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

but i guess princeton doesnt really count as a 'suburb'

actually, my childhood catholic pplz were polish or otherwise eastern european, not irish. indeed there was a big hubbub when someone made a statue called 'hunky steelworker' cause so many people could remember when 'hunky' was a slur.

when i was in grade two everyone else went to ccd for two weeks and i got to just sit there reading. awesome

-- mookieproof, Saturday, 12 July 2008 01:20 (2 days ago) Link

you from picksburgh?? a couple of years ago, my brother was in the hospital and some relatives from western pa. came out to visit him. during a visit, my cousin turned to me and said, 'he'll be all right -- he's a stubborn bohunk!!" truer words were never spoken.

I think what people are largely glossing over here is that, at least in a lot of places, the suburbs aren't economically homogenous. There are upscale suburbs and downscale suburbs.

For real – there's a big diff between McMansion Playland and Levittown.

I think my favorite thing about the former incarnation of suburbs IS: archaeologists determined Mesopotamia was a well-formed society bcz of their logical, grid-based roads. What will THE FUTURE think of all the random twists & turns peppered with cul-de-sacs?

sure, but do you say pop or soda?

-- mookieproof, Friday, July 11, 2008 7:50 PM (Friday, July 11, 2008 7:50 PM) Bookmark Link

tonic.

and tresspasses which, in northern mass speak came out as "tresspuhsez".

my mom's neighborhood consists of all these four-digit house numbers which bear no logical relation to one another-- like, 6837 is next to 2339...

Poor pizza delivery people.

club soda innit

council estate represent, it doesn't get realer than the Scott

someone got their bike stolen, like, last month

xposts

not that we care about xposts, on the estate

Do people really feel less spied-on when they have neighbors who they share walls with rather than neighbors 20 feet away?

It's not a matter of spying or privacy, it's that ... when you're in a dense rental area, people mostly just expect you to be non-annoying and otherwise treat you like a near-stranger in a dense area, doing whatever it is that you do. In an upscale ownership-based subdivision where real estate values and people's sense of the American dream is at stake and people's kids all play together, you are policed and confronted with a lot of expectations about how you're fitting into things -- socially, professionally, etc. It's fundamentally a fake scale recreation of a "village," and you're known to all and carry all the responsibility of a good villager, only more so.

The suburbs of major cities are getting the opposite these days, though -- people pushed out of gentrifying city centers, winding up very isolated and shut off and non-villagey in the kinds of strip-mally suburban spaces that don't jump to mind when we talk about "suburbs" in the leafy-subdivision middle-class sense.

otm

... But a dense rental area that's largely populated by students who grew up in strip-mally suburban spaces is the worst kind of hell.

The Suburns are Euro-american living pods popular for their isolation and seclusion, allowing a social interaction -free life. This prevents minorities from seeing them and vice versa. The television acts as the survelince monitor for world events and to have social times. No more apartment neighboors, a welcome sight to the easily annoyed and annoying American stereo owner.

― Mike Hanle y, Thursday, August 30, 2001 5:00 PM Bookmark

Gah. Reading this made me so angry that I have to rebuke it even nine years later. As a minority who grew up in the suburbs, the suburban county where I was raised had a rather wonderful diversity: the largest Korean-American community in the state, larger concentrations of Latinos than the central city, a well-established black community in the county's largest town (which I was born out of), growing South Asian and African populations, a thriving Russian community, many other Asian ethnicities, a large, well-populated Indian Reservation, and more.

Which leads to my problem: some white guy is denying that me and millions of people like me exist, just so he can set up some easy narrative that makes him cooler than some other white guy. This pisses me off indescribably.

I really shouldn't have clicked on this thread, it was only going to make me mad.

My suburban street had a black family, a chinese family, and a gay couple, so I feel you Rev. But really everywhere else it's just whites.

My point is (well, maybe depending on where you are) that isn't really true at all.

I mean, there were definitely pockets where I grew up (my own neighborhood, unfortunately) that were super-white, but at the sametime there were other areas that were anything but.

rev's point is kinda that sweeping, superior, judgey-judgey generalisations about what "kind" of people live in a place are duds.

rev and lex otm.

pretty sure my parents are the only asians living in our suburb. have made it out to the north jersey suburbs which are pretty heavily asian and south asian dominated. and to the northwest philly suburbs which are pretty russian dominated. but yeah, it'd be nice to see some more integration.

