All of Williamsburg proper made its way across the bridge to Piano’s last Thursday evening to celebrate the release of lit It Girl Marisa Meltzer’s latest tome, Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music. Twentysomething ladies in their Designing Women finest (see images here), not to mention a fair number of gentlemen, gathered in small groups slowly sipping their Brooklyn Lagers and having overly earnest, and often exceedingly loud, conversations about the state of music. The book, an examination of how bands including Bikini Kill, Sleater Kinney and, yes, even The Spice Girls paved the way for today’s more confidant female musicians, is the follow up to Meltzer’s 2007 book, How Sassy Changed My Life.

“I just really think Bikini Kill was, like, the most important band of the ’90s,” a young woman named Jessica, who at 24 years old would have been 6 when the group’s eponymous first record was released, told me. “They, like, really paved the way for Sleater-Kinney and the whole alt scene.” Her three friends all nodded very seriously as she told me this, making me assume my line of questions that included “What if God were one of us?” and “Do you want to be a polyester bride?” might be inappropriate for this group. I asked her opinion of Britney Spears, someone who Meltzer also touches on in the book, which launched what may have been the most unnecessarily profound discussion of the pop star ever. “I mean, she was such a product of the label,” Jessica began, “but at the same time, like, she showed how successful females could be. You can’t be that popular and that global without having a strong business sense and, like, without being an intelligent person.” At this point my head was spinning, so I decided to fight the crowds and race to the bar for a drink before I exploded.

While there I spotted Kathleen Hanna, the former Bikini Kill mastermind who’s recently made news by collaborating with Christina Aguilera. Thrilled to finally see someone who had lived through the ’90s rock scene (and a sucker punch from Courtney Love), I rushed over to talk. There was a problem, though: After speaking with her and getting some really great insight, my date informed me the person I was talking to was most certainly not Hanna. Considering half the girls in attendance kind of looked like her, there was no way of actually knowing. I slipped back into the night, regretful that I had no flannel to keep me warm.