Yuccaboo

Domestic tourists to New York often associate the city with Times Square. To them the noise, lights, congestion, and annual dropping of a pricy disco ball give credence to their media-conspired vision of the city. For their convenience, an Olive Garden has been added. It generally has a two-hour wait for a table.

To the foreign visitor, SoHo may best represent the city. Once the habitat of aspiring artists and despairing dot-commers, this increasingly congested pedestrian mall teems with high-end shops, all of which are readily found in the tourists’ native cities. A few blocks to the east, the small, bespoke and custom shops of local designers struggle to survive.

But to the local resident, the quintessential New York neighborhood is arguably the Upper West Side. Here, where the Avenues have shed their numbers, one finds a sort of Bermuda triangle conceptually anchored by Lincoln Center, Zabar’s and the Dakota Apartments – with a Filene’s Basement thrown in for good measure and for quality designer merchandise at discount prices.

In a widely held stereotype, the population of the UWS consists of lonely Jewish girls, retirees whose fixed incomes – despite their claims to the contrary – far outstrip their rent control and trust-funded students of Columbia University whose parents want them to live somewhere “safe.” In reality, the population consists of lonely Jewish girls, retirees whose fixed incomes – despite their claims to the contrary – far outstrip their rent control, trust-funded students of Columbia University whose parents want them to live somewhere “safe,” and curious beings I have come to call Yuccies.

Yuccies is a weak but increasingly necessary acronym for Yuppies Unendingly Creating Children. Their tireless contributions to the post-9/11 baby boom, fueled by an ever-increasing array of fertility drugs, have irreversibly transformed the once seedy landscape of SROs and gin mills that was the Upper West Side. Every nine months, a dive bar closes and a new patisserie or bassinet boutique is born.

While there are many things disturbing about Yuccie behavior and psyche, perhaps the most troubling to me is their almost tangible sense of entitlement, which, like all spoiled children, invariably exists in inverse proportion to their self-esteem. It is not surprising, then, that the inner conflict of the Yuccie psyche is played out in the rearing of their offspring, and that in this little drama I make a cameo whenever I can.

A favorite grazing spot for the Yuccies is Nice Matin, where I have worked for almost a year. Nice Matin is a somewhat upscale French Restaurant theoretically specializing in the cuisine of the eponymous sun-drenched Riviera City. In reality it is a more colorfully glazed transplant of its older sister, Marseilles, in Hell’s Kitchen. Its popularity lies in its reasonable prices, consistent product, location and timing – it was the first establishment of its caliber to open in the area. While a typical restaurant job in most ways, the care and feeding of the Yuccies has proven both perplexing and amusing.


Most afternoons – but especially weekends – Nice Matin is overrun by less than desperate Terri Hatcher – wannabes out for an afternoon of errands with their spawn. Of course, to every parent, Yuccie or otherwise, theirs is the only child present, and by far the single most important entity within sight. To watch the attention lavished upon these children is to wonder how the species managed to procreate until 2002. On some days, the endless consoling over dropped Elmos and the demands for the microwaving of freshly pumped breast milk are just annoying. On other days they are fodder for my favorite past time: fucking with the yuccies.

The ego of the yuccie, especially with regards to their children, is like the rain forest – a fertile yet fragile place. Toying with that ego is not a game to be played by children. However in this sport I am a rather adept, though maladjusted, adult - the Lance Armstrong of Yuccie ego manipulation, if you will, without the impending retirement. Remember, before years of commuting on the 1 and 9 trains stripped them of civility, Yuccies were intelligent graduates of Brown, Penn and, of course, Columbia. They are not stupid and the cruel and wanton manipulation of their belief systems requires intelligence, focus, creativity and a partner.

As for focus I could have chosen many things, but offspring seemed the logical choice. Using the kids themselves as my target was too dangerous – and rather unethical - so I latched onto something even better – the status stroller. You see, at the heart of every Yuccie, behind the genuine love of a parent, lurks a yuppie, and consequently a profound, even physical, need for status and ostentation. Where better to manifest this than in the stroller, a device they have to have anyway? How better, then, to confound and befuddled the Yuccie than by feeding him or her with false promises of ever-safer, ever-better, ever more-exclusive sacks of fabric on frames and wheels?

