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The Spectacle Blog
Yuppies are the most intolerable genre of people next to liberals, but there’s a lot of overlap of habits and views. They share a condescending attitude and egos inflated by what appears to be air. The main difference between the two is simply that while genuine liberals will pass legislation to force you to adopt their pretentious, feel-good practices, yuppies will merely judge you if you do not. Yuppies are liberals in the making, too young to have real clout and too self-centered to realize that they’d better decide what’s best for you, too.
This being said, as much as I loathe being associated with them, yuppies have managed to improve aspects of society. I guess anyone would whose only concern was, “How can I make this experience as pleasant for me as possible?” So if you can suffer through or ignore their unfounded sense of superiority long enough, you might take enjoyment from the following yuppie things:
Specialty cocktails: Found in a chic bar, normally some sort of repurposed industrial space that retains just enough of its blue collar feel to remind you just how not blue collar you or the bar are. It will be loud and crowded, people will actually kiss each other on the cheeks when they meet and not think it’s weird and European, and they will all sit around talking intently about their jobs and never about sports. But! the drink menu is creative and delicious. Honey, herbs, flowers, fruit, and magic are added to make cocktails taste like they don’t contain any liquor at all, and each drink proclaims its individuality by being served in its own designated glass with pleasing garnishes. Note: If you’re an authentic yuppie, you’ll visit the bar for happy hour. If there’s one thing yuppies love more than paying needlessly high prices for normal things, it’s paying normal prices for things that claim they’re half-off.
Specialty coffees: I had a latte at a little yuppie coffee shop once, and now every other subsequent coffee will be judged in comparison to this one creamy, frothy, flavorful concoction with the leaf foam art on top. The ingredients were better (milk from a glass jar!) and the preparation was more deliberate. Five or six baristas spent many hours watching Fair Trade coffee drip at a painstakingly slow pace through recycled filters, just for me. Whenever I dream longingly of that particular latte though, I just remember its price, which was hard to swallow. I could have purchased an entire carton of milk for what it cost me to have them heat up and stir six ounces of it.
Farmers’ markets: Yuppies shouldn’t have a monopoly on this one, but we probably owe some thanks to them for the prominence of farmers’ markets in urban areas. I’d love to see a yuppie try to drive a tractor or harvest anything that didn’t come right off a fruit stand and into a plastic, or more likely paper, bag. Nevertheless, I am all for fresh, organic food, free of hormones and additives that make a single apple the equivalent of a three-course meal. Besides, the agrarian society is preferable to the world of Apple, is it not?
I admitted to my brother confidentially and with guilt one night at a trendy bar while I was sipping the best cocktail in the world that I actually enjoyed some yuppie contrivances. He shrugged and answered most wisely, “Yeah, it’s fine so long as you don’t have to talk to them.” This leads me to conclude: Take advantage of yuppie things, but limit yourself and know that it’s mostly ridiculous. It’s okay to support the cause if you’re doing it for the right reasons. Also keep in mind that yuppie habits are emasculating. I’d almost be willing to bet that nothing Hemingway ever drank had more than two ingredients.
View all comments (16) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Teresa Mull
http://spectator.org/blog/2013/03/02/when-yuppies-arent-the-worst
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Peej| 3.2.13 @ 12:44PM
UP WITH FARMER'S MARKETS!
SCPOret| 3.2.13 @ 1:04PM
I'm sorry to inform young child, but farmers markets are not a YUPPIE invention. I'm 70 years old and have been shopping at farmers markets for the things I didn't grow for myself since I went with my father in the mid 1940's. The closest farmers market to me has been in business since 1936. The man that runs it now is 3rd generation farmer and the market is located on the farm. His speciality is strawberries, but he grows everything you can think of, and some things that you have to ask what it is, and how to prepare it. he is my friend, my grocer, and also my customer, as I sell farm equipment and parts to maintain the equipment.
fmm| 3.3.13 @ 7:21AM
Thanks for the reminder. Mother used to wake me at 5AM for the trip to the farmers market downtown to buy bushels of fruits and vegetables for canning. The products she made were better than anything one could buy in the grocery stores and would last well into the next year. No need for us to be waited on by "five or six" servers as we did the work ourselves. The farmers market was in the same venue where they held rodeos and no "repurposed" space was needed. The author of this post does not realize how far removed from the real world that even she has become, let alone the yuppies.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 3.2.13 @ 3:51PM
I generally counsel against the use of labels such as yuppies, as you place people (occasionally undeservedly) in pigeonholes where they might not belong. That being said, pigeonholes were created because they were thought to have some usefulness.
