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I am always searching for an alternative to my Cheetos/Diet Pepsi/Nutella cocktail, as I will acknowledge it is perhaps not the best for achieving optimal health. And in snoburbia, you must constantly question and analyze your food choices for corporate responsibility and sustainability. In snoburbia, eating something because it tastes good is verboten.
So I was happy to discover a new favorite: Honest Tea's orange mango,* which has "50 percent less sugar" and contains "mangosteen, a delicious fruit from Thailand." It's organic! I have always diluted juice by at least 50 percent, so this watered down, barely sweet concoction is quite good. And its origins are right here in snoburbia. And they sell it at the snobby deli in Cabin John along with the popped chips and Italian wine. More importantly, Honest Tea "...addresses the needs of economically disadvantaged communities."
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* I just noticed that the new plastic bottle has a nearly-3/4-inch indentation hidden in the bottom. Honest.
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When I saw this floating around on Facebook, I thought it was really funny. But I also thought that it could never happen in snoburbia because no one around here does the lights overkill thing. You can't overkill understatement, right? But then I was driving and saw the snoburbia version:
Just...one...more...garland.
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In snoburbia, there is always something new about which to become snobbish. It's exhausting.
Take today, for instance. I innocently stepped into the snoburbia specialty luggage store to buy a new wallet.
So I started looking around the store at luggage. After all, I need to replace the cute, polka-dotted suitcase my daughter swiped from me. I was happy with that polka-dotted bag. I bought it a few years ago - it came with a second bag for a total price of $49.99 (JCPenney).
Luggage is just something I never have thought about. If it holds my stuff and fits into the overhead compartment, I'm good.
But after spending time in the luggage store with a very persuasive salesman, I now realllly want either the Briggs & Riley bag ($299), or the Tumi Voyager ($495). Or will the hard-sided Titan USA spinner in ocean blue ($660) haunt my dreams?
Still, I might see if there is hope at Target.
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In line at the bank yesterday, there was one of those snoburban moms behind me who was chattering away to her four year old: "You looked at art today at school - what was it? Monet? Renoir? Picasso? What did you learn?" and other loud questions, for all of us to hear.* That's because her child is the only child in the universe, and none of us ever has had children.
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* We had the Appalachian equivalent of this in my hometown, when the old guy at the front of the city bus would talk to the bus driver about his goiter.
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Overheard at Montgomery Mall, from a loud gaggle of Ugg-booted, abercrombie be-jegginged group of preteens:
Tween 1: I made the honor roll!
Tween 2: So? Everyone makes the honor roll! I got all As and one B
Tween 3: I got straight As!
Tween 4: So did I!
These kids would have been beaten to a bloody pulp in my hometown. They certainly would have kept this information to themselves or within the family unit until they received their college acceptances.
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In snoburbia, you just never know what will occasion a mention of how impressive your child is.
During the weekly announcements at Mass,* while talking about an upcoming holy event, the announcer casually let it slip that her daughter had received a [amount] scholarship to [name] university.
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* I used to be a C and E Catholic, but now have downgraded to a when-my-mom-is-in-town Catholic.
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The student directory at the local snoburbia middle school - always in paper booklet form - is now being delivered in "app" form:
The App is accessible through iPhone, Android, Blackberry and even your desktop computer.
I guess that makes it official - I'm the last one in snoburbia with a dumb phone. My children and my friends laugh at my phone ("You don't have auto-correct??"). And the other day, a guy next to me looked over at my phone, smiled and said, "Niiice phone." He had the same one, and we commiserated about the unspeakable humiliation. Here it is, an antique, circa 2009:
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School volunteering in snoburbia: This is where former lawyers, journalists and Ivy graduates who are stay-at-home moms fight for the plum jobs that will win them reverence and thank yous from other former lawyers, journalists and Ivy graduates who are stay-at-home moms.
The desirability of any volunteer job in snoburbia is directly proportional to the amount of kudos the previous volunteer received on the PTA listserv. Desirable job: teacher appreciation breakfast chair. Desirable job: holiday bazaar chair. Desirable job: fun fair chair. Not so much: classroom volunteer. Not so much: room parent.
I was a room parent for ten years in a row at my children's elementary school, organizing classroom Halloween and Valentine's parties, and organizing the teacher gift* at year end. I tried to be holiday bazaar chair but didn't have the credentials.