It was one dreary day while writing out the schedule that my cohort, a hostess named Elizabeth, and I hatched our little scheme. I glanced over, barely awake after four espressos, at a table of two moms and their spawn. One mother was negotiating bagel decisions with five-year-old Ethan, who was not finding any to his satisfaction. To his left, two-year-old Hannah, inconsolable over her confinement in a high chair, was erupting in a wailing Vesuvius of Cheerios. Next to them, blocking any access to the table that did not entail the server passing hot coffee over the children’s heads, the theoretically concerned mothers had placed a massive 3 by 5 foot stroller, the likes of which I had never seen, or to which I had never paid attention. It was garishly large, obviously expensive and brand new- a Cadillac Escalade for toddlers. Here would be my focus.

Elizabeth would be my partner, and she and I worked out our ploy quickly. We would compliment guests on their strollers, noting particular features, and then banter about even more rarefied strollers we had recently seen, but that did not really exist. In this good-cop, bad-cop scheme, I would partly remember some detail and then Elizabeth would correct me or perhaps validate my observation and then further elaborate. Elizabeth was key to this. An innocent-looking 19-year-old blond, she was street smart beyond her years and disarmingly coy. She was also Canadian, which meant she was perceived of as incapable of lying – after all, she was willing to admit she was from Canada.

First a brief primer on status strollers. The basic stroller is the maclaren, no relation to the Florida-based auto racing empire. The maclaren is the Hyundai of strollers, a simple metal frame with four sets of small wheels, a minimal seating space and two rubber-capped handles. When the Yuccie mom sees a child, usually her nanny’s, being pushed around in a maclaren her heart is filled with a genuine mixture of concern and pity. “I could never,” she bemoans “imagine putting my little Tacoma (or Madison or Savannah or insert some other mid-sized metropolitan area) in THAT thing.” Worst of all, the mesh tote on the bottom could not possibly accommodate a yoga mat.

One step up from the maclaren is the Graco. The Graco is like the Ford F-150 of strollers – affordable, sturdy, popular and frequently recalled for safety problems. The Graco is adequate for the Yuccie – something to keep at the Hampton’s share or the grandparent’s place in Boca.

At the top of the list (well, not in my contrived reality, but we’ll get to that) is the Bugaboo, undoubtedly the Range Rover of strollers. The top of the line Bugaboo is a model called, inexplicably, the Frog. The Frog has four ten-inch wheels with mountain-bike style tires. Fully armored with bassinet it is almost four feet long, two feet wide and four feet tall. It is sheathed in nylon that seemingly cannot be pierced by a switchblade, but from which baby-vomit can be readily wiped. Available in red, blue and orange (and limited edition denim), it’s easily identified by its size and its logo of circles, which bears a disturbing resemblance to the universal biohazard sign. The Bugaboo comes with maps of New York, Los Angeles and other world cities detailing day-trips one can take that are suited to the Frog’s size. A regular routine of Pilates is necessary to move the thing. According to the US version of the Bugaboo website (there are sites in 15 languages), the base price of the Frog is $795. This does not include must-have accessories like matching parasol, UV filter and wool-lined Gore-Tex shearling baby pouch. Even with discounts below MSRP offered at sites like breastfeedingexpress.com (yes, breastfeedingexpress.com), the price approaches the cost of a minor mob hit. Appropriately the Bugaboo and its owners have become my targets.

It began innocently enough on a Wednesday afternoon I think. A pair of happy Yuccie moms entered the restaurant – having passed the rather gymnastic task of opening two heavy doors whilst pushing/pulling two Bugaboos. Their pride was obvious – not only had their babies just done something Biblically miraculous like wake up or smile or move – they had done so simultaneously. Thus their guard was down.

“Hi,” I said, “Wow, those are really cool strollers.”

