You must log in or register to comment.
As someone who lives in the suburbs in the Midwest as an adult who can’t drive - yes it’s a fucking nightmare. I lived in NYC and just lived near subway stations, best time of my life. SoCal is a close second, I lived in a city that was walkable/bikeable to anything - including the ocean. To say the suburbs were a shock is about as equal as my depression is to it still today. I’m an artist so fortunately I at least have that to do at home, the depression means it’s working right?
I’ve seen my neihborhood slowly shifting in the few years I’ve been here.
I got everyone on my small street to start gardening and they got other blocks to start, we all share our extra crops for the most part. No one is very good quite yet aside from a few houses who’ve been doing it for years and have been trying to help us non green thumbers.
There’s a plumber 2 streets over who’s lived there for a decade, I used him for a job and now he’s the go to guys for most of my direct neighbors.
I make my own oat milk so I buy oats in bulk. A few people in the neighborhood buy a bunch from me for much cheaper than the grocery store and some have even started making their own oatmilk with me.
Anytime someone needs tech support they come over to me first, I used to see a geek squad van in the niehborhood weekly since there a lot of elderly. I hate doing it, but my god those tech support companies are slimy.
I’ve done a couple carpentry projects in the neighborhood and helped fix quite a few fences.
I feel like I moved here and said “why don’t we help eachother out?” And it was a revolutionary idea that no one had thought about before.
When I was in the city it’s just what you did. People survived with eachother but out here in a weird mix between the sticks/suburbs it seems like most people don’t even know their neighbors names.
Is it difficult to make the oat milk? I drink a lot of it and have been thinking about trying to make it at home to save money, but I wouldn’t know where to start.
Super easy, we just throw 1 cup of oats and 4 cups of water in the blender, blend it for ~45 seconds and put it through a cheesecloth bag a time or two. I like to throw a little maple syrup in there to sweeten it up a bit.
As another commentor said, you can soak the oats overnight, and that makes it better, but most of our oat milk is for my toddler and I’m not prepared
It is very easy. You soak your oat overnight, throw away the water add some fresh one, blend it and strain it. That is the same for pretty much any vegetable milk.
The European mind can’t comprehend.
About ten years ago I met a group of American exchange students at some high school event. The city (in Europe obviously) had* the most incompetent, mismanaged, underdeveloped, dysfunctional public transit system I had ever seen… and the Americans had nothing but praise and adoration for it. I couldn’t understand why, until I stumbled across Not Just Bikes and learned how fucking dire the situation is over there. The transit system is still the same, maybe worse, but this new perspective gave me a measure of appreciation. We’re not quite as fucked.
However, most tourists only experience the public transport in relatively central areas of the city, going mostly towards the centre, and mostly outside rush hours, so they do experience it at it’s best.
The European mind can’t comprehend.
We got lawns from France and England.
Not on the same scale as the US. This is sort of like watching pedestrians dodge traffic at a right-on-red 8 lane stroad that is 100ft wide in the US and then saying the UK is similar just because they also have roads while UK roads are far more narrow, the cars are far smaller, and the legal system is far more protective of pedestrians
A classic English garden is quite different from an American lawn. An English garden has flowers and bushes and ornaments. It is very well maintained though, that is true, too maintianed maybe. The grass part is also pure grass with no room for “weeds”. But the English make it look “orderly and autistic” while the Americans just make it look “sterile”, no life, no inspiration, no spirit, no joy, no color, no vegetables, nothing.
At least the ones that I saw my year and half spent in England/Wales, most are significantly smaller than American lawns. They’re not just big yards that half the time look like junkyards with spare broken down trucks or old kids playgrounds.
If you wanted to. American seems like they’re required to have a lawn or else they’ll get sued by HOA or something.
My HOA requires a “percentage of green space” which most people have interpreted as lawn. Primarily because it is cheaper (and less effort) to just slap down some Kentucky blue grass and a sprinkler system than it is to plant native plants.