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* This consists of getting people who have more money than you to pony up $10, that they promise you they'll give you "tomorrow." So you buy the $200 gift certificate, the teacher thanks you, and then after a few emails to the scofflaws, you give up and eat about $80 in expenses.
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How to tell if your local public high school is snoburban (from announcements):
All Squash Club members...don't forget to come to the Potomac Squash Club at the corner of Seven Locks and Montrose today to play after school.
There are seven places remaining for the trip to Italy this spring 2012.
Come to the next Peace and Social Action Club meeting today at lunch in room G35.
Science Olympiad meets after school today in room 221.
The Feed Hope Club will be having a meeting on Wednesday in room 111. Please join us in our fight against hunger in Montgomery County.
The International Club presents Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah. Come join us at lunch in room 123 on Wednesday.Would you like to help disadvantaged children in Nepal? The Nepal School Club’s first meeting is on Thursday at lunch in room 138.
Habitat for Humanity will meet in room 111 on Thursday at lunch.
The Cricket Club is going to play cricket Thursday after school on the softball field. Be there.
Come to the Tea Club in room 114 at lunch on Fridays. Members will sample different teas every week.
The SAT word of the day is: auspicious (aw spish us) which means favorable, promising, pointing to a good result.
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I am finally a snoburban soccer mom. I actually go to all of my son's high school games. This change was a long time coming. At his games through the years, I used to pull the car right up to the field and read a book during the game. "Did you see my goal?!" he would ask, as I looked up from my reading. "Yes, of course I did! It was awesome!"
But now I go to the games and actually watch. That's because his team is really, really good. A D.C. United pro player and a college coach came to the last game.
Being a hillbilly, I hoot, holler and woohooooo! Where I'm from, the crowds are loud, the cheerleaders are almost professional, and raucous hooting and stomping are expected. Not in snoburbia. Now that the team is way ahead, the crowds are picking up, but the volume barely is. When the ref makes a questionable call, the kids shout, "But, sir! But, sir!" They are trying to win the sportsmanship award (so tongue-in-cheek, yet admirable!).
I guess I shouldn't bring a milk jug filled with pebbles to shake at the next game.
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Apparently, if you live in snoburbia, and walk your dog in the neighborhood park, the following question is not considered inappropriate: "Who is your breeder?" (You can't get a labradoodle* or goldendoodle at the pound, after all.)
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*Astute reader and goldendoodle owner F. says this happens to her all the time. Personally, I am not a dog person, and I think any self-respecting dog should not allow itself to have "doodle" in its name.
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You know how that truck comes to your house in the snoburbs and picks up all your stuff and takes it away for you?
Well, I then go to the thrift shop and buy that stuff for $1.99 or $4.99. I lovvvve thrift shopping. We have a huge thrift shop that sends trucks into the heart of snoburbia to retrieve loot.
My most recent, epic haul: Lucky jeans that fit like a glove, $4.99; orange cashmere turtleneck, $3.99; Adidas like-new sneakers that I've always wanted, $6.99; Gap black jacket, $4.99; brown cowboy boots that I'm going to cut off at the ankle, $4.99; and REI down bootie slippers, $1.99. And for the kids and husband: J. Crew khakis, $3.99; Nike basketball shoes, $4.99; North Face polarfleece, $1.99; Levi's skinny jeans, $2.99; American Eagle hoodie sweatshirt, $4.99; Under Armour shirt, $.99; and Calvin Klein pajama bottoms, $2.99.
I have friends who won't set foot in Wheaton Plaza, let alone a thrift shop. My gain, suckas!
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Observed, in front of a snoburbia high school [snicker, guffaw, snort]:
So I looked it up on the MCPS website:
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Back when my husband and I were city slickers, and we were looking for a house in the snoburbs, we shared a distaste for the houses with manicured lawns our realtor insisted on showing us. We didn't want to live in a neighborhood with perfect lawns (ahem, cough cough - the overclass neighborhood just to the south of ours*).
But today, I went out front with one of those obnoxious leaf blowers and raked the storm detritus into the big paper yard bags I just bought. I was so proud of myself. Maybe I've lived in snoburbia too long, but those perfect yards are starting to look pretty good. Next: Maybe I'll go crazy and hire a landscape designer.