I was trying to joke lightheartedly to Rev. The.overgeneralizations abt.race in the suburb are retarded.

Looking at wikipedia, it looks like my home county is about 15% minority, but that includes the rural parts too, which really were that white (except now lots of Latinos live in those parts too and you have ignorant white folks complaining about all the "Mexican gangbangers" in Monroe).

So, I'd guess it's more like 20% in the more urban/suburban parts of the county.

kkvgz: I gotcha, but sometimes jokes are hard to read on the net.

Actually, another gay man (I strongly suspect) moved nxt door to my folks, but he's a bit of an asshole about his lawn and nowhere near as cool as Bill and Pete.

(Especially when I'm kinda worked up.)

Understandable, Rev.

suburban makeup is changing quickly in a lot of places. comments 9 years ago are starting to look more like 19 years ago.

Suburbs are still dud imo

at this point it seems that a lot of the chicago suburbs are more ethnically/racially diverse than most parts of the city itself

suburban makeup is changing quickly in a lot of places. comments 9 years ago are starting to look more like 19 years ago.

― 156, Tuesday, June 8, 2010 1:43 PM Bookmark

Yeah, but my family's been there for 50 and a lot of the black families in my hometown have been there for longer (Although it should be mentioned that this is an old 19th-cen. mill town that got sucked in by conurbanization). Obviously, the makeup has changed due to successive waves of immigration. But most of these communities have been in place for as long as I remember.

there are suburbs that are super diverse and there are large american cities that are not. suburbs are dud for other reasons.

Sure.

what is the best kind of community

humans only obv

Suburb-bashing is superdull and I will probably think you are a moron if you (not you personally) engage in it, though.

"How can I be folk? I'm from the suburbs you know" -- John Fahey

i got to say they're still a pretty bad scene around here. mostly middle and working class white-flight havens (which will eventually become more "diverse" - thereby leading to another exodus ten years later to a farther outer-ring development of zero-lot-line boxes), and scorched-earth McMansion developments for a tacky, aspiring upper-middle class who have lots of Palin stickers on their SUVs.

at this point it seems that a lot of the chicago suburbs are more ethnically/racially diverse than most parts of the city itself

it seems like this is happening in a lot of major cities(?); not so much down here.

Suburbs are dud for a lot of reasons. Cities are dud for a lot of reasons. Rural areas are dud for a lot of reasons. Seems like city folk are the only ones that get off on looking down on the others. (the "ugh city folk" lament of rural peeps is just a reaction to urban snobbery).

again, I'm only speaking for what I see in a 20 mile radius of moi

*Suburb-bashing*
"The suburbs aren't all bad."
"How can you have anything nice to say about suburbs! They're horrible!"

Cause I spent the vast majority of my life there and I probably know a hell more a lot about them than you, you condescending twat.

well I've spent the vast majority of my life in a suburb too - and it sucked.

I really, really hate cars though.

chuburbs

xp to Grany What? Please. The country people I know LOVE looking down on urban peeps because we live "all smushed together on top of each other" plus we don't have the American dream of enough space not to care what anyone else thinks of how you live. And, you know, attics and basements and garages. Plus the country smells better plus lake views plus the beach plus they really love their lives there and it's the opposite of here so pretty much they're nice about it but they escape back to their private, individual houses with great relief.

(the "ugh city folk" lament of rural peeps is just a reaction to urban snobbery).

ugh, I once spent a week visiting a country cousin who insisted on calling me "city boy" the whole time I was there, which wasn't even accurate

Also they think the city is too fast and too worldly and too coarse.

i'm sorta of the mind that if i ever move out, i'm moving waaaayy the fuck out. like can't-see-nearest-neighbor's-house out

Just about to start reading this book, which looks like it addresses whats being discussed here, rather than an out-of-date popular image of suburbia

http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-History-Historical-Studies-America/dp/0226456633/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276030940&sr=8-1

I should add that they like Trader Joe's and triple-cream brie, though, so I will be filling a cooler with strange and wondrous foods next weekend and sending it home with my country people after their visit to the great grey city.