“Yeah,” added Elizabeth, with just a hint of Ottawa in her voice “is that a new model?”

“Why YES,” mom#1 explained while mom#2 did her reflexive sorority-girl head flip and smiled, while detaching her little bundle of joy. “How’d you know?”
“Well, “ I said, “as you can imagine we see quite a few strollers in here.”

“I can imagine”

“Elizabeth, what was that one we saw the other day, Monday maybe?”

“I don’t know – the green one?”

“You know the other one, it had, like turn signals or something”

“Oh that one.”

The Yuccie mother is hooked. This cannot possibly be.

“Turn signals? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No, seriously. It was really sleek- looking, and –“

“It was silver!” Elizabeth perkily chimed in.

“- And it was foreign, they told me it was really popular in one of those old European cities with tiny sidewalks and crazy drivers, like Paris or something.”

“Really?” mom#2, having released her spawn, which was already careening unattended toward a set of stairs, inquired?

“No, Chris, it was Rome,” Elizabeth pointed out. They were from Rome. They had a hard time getting it through security.”

“I can imagine’” mom#1 commiserates.

“Yeah,” I continue, “it was Italian. It had huge tires but it was almost bullet shaped, and the frame was made from the aluminum they use in velodrome racing bikes, so it weighted, like three pounds. And it did have turn signals, on either side of the front tire and on the handles. It was weird.”

“Was it a Bugaboo? That’s a kind of stroller, like this one.” Mom#2 offered.

“No, no, I’ve seen a Bugaboo or two in my day, but this was not a Bugaboo. Some company that makes more than just one kind of thing made it. Like you know how Mitsubishi makes cars and electronics, but it wasn’t Mitsubishi….”

“It was European for sure,” Elizabeth offers, slowly twisting her shoulders and batting her eyes.

“Fiat!” I exclaim, “It was made by Fiat!”
“Really? “ the moms exclaim in almost harmony and in certain jealousy. They now covet the imaginary. I leave them to ponder this and to Blackberry their husbands as Elizabeth show them to a table, one near the stairs.

The devil in this game, as in all things, is in the details.

I was inspired by this and took it one step further the next day. I figured that if the Italians could make a top-notch stroller, the Germans could go one better – the all-terrain, weather defying BMW T950 (Toddler 9.5 kilos).

I think this was a Friday, when a Yuccie dad – the easiest of prey, especially for the buxom Elizabeth, tried to back a blue Bugaboo into the restaurant. Of course we offer no assistance and just stare – it’s simply too much fun. Because the biohazard logo was invisible, we could play dumb.

“Welcome,” I said, as an alternative to “hi.”

“Wow,” began my cohort Elizabeth immediately – is that the new BMW stroller?!?”

Between her perky boobs and the implication of confused status, the poor bastard was hooked.

“Um no, it’s not…BMW…no it’s a Bug… BMW? They make a stroller? Since when?”

“I saw one yesterday for the first time” I offered. “Really nice couple, I think they work on All My Children (a lot of AMC actors visit the restaurant). She told me that BMW first made one for Madonna and Guy Ritchie, for their second kid. They wanted to thank Madonna for the short movies she made for the BMW website.” Again, a little truth to hook them in – Madonna did make these movies.

“Yes,” Elizabeth continued, her breasts intimidating the Yuccie dad on a level my stroller lies could not reach, but from which they gained added credence, “it even had a place to dock your iPod!”

“And little speakers in the baby cabin so you could play educational stuff or sleeping music for the baby.”

Thus transfixed on many levels, Elizabeth escorted the hapless, obsessed Yuccie dad to a table far too small and too loud for him to enjoy his meal or to discuss this BMW stroller with his wife on his new Motorola Razr phone.

From here on out it just got easier and easier. We created an endless array of stroller accessories – heated seats, side-mounted Purell® dispensers, XM Satellite radio, On-Star…they all worked, hook, line and sinker. Except for the Sponge-Bob air side collision airbag on the Audi stroller. I got called on that one. I was a little disappointed that my run had come to an end. That is, of course, until the Prada stroller hit the market.