Foreclosures, Pot Houses & Bad Architecture

Yeah, I know: this is not the sort of topic you expect from me. But here's the thing. If you've been listening to the news or even reading the headlines, you know that the real estate market is wallowing on the beach. My area of Northern California is particularly hard hit. Elk Grove was, two years ago, touted as the fasting growing city in the US. Hey, I was excited too. I may have given up LA, but I was getting a Happening place in return. And I was getting a brand-spanking new house, where I got to pick each and every piece of tile and trim on woodwork (well, sorta, within the confines of the builder's specs, that is).

I've written before of my shock when I moved here and discovered that my house was one of literally thousands, all painted varying shades of brown. But I've adapted. I love the inside of my house. And I'm one of the lucky ones; I don't have an adjustable rate mortgage that is eating up my income and threatening to bankrupt me. So I'm just an observer in the process which real estate expert Norm Schriever outlines in his blog today.

Norm is writing about the Franklin East Reserve area of Elk Grove. That's my area. I think you'll be reading about us soon, because we're going to become, I would bet, the poster child for the ills, varied as they are, of the US new housing market bust. Several weeks ago, The Sacramento Bee did a feature in the their Business section on just one of our problems: vacant houses, absentee landlords, lawns gone to seed. What follows this in any neighborhood, as the police will tell you, is the Broken Window Syndrome: crime, gang activity, further falling property values. The Wall Street Journal picked up the story, and their version is supposed to run on Friday.

I would say the lawns have gone to pot, but that's another problem that's put us in the news. Those absentee landlords? Some of them bought their houses to grow marijuana in. The newly-formed Elk Grove Police Department has gotten more press than it ever expected for their pot busts. Today's headline, above the fold in The Sacramento Bee: "Big pot operation busted in Elk Grove." The major busts several months ago were of houses totally dedicated to growing plants. This time, the growers got smart; they avoided neighbor's suspicions by keeping their lawns mowed, the first floor occupied and only growing the plants on the second floor.

And this is where the third part of my title comes in: Bad Architecture. Our homes were all built so that the living in them takes place in the back. You drive into your garage, and for the period of time that you're at home, you are never seen again. Nothing, I repeat, nothing happens out front. Neighbors? Huh, what are they? Come to think of it, who are they? The days of the front porch, of families watching out for each other, of the village raising the child--these are all non-existent, impossible even, in our area, thanks to the design of our houses.

For the two years that I've lived here, I've wailed about this. The [former] cultural critic in me has tried to deconstruct what it was about society that led to an entire generation of houses where no one was ever home. I know as a [former] cultural critic that the impact on society of culture is in some ways symbiotic. That is, it works both ways: a particular aspect of culture both reflects and refracts the society from which it comes. So these houses where the front yards were manicured, where the garages had trimmed windows that faced the street aping what should be a living room, where the living quarters were all in the far back of the house--these houses gave the appearance of perfect suburbia. But in fact, what they nourished was the underbelly of society: drugs, crime, and a host of social ills.

Goodbye Delta, Farewell Dawn

I live, oh, about a mile from the river where the two humpback whales, now named (thank God, at last) Delta and Dawn, decided to swim to Sacramento, instead of San Francisco. I could have gone to see them any time of the day or night. I could have made three trips a day, with breaks to brush my teeth and get a little shut-eye.

I didn't. And I avoided all reporting on them, save the 30 second headline that told me where they were. This meant, of course, that I have not seen a newspaper or watched TV in the week or so that the whales have been in the Delta. Every once in a while, I'd catch a glimpse of one or the other breeching. Or hear one or the other of the reporters waxing eloquent on how majestic these creatures of God are. (Truly. That's how the TV reporters talk here. Especially the ones from the CBS affiliate.)

I would have like to see them, but I cannot bear the hoohah and hooplah that has surrounded these poor fish swimming in the wrong direction. It seems to me that it's more of a modern day public hanging or bear baiting.

Come one! come all! Step right up and see how even the most gigantic of beings is nothing before Mother Nature. Here you go, get your bottled water here and your whale T-shirt over there, sorry but I only have XLs left. Look at little Johnny over there, such an mini entrepreneur: he's selling lemonade. And over there, under the trees, big Johnny is selling dope.

Never mind that the levees aren't made to withstand the weight of ten thousand tourists tromping through. Never mind the expense to the county of crowd control and keeping ski-jets and speed boats from within 100 yards of the whales so as not to--ooops--frighten them even more. Scare them into beaching themselves--but, hey, Bubba, then we'd really get to see the whales up close. Behold the porcine mamas with tattoos on their asses, which I know about because their tank tops don't meet their short shorts, and there's a gap at the waist which exposes several spare tires and their butt cracks. Let's not forget the hairy daddys, who are either fifteen months pregnant or are in the final stages of liver disease, so enormously huge, so whale-like are their guts. And they too are wearing shorts shorts and tank tops that expose the full glory of their man-titties and underarm hair. And crosses. Why do such men always wear the full Jesus-on-the-crucifix around their necks? Goes so well with their Eat Me tattoos.

But why am I being so hard on these people? This is America, after all. Land of the free, etc. etc. What are our soldiers in Iraq fighting for if not the opportunity we all have to make asses of ourselves. To gawk. To make a buck off of anything one can. To do what we want to right now, when we want it, willy nilly of whether it's right or good or creates a danger for others. Because we're Americans, goddamit, and rampant self-interest is our birthright.