We live in a neighborhood that has a gate, home owner’s association, architectural review board, the whole nine yards. It’s not unusual for little nasty memos to be circulated around because someone didn’t bring their trash can in on time. My husband and I are just waiting for our first memo. I’m glad we live here, but I’m sick of all the nasty old men who are out exercising in the morning. They think they own the place.
1st example occurred the one and only time it snowed this year (in SC). They don’t plow in this area. No salt. Just snow (although not very much of it). I’m driving to work, staying in the little wheel ruts. This old guy is out jogging and WON’T GET OUT OF THE RUT! I should have run him over. I had to pull into the little snow bank, risking getting stuck, so he could exercise his little ass.
2nd example happened yesterday. The speed limit is 19 (whatever). I was going 20. This guy (different one) is out riding his bicycle. I see him every morning. He looks like he took a couple shots of whiskey before he got outside, because he weaves around in the road and always looks like he’s about to fall over. He screams at me, “SLOW DOWN!” as I pass him! Well, fuck off! I’m not speeding! I should have weaved a little, acting like I was going to hit him, just to scare him. I think that because I’m young, blonde, and drive a pretty crappy car that he thinks I’m just some local teenager. I can’t wait to go to one of those little cocktail party thingy’s they hold so I can make some really rude, subtle little jab at him. Twit.
These men who held executive positions their whole adult life, made some money, retired, and now STILL think they’re upper management to the whole world just piss me off. Jerks.
C3, my parents live in a similar neighborhood. I hate it. There’s a golf course inside, as well as “clubhouse”. Full of shitty stuck up old rich fuckers. I tend to drive really slowly through the golf course area with the Wu Tang Clan or the Unsane on full blast from my car just to watch them get pissed. I post TONS of similar stories about grouchy old bastards that think they rule they world, but it would just get me fired up. I’ll just leave it at saying that I can sympathize.
“My Accountz Reeceevable Posse don’t call me Tha Troubleshoota for nothin’. Suckas think I be chillin’, but I gots to represent at all times, 'cuz ain’t nobody else reeceeve accountz right but ME.” --Herbert Kornfeld
This is going to sound snotty, C3, but you’re going to have to take the bad with the good in a place like that. People move there because they want to have control over their neighbors. My parents also live in a gated community and it really gets on my nerves. I love seeing them but, after a day or two, I can’t wait to get back to our funky beach town apartment with the lesbian witches next door, and the surfers with the iguana cage on their porch across the courtyard.
Put me down as being against arrogant old pricks, too. My sister lives in one of those communities here in Atlanta. (Which actually contains a fair number of arrogant young pricks, too.) These folks really need to stop bringing that “upper management” attitude home with them.
I’ve gotta vote with Cher3 on this one, though. You’ve got to expect that kind of thing if you move into that kind of neighborhood. I guess you have to make a cost/benefit analysis for yourself. Me, I eschew the suburbs and live in a funky old neighborhood in town. The neighbors are great!
Yeah, as soon as we get out of this area, we’re going to live somewhere with a little more depth. This place has no soul. We bought this house because we’re planning on moving in three years, didn’t want to spend three years wasting rent, and were mainly focused on the resale value. There isn’t a whole lot in the way of “funky neighborhoods” around here.
I LOVE my house, the neighbors are just assholes.
An update: I saw the old man on the bike the next day…he was wearing a helmet and one of those flouro orange vests with a big yellow X on it! Ha! Scared him, didn’t I? I haven’t seen him since…must have been the dirty look I gave him as veered past me.
We live very near a “county club” community. Lots of wealthy retirees but also lots of middle-aged yuppies and wannabes with older (i.e. teenage) kids. We used to get a lot of sophomoric pointless vandalism in our neighborhood: lawn doughnuts, mailbox bashing, egg tossing, etc. Then the country club people decided to do something to keep the riffraff out of their neighborhood and put up gates. Guess what? Now that they could keep track of everyone’s late night comings and goings the vandalism outside the country club vanished!
Looks like they succeeded in keeping the riffraff in their own neighborhood all right!
“You have no choice but to be impressed.”
Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan Doubt and Certainty
Why, it’s when you do a doughnut on someone’s lawn, of course. (Hint: you use a car.)
