Punks vs. Yuppies in San Francisco

June 16, 2002 6:40 PM

Punks vs. Yuppies in San Francisco I don't know how I feel about trying to get yuppies and punks to reconcile but I do like the idea of a yuppies vs. punks Olympics. It'd be funny if they had one here in NYC (I'd nominate Willimasburg as the location).
posted by zinegurl (27 comments total)

bah.. lame site registration required... you should probably warn us of that next time you post :-) i know there's a metafilter pass for nytimes.. is there for latimes too?
posted by twiggy at 6:52 PM on June 16, 2002

Wait, is punk/yuppie really the social dialectic in SF? What about the ravers, the hippies, the freaks?
posted by lbergstr at 6:56 PM on June 16, 2002

for what it's worth, metafilter/metafilter worked for me on the latimes site.
posted by ztt at 7:06 PM on June 16, 2002

lbergstr- they're all from marin. they dont count.
posted by atom128 at 7:40 PM on June 16, 2002

Requires registration. Requires cookies. Too lame, I'm outta there.
posted by chipr at 7:44 PM on June 16, 2002

Don't let the door hit you in the ass.
posted by Optamystic at 8:03 PM on June 16, 2002

Wait, is punk/yuppie really the social dialectic in SF?

Of course there are many social groups here but I think the Marina/Mission dialectic came into prominence during the dot-com boom. In particular, the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project started by some guy who named himself after the anarchist Nestor Mahkno, got a lot of press.
posted by vacapinta at 8:08 PM on June 16, 2002

Smart money's on the punks.
posted by D at 8:15 PM on June 16, 2002

Who's gonna be the referee's, the Hare Krishna's?
posted by jonmc at 8:54 PM on June 16, 2002

Williamsburg?

Punk.
posted by UrbanFigaro at 8:59 PM on June 16, 2002

If you like Punks vs Yuppies, you may also like the exhibit of the Class War Poster Campaign in SF.

standard disclaimer: I am against class war, blah blah blah....
posted by jessamyn at 9:00 PM on June 16, 2002

Referee? Ouchy the Clown, naturally.

Honestly, Chicken John should host this thing down at the Odeon... it'd be a spectacle worthy of his reputation.
posted by gangcandy at 9:01 PM on June 16, 2002

The women were both blond, both articulate, both ponytailed, both in workout gear and both sipping the same mango drink with a vitamin "fem-boost."

San Francisco - where even the really, really normal people do stuff that's either illegal or impossible to do in 99% of the country.

God, I love the place.
posted by swell at 9:47 PM on June 16, 2002

YUPPIE SCUM SAY: "DIE YUPPIE SCUM!"
posted by jeb at 10:06 PM on June 16, 2002

they both lose no matter what
posted by Satapher at 10:26 PM on June 16, 2002

I had no idea that we still called people Yuppies any more.
posted by Foaf at 10:29 PM on June 16, 2002

Nice link. Related rants about San Francisco:

"The San Francisco I moved to for the first time in late 1990 - moved to precisely for its reputation for openness and its willingness to tolerate the experimental, the provisional, and the frankly weird - is nowhere to be found among the lineaments of the new city. Not in the painted ladies embalmed for the picture postcard, not in the spanking new redbrick baseball stadium in the heart of SoMa, absolutely not in the fondly recreated and thoroughly neutered decadence peddled as street life in the Haight or the Castro."

(From v-2.org)

"San Francisco and I have never seen eye-to-eye, you see. We don't like each other, and have known to go out of each other's way to piss the other one off. ..I like my pretense up and in your face, like the women in Beverly Hills who wear Prada stilletos while they browse produce and network production deals on their cell phones. Not like the sea of inbred Ivy-Leaguers swarming the craggy hills of SF in Pursuit of The Good, snacking and preaching organically-grown bananas while tossing the peels out the windows of imported SUV's.

Give me LA and its masses of freeway-infested shopping parks, its armies of inorganically-grown centerfolds. At least it's warm here."