If you violate HOA rules, they can put a lein on your property (fine you) and, in extreme cases, you can be evicted.
Why do HOAs have this power? Property values.
So down at the bottom, what’s the reason for the homogeneity and isolation of suburbia?
Laziness and greed.
In the same way you got deep dish pizza from italy
*casserole
-
Yes. Yes. We played video games or read books or had to have our parents drive us to a park or walked the whole way (no sidewalks) there.
-
Because our officials are incompetent. Yes. Yes.
-
See above on lobbying from oil and car companies.
-
Because the word “commie” is scary to Americans from decades of indoctrination and the “nuclear family” having their own home is the biggest lie in the “American Dream.”
-
Because of zoning laws. Refer to the above about incompetent officials. Yep, it is simply not possible and legal.
-
Americans care way more about appearances than actually having things be useful. What can I say, we’re fucking coddled.
Hope this helps. It’s valid to still be baffled at such.
incompetent
No, malicious. Racist in fact.
Suburbs were intentionally designed to be hostile to families without a car. This created a financial barrier to living in the suburbs, organically weeding out “undesirable” (aka non-white) families. Yes this also meant that many white families also couldn’t afford to move to the suburbs, but that was a downside the rich white racists were willing to accept if it meant keeping most non-white families out.
Add in redlining and you’ve got yourself a good ol’ American suburb!
You’re absolutely right but I’m also gonna go out on a limb and say malicious/racist and incompetent are not mutually exclusive from one another.
Definitely!!!
many white families also couldn’t afford to move to the suburbs, but that was a downside the rich white racists were willing to accept
I think this was a feature, not a downside. (I agree with the rest of your post tho)
- Americans care way more about appearances than actually having things be useful. What can I say, we’re fucking coddled.
But that is the strange part to me: its appearance is awful. A big garden full of plants is much nicer looking than only grass.
So many Americans get rock hard about their lawns, and demand that everyone else does as well. There is no logic to it
Two pet theories I have about this
-
it is profitable for big chemical companies and whatever lobby makes the lawnmowers and weed whackers for everyone to have these big lawns that need to be maintained via mowing and pesticides. There are breeds other than bluegrass that don’t grow that tall, chiefly buffalo grass, with deeper roots that make it generally more healthy, less patchy, less susceptible to weeds, etc.
-
It is convenient for the ruling class that we have to do all this maintenance individually, leaving us less time (and wealth) to organize and build community/alternative modes of governance. Divide and conquer and all that.
OK I lied here’s a 3rd:
- Western society is pretty much defined by our need to control nature/the world around us in outright denial of any consequences that might arise from doing so.
-
But HOAs mandate then
I saw a case of a guy who was being prosecuted for having unruly lawn. The kicker? He was elderly with cancer, and his son used to do it, but he went away for a while and no one was doing it. The judge said, and I quote: “You should be ashamed of yourself. If i could give you jail time, I would. Why should the neighbours have to look at that?”. HE WAS ELDERLY AND CANCER RIDDLED.
Ah okay, that explains it.
-
I read that all with a Slovakian accent and it made me happy. I will likely bust out with that accent next time I want to rant about how stupid suburbia is.
Ôc stopin douz pípľ from džast päkin ap end lívin? Auŕ bratia of Bratislava vud uelkam dem uit oupn ármz. Ánlez dejr Hangäryjen ór Džipsy ór dérz tú mäny of dem.
Haha, that accent is even thicker than Scottish. And no, I don’t know why they don’t just leave, I heard they like it there. Certainly not Hungarian or Gypsy, though, they’re what we call WASPs and are welcome about as much as a nest of wasps.
Aw, someone jelly.
As someone who grew up in the city and moved to the suburbs for a brief period of time in my teenage years, I had similar questions. While it was arguably the highlight of my life, walking to and from school was a nightmare because we were all the way in the back. Despite being a nice place to live in, the logistics were hard to ignore.
deleted by creator