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* My friend lives there, and she says she and her husband are the "white trash" of the neighborhood because they sometimes have lumber stacked in their front yard. The neighbors look askance.
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With Hurricane Irene just hours away, everyone here in snoburbia is making preparations. I fairly tackled an overbooked gutter cleaner and cajoled him into charging me a fortune to clean the ecosystem out of our gutters. Check. We tried to buy a generator, to fit in with all our neighbors, to no avail - sold out.
Now for the basics. First, provisions from Trader Joe's: Stacy's Pita Chips, arugula pizza, champagne grapes and wine. I made couscous, and stocked up on ears of local corn, tomatoes and rosemary rind goat cheese from the farmers' market. Oh, and don't tell anyone, but I neeeeed my Cheetos and Diet Pepsi.*
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* This is my secret shame.
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I and my friends are feeling wistful around here at summer's end. Everyone is returning to town or getting one last weekend in before shuttering the beach house. But most notably, all* the 18-22s are disappearing again, headed back to Connecticut and Boston. Graying dads are buying dorm refrigerators and XL twin sheets. Soon we'll see no more tattered Volvos with 15 bumper stickers at the ice cream parlor. No more Tom's shoes. We'll see them next spring, when they return for their D.C. internships.
Have a great school year, everyone!
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* Everyone in the snoburbs goes to college.
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In snoburbia, it's the oven, stupid.
Why not enjoy a pizza from a wood-fire brick pizza oven? God, no. Wood-fire ovens are now in those D.C. tourist restaurants that call themselves "grilles," where people wear denim shorts and tucked-in golf shirts. I saw one in Youngstown, Ohio, fergodsakes.
Rather, your pizza must be cooked in an eco-friendly, labor-friendly coal-fire oven. From Haven Pizzeria Napoletana:
Anthracite coal... is the cleanest and most environmentally friendly fossil fuel, and is virtually free of smoke and emissions. It burns cleaner than a wood fire.... Our coal is mined from existing mines and does not disturb new areas. Every time we purchase coal from the mine, funds are provided to a Federal Fund to restore the environment under The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
And the coal is mined by American workers!
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I had to laugh at this story about Abercrombie & Fitch asking Jersey Shore cast member The Situation (really) not to wear their clothes because it hurts their image. I hate to tell them, but nobody in snoburbia has been wearing A&F for at least three years now. It couldn't possibly get any more downmarket.
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If you live in overclass snoburbia, you must like wine. You must know about wine. You may have a special room just for wine - or at least have a wine rack under your soapstone counters.
I like a cheap wine. I pronounced this boldly the other day in polite company, and was met with incredulity and laughter. I was instead served "a good wine" by someone who really knows his wine. I didn't like it. I just didn't like the taste. But I smiled, validating his teaching moment.
Whenever I do like a wine, it turns out to be mass-market. This does not stand me in good stead in snoburbia. I have just discovered Barefoot Pinot Grigio. I like it! It must be lowbrow. You probably hate it.
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I just saw the school supply list for 6th grade. It said: "TI-84+ graphing calculator for IM, Algebra & Geometry." The rest only need "an inexpensive calculator."
Oh no!
Now I'm feeling really, really guilty that I didn't put my kid in the two-week summer math prep class to get him into advanced math. Now he's going to have to carry the badge of shame - the "inexpensive calculator."
But he's already a year above grade level, so no need to worry, right? So not true. In snoburbia, above average is below average. It is not enough to be one or even two years above grade level in math. If your middle school child is not picked up by a special school bus that drives him and a select few to the high school for Algebra II, he is not going to MIT.
We still have a few weeks of summer - maybe I'll get him a tutor and have him do an extra math packet!
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I was driving with my friend past my neighborhood swim club at midday earlier this week. It was sunny and hot. "Why is the pool empty?" she said, rather stunned.
I was rather stunned that she asked. In snoburbia, no one is home between mid-July and mid-August. They have taken to the friendly skies or hit the road. They are at the beach house, the mountain house or, around here, the river house. If they are here, it is only because they are just returning from Sweden or are about to leave for three weeks in New Hampshire.
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As fantabulous as snoburbia is the rest of the year, if you stay around here in the summer, you must really be lame. But I'm okay with it. It's 92 degrees out, and I'll have the snoburbia swimming pool to myself. Okay, I really am lame.
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We are not going anywhere this summer. This is not okay.
I am messing up the snoburbia social order.