( From Dooce )

Personally, I LOVE the city.
posted by justlooking at 11:11 PM on June 16, 2002

Why would anyone want to define themselves as punk these days? It's an artifact of history, like flapper dresses and ragtime.
posted by gimonca at 7:10 AM on June 17, 2002

To hell with petty punk-yuppie wars. The real death here (cited by Ferlinghetti in the article) are the artists. Musicians, writers, rabblerousers and the other glorious leftist urchins of the streets have either adopted wholly jejune and uninformed political positions (the pro-Palestine, solely Chomsky-spouting activists at SF State) or capitulated altogether from the wonders of the City. For those of us who have been here long before the dot-com crap, this is truly the disheartening thing. People are moving away in droves, but they aren't willing to put two brain cells together and realize that, courtesy of the sudden change in the housing market, it is almost possible to return to this pre-dot com Che Guevarra splendor. Get a few friends together, move into the City and start a revolution! Take back the City! Now is your time!

But apparently this isn't happening. There apparently is no middle ground between the quotidian 420 excursions of mindless, directionless hanger ons, who have more in common with fun-loving corporate tycoons than Abbie Hoffman, and the soulless fuckers building up their savings accounts who look upon Victorian splendor and burritos as a chic, even kitschy aesthetic. For crying out loud, Dave Eggers, having wholly forgotten the satire of Might Magazine, has returned here to mass-produce more writing that fails to take into account the homeless, class, drugs, real everyday human problems, the like, natch.

Fuck that. That wasn't the City I moved to in 1994 and it sure as hell shouldn't be the City of 2002. Without too much probing of my memory, I can readily name five hard-core creative friends of mine who have moved away to either urban jungles like New York or dull places like Indiana to sow their wild oats. Why the vagabonds have abandoned the City when their City needs them is a mystery I'll never understand. The time has come for everyone to unite, not with the dated yuppie-punk dichotomy profiled in this article with the raison d'etre for La La Landers to laugh over these petty generalizations, but with the simplicity of a City with verve and elan, a City with purpose, a City that busts the balls of the naysayers and those who walk somnambulistically through life without purpose.

Ask not what your City can do for you, but what you can do for your City!
posted by ed at 7:32 AM on June 17, 2002

I think that Berkley used to have an annual punks vs. pigs kickball game. Also, gimonca, no flaming.
posted by goneill at 7:43 AM on June 17, 2002

So, do they still make that delicious sourdough bread in Frisco? I really like the cable cars, too.
posted by groundhog at 7:45 AM on June 17, 2002

"The San Francisco I moved to for the first time in late 1990 - moved to precisely for its reputation for openness and its willingness to tolerate the experimental, the provisional, and the frankly weird - is nowhere to be found among the lineaments of the new city. Not in the painted ladies embalmed for the picture postcard, not in the spanking new redbrick baseball stadium in the heart of SoMa, absolutely not in the fondly recreated and thoroughly neutered decadence peddled as street life in the Haight or the Castro."

Awww... San Francisco is growing up. Poor thing.
posted by kindall at 8:54 AM on June 17, 2002

No comment.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 9:46 AM on June 17, 2002

Gimonca must be oblivious to the post-70s punk scene. I define myself as punk and proudly so.
posted by zinegurl at 5:09 PM on June 17, 2002

Why would anyone want to define themselves as punk these days?

There might be some confusion here. The 'punks' referred to in most of this thread is used as a catch-all term that includes street-punks, skate-punks, the dj crowd, rockers, indies, goth, beatnicks, swingers, retros, mods, urban hipsters etc. The clothes are more Ben Davis/Dickies than JCrew/Banana Republic which would describe the anti-thetical 'yuppie' crowd (which also includes jocks, preps, etc.)

This is different than 'punkers' meaning part of the 'punk' scene.

Thank you.
posted by vacapinta at 6:04 PM on June 17, 2002

As I expected, by their designer labels ye shall know them.
posted by groundhog at 5:59 AM on June 18, 2002

Suzy Creamcheese, oh baby... now what's become of you?
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:24 PM on June 18, 2002