That’s fine, and that was my point. It’s all about preferences. So don’t get judgmental for those who choose to shop at Wal-Mart.
No, it seems pretty much in line with your post looking down on those who you feel aren’t as enlightened as you and choose not to live in an urban area. I’m just calling you on your condescending attitude towards those who do not share your preferences.
Right.
Right about here is where I’m going to apologize for being condescending about the fat schlubs I work with who go home at night and spend 6 hours on War of Warcraft, and worry about the fact that they’re 35 and have bad backs, no girl, ulcers in their intestines, and pressurized sleeping masks to keep their hearts from stopping 60 times per hour.
It’s all just a matter of “not sharing preferences”.
There actually is something evil about that attitude if your preference for cheap and convenient goods results in you purchasing non-fair-trade goods or goods made by third-world slaves. But of course, that probably makes me a self-righteous elitist.
Hey, don’t forget to point out that we city dwellers commit more crimes and are ruder than our suburban/rural counterparts, too. Wouldn’t want you to leave any bullet points out of your stereotypes. What a fucking idiotic paragraph.
That’s what is wrong with this country. People feel that everything is “relative”, that there is no such thing as “right and wrong”, that everone can just “do their own thing” and we can’t judge your “lifestyle” choices. But there really is a big difference between a small, owner-run ethnic store and the “gourmet” ailse in a Piggly-Wiggly. Food in a Chinese retaurant with a badly translated menu and cooked by a recent immigrant is (usually) better than P.F. Changs. And, damn it, churches are supposed to have pews and steeples not folding chairs and gaudy electric signs. There is a reason God used a burning bush and not a neon sign.
I just wanted to clarify that I have lived on farms my entire life, so I do know the shitty conditions of farm work firsthand. Ive baled my fair share of hay! Trust me, Im sick to death that farmers have to sell their land, or the heirs do…appeal the death tax. I will probably be in this same position someday myself, and I hope I can hold onto my values when that developer waves $$$$$$$$$ in my face, and I can say no…I prefer shoveling horse shit to living in a cabana in tahiti.
My post went along with a lot of what Trunk said. Ive no objection to cities, I chose to go to college in a city, to experience another way of life. It has everything rural life doesnt offer, and nothing that it does. So I can see the draw of suburbs, ooo I get a little bit of both. But in reality, you dont really get much of either. what I can’t fathom are the people who move to suburban sprawls, and their lives just consist of “getting a wii or the next csi episode”. It just seems like a bleak, soulless existence. To each his own!
As far as complaining about a local farm. Come on people, do your homework!! Its Your responsibility to determine if a home is near a place thats deemed too stinky for your nostrils. These places are in business to provide sustenance for You!! and you’re going to bitch about them? I can understand putting up a fight if someones planning on putting in a giant hog operation right next door, but if they were there first, too bad,
I guess the crux of my dilemma was : suburban/urban/whatever people moving to the country and imposing their views on the folks who have been there for a lot longer! Then comes the cry for a walmart/target/ and then all of a sudden its the same goddamn characterless, bleak landscape they were escaping from.
I also know people who were raised on farms, bemoan the loss of the land to development, and jump at the chance to shop at walmart any day of the week. I guess I was using walmart/kmart/target as sortof a microcosm to a bigger problem…
And dont even get me started on Mcmansions 
" The wow factor"…you mean, wow Im ostentatious? Wow, this sure is a big house for a family of 3.5, Wow, Im glad I work 70 hours a week so I can pay for said Mcmansion and this sweet mercedes so my neighbor Might think Im classy.
I do not care about local character. On the list of things that would determine where I’d like to live “character” is totally and completely lacking. Convenience, good schools, low crime rate, cost of living, these matter to me. I’d run screaming away from a neighborhood that a realtor claimed had character. Both of my parents are from places with character and they aren’t even nice places to visit, much less live. Character seems to be the opposite of opportunity. Don’t really give a shit about the destruction of an old drafty house, either, as long as the previous owners are now rolling in the kind of dough that the developers should be paying for those farms.
All that said, I don’t like sprawl and would really rather we had all the jobs we have now, but only the population of 1984. Plus a pony and a little plastic rocket.
