'80s go-getters

Usage examples of yuppies.

Sometimes it was genuine industrial espionage-peeling apart a running shoe to see what kinds of adhesives it used-but usually it amounted to analyzing tap water for the anxious yuppies moving into the center of Boston, closet environmentalists who didn't want to pour aromatic hydrocarbons into their babies any more than they'd burn 7-Eleven gasoline in their Saabs.

The other week I was at a party full of Boston yuppies, the originals, and they were all complaining about the panhandlers on the Common, how aggressive they'd become.

In my fantasies, I wanted to encircle Spectacle Island with a blazing corona of yellow flares, a beacon to ships at sea, a landmark for airline pilots, permanent fireworks for the yuppies in the new waterfront condos.

Maybe we were talking about a drug lab, financed by yuppies, run by dustheads, and now that we'd gotten into this cloak-and-dagger stuff, the upper echelons didn't know quite how to handle it.

Laurie described the deceased as single yuppies whose drug use came as a surprise to friends and family.

They fell on the two yuppies, slapped the scythes out of their hands, slammed them back against the bar, kneed them briskly in the privates, and then frog-marched them out.

All the BMWs and Mercedes had gone off with their yuppies in the eternal search for more.

In my tattered trench coat, I looked even more so among the trend-setting yuppies that headed towards the club.

The mix of granny drivers too timid to merge, urban cowboys determined to prove their macho behind the wheel of their pickups, guys who’d stopped off for “one for the road” before heading home after work, midwest Yuppies in Range Rovers, and people who just plain shouldn’t have been allowed in the driver’s seat all made for some white-knuckle maneuvering.