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June 11, 2005

Indie Yuppie Bastards

In all my three years of commuting to Dublin one major noticeable arrival in commuter-types stands out the most. The frequently crammed and often sticky carriages of Irish Rail have always been lined with civil servants, students, day-trippers, pensioners, business people, mitchers and so forth. But rarely does a new breed launch itself onto the platforms so casually as the Indie-Yuppie. The bastard cousin of the 1984 yuppie is here. He’s in Ireland, he’s on our trains and he’s got an iPod. Defining an Indie-Yuppie is a hard thing to do largely because most twentysomethings can now be categorised as one. It’s the look, it’s the opinions, it’s the music. Music is paramount to an Indie-Yuppie. Mainly because they believe their tastes in music to be superior to everyone else’s. They like INTERPOL. They like WILCO. They like The Killers and all bands beginning with “The”. And then when the band they liked and knew of for a “couple of years” before everyone else gets played on mainstream radio they immediately remove it from their iPod listings. But here lies the crux.

The Indie-Yuppie is such a wide spread being that the individuality in tastes that they claim to have, become mainstream. They’ve come from all labels of society - from hipsters to musicians and from students to Yippies (Young Irish professionals). Spotting one is easy. When you’re in Heuston Station look around you. He’s the guy in SuperMacs with the distinct white ear phones of an iPod dangling around his neck. She’s the girl sitting outside Eason’s reading EMPIRE. It’s the two of them sitting at the JusJuice Bar drinking smoothies. As mentioned several times thus far an iPod is the pier-de-résistance for an Indie-Yuppie. To them it’s a means to listen to Talking Heads but more importantly it’s a fashion accessory. Fashion plays an important role with the Indie-Yuppie. If their not wearing their iPod on the train you can spot them by their retro cartoon t-shirt.

At 7am in Newbridge Train Station don’t be fooled by someone who looks like they just rolled out of bed but still looks cool. It’s a look. Indie-Yuppies get out of bed, have breakfast and then head to the bathroom where’ll they attempt to give themselves that “just-out-of-bed” look. In fact you could be an Indie-Yuppie already. You might be one if you believe that the bigger the gig, the better the band are. On the other hand, you might be an Indie-Yuppie if you're the only one in the audience. You might be one if you think Napoleon Dynamite should have won Best Picture of the Year at the Oscars and Zach Braff should have got Best Director. If you’ve set salon.com as your default Internet homepage. Wait just a minute. At this point the sinking, sudden feeling of a dawning realisation pushes down my stomach. I have copies of the New York Press scattered on the floor. I ironically own a pair of Converse shoes now owned by Nike. Eighty per cent of my DVD collection is made up of Hitchcock and Asian movies. I put little cocktail umbrellas into my coke glass whilst doing lunch. I have a blog. Oh my God. OH MY GOD!

Trains, Buses & Automobiles by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist.

Posted by LiamG at June 11, 2005 01:43 AM