When I run into someone and she asks the obligatory, "What are you doing this summer?" and I say, "We're staying here," she blinks for a minute, not sure what to say. I've messed up the repartee. I need to mention my summer plans so she then can tell me about that great family camp in Maine, her son's trip to help rebuild Haiti, or her family's trip to British Columbia.
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It's summer, and you have lots of odd jobs to get done. Or you want to have a nice dinner out with your spouse, and plan to get a babysitter. So hire a teen!
News: Teens in snoburbia will not work for you. They have better things to do. They are mountain biking in Montana. Or they are at the beach with that friend whose mom and dad have the amazing beach house that comes with scooters and Jet Skis.
Oh, and they don't really need your piddling $15/hour. Are you f**ing kidding me? If you are lucky enough to find a teenager still around who is desperate enough to work, you had better come up with a serious cash offer. If he can't earn at least $50-75 for a couple of hours' work,* he won't even text you back. If you want to ensure he will actually show up, make it $100.
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* If you do hire a teen, and want to entertain him, please use the following phrase, "I used to babysit for $1 an hour."
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I went to see Midnight in Paris a couple of nights ago at Bethesda Row theaters. The movie was an ode to Paris, which was rendered especially beautiful, magical. The audience was feeling the love for Paris. But I was feeling the love for... snoburbia. The theater had an espresso bar and stadium seating and fresh cookies. The women had good purses. But more importantly, the audience got even oblique references to literature and art and caricature. The crowd roared at Dali! and Hemingway. (But that was to be expected: In snoburbia, we love Woody Allen movies.*)
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* Only the ones without Woody Allen
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Someone in my snoburban neighborhood has put up a wooden sign with an American flag painted on it. It's big. And it says, "Proud to Be an American" on it. Seriously.
Oh, yeah, maybe it's just for the Fourth of July. Whew. It's not bunting or a single cotton American flag, but so long as it is removed by the fifth of July, I guess it's okay.
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I happened to be in outer suburbia yesterday. So I stopped by the CVS to buy some Sun-In for my blonde daughter. She squirts it in her hair before walking over to the neighborhood swimming pool, for that week-at-Bethany look. I searched the whole store. Nada. You mean teens around there are not blonde and don't hang out all summer at the swim club? Weird. At the snoburban CVS there is a separate display rack just for Sun-In.
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So the "Senior Scatter" came out this week. Everyone waits with bated breath for this list of the colleges to which kids from our local snoburbia high school are going this fall. It is our annual parental pat on the back for all those years of toil and tears and tutoring. Even if we don't have a senior. Or have one of the kids who toil.
Yes, it's a public school. And yes, I'm going to post this every year when it comes out, because, well, you private school parents can just suck it. Here are some of the schools the class of 2011 got into:
Harvard (3), Princeton, Columbia, Penn, University of Chicago (2), Haverford, Carnegie Mellon (3), UC Berkeley, Vassar, Hamilton, West Point, Tufts (2), Tulane (3), Emory (2), Pitzer, UVA (3), Cornell (2), Brown, Wake Forest (2), Barnard, UNC Chapel Hill (2), Edinburgh (3), Pratt Institute (2), William and Mary, University of Michigan (4), Carleton, NYU (3), Wellesley, Northwestern (2), Wesleyan, University of Maryland College Park (44), Oberlin, Georgia Tech, Eastman School of Music, Bard, Mount Holyoke, Kenyon, Denison, RISD, UMBC (8), Penn State (8), Dickinson, Macalester, St. Mary's of Maryland, and many others.
Plus: Marines (3), Empire Beauty School (1), and CIA (um, seriously?).
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You may notice (please?) that I haven't been posting much lately. That is because I am a civic activist, and we have had two major public hearings in the last few weeks on two issues.
So I've noticed that now I am getting activist hair. (Have I been "activisting?" "activizing?" "civic-ing?" Don't know, but whatever it is has been sucking up all my time that could have been spent in the hairstylist's chair.) This unkempt mop may give me street cred, though. I mentioned this to a fellow civic activist before we testified at a public hearing, and she said, "Yeah, I went to my hairstylist today, and I asked her not to blow my hair out because I didn't want to look too 'Chevy Chase.'"*
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* She is from Chevy Chase.
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Thanks to reader Danny R., who sent this from his Blackberry. (Really, Danny - no iPhone?)
