Lately people keep asking me, Do you think we’re having another tech bubble? Like an echo bubble or something? Tell you what. Look at these photos from a Yelp party at SFMOMA taken by Mitchell Aidelbaum (whose flicker page is here) and then you tell me. I mean, I’m not 100% sure, but when a) you’ve got companies with names like “Yelp”; and b) they’re having parties at SFMOMA; and c) this man wearing a bra is one of the guests of honor; and d) your PR bimbos are acting like drunken LUGs at a Girls Gone Wild party, and e) it’s all being paid for by venture capitalists who are just betting that a bigger fool (cough, Rupert Murdoch, cough) will come along … well, yeah, you might start thinking that maybe you’re in the middle of a bubble type period.

Kids, you seem like a nice bunch, and you’re not bad looking, at least by San Francisco standards (in NY or LA people would just laugh), and I’m sure Oberlin was awesome and the year in Prague did you some good and opened your horizons to other cultures and you saw how the rest of the world views America and everything, and I know it’s a bummer to be living in the U.S. right now with Bush as president and Rove as head of the Senate or whatever, but at the same time you’re soooo into living in the Bay Area and soooo glad to be working with so many rilly rilly smart and cool people and everything … and you’re growing sideburns and a soul patch, or getting your clit pierced and experimenting with bisexuality and taking up snowboarding with a bunch of other faux dykes at Alpine Meadows … but take some advice from an old guy. You’re working a little too hard at showing the world how much fun you’re having, okay? You’re putting in just a little too much effort at seeming hip. You don’t need to make out with other chicks in public to shock us. We’ve seen it before. And with hotter chicks. And it’s not shocking. What is shocking is that drunk, dopey expression on your face and that fugly orange thrift-shop dress and that freaky high-waist gray stretch skirt. Ditto for the big fur coats and indoor bicyle helmets (which yes, do make you look frigtarded) and the conspicuously doofy hat and the beatnik beard which I guess is supposed to make people not notice you’re fat.

Look. I know you’re trying to come across as hip and bohemian so that people will forget that you’re basically nice middle-class kids from the East Coast or the Midwest. I know you don’t want anyone to think that you’re just as desperately greedy and materialistic as your parents, and that you’re secretly hoping to make huge amounts of money to get back at them, and that you’re deeply, deeply insecure because your only previous work experience involved typing up the school lunch menus for that local weekly back in Connecticut. But just ease up a bit. Seriously.

So, is there a bubble? Well, I’m no economist. But kids, I wouldn’t throw out those Burger King uniforms just yet.

And to all you institutional investors that are pumping your pension fund money into Bessemer Venture Partners, that 100-year-old, very blue blood, very prestigious venture firm that is a lead investor in Yelp, well, the kids out here in the Bay Area just want to say, Thanks, grandpa. Rilly. We’re having an awesome time with your money.

(Please note: Both of the above photographs of drunken Yelptards and all of the other fine photographs that are linked in this item were taken by Mitchell Aidelbaum and distributed under a Creative Commons license. FSJ thanks Mitchell Aidelbaum for his fine work. When this item originally appeared it did not credit Mitchell Aidelbaum and also failed to include a link to Mitchell Aidelbaum‘s flickr page. FSJ regrets the error and apologizes to Mitchell Aidelbaum for this mistake.)