snoburbia, the blog

unnecessary to whom?

 

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From the city council newsletter in the Montgomery County, Md. snoburb of Kensington:

St. Paul Park has undergone an update with the landscaping, replacing some of the older trees and bushes that were either dying or collecting trash and serving as a harbor for unnecessary behavior.

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snoburbia.com t-shirt website - now online!

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Our companion t-shirt website, snoburbia.com , is now online! Please check out our latest t-shirts making fun of snobbery, overachieverism and suburbia, as well as celebrating where you live – snoburbia.

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overheard: private school spring break

 

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Overheard at a $30,000-a-year private school in Washington, D.C.:

Girl 1:  Where are you going for spring break?
Girl 2:  Paris.
Girl 3:  I’m going to the Bahamas.
Girl 4:  I’m not going anywhere.
[momentary awkward silence]
Girl 3:  …anyway…

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rottenneighbor.overclass

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As I was driving through Chevy Chase Village this morning, I noticed a house that I’d never noticed before. Its 1920s Beaux-Arts finish is now painted tennis ball yellow – this in a neighborhood of trimmed boxwoods, Mercedes sedans and staid brick manses.

In the driveway? A Hummer and a Lamborghini.

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overheard in snoburbia - soccer players

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Overheard in an overclass snoburb – three teenage boys, who play on a $1,500-a-season elite travel soccer team, talking about their soccer cleats:

Boy 1:  Mine cost $180!
Boy 2:  Those are totally fake Vapors.
Boy 3:  Well, I am getting a pair that cost $300!

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countdown to disappointment

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For overclass parents in the snoburbs, all their years of pushing and helicoptering are defined by this very moment. April 1.

High school seniors all over snoburbia are biting their nails, waiting for their fat or thin envelopes, that email ping. Will they be rejected or accepted? Will it be Princeton or Swarthmore? Or (too horrible to consider) that local public university, the safety school.

But most importantly: Will their parents brag or weep?

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From The Overachievers, by Alexandra Robbins, who followed kids from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Md., from junior year through the college admission process:

“My-kid-is-better-than-yours playground gossip” can start in the park about preschools when the children are still in strollers: it comes to a head during the college admissions process, when applications and results are discussed among adults at school functions, cocktail parties, and chance supermarket encounters.

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the economy and private school angst

 

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As the economy tanks, more and more parents in snoburbia are pulling their children out of private schools and enrolling them in (gasp!) their local public schools. Never mind that public schools in many overclass suburbs are fine, excellent even. It’s a step down and a humiliation.

So some parents are staying put in private school – but for the first time ever are asking for financial aid.

But they just don’t get what it means to actually need financial aid. Word of advice: Maybe if you take that $8,000 Caribbean vacation or the ski trip to Aspen, you just might not qualify for financial aid.

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one evening in snoburbia