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We need to get a tiny car. This is because I put 60 - 100 miles on my minivan every day, mostly hauling overindulged children to various and sundry activities, and because $78 per tank is galling.
But what kind of tiny car should I get?
My first choices would be the new Fiat 500c or a Mini Cooper convertible or a Smart car. Okay, more realistically then - a Honda Fit or a Toyota Yaris. Or maybe a Toyota Prius. But hark, what's that cute car I saw in outer suburbia the other day? Oh, never mind... it was American, a Chevy. I can't have the only* American car in snoburbia.
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* Hulking SUVs notwithstanding
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Easter in overclass snoburbia is a low-key affair. Unlike outer suburbia or where I grew up, there is nary a tree filled with hanging plastic eggs or a front yard filled with giant inflatable Easter bunnies. In fact, you hardly see any Easter decorations at all. Obviously it's because people have more restrained tastes or don't want to offend their neighbors.
Or maybe it's because half of snoburbia is Jewish, Unitarian or atheist.
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During this weekend's trip to New York, I was thinking about the things I wanted to bring home. One of them was not bedbugs. I am freaking about possible bedbugs in my hotel room. If they were at the Plaza, then they might not mind taking up quarters in my not-$755-a-night hotel (where I zipped my bag inside one of those Hefty Big Bags).
But I don't have to worry, right? We would never allow bedbugs in snoburbia. [Covering my ears - I can't hear you, I can't hear you, I can't hear y0u.]
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So I told my mother I am taking the bus to New York this weekend. What? The bus?!
So maybe she was imagining a scary ride with the great unwashed, like the time a guy was beheaded on a Greyhound bus in Canada. Or that time when I was 16 and rode the Trailways bus to North Carolina. In the Knoxville, Tenn., depot, at 3 a.m., a greasy haired, toothless man tried to hit on me until the big mama next to me literally took me under her arms and told him to, I quote, "Git."
But no, mom, I said, it's the Vamoose bus. It's faster and cheaper than the Amtrak or flying. It's cushy, clean, new(ish) - and it leaves from snoburbia, filled with snoburban people with good haircuts, people carrying smart phones and laptops. It has Wi-Fi. It doesn't stop anywhere else to let people of a non-snoburban character on board.
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Sitting across from me in the waiting room in snoburbia was a darling blond boy, about nine years old, intelligent and charming, wearing his private school khakis, blue oxford and striped tie, sitting with his nanny, doing his homework and talking on his iPhone (worrying about his science project), waiting to see his therapist.
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It's April 1 in snoburbia, and besides being a holiday (the day your kid gets his college acceptances), it's the day to pull out your rain boots. If you are a snoburban female between the ages of, say, 15-50, you must own a pair of knee-high rain boots. You must wear your jeans tucked into your boots. I own several pairs.
Or maybe it's just a D.C. thang? A group of us went out of state to a non-snoburban area, and it rained. So naturally we wore our rain boots. We must have heard at least 50 women say, "I love your boots!" And we were like, What? Everyone where we live has rain boots.
If you live in Chevy Chase or McLean, the boots must be Hunter or Burberry.
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From my friends' Facebook posts, a cornucopia of typical snoburbia weekend activities:
• Dropped daughter off at a Bat Mitzvah. Now to boxing class.
• Husband crushed his PR at the National Marathon this morning.
• Daughter stroked the novice eight - won the regatta this morning.
• Off to The Container Store and Trader Joe's.
• Son plays FC Westchester (Scarsdale).
• Ready for Earth Hour tonight.
• Off to North Oldham to watch son play lacrosse.
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So we recently had a big party. My friend offered to pick up the beer. He brought back the usual bottled varieties - and a case of Pabst. Pabst! Pabst is what the drunk in my old hometown neighborhood used to spill all over himself before he passed out in the alley.
Who the heck was going to drink Pabst? So I hid it out on the porch as a backup, late party replacement. I certainly didn't want it to feature prominently in the cooler.
But apparently, Pabst is a staple of twentysomething hipsters*, as is anything working class that their parents in snoburbia have rejected. (Next: Bud.)
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* It may be over. Real hipsters would not be caught dead drinking something that the johnny-come-lately hipster masses have discovered. Real hipsters also never call themselves hipsters.