Yeah, because everyone who doesn’t live in an urban area fits this description. :rolleyes:
I can’t help it you work with losers. Plenty of people who live in suburbs are fit. Plenty of people who live in urban areas are fat, stupid, and lazy. Prefering to live in an urban area doesn’t mean you are smart or healthy. It means that you prefer what an urban area has to offer. The same goes with a suburban area.
I live in the city because I like to have a short commute. It’s an old neighborhood with the houses shoulder-to-shoulder. I’ve met my neighbors a couple times, but I don’t really know them and don’t want to know them. I’m not a people person.
Big corporations employ a lot of people, including people like me whose specialties just wouldn’t be that useful in a small business. Spending money at a big box primarily benefits people like me. The bulk of the employee compensation budget goes to average people, not CEOs. The small business = virtue but big business = evil mindset baffles me.
If I could live in a suburb-style setting where my neighbors’ houses weren’t close enough for me to hear their music, where shopping was convenient and yet my home was close to downtown so I had a short commute, I’d do it.
No, it does not. Consumers should be educated before they purchase their products. I don’t support buying products made by slaves. Please show me any products made in Wal Mart by slaves and I’ll gladly refrain from buying it.
I was trying to describe a certain type of urban dweller. Perhaps your urban schools didn’t teach you to read very well, so I’ll forgive your misunderstanding.
True. However, this is still a matter of preference. Some people don’t care if they have a selection of “gourmet” goods. Some don’t care about the quality of their Chinese food. I’m not saying that the Chinese food where I live is as good as the Chinese food in DC. I’m simply saying that I don’t care that it’s not as good.
That is a good point, and I do have to excuse myself for being young, passionate and inclined to look at things in one dimension (haha Mine!). I also apologize for saying that people who live in these burbs are soulless and boring, thats totally retarded. Of course one cant make such generalizations. Its just an easy one to make coming from my perspective, which has been relatively fortunate.
My job is in the suburbs. That’s one of the main reasons I bought a house in the suburbs. If I lived in the city my commute would be much, much longer.
Ed
A good point. I should have specified that I work in the city. As you can see, I was trying to counter some of the arguments that suburbs are a bad thing.
My urban schools taught me psychics are frauds, which is why I’m calling you on your bullshit attempts at mind-reading. Maybe people eat at trendy bistros and shop at Whole Foods because they actually prefer the quality of the food, or because they can get items not available at the cheaper options, rather than because they think it makes them better people. Not everyone who doesn’t shop at the massive chains does so because they’re elitist. And, FTR, it seems to me it’s not any less self-righteous to adopt the “voice of the common man” stance or preach the relativism of “it’s all just personal preferences anyway” than it is to shop at independent outlets because you think corporations are evil. As I said, a fucking idiotic paragraph you wrote.
I’m completely unconcerned with any idealized visions of rurality, but I honestly agree with Merkwurdigliebe’s about 100%, and it’s what I would have written if he hadn’t gotten to it first. Suburban (and now Exurban) sprawl is killing American Society, while at the same time it’s so wholly representative of and relfects everything that’s gone wrong with us.
I grew up in the suburbs and have lived in the city for three years now, and I can’t imagine ever moving back to the suburbs. It’s amazing just how sprawly, ugly, wasteful, and crass Suburban reality is. The homes are ugly, embarrassing, and overpriced everywhere, the chains and big boxes are ugly and out of control, and Goddamn, everything is SO far apart.
I was on tour with my band last year and it was really eye-opening how everywhere looks exactly the same. That’s not something I want in my life.
Even worse is the “suburbanization” of cities; here in Chicago, it seems like the yuppies are using every neighborhood as a “pre-suburb” - they buy condos, driving up housing prices, only to dump them the second Mike makes partner and little Pashleigh and Skyler are old enough to go to school and they move to the suburbs. In the meantime, they’re helping (and demanding) the Targets, Best Buys, Cold Stone Creameries, and Applebee’s to crop up on every corner, displacing whatever character the neighborhood had.
woodstockbirdybird,my post was written as a reaction against Trunk’s elitism. I never passed judgment on those who shop at Whole Foods or eat at trendy bistros. I simply said that those who do should not judge others. Trunk was obviously judging those who do not share his preferences. It’s fine to prefer trendy bistros, expensive organic food (although you’re an idiot if you do so because it “helps” the environment), and expensive vodka (again, you may be an idiot, since it all tastes about the same). If a city makes sense for your preferences, then by all means live there. Just don’t look down your nose at those who may think differently.
