Subtropical suburbia
For those who have visited me or, through other circumstances in their life, seen my little southeasternmost corner of the republic, you will be familiar with the general scenery of this enclave. Some wags have called it--and not without a modicum of accuracy--"Palm Beach Lite."
I like it. Not because there are Bentleys at every corner, or because every house is palatial, or because the ethnic makeup is monochromatic. I like it because it's very pretty, very placid, full up with Historical Landmark Type Houses, and convenient to really good shopping.
There is much to dislike about suburbia, to hear neo-urban hipsters tell it, but most of their gripes hold no water here. The shopping areas are pretty much free of the same retail chains which pockmark landscapes elsewhere but they are also blessedly free of those "funky" stores that all basically look alike. There is one huge-ass Barnes and Noble and it coexists happily with an independent bookstore that has a lot of hard-to-find books, all conveniently priced at full retail.
For the last 3 years, though, we have been down one Vintage Book Store, which I find almost intolerable. TFBIM will tell anyone who seems halfway sympathetic that my very favorite sort of shopping is at used bookstores and, in fact, I have wasted complete afternoons at library sales.
I am, I freely admit, an unalloyed book whore.
Cookbooks, books on history and biography, film, geography and travel, language and culture, Americana and pop culture, comedic literature, and (quite literally) boxes upon boxes of old magazines* find a home in my, er, home. So imagine my dismay when the two crewcut pentagenarian women who ran "Book Keeping" took their cats and crystals and Birkenstocks and left for greener pastures. So here I am, having to make do with eBay and B&N. Poppy was once kind enough to show me her favorite one in Boston, and I know that she waited until we were tight on time for our respective flights to do so, such is her Macchiavellian sense of passive-aggressiveness. Still, I had enough time to run off with a tome or two.
But aside from this, life here is pretty idyllic, if you don't mind the sorts of summers that make Texans and Arizonans reflexively wander to the air conditioner. (This is the price of being able to wander out to your garden in February in shorts and a tee shirt and pick dead-ripe tomatoes and lemons and, since I am happiest when I am spending copious amounts of time indoors, this seems very equitable to me.) We have no gated communities, no vast expanses of houses looking identical (or nearly so) to each other, no Starbucks at every corner. Good golf, a great library and a biggish University nearby.
Oh, and one of the GREAT Italian auto mechanics down the road.
-Joke
* A future blog entry on this, I promise.
I like it. Not because there are Bentleys at every corner, or because every house is palatial, or because the ethnic makeup is monochromatic. I like it because it's very pretty, very placid, full up with Historical Landmark Type Houses, and convenient to really good shopping.
There is much to dislike about suburbia, to hear neo-urban hipsters tell it, but most of their gripes hold no water here. The shopping areas are pretty much free of the same retail chains which pockmark landscapes elsewhere but they are also blessedly free of those "funky" stores that all basically look alike. There is one huge-ass Barnes and Noble and it coexists happily with an independent bookstore that has a lot of hard-to-find books, all conveniently priced at full retail.
For the last 3 years, though, we have been down one Vintage Book Store, which I find almost intolerable. TFBIM will tell anyone who seems halfway sympathetic that my very favorite sort of shopping is at used bookstores and, in fact, I have wasted complete afternoons at library sales.
I am, I freely admit, an unalloyed book whore.
Cookbooks, books on history and biography, film, geography and travel, language and culture, Americana and pop culture, comedic literature, and (quite literally) boxes upon boxes of old magazines* find a home in my, er, home. So imagine my dismay when the two crewcut pentagenarian women who ran "Book Keeping" took their cats and crystals and Birkenstocks and left for greener pastures. So here I am, having to make do with eBay and B&N. Poppy was once kind enough to show me her favorite one in Boston, and I know that she waited until we were tight on time for our respective flights to do so, such is her Macchiavellian sense of passive-aggressiveness. Still, I had enough time to run off with a tome or two.
But aside from this, life here is pretty idyllic, if you don't mind the sorts of summers that make Texans and Arizonans reflexively wander to the air conditioner. (This is the price of being able to wander out to your garden in February in shorts and a tee shirt and pick dead-ripe tomatoes and lemons and, since I am happiest when I am spending copious amounts of time indoors, this seems very equitable to me.) We have no gated communities, no vast expanses of houses looking identical (or nearly so) to each other, no Starbucks at every corner. Good golf, a great library and a biggish University nearby.
Oh, and one of the GREAT Italian auto mechanics down the road.
-Joke
* A future blog entry on this, I promise.
Comments
What I really need is a major metropolitan area in the USA that has no: Winters to speak of, income tax, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes or floods. I might be willing to trade an ocean front for all that.
-Joke