At work, newly minted yuppies were also sold a certain story: The top was open to anyone with the right qualifications and the right work ethic. Take Nancy Lieberman’s experience. After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School in 1979, he was hired by Skadden, a start-up law firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Soon he was logging 60 to 75 weeks working on multi-billion dollar deals. At Skadden, he believed that same sex should be. “I never thought, ‘I’m miserable. I’m a woman, and I’m trying to make it in a man’s world,'” she said on a recent podcast. “He just wanted you to be a good lawyer.”
That pursuit of life is hard extended from work to leisure for yuppies. They developed a love for road races like the New York City Marathon. This was not the usual run that had embraced the counter-cultural genres of the late 1960s. It was running the distance, and it required the same self-discipline and long-range planning that characterized yuppie careers. “Some races you fall flat on your face, some races you do very well. It’s the same thing in the trading world,” said former bond trader Mr. Jen told me. “There are no excuses. You play or you go home.” Here are the seeds of the fitness culture that is blossoming in our time, where fitness trackers and peptide stacks are the headlines of the party. For yuppies like today, recreation is just another form of work.
The race also appealed to another important constituency: city leaders, real estate officials and corporations hoping to destroy New York’s image as it emerges from the financial crisis of the 1970s. What better advertisement than a marathon, whose participants were white-collar professionals? In the 1980s, television broadcast glamorous images of yuppies running around the city to millions of viewers around the world. The marathon was just a harbinger. Encouraged by the success of that experiment, New York decided to stake its future on the yuppies: paying them, housing them and entertaining them. Decades later, the cities remained their playgrounds – places to spread their disposable income and display their class and taste.
Yuppies also helped create our modern foodie culture: one that required wealth but also cosmopolitanism to know that, like, balsamic vinegar, sun-dried tomatoes and Manchego cheese were foods to be enjoyed. The Zagat Guide — created by two corporate lawyers in 1979 — helped educated professionals demonstrate this technology. (The guide was designed to fit in a business suit jacket pocket.) Grocery stores have adapted themselves to yuppie love, too. Shopwell, a mid-sized market with roots in the Lower East Side, is rebranding many of its stores as Food Emporium. The idea’s mastermind, Glen Rosengarten, called his new concept “Bloomingdale’s department stores” – a high-end store for the well-heeled customer. It has joined the rafts of other high-end markets, from Silver Palate to EAT to Dean & Deluca, that have trained an entire generation on the joys of good life.
Yuppies have redrawn our political map. They helped move the Democratic Party away from unions, black Americans and the New Deal coalition’s urban bosses and big-city professional interests. In the 1980s, a new generation of politicians and donors – people like Gary Hart, Chuck Schumer and Bruce Wasserstein – re-liberated the freedoms of the post-industrial era. They think that the respected ethics of the business environment should govern the society as a whole. Innovation, not regulation or redistribution, can drive growth. And the sclerotic control condition was only disturbing. What was needed instead was a strong government overseeing a tech-heavy economy, with yuppies at the helm.
