Lincoln Park Trixie Society

Oh, the things that can happen when very clever people find themselves with lots of free time and a chip on their shoulder. On the bad side, the Unabomber. On the good side, Gandhi. Somewhere in between lies the Lincoln Park Trixie Society.

A send-up of the shallow and insular yuppy lifestyle one of Chicago's tonier neighborhoods, The LPTS is just one of a small but growing number of very witty, very thoroughly straight-faced satires on the Web. The site is so thorough, in fact, that some less clued-in to the vagaries of Chicago life have taken it seriously.

Nevertheless, you don't have to be from Chicago to get the joke; every town has its Trixies. They're the women with Kate Spade bags for every day of the week; the ex-sorority girls still lusting after big, dumb jocks; the women who go to law school to find husbands.

The site claims to be the Internet incarnation of the Lincoln Park Trixie Society, providing "the backbone and courage necessary for many young Trixies to climb the social ladder, and continues to provide the structure necessary to maintain Lincoln Park as one of the most wonderful neighborhoods in all of Chicago." Along with information about the society's history, membership and services, it features a host of sections, with names running from the subtle (the "Ask Ashley" advice column) to the ridiculous ("Ride in my Jetta").

Nor does the site restrict its firepower to women. Men, referred to as "Chads" or "TrixieMales," are common targets, though they are always subsidiary to their girlfriends. The "Photo Gallery" is replete with images of studly, arrogant- looking men in tow behind their swooshy-pants'd partners. In a clever inversion, the site's focus on the Starbucks and Gaps and sorority alums of Lincoln Park recalls, in its absence, the days when the neighborhood was dominated by blue-collar immigrants, gangsters and speakeasies.

Sometimes the humor is backhanded and contextual, like this excerpt from the "Trixie Guide to Party Planning":

Invite the Boss, his spouse, and no more than three couples to this gathering. Make sure the accessory couples you use are the most sophisticated people you know to ensure the greatest impact on the Boss. Use the following guide to judge the appropriateness of your guests: traders are preferable to dot-commers and investment bankers are preferable to creative-types (e.g., media consultants and designers). Dreamy, well-coiffed real-estate gurus such as Chaz Walters are preferable to just about anyone else. If those in your immediate circle are not up to the task of dazzling the elite, ask around. Word of mouth works wonders in our Trixie Village, and you'll have little trouble finding attendees of the highest caliber.

Other times the site is a 30-ought six, as in this Q&A from the "Frequently Asked Questions":

3. Is it required that all Trixies look and act alike?

Emphatically No! Many people believe Trixies must look and act alike, for some silly reason. But the truth is that the Society and its members are a tediously diverse group. A cross-section of the Village's residents reveals that Trixies often choose to look and act like their best friends and coworkers, but these girls often take small, subtle risks to differentiate themselves from their peers. For example, when Kate Spade handbags were first introduced, all Trixies bought the standard black model because that's what everybody else did. Nowadays, however, some Trixies venture away from the standard black bag and buy blue, green and even white bags. Other Trixies have been known to buy white Jettas, or stray from Starbucks and buy their Lattes at places like the Corner Bakery, Seattle's Best, Caribou or even Peet's.

A lot of the site's humor comes in this vein, and after a few pages you get the impression it's run by a bunch of guys who got rejected by one too many cheerleaders in high school. Nevertheless, the site does a good job of mocking a materialistic lifestyle whose practitioners are largely oblivious to the world around them. On the "Ask Ashley" page, for instance, a concerned "reader" writes about violence in the Cabrini Green Projects, just south of Lincoln Park; "Ashley" responds: "Someday soon we'll laugh this off, as Cabrini becomes so safe that we won't think twice about jogging down Clybourn with our SUV strollers. I heard they're even building a replica of Wrigley Field somewhere in the area, which will certainly improve the neighborhood considerably!"

Ultimately, more than a few visitors to the site, after getting the joke, will scratch their heads and ask "what's the point?" And, admittedly, there are better things to do with your time than spend countless hours on a Web page making fun of yuppies. But the Web is a tool with unlimited potential for subtlety and sly social commentary, and while it's not the best of its kind, the LPTS goes a long way toward that end.

— Clay Risen (clay@flakmag.com)