American Yuppies

[WriterDude]

A question of language really.

The term Yuppie is synonymous with eighties Britain. Was the same term term widely used in the US?

[lorna_w]

yes. I haven't heard it in years.

[WriterDude]

Originally Posted by lorna_w

yes. I haven't heard it in years.

Thank you. I'm pretending to be an American narrator telling the tale of an American and don't want my ignorance to blow my cover.

Regards

[alleycat]

Yes, the term was very common in the US in the eighties and early nineties. It's still used, but I don't hear it nearly as much as I once did.

Are you going to gently explain the term at some point in the story?

[WriterDude]

Originally Posted by alleycat

Yes, the term was very common in the US in the eighties and early nineties. It's still used, but I don't hear it nearly as much as I once did.

Are you going to gently explain the term at some point in the story?

The story is set in a place that couldn't exist without the consequences of the exuberances of the 1980s.

While I'm at it. A bit of world building I'm trying to make plausible. I have a disused north American holiday resort. The closest I have been to that particular continental plate is Cuba, but I want to set a story in a remote beach resort that is closed to the public. Its been closed for some time, but every year, the owner invites his friends and extended family to stay over for one long barbecue. The place is in disrepair, but the pool is fine, and there's enough accommodation still habitable for a private freebie function, but not a viable commercial enterprise without considerable investment.

This type of place exists in Britain, or did, I think my inspiration has since been demolished, but this place has the beaches and climate of Florida, but the hills and coniferous forestry of British Columbia. I had planned to hide the geographical detail in the non-specifics of the dialog, which is really hard as a Geography major.

Any tips on making this fictional place more believable massively appreciated.

Regards

[veinglory]

Yuppies is a tad dated. Hipsters seems to be the in thing now.

[Maryn]

Much of the US's Atlantic coast was built up early in the 20th Century. There are properties in disrepair in every vacation area which has not boomed multiple times, with new investors either tearing down and rebuilding or fully restoring the older properties.

Atlantic City leapt to mind. It's all casinos now, but it got pretty bad before its reinvention by Trump and others. I never saw it in the 80s, though.

Maryn, hoping to help

[lorna_w]

Any tips on making this fictional place more believable massively appreciated.

but you can tell us the location, right? Google "foreclosed motels for sale" the state/city you want, and you'll find some inspiration. Add Overgrown weeds. Dead fronds hanging off palm trees. Palmetto bugs. Cracks in plaster and pool. Smell of mold. (Getting some of this off reviews of less than wonderful hotels in Florida.) alligators wandering through. If you're not in Florida, adjust.

[WriterDude]

Originally Posted by lorna_w

but you can tell us the location, right? Google "foreclosed motels for sale" the state/city you want, and you'll find some inspiration. Add Overgrown weeds. Dead fronds hanging off palm trees. Palmetto bugs. Cracks in plaster and pool. Smell of mold. (Getting some of this off reviews of less than wonderful hotels in Florida.) alligators wandering through. If you're not in Florida, adjust.

Thats the kind of place. Its closed to the public but a millionaire orphan likes to maintain a sense of family and a holds a traditional vacation there every year for all of his friends/family.

The actual where isn't important, the characters make an annual visit there, and a flight isn't a problem, but I'm struggling to come up with a venue that is just idyllic, despite the dilapidation, that wouldn't be a natural tourist hotspot.

I also want it to be southern US for the climate and language. I live in NW England, where it rains so much they call it the lake district, and I have childhood memories of overgrown derelict concrete 1930s holiday camps in balmy summer heat. One of my nearest beaches is dominated by two thermo nuclear power stations and an international sea freight terminal, ands it still beautiful.

Question is how do I make somewhere so much more lovely than my local pebbly radioactive beach, unviable as a tourist hot spot? If it was Britain, that's easy, everyone goes to Spain or Turkey, but thats for the weather. If we had the weather, it would still be thriving.

So I have the place mapped in my head, I can visualize where the guests get their burgers at eleven, and where they pick up bottled water from the jetty, but I can't think why such a resort would close in the first place.

[Saanen]

Places like that close all the time. Developers overspend, investors don't want to invest enough to make it truly attractive to the right sort of people, and the place isn't close enough to a trendy area to get enough spillover traffic. The upkeep is enormous, especially if it's near a coastal area where hurricanes and flooding are frequent. Unless you've driven through parts of the U.S. and Canada, it's easy to forget how enormous the continent is. We have a LOT of room to waste. Drive thirty or forty miles from almost any coastal hotspot and you'll find a lot of empty land, trailer parks, isolated communities, and abandoned resorts. Prime coastal land is different, though. Most attractive beaches on the Atlantic coast and the Gulf are lined with beach houses, many rented out by the week in the summer months.

I can't think of anyplace in the south with subtropical beaches but coniferous forests and hills. Most of the south is pretty flat once you get away from the Appalachian mountains.

[blacbird]

Originally Posted by veinglory

Yuppies is a tad dated. Hipsters seems to be the in thing now.

Hipsters? Really? That slang sends me back to the 1960s. I haven't heard anyone use that term in a couple of decades.

caw

[BenPanced]

http://unhappyhipsters.com/

[LJD]

Originally Posted by blacbird

Hipsters? Really? That slang sends me back to the 1960s. I haven't heard anyone use that term in a couple of decades.

I hear "hipsters" all the time. Much more often than "yuppies".

