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Monday, June 17, 2013

Suburban Chic

Sitting in Naperville you have to wonder if the city has given up something to the suburbs. Naperville is a small city...maybe 140k..not sure exactly but there is a definitely a look. Newness. Newity. Newebees as opposed to the old look of the city dwellings and people rooted in twentieth century structures and neighborhoods. As a writer I crave these old structures and this old way of living but the newity of suburban living is like a clean dentist office and almost clinical. Clean restrooms abound and this is because clearly white middle class people no longer produce waste.

And you have to wonder if this is the way people will live now. Certainly the net demands this kind of living where everyone works at home. So you need space and space is to be had in the cornfields to the West because people live and work in these cornfields and don't want to feel hemmed into their little apartments they never leave because there is no company to leave for. And yes I know Google just brought their people back to the office but it is a blip. The writing is on the wall and the gulag trudge of Metra riders is bracketed by time the same way scanners have put the death sentence on check out people in grocery stores.

Tech will have its due and so we get back to suburban chic. Women with impossibly blond hair and men with gelled perfection and everyone looks like they have never cracked a book in their life. Maybe they have but they look just so unangsty and so perfect and this is really the new chi of suburban living. A blasé non plussed just out of the department store shod populace that is well heeled and white and never dirty.

It is not a bad way to live and actually very easy. Less people equals less hassle. Ask someone in Geneva Illinois their view of life versus someone in New York city. They will have radically different views on the hassle of going to the grocery store. For one person it is a battle for the other just a pleasant stroll through empty aisles. And maybe that is what money buys finally. The departure of people. Nothing new here. Our rich buy large  estates and wall out the world. So really suburban living is a poor mans rich.

Until everyone else arrives.

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Books by William Hazelgrove