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The kids at a nearby overclass snoburbia high school just held a charity drive, to raise money for a worthwhile cause. They did stunts like duct-taping the principal to the wall.
The haul? $38,000. It is rumored that one boy gave $700.
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I, for one, am relieved this season is ending. Ski season, that is. If you live in snoburbia, you must love to ski. If you do not love to ski, you have a character defect. ("I have never skied," I said, to the blank stares of my friends, who were regaling each other with tales of recent ski excursions.)
I finally made my first attempt at skiing, when the pressure to take my children skiing became too much to bear. They picked it up right away and loved it. I, however, ended my skiing career in tears, death-gripping the outstretched arm of the bemused ski instructor as he guided me to the bottom of the bunny hill.
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I pulled into the snoburbia gas station, and absent-mindedly started filling my tank, as I usually do*. Then the pump clicked and I looked at my total: $80.35. What the f...amily! Apparently I chose the second most expensive gas station in Maryland, at $3.79 a gallon. In a few days (I drive a lot), when I fill my tank again, it will be at the station I passed today in outer suburbia, $3.42 a gallon.
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* I usually roll into the gas station on fumes, down to zero. This is because you can't find a gas station in snoburbia: Residents of snoburbia feel about gas stations the same way they feel about Cash for Gold stores.
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Bumper sticker on a Honda minivan I saw today in snoburbia:
I used to be cool
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Today was the fifth day of the semi-annual public radio pledge drive, and I just couldn't take it anymore. I had to get away from the you-know-they-were-cringing news reporters not quite convincing us with their earnest groveling.
So I went far, far away: I listened to morning shows on two local commercial radio stations. I know. But it was in name of research.
I learned a lot: There is a big NASCAR race in Daytona this weekend called the American something; there are women who breastfeed their six-year-olds on the Metro; a Detroit baseball player got really drunk somewhere; and certain deejays like to make certain noises during certain acts with their life partners.
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In snoburbia, one does not like Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is for dupes, rubes - people who buy those horrible Kay Jewelers necklaces. It's okay to like it ironically.
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In snoburbia, one does not tan in the winter. That is, unless you actually went to Aspen or the Caymans.
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I can't think about tans without remembering my good friend Jeff C., who died too young. He was always tan, usually from playing volleyball on the beach where he lived in Southern California. His motto, à la Zonker, was, "Tan, don't plan."
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Our recent power outages have got me mulling things over. First, why, in one of the richest counties in America do we have more and longer power outages than in India? But I digress.
I want to talk about place. Without power, and internet, one has a lot of time to mull, ponder, ruminate and consider. (Sorry, readers but when I’m mulling, that means a long post.)
During the recent three-day power outage, I traveled often to nearby suburbia, which had power. We spent lots of time in those generic, cropped-up-overnight “town centers.” You know, those tasteful, potted-tree-and-awnings centers where you can always find a Panera, Chipotle, Five Guys or Carrabba. Each lunchtime and dinnertime we found new, good food to eat. But after several days, I was feeling unsettled, unsatiated. I couldn't put my finger on why. The food was fine, tasty even. I knew that going in – that the food would be predictably delicious. A Chipotle burrito bowl or a Five Guys burger – delicious as usual. People were milling about, in a good mood. The settings were pleasantly designed and pleasingly lit with natural light, with well-thought-out seating plans.
It got me thinking about place, and what makes a place a pleasant place. I happen to live in an area where most restaurants and stores are locally owned. You can go out and eat at different restaurants and be pleasantly surprised (or disappointed) by a dish. Just five minutes up the road, you can find independent Thai, Chinese, Peruvian, and Mexican restaurants. (And Thai, Chinese, Peruvian and Mexican people eat there.)
And they all may be gone in five years.
You see, our area is about to be redeveloped, with a jazzy new town center, pedestrian walkways, new streetscaping and possibly hundreds of new “luxury apartments” over top of new restaurants and retail. It sounds exciting. Everyone wants to clean up the more run-down areas and revitalize. The town center will be shiny and new. Its mixed population will bring racial and socio-economic diversity to our town. Teenagers will have a new place to hang with their friends.
But what happens to the small local pizza joint that has been here since 1967, where all the firefighters and police officers hang out? Will the Greek father and son owners be able to afford the rent in the shiny new building? What about the women’s consignment store, whose owner I have known for ten years, and whose college-age son I watched grow up at the local pool? What about the bakery where the local owner knows my son's name and knows he likes the chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing? Or the shop where the teenage hipsters buy 1960s Valentine's Day cards and vintage sweaters?
