Apache, while not hipster-compatible, is still very much alive.
> I think it may be time Apache itself branches out to a leaner version (with the kitchen sink build available separately) that's as bare-bones as possible with basic functionality that can still be easily extended by modules later.
Right. Here's a binary size comparison between Apache 2.4.6 and Nginx 1.4.1:
~ $ ls -l /usr/sbin/apache2
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 580528 Jul 26 13:23 /usr/sbin/apache2
~ $ ls -l /usr/sbin/nginx
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 661264 May 24 07:42 /usr/sbin/nginx