organized alphabetically - sort of. Didn't anyone teach these guys how to file? Spelling errors ("appathetically") and typos are just as dumb as the ones often found in the magazine; and there are factual mistakes such as the statement that Nirvana's Kurt Cobain penned songs for the Hole album Pretty on the Inside when it was really Hole's Live Through This.

Ms. Hastreiter views the guide as an "archaeological dig" on culture.

"All this stuff that everybody thinks is normal now, when it started 15 years ago, everybody thought it was weird," she says. "When we put a girl with a tattoo on the cover in 1986, mainstream advertisers wouldn't advertise because they thought it was weird."

Meanwhile - and this is exciting news if you live outside Manhattan - the center of hipness as Paper sees it has changed.

"It's not in New York anymore," Ms. Hastreiter says. "There are underground communities brewing in all these cities. People can't afford to come to New York. They're not using New York as the petri dish, as the place to develop their creative juices. Instead, they're coming to New York after they're successful."

And Paper doesn't want that kind of success, thank you.

"For us, it's more important to know these people when they're starting out," Mr. Hershkovits says. "We lose interest in it when everybody else discovers it. Our mission is to tell what's bubbling under the radar screen."