What about the organic grocery in the low-slung, old 1950s town center, where one day the chef offers “quail eggs in homemade hibiscus vinegar w/ sea salt” and the next, “crispy turkey skin wrapped around andouille, sweet potato, and brussels?” Will it be replaced by a Macaroni Grill? Will there will be no surprises, no recipe to be tried, no new dessert introduced by a chef's whim?
I know what the new places will look like. Everyone does. They offer familiarity.
The cornices, wide sidewalks (for cafe tables and market umbrellas, of course) and “green walls” will please the eye. The brick will be the right color of brick, with just the right, tasteful amount of pink – not that cheap brick. Or maybe there will be a couple of towering sandstone-faced columns and the word “grill” or “rock” in the restaurant name. There will be at least one restaurant with a wood-burning fireplace. The ground level stores and restaurants will have 20-foot ceilings. Maybe the town center will have a retail store with whole timber beams. The heavy glass and wood doors will have clever handles, like canoe paddles or trowels. The pathways leading up to them will be of flagstone, flanked with thick, rock-covered walls and nice benches. The metal Victorian lampposts must be painted forest green.
But how will I know where I am? How will I know I'm not in Colorado or Virginia or Michigan? What of place?
Think about some of the places that are revered, that have been for many years. Think: Georgetown, Rhinebeck, Telluride, Santa Barbara, Athens, Burlington and many others like them. They don’t need “mixed use town centers” or manufactured “green space” and "pocket parks." We don’t know why, but we feel at home in these places. We walk on uneven sidewalks. We walk by imperfect windows filled with objects arranged (without a chart!) by local owners who know their customers. The downtowns were built slowly, over time, by locals. There are also good examples of new developments, which are not quite the same as the naturally occurring towns, but come close: Seaside, Fla. and Kentlands, Md.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have a Lebanese Taverna on my corner, or be able to buy a black Gap Favorite T two blocks from home - for a while anyway. But will my town's uniqueness, its sense of place, be lost?
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Mixed use and dense, vertical smart growth are the New Urbanism planner mantra and the snoburbia development method du jour. Developer$ love thi$ approach, too, and they can $ay they are "green" to boot. (Bonus!) Our whole county is headed in this direction – and fast. But is this wise? [Read an article debunking Portland's smart growth here, and an article about the burgeoning debate between New Urbanists and the interloper Landscape Urbanists, here.]
I predict: The new high-end, the snoburbia of 2030, will be the places that resisted.
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In snoburbia, there is a hierarchy in everything.
High school kids in snoburbia must take as many Advanced Placement classes as they can cram into their schedules. But, in a high school where not one, but two kids just became Intel semifinalists, there is snobbery about which AP you take. A boy I happen to know very, very well is proud to be taking his first AP class - AP Human Geography. He spends hours learning the rivers, countries and capitols of Africa and South America and neatly coloring in maps.
His friends tease him for taking "AP Coloring."
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So, yeah, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is getting its share of attention in snoburbia... as a manual, or as validation. I know many parents like the author, Amy Chua.
One child plays her piano for hours a day. ("Wow, Anna, that is beautiful!" I say as I walk through the front door. She's amazing, her small fingers flying over the keys. "No - don't tell her that! It doesn't sound right yet," says her Tiger Mother.)
I'm more of a capybara mother ("Fun fact: Capybara dive and may remain underwater for as long as five minutes"), or maybe a giant panda mother ("primarily spends its life roaming and feeding in the bamboo forests of the Qinling Mountains").
My son has recently learned how to do a back flip, to juggle, to break-dance, and to recite the Declaration of Independence by heart. And, and! He can do the Hammer dance and knows all the lyrics to U Can't Touch This.
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Holy black lotus! I dropped my son off at an event last night at the local strategy game mecca, Dream Wizards. It was nerdvana. There were about 100 gamers from snoburbia and beyond. In the back you had your Magic: The Gathering game. Warhammer dark elves and undead battled in the center. To the right were your Dungeons and Dragons players (among which were the only females in the whole place). I've never seen so many neck beards* in one place.
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* A computer programmer I know assures me that you cannot be taken seriously as a programmer unless you have one.
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