As I said, perhaps you didn’t understand what I was trying to say. Instead of studying about psychics in school, you may have wanted to concetrate a little more when they were teaching reading comprehension.
Whatever. A hundred years ago people were saying the same thing about people leaving the farms and moving into the cities. Every change in the way society lives is met with the claim that it’s “killing America!”
Again, I generally share your disdain of suburbian aesthetics. So what? If people choose to live there, then what do you care? If you don’t want to live there, stay in Chicago. How are their choices hurting you?
Then stop touring.
Jesus, Renob, why the snipey, pissant responses to everything? You can passionately argue stuff in the pit without just being a dickhead.
If you’ll re-read the post I’m referring to, it IS bad for American society because this big suburban movement is a direct flight from having to deal with the problems in our urban centers, and it makes those problems get worse, causing misery for all of society at large (because it’s one big organism).
That ties into this crazy streak of selfishness and NIMBYism that most Americans seem to have, and which seems to be getting worse; “Sure, the blacks should have equal opportunities in our society, as long as they’re not in MY neighborhood!” (so he moves to the suburbs). “The local public school system sucks, so I’m yanking MY kids out of it and putting them into an expensive private school.” (Good luck to the kids that can’t afford to do that!). "I’m getting this SUV so that at least MY family will be safe inside it (though it’ll probably kill the other car’s occupants if we get into an accident - sucks to be them!).
It’s all connected, and these developments cause us great harm in the long run.
True, but here’s the only place I get to be a dickhead, so I thought I’d indulge.
Sorry, but I just don’t buy it. I fully understand disliking the aesthetics of suburbia. As I said, I don’t like it either. But I don’t think that the desire for a bigger home, a yard, and safety is a bad thing.
Most of the suburbs I know have a decent number of black people, so I think it’s more an issue of trying to escape crime and not black people per se. On the other issues, it just makes sense to leave a failing public school. Why send your kid there to continue to have poor teachers, a dangerous learning environment, etc., when you can just move and have very good schools? It’s easy for people to say “leave your kids in crappy schools and fight to make them better.” Take DC, where they have been trying to make schools better for decades. Hasn’t worked, even though they have tons of money. Why should people leave their kids in these schools in order to satisfy your utopian vision?
People have the right to try and make their lives better. Condemning them for doing so is idiotic.
Actually, for many people, moving to the suburbs is great for them. If it wasn’t so great, then why aren’t we seeing a rush to live back in the cities?
Well, actually we are. The price of downtown condos is astronomical in places like Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, etc. That shows there are more people who want to live there than the supply of houses.
I find it hard to believe that in any region of the country conservatives have a monopoly on suburban life while virtuous liberals foster cultural diversity in the inner cities. As an example, I frequently see letters to the editor in the New York Times from liberals blasting red-staters and SUV drivers, though oddly enough many of said liberals come from upper class and semi-exclusive suburbs in New York and Connecticut. But they probably don’t allow Wal-Marts in their neighborhoods. 
What you may have missed in the link about Buckeye Egg and its stink and pollution is that the company set up operations in a rural area and gradually created a massive problem for residents. From the link:
"Neighbors filed suit after they said Pohlmann ignored their complaints and protests about noxious odors, water pollution, billions of flies and other problems resulting from 7.5 million birds kept in large chicken houses scattered through the countryside between Johnstown and Hartford…"Dan Perkins and I have had it for 20 years,’’ said plaintiff Marilyn Seelke. Perkins is also a plaintiff. “The first barn was in 1981 and it wasn’t bad in the beginning, but he just kept adding barns,’’ she said.”
Sometimes farmers are good stewards of the land. Other times (especially with large farming operations) they are not. It’s no longer some LIttle House On The Prairie idyll, if it ever was in the first place.