I’m agreeing with the hypothesis that if you move into a gated community with a shitload of rules, you should expect to be surrounded by anal rule-junkies who need everything to be Just Right. Don’t like it? Leave ASAP.
Lawn Donut:
Drive onto someone’s lawn and then throw your car as far to the left or right as possible, and drive in a circle as fast as you can manage it. Comepletely destroys the lawn.
I avoid gated communities, even though to some of you, I might be an ‘old man.’ (I don’t think so. Hell, I dye my hair!)
Too many pissers live there who have too much time to pay attention to what the neighbors are doing and I’ve known too many people living in such places who seem to have a tenants board of directors that no one likes but which still seems to always get elected.
Besides, I like somewhat weedy, over grown lawns, am not big on immaculate grass and hate picture perfect flower beds.
My parents bought a winter home in one such “enclave” in the Phoenix area. List me with the people who hate it.
Y’know, when I walk my dog on the public streets in my town, I sort of wait until people go by before, ah, scooping after her, because it’s a little, well, embarassing to be seen picking up dog crap – not my finest hour. (But I do it, good citizen that I am.) In my parents’ fascist gated community (complete with “grounds”), it’s to your advantage to been seen ostentatiously cleaning up after your pet, because if you don’t, some old geezer is guaranteed to come out and yell at you about it. As I would stand there, out on a walk, waiting for my parents’ dog to do his ‘bidness,’ I swear I could feel dozens of beady eyes on me, peering out from behind curtains or from lawns, waiting to see if I cleaned up after him. As I did, but – and this is the crux for me – as I would have done without the supervision. It seems to me that if you move to a gated ‘community’ to keep out the riff-raff, but then don’t even trust your neighbors to do the right thing, you’re just SOL because there isn’t any place ever gonna be good enough for you.
Ha…Klaatu, don’t think the thought hasn’t occurred to me.
No, really, I don’t mind the rules and restrictions THAT much…if it was that big of a problem, we wouldn’t have bought there. And I like that everyone has to keep their lawns looking nice, that the houses are all in good shape, and that there isn’t any trash or anything like that. I also like the security…there’s a little security guard who patrols the neighborhood in his truck. We don’t worry about someone breaking in as much as we did in the last place we lived.
I wasn’t really complaining about the neighborhood (although, the next place we live probably won’t be like this) as much as that type of person who had some power over people in their job for years, has retired, and now still thinks everyone is there underling. That type is especially prevalent around here because there are a lot of retirees and also because this city still operates mostly within the “old-boy network.”
The guy was out riding again today…he rode past as I left my driveway (not only did he have his helmet and vest on, but he installed little blinking lights on his bike). I wonder how long it’s going to be before I get a memo!!
What I love are those condo communities (my husband and I call them “Ghettos for the Rich”). They built one of those is a very rural community (I mean farmland) in New Jersey. The yuppies moved in and then started complaining because the there was a smell from the farm next door (the farmers keep cows). Now they want the town government to do something about it.
Now, when they moved in, was it that they just didn’t notice the cows grazing next door, or did they think that cows smelled the same in person as on TV? :rolleyes:
Here in Atlanta what annoys the hell out of me is people moving onto a busy “cut-through” street and then griping about the traffic. The city inevitably caves in to the pressure, and puts in a bunch of speed humps and islands and what-not.
I lose more good short cuts that way.
Another irritating phenomenon is yuppies moving into an entertainment district, and then trying to shut down all the bars. Goddammit, you knew it was a bar district when you moved in, you twits!
When I started college, the roommate assigned to me lived in one of those communities. Being the naive boy I was then, I had no idea they even existed, and was completely shocked when he told me stories about the place. Then, for Spring Break, he invited me to his house. It was the time that I discovered a little hydrochloric acid, a little aluminum foil, and a plastic bottle equal fun and mayhem for an otherwise peaceful and stuck-up golf course.
I would have told the old geezer on the bike not to worry, my insurance will cover any damage his body and bicycle did to my front end (I’ve used that line in grocery store parking lots and it really riles 'em).
Isn’t it a bit ironic that the people that live in these neighborhoods are the same tight-assed Republicans that bitch about taxes and government controlling their lives, yet they have no problem sticking their neighbors with outrageous association fees and want to tell you what color trash cans you can have?