THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9603010243
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
``The yuppies are here,'' said the headline in The Clipper a couple of weeks ago, a yuppie being a young urban professional.
Well, I am here, too, but I am a soggie, which is a suburban old geezer. Come July 15, I will have lived in Great Bridge 25 years. That entitles me to make a few comments on the yuppification of our community.
I used to live in Norfolk and thought of Chesapeake as the land of the Great Unwashed. I mean, when you hit Great Bridge heading south you were in the undoubted boondocks. Look out for the chickens crossing the road. Literally. Chickens crossing Battlefield Boulevard were a common caution back then. And, no, I did not stop to ask them why they were crossing the road.
Then, in 1971, my Norfolk neighborhood overdosed on traffic. We looked south to Great Bridge, where neither the buffalo nor the gridlock roamed and the skies were not cloudy all day. Or something like that. Anyway, we found our house. We found serenity.
But at the beginning of the 1980s, the developers found Chesapeake. Crank up the bulldozers and the chain saws. Hire 10 poets to think up folksy names for subdivisions. Actually, Big Mortgage Manor would fit most of them, but that's not what you'd call a great sales pitch.
Now there is so much traffic on my street that I refer to it as Ashley International Raceway. The 25-mile-an-hour speed limit I call the Haley's Comet Law because it is observed only once every 76 years. And when I see what's happening to the green areas of the city, I wonder if the surgeon general has declared trees hazardous to your health.
Chesapeake's changes aren't all bad, though. Culture-wise, we have progressed light years since 1971. I have observed in the past that whereas ``the three Bs'' usually referred to composers Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, the term meant something else in Chesapeake - namely, beans, barns and barbecue. One of my neighbors opened an art gallery in the early 1970s. For all the response she got she might as well have been selling space heaters in the Sahara Desert.
Back then, Chesapeake's major cultural contribution was clogging. I enjoy clogging when it is done with zest and verve and spirit. But every time you looked up, it seemed that tired youngsters were tramping out the steps by rote. Mechanically, not merrily.
So if the coming of the yuppies is the reason for the thriving interest in the arts that I see in Chesapeake, I'll drink to the yuppies. In white wine, of course. With some brie (cheese) on French bread, please. In January, Miz Phyllis and I went to a concert at the Central Library played by a brass quintet from the Virginia Symphony. I was talking to one of the musicians, and he told me how wonderful it was that the Chesapeake Fine Arts Commission was sponsoring concerts like that. Amen!
Despite the progress of Chesapeake yuppification, though, we will not achieve it until we have a clone of the Naro Cinema in the truly yuppified Ghent section of Norfolk. Note the word ``cinema.'' That means it frequently shows the kind of films where there is an actual plot instead of a string of explosions. Also note the use of the word ``films.'' What plays at a ``cinema'' is a ``film,'' not a ``movie.''
Another thing: the Naro goes beyond the over-iced drinks and greasy popcorn featured in the average theater lobby. It has baklava and cappuccino, both very yuppie in style and substance. One other reminder: Under no circumstances, if you are striving for yuppification, refer to a ``film'' as a ``movie.'' However, you may call it a ``flick,'' short for ``flicker'' and not lose any yuppie points.
Among what I consider to be the happy signs of Chesapeake's new-found culture shows up when the public radio stations hold their fund drives. It seems to me that I almost never used to hear Chesapeake mentioned when contributors' home towns were reported. Now I hear it often. And, bless us every one, the very general manager of the stations is an old South Norfolk boy and still-Chesapeaker, Raymond Jones.
On balance, I guess I am glad to see Chesapeake yuppifying. Even if the shops that are coming in are ``upscale,'' and my income is more medium scale. You can tell just how upscale a shop is without seeing the price tags. If it's a ``shoppe,'' it's expensive. As a rule of thumb, the more cutesy the name, the higher the prices.
Truthfully, more than advanced age disqualifies me from being a yuppie. I'd rather drink Pepsi than white wine. I drive Chevys, not Volvos. And I would much rather have a discount price than a designer label. Let's face it. Forgive me, yuppies, but I am a soggie and glad to be one. by CNB