Two Cheers For Yuppies

   Two Cheers For Yuppies



   Many people I've met don't like yuppies. Now I can see why this should be. Yuppies are usually smarter than many other people and people don't like to feel stupid. Yet let's back track a little before we proceed and look at some history.
     An American journalist first coined the term when he was  covering the U.S. Democratic primaries of 1984." Gary Hart has all these young affluent people voting for him," he said in effect. These young Hart supporters were soon given a new name, made up from the first and/ or second letters of the words' young urban professionals'.Of course, the term 'yuppie' came in part from the 1960's revolutionary group namely 'the yippies' or the Youth International Party. And it in turn was derived from the term 'hippies'.
    The yippies were led by Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Like hippies, yippies smoked marijuana, dropped out of the system, dressed any which way, and made love wherever and whenever they wanted to. Yet unlike the hippies, yippies were revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow the system.
     "Kill your parents," Jerry Rubin urged young people in the late 1960's.
     Yuppies, on the other hand, joined the system. They didn't want to overthrow it. Yuppies became stockbrokers, lawyers, doctors, urban planners and so on. They were the winners in society and one reason they ended up at the head of the line was that they were smart.
   Take the housing co-op I live in. I moved in there in 1982. When I first lived there and for 20 years afterwards there weren't too many yuppies living there. The place erupted in problems. One reason for this was that most of us had little experience in running a 40 suite apartment building.
     But just as important perhaps was that many troubled people lived in the co-op and none of them were yuppies.
     One man used to bring home his lovers and sometimes beat them up. A woman had two children living with her and all three of this trio were dysfunctional. "I don't think that this woman should have been a mother," another mother said at the time and she was right. The two children, one boy and one girl, tore their apartment up. It cost us $8,000 to repair the damaged place. One of my neighbours was an alcoholic who was nice when he could get his hands on liquor. Yet when he couldn't, he turned into a horrible abuser.
     We took pity on a disabled woman and rented her an apartment. This was a mistake. "She had a stroke and then got hit by a car,' someone told me. "Or maybe it was the other way around." In any case, this big chunky woman was a constant source of trouble. After many long years of disputes with this woman we finally evicted her.
     We had to throw out other people too. One or two people couldn't pay the rent. Another man went to pieces after his mother died.And if we had problems with adults we also had trouble with children too.
     One young man set off a fire in our mailboxes. An adolescent used to break into cars in our garage. A third young person entered her next door neighbour's apartment and stole money from the lady's coin dish where she kept dimes, quarters and nickels.
   Family feuds nearly tore our co-op apart. One mother moved into the place after her son did. Soon she and the son's partner were at each other's throats. They nearly came to blows.
   Many of these adults smoked cigarettes, drank whiskey or beer all the time and often played bingo.
      Now I must be fair here. Many of the people who lived in our co-op in its first twenty years, caused us no problems at all. One trucker helped put together our annual budget. A landscape gardener saved us lots of money and was one of the hardest workers I ever saw. A woman who worked in a bank did endless work for the co-op and was a true co-operative person. And the list of non-yuppies who kept the co-op going, was huge.
    Still, wherever we had a big problem with some body it's fair to say that that person was not a yuppie
    Yet then in the 21st century, we had to take out another mortgage to repair our co-op and so we had to raise our housing charges. Rising rents drove most of the problem people out. Urban planners, economists, doctors, lawyers and professors have moved into the co-op. And now co-op life moves along much more smoothly.
     "Don't put yourself down," one co-op resident told a new arrival. "You're a yuppie and we need yuppies in this place.".I, who at one time was an ardent socialist now realise that life with yuppie neighbours is easier than with dysfunctional members of the lower middle and working classes. Yet that doesn't mean that yuppies are perfect either.
   I'll explain more on this topic in my next blog.
     
   
  
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