People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

in fact one of the great things about (middle-class*) city living is buying your groceries the day you want to use them! so that stuff doesnt have to go bad! and you can decide what you want to eat!

Did not realise that that's the reason. I thought I was just being lazy and inefficient by only thinking one meal ahead. *struts* (to the nearby shitty little supermarket)

The shitty apartment thing, I sort of get it, maybe? In my home town, there was only one apartment complex, and it was one of those "townhome community" things, and I definitely felt like it was for people who couldn't afford to buy a house, or qualify for a loan/mortgage, and that was sad and kind of embarrassing for them. I'm pretty embarrassed myself, remembering it. But that was the message I got from adults. Because the only way to be the right kind of citizen was to own a home.

This is the kind of fuzzy-headed thinking that got us where we are, I suspect?

xp welllll thats how i *used* to think about it, but then i "reframed" my laziness as a positive attribute

Strawman communities everywhere

ps all this lol attempt at trolling 'how do you get groceries???' stuff - I mean even if the ppl itt did live in urban areas where it was hard to get groceries, that would ultimately be due to the fact that the cities simply weren't dense enough to support the business. my gf lives in a pretty walkable college town going through a downtown renewal of sorts and they're finally building a grocery store downtown - at the bottom of a brand new 20 story apt building. next to a train station. not some crazy coincidence, these things go hand in hand.

also: http://www.peapod.com/

tbh, I don't get groceries, I just live off of fast food and the liquor and chips that they sell at the convenience store because no grocery store will move into my neighborhood.

Now that I've made that horrible reference, I am suddenly wondering if markers grew up in an underprivileged neighborhood and really does live off of slurpees and snacks

Sometimes I live in the country/Sometimes I live in the town/Sometimes I take a great notion/Just to jump into the river and drown

I don't get groceries, I just live off of fast food and the liquor and chips that they sell at the convenience store because no grocery store will move into my neighborhood.

lol because I live in a food desert right now. Probably passed two dozen bodegas last night, looking for one open store or restaurant.

Great thread. Wish I could contribute more, but I live in a house with a front yard and a back yard. It takes me five minutes to drive to my workplace in the downtown district. I park in a free lot and walk the rest of the way (after dropping the kids off at their daycare.)

I don't think there's anything wrong with making a very general assumption that suburbs are conservative. It's why Republicans in redistricting prefer cutting up metros like pizza slices instead of the Democratic way of shaping districts like bullseyes. It's no different than saying Kansas is conservative, even thought they've had a recent Democratic governor and Lawrence is still doing its progressive thing.

There are shitty apartment complexes everywhere though. In fact, they're probably shittier the further from an urban area you get.

Bethesda Maryland and Arlington, Virginia are Democratic voting suburbs

we've beat this idea to death itt 1xbln times, but there's a diff between "suburb" as someplace near but outside the formal borders of a named city and "suburb" as recently-built very low density freeway-centered development. "suburb" A is not really what pro-urban people are criticizing, a lot of those places are materially indistinguishable from the "real" city.

yeah laurel that hood is really surprisingly lacking in grocery stores, considering that its been pretty middle class for the last couple decades

right - Arlington is more of an urban area than anywhere in 'big city' Jacksonville Florida

xp

oh man Jacksonville.

That city is a 4000-acre parking lot, and the annoying kind with coin-operated meters.

Seriously, max, what IS the deal? There are no stores of any kind out there! No laundromats, no dry cleaning, no groceries, no restaurants, no drugstore, one little hardware store that closes at 6pm, until you get to Fulton (still not much there) or far enough west that it's Clinton Hill-ish.

I might as well live in the suburbs.

p much my conclusion from this thread & others is that everyone should live in college towns

yeah i dont really get it either. i guess its always been a really residential neighborhood but youd think thered at least be like a key foods on fulton or something? lewis is like the main commercial drag and there are what like five stores on it? and three restaurants? and the cafe went out of business

people should live where they want

I want to live on Mars

i think the lesson is, you moved out of the city to escape the assholes, but the assholes followed you, on the internet.

people should all live in new hampshire

I would settle for living in one of the underground cities in Cappadocia. If it's good enough for the Hittites, it's good enough for America!

in fact one of the great things about (middle-class*) city living is buying your groceries the day you want to use them! so that stuff doesnt have to go bad! and you can decide what you want to eat!

pretty sure this can be done in the burbs too?

oh, weird, never realized that *packs up stuff, moves back to suburbs*

hopefully not my suburb

town ain't big enough for the both of us, son

can we drop the grocery talk? it was a pretty lol attempt at a trump card.

*calls real estate agent frantically*

xp: iatee, don't take me seriously. I'm only hoping for lols, not trump cards. I actually believe in living in apartments mixed-use developments and was as recently as this morning fantasizing about developing a high-rise with all that lotto money I'm going to get this weekend. But until then, it's home ownership and making fun of stuck-up city folk.

But also, people should be allowed to like their suburban homes and lawns and nature and sunshine without being called "republicans".

Mars sounds really great until you calculate the posting lag. There would always be new answers on the active thread! You'd never get to actually post.

But also, people should be allowed to like their suburban homes and lawns and nature and sunshine without being called "republicans".

I am sure the Republicans who like their suburban homes and lawns and nature and sunshine would be very annoyed with this statement.

Funny how it gets turned into people having "incorrect" desires rather than cities being "incorrect" for not being able to address those desires.

brb, gotta go tell henry that he has to go to the glue factory because the mean people on the internet said we shouldnt have a lawn

You could just let him do his business right there on the floor like cityfolk do.

oh yay thread is reactionary again i.e. granny dainger is here

it's a pretty shitty thread anyway. happy 9/11 everyone

you must be from the suburbs

very sensitive

How about instead of reading "incorrect" desires we read this as "community features we feel are detrimental or undesirable." I've had conversations with people where they see nothing wrong with having no walkable resources, feel a row of big box stores next to the freeway makes a lot of sense, and so on. I'd say a lot of people here bring a lot of opinions and experiences to the table that make these seem detrimental, but it's condescending to assume others are idiots or have an entire swath of political ideas you dislike because they accept these things.

a lot of people have dogs in the city fyi

also can i just be clear, i dont think anyone is "correct" or "incorrect" for their "desires," i just think that the human race will die if we dont all move to new hampshire

xp: and they never pick up after them!

there are dogs that need lots of room and constant exercise fyi

http://s3-ak.buzzfed.com/static/imagebuzz/web02/2010/1/7/22/window-horse-20723-1262921599-62.jpg

like yeah you could have a siberian husky in the city, if you wanted to own a miserable dog i suppose