"are you enfianced?"

Nestled underneath the arcades of the Place Des Vosges, I debriefed on my underwhelming impression of Berlin with a couple of true Parisians. The zany stranger seated at the neighboring table overheard my less than complimentary comments about Berlin, and we delved into a discussion of urban gentrification (and the irritating characters who accompany it). There are the bobos in Paris's 17th arrondissement ("Bobo" is a term for Frenchies who are simultaneously "bourgeois" and "bohemian"); there are the yuppies in Manhattan's Murray Hill; there are the hipsters in Brooklyn's Williamsburg.

But nowadays there is something more offensive than yuppies or hipsters: the yipster. Yuppie + Hipster = Yipster. Yipsters tend to reside post-college on the Upper East Side (where they live rent-free in apartments formerly occupied by their grandmothers). But the yipster quickly accumulates enough wealth to move to Williamsburg, where they stock their kitchens with Whole Foods groceries and frequent the gym in their full service river-view buildings.

The yipster drinks Red Stripe beers out of the bottle at the local backyard bar venue on Friday nights. The yipster probably went to Harvard but prefers to hang out on weekends with up-and-coming artists who went to RISD. I suppose I am similar to a yipster, except that yipsters usually have real jobs so that they can eventually buy a house in Westchester County, forget the "grunge" of Brooklyn, and buy the paintings of their former 'artist friends' who gain credibility from Christie's contemporary art auction.