[blacbird]

Originally Posted by LJD

I hear "hipsters" all the time. Much more often than "yuppies".

I don't hear either one of them much. But then, I live in Alaska. Things are kind of slow to filter up here from you folks in the deep south.

caw

[frimble3]

If you put it on an island, and have the causeway wash out in a storm, it might not be worth rebuilding. Especially if the place was already starting to fade, and losing money. It might be a lovely location, if it had access, but hauling in stuff by boat to repair and renovate is just too expensive and time-consuming. There are other places, just as pretty, on the mainland that tourists can get to easily.

Also, it could be a victim of the modern 'disposable' culture. If it was built at the start of the 20th century, it might have electricity and running water, but the kitchens would be out of date, there'd be no outlets for multiple modern appliance, no wi-fi, no fancy hot-tubs and spas. Developers, faced with deteriorating buildings, and major up-grades, would rather tear down and start fresh. But that brings us back to the causeway that would have to be built first.
There's cheaper, less problematic places on the mainland.

Idyllic for one group, once a year, though. Couple of boatloads of supplies, start up the generators, bring in a cleaning crew and you're golden.

[holy_shiitake]

Seems to me that yuppies are different than hipsters; yuppies mostly refer to upper middle class or upper class people with too much money, and hipsters are more hippie-like in nature and generally considered less moneyed. They still can *have* money, but they flaunt it in different ways. A yuppie would go out on his private yacht or buy his own island off Nantucket. A hipster might curate a collection of organic, locally crafted rare beers or host supper clubs.

[Lehcarjt]

Where I am hipster doesn't come from hippie, but hip-(as in cool)-ster. It's the groups of women walking through the park wearing black yoga pants with neon labels letting us know what brand they are, designer sunglasses(also with labels), and trendy strollers (and trendier children) when they are not driving around in their SUVs with their iPhones stuck to their ears. It's a modern equivalent of yuppie - for the middle-income group.

[Spy_on_the_Inside]

I don't know if there even is a modern word for yuppie. It's just something that doesn't seem so relavent anymore. I do agree, hipsters are more recognizable in modern society: organic food, babies in backpacks, men with beards and wool hats in the summer.

I don't know if people really even acknowledge yuppies as a cultural subgroup anymore or if they just kind of phased out.

[BenPanced]

Yuppies have nothing to do with hipsters, and vice versa.

Both terms came from the media. "Yuppie" is an abbreviation for Young Urban Professional. The "yuppie" fit the demographic of an educated person, living in the city, upper class lifestyle. These are the people who bought the earliest cell phones, "went condo" before the housing bust, and worshiped at the altar of the Cuisinart. The shoulder pads in the women's tailored jackets rivaled those worn by the NFL. The best examples are Charlie Sheen in Wall Street and Michael J. Fox in Family Ties. Yes, "yuppie" is more 80's, the term falling into disfavor/disuse after the stock market drop in 1987.

The current, 21st century hipster (the original term born during the Jazz Age) while urban-dwelling like their yuppie predecessor, shun everything materialistic and fashionable the yuppies built. Ironic in their lack of irony. Generally embraces "the nerd" or "art fag" look. Would be hard pressed to explain why they're wearing a Che Guevara or Bob Marley t-shirt, beyond the current subcultural subtexts behind both legends (Che: led a revolution and carried a gun. Bob: smoked grass and sang in a band). A visual guide to the hipster.

[StephanieFox]

The term comes from demographics and stood for YUP or Young Urban Professionals defined as people under 35 years of age making more than $35,000 (which in the 1980s was quite a lot of money.) YUP was expanded to Yuppy partly serious and partly as an insult depending on how it was used. It's really not used anymore and almost no one knows the origin of the term.

[DancingMaenid]

Like Ben points out, I would definitely say that yuppies and hipsters have distinct styles and goals.

I see the yuppies as being more about fitting into upper-middle class society and corporate culture. A yuppie is likely to want to wear nice suits to the office and adopt the latest technology.

Hipsters, on the other hand, try to be cool by going against corporate culture and pop culture. They want to be cooler than middle-class society. A hipster is more likely to want to dress like an art student and listen to vinyl records because they're retro.

I think older hipsters can look like modern yuppies to a degree, but the desire to be cooler than the mainstream is still there.

[shadowwalker]

I don't know if you require 'subtropical', but there are also many, many abandoned resorts around the Great Lakes areas (again, a huge area in itself), and the summer months get absolutely tropical (high temps, high humidity). I'm thinking of northern Minnesota also as far as isolated places - you can drive a hundred yards off the highway and feel like you're the last people on earth, just due to the heavy woods and absolutely no sounds coming through except the wildlife.

[StephanieFox]

Originally Posted by shadowwalker

I don't know if you require 'subtropical', but there are also many, many abandoned resorts around the Great Lakes areas (again, a huge area in itself), and the summer months get absolutely tropical (high temps, high humidity). I'm thinking of northern Minnesota also as far as isolated places - you can drive a hundred yards off the highway and feel like you're the last people on earth, just due to the heavy woods and absolutely no sounds coming through except the wildlife.

These people probably wouldn't have a pool but there would be lake access and the hotel would have been called a lodge. There are a number of lakes interconnected with small islands everywhere. Today it was in the 90ºs but in the 80ºs is more common in the summer. There are bears and wolves, loons, cranes and heron.