For the Unpretentious Beer and Ball-Cap Crowd, ‘Yuffies’ Is Way to Go

If you’ve decided you’ll never be able to afford a BMW or otherwise gain Yuppie status, but you hate feeling left out, you might consider joining the Yuffies, a bunch of losers who like it that way.

To be a Yuffie, or young urban failure, you must accept the heady goals of having lots of mindless fun, accepting your own limitations and enjoying Schlitz out of the can.

Co-founders Jeff Markell and Alex Murashko, a pair of “retired,” 29-year-old bartenders from Orange, Calif., view the group as sort of a low-brow, low-tech backlash to the consumerism glorified by young urban professionals known as Yuppies.

“I was sick of reading the hype about Yuppies,” Murashko said. “They’re too perfect.”

More than 500 self-proclaimed “decadent dreamers,” most of them Southern Californians, have joined the group since its formation a few months ago.

Membership is gained simply by buying a $7 T-shirt that entitles members to sporadic newsletters and invitations to tailgate parties at California Angels baseball games.

Markell and Murashko say they are out to save the world from rapid, vapid materialism, but they quickly add that they are not opposed to making a little money while preaching the message of slobbism.

They decided they had to do something since quitting their bartender jobs, which they described as “much too stressful.”

To pay the rent and spread their anti-Yuppie gospel, the two are marketing Yuffie T-shirts, $5 baseball hats, and a $13 Yuffie kit, consisting of a Yuffie shirt, hat, bumper sticker and button.

They also have a Yuffie hot line for updates on group activities.

A Yuffie song is in the works, written and performed by Marie Cain, a piano bar singer the two men met while bartending.

The lyrics go like this:

Forget the brie/ And come with me/ I’ll put you in the finest kind of company/ We don’t act stuffy/ We don’t get huffy/ We haven’t got names like Skip, Chip or Muffie.

Like the Boy Scouts, Yuffies will get their own handbook. One chapter is titled, “Phrases and words Yuffies either don’t know or don’t care to:

“T-bills (Could it be the way Londoners keep track of their afternoon tea expenses?).

“State-of the-art (Used only to refer to a party that has a keg).

“Six-figure salary (Personally, no woman’s figure is worth that much).”

The Yuffies handbook also tells members how to dress (shorts, flip flops, T-shirts and baseball caps); what to read (Recycler, Biker and Hustler); what to drive (a Ford Pinto or recycled U.S. mail truck).

Yuffie founders concede that they are not the first to coin the name. It has popped up in an Ann Landers column and in the cartoon strip “Crock.”

Markell and Murashko, however, think they are the first to form a group, which they hope will attract thousands of members across the country.

But the pair already has encountered a stumbling block in the word “failure.”

“To some people, the word is so negative that people are offended by it,” said Markell, who is proud of his status as a two-time college dropout.

Adds Murashko, “But I tell them, the only thing we’ve really failed at is to reach Yuppie ideals.”