In addition to the return of cocktails, yuppies also receive some credit for raising the profiles of imported or micro-beers. With that in mind, I'll leave you with the anti-yuppie Frank Booth, and his thoughts on imported premium beer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbxGgCY9PKw
Bob Grant| 3.2.13 @ 10:13PM
Frank's bartender: "Do you want me to pour it, Frank?"
Frank: "No, I want you to F*** it. S***, yes, pour.the.f***in' beer!"
Bob K| 3.2.13 @ 9:42PM
I believe that the writer here is an intern in the AS Headquarters inside the beltway. That being the case, the Young Urban Professionals she is talking about are, in all likelihood, recently minted bureaucrats in the employ of our bloated Federal Government living off the taxes paid by average people out in flyover country.
May they all be affected with lactose intolerance from all the lattes they are drinking! The analogy is apt. Flatulence amongst the apparatchiks of a flatulent government.
Bob Grant| 3.2.13 @ 10:15PM
Think this through. Sheila Jackson Lee, lactose intolerant?
Bob Grant| 3.2.13 @ 10:28PM
What, people still use the term "yuppy"? I thought it left us years ago, about the same time "fern bar" bit the dust.
Ted R.| 3.3.13 @ 1:51AM
Funny, I think Ms. Mull here is reproducing the EXACT same thought process that an erstwhile hippie from 1973 would be making, as she began the hippie conversion process to yuppiedom.
fmm| 3.3.13 @ 7:06AM
Yup. The next yuppie in line has spoken. So take a long swig of bitters to take the taste out of your mouth.
JimH| 3.3.13 @ 7:48AM
Yuppie is a term taken from Young Urban Professional. I first recall the expression being used in the eighties. It was applied to suspendered, suited males (think the manager in Office Space or most of the board in Robocop)and power chick suited females. Many worked in finance or law with degrees whose ink was still wet. Most notable about them was their conspicuous consumption, occasional cocaine use and lack of concern for anyone else. Most of them could not truly distinguish the qualitative differences in what they acquired, only that it was cool and expensive. And while they may have made some indirect contributions as outlined in this article, they also drove up the price of those things they purchased, often pricing them out of range of others who had lass money but might actually appreciate them more.
Oldefarte| 3.3.13 @ 3:11PM
If not already, in five years there will be no more "yuppies" as the implied term/aspect of YOUNG UPWARLY MOBILE will cease to exist. How can the youth of today be so when they will be forced to endure a lifetime employment at fast-food establishments [due to the socialistic uneconomy of the domestic terrorist party's achievements in government]? What, going from soft drink filler to counter person would qualify one for being termed a yuppie??????
Larry Siegel| 3.4.13 @ 6:00AM
Oh, and there's that thing about the cities. Yuppies are young *urban* professionals. I am old enough to remember the time before yuppies, when people with good jobs wouldn't be caught dead living in a city. Now most of our big cities are livable places once again, not quite as peaceful as they were before about 1965 but with better coffee. Thanks yuppies.
JP| 3.4.13 @ 8:36AM
Yes, the urban nieghborhoods have to still be edge. You know, close enough to the under class crime scenes without necessairily being outright dangerous. It gives the metrosexuals a thrill as well as street creds. They perfer marginal urban blight mixed with enough color from expensive boutiques, art galleries, cafes, bistros, and markets to give their places a turn of the century (19th Century) Godfather feel. The last place the yuppies would live are the "soul-less 'burbs" filled with squaking kids, shopping malls, subdivisions surrounded by corn fields, mini-vans and Chik-Filets.
c. j. acworth| 3.4.13 @ 8:14AM
Keep your fruity cockails, children. Bourbon whiskey. Straight up, no ice. Knob Creek or Buffalo Trace.
JP| 3.4.13 @ 8:27AM
Many years ago I was at a bar with my father drinking a few beers where a group of noisy yuppies were noisily drinking micro brews. The one that they were all going gaga over was a "Dortmund" style lager. While they extolled the virtures of this now extinct style of beer and how it was far superior to the working man beers of their father's generation, I couldn't quite get over the irony of their conversation. Dortmunder Lager was once the beer of choice with the iron workers and coal miners of Westphalia. For a short period of time the Dortmunder Brewery was the largest in Germany. Its style was dubbed "Export" because it could easily be exported without spoiling. It was a full bodied, very bitter, and highly alcoholic lager (6.5%). And it was very blue collar -definitely a working class beer. The upper classes in German drank their expensive champagne and Rieslings, while the working classes drank Export Lager. One hundred years later, this style is popular with upscale yuppies. Go figure.