Walden Pond

Today, I went to a real city, one that was built before cars were invented, before steam engines and trains. Real cities don't sprawl, suburbs sprawl, it doesn't matter how many people live inside it, if it sprawls, it is a suburb. I forgot how much I like real cities. It has been roughly 13 years since I have been to a city that is so old. I like that the houses are right next to each other, sharing a wall. I like that some of the streets are so small the only car that you should be driving down the road is a smart car, or better yet walking. I like the brick, I like the archetecture. I like the small alleys. I like that right next to the fancy jewlers with marble floors is the comics shop with rotting wood embelishements on the outside, worn wooden floors, and hand blown glass from who knows when. I like that most of the businesses I walk past are local. I like the people. I like walking on the uneven brick sidewalks. I like that you can sense the history in the buildings and the walk ways. I like that it isn't new and fadish. I like that there are more cars than parking places, and I'd like it even more if there were no cars or parking places.

I've never been much of a fan of the autocentric, keeping-up-with-the-Jonses, American-Dream-toting, commute-inducing phenomenon of the suburbs. I don't need much space, I'm creative enough to fit six people in a small space, three bedrooms and one bathroom with a kitchen that has a sizeable dining room and a family room is really all I need. McMansions are something that I will never understand, what do you do with all that space anyway?

Suburbs seem to have been invented to find a happy medium. Reminiscent of country living, with the convinience and variety of the city. What I find ironic is that the suburbs don't seem to provide either. Can you really call a lawn, which over the years has gotten smaller because people want bigger homes, with a few small trees and a six foot fence country living? Especially in newer neighborhoods where all of the foliage has been removed and replaced with adolescent trees whose trunks are no bigger than a pencil?

Can you really call big box stores like Wal-mart and Target convenient? It used to be that all the shops were located on easily walkable streets sevices by people who knew what they were doing and were willing to provide great customer service because they needed YOUR money. Now, they are supposedly all located conveniently inside my local Wal-mart serviced by people who are getting paid way less than anyone should, who don't know where the products are in the store, let alone which one is best. I probably spend more time driving around trying to find all of the things I need than I would walking down some easily accessible streets, because my local Wal-mart while covering a wide breadth of items, lacks severely in depth. I still end up looking for specialty shops, which instead of being found in one convenient walkable area are part of a strip mall, surrounded by massive parking lots. I'm not talking about my good food fetish here, I'm talking about survival basics.

Where is the sense of community--an identity that belongs to a city? Everywhere we go, there is at least a Wal-mart and a McDonalds, everywhere looks the same. The only reason you can tell that you are in Houston, Texas rather than Pheonix, Arizona is because of the difference in humidity.

I'm obviously tooting a silent horn and wishing desperately to myself that I could get away from a world that is autocentric and driven by large corporations. How did we ever survive with out our very own internal combustion engines sitting in a special room in our homes? How did we ever survive with out being constantly entertained and marketed to? I sometimes think that knowledge is lost. I wish we could find it again. Maybe it's time I found my "Walden Pond" and got away from it all for a while.