Recently I’ve been feeling the draw toward the suburbs. Can’t pinpoint the exact appeal of it is, but I can pinpoint when it happened — when HBomb was born. We live in Boston, some would even say we live in the most family-friendly part of Boston. And I used to love it. Weird thing is, when I was a kid, I hated cities.
Yup, cities and me were like oil and water, yin and yang, W and… well, you get the picture… When I was in college I even made a trip to NYC and found myself feeling clausterphopic. Then something changed. And I began to appreciate the city and all it offered.
That changed. All I can think of now is yards, decks, driveways, and H playing in the grass. Screw the good restaurants, the easy access to stores and the walk-to-everything lifestyle. I want what I had when I was a kid: a yard. A drive to the movies. Kids to play with in my neighborhood. Though, I guess Hayes would really be playing with them. Yup, that has changed. Now I want to play with the big kids. You know, those crazy grownups.
AJ says:
June 26th, 2005 at 10:46 am
You can still have the walk-to-everything lifestyle if you live in a small town. Well, walk to the most common amenities, drive to the occasional necessities. You’ll miss the broad range entertainment opportunities that a city offers, but your kids now occupy most of your time.
I remember a Caldecott children’s author visiting my elementary school, with her young daughter. The girl was enamored by our soccer/baseball/football field. Or more accurately, she was fascinated by all the grass. I can’t imagine what life was like in the big city she came from.
That was my growing up in the burbs. I moved away. My kid is growing up where trees are the tallest thing on the skyline. It’s not for everyone, but yeah, you at least need a big yard. That’s where all the adventures take place.
Universal Hub says:
June 26th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
The call of the mild
Now that he’s a father, Eric reports he’s been thinkg more of the suburbs:
… All I can think of now is yards, decks, driveways, and H playing in the grass. Scre
eeka says:
June 26th, 2005 at 6:02 pm
Don’t do it, man!
There are places in the city where you can have both. The Stony Brook and Forest Hills areas of JP have yards and trees and driveways, but you’re right near the T and can walk to shops and restaurants.
I’m not intimately familiar with the burbs around here, but from the ones I’ve worked in and visited friends in, it seems like they’re either disgustingly snobby and elitist or they’re full of people who live 10 minutes from the city and don’t go into the city more than once a year. The latter group even includes people who work in the financial district and make a mad dash for their commuter rail and safety of the burbs at 5:00, never shop in the city or hang out there after work, etc.
BC says:
June 26th, 2005 at 6:14 pm
Eric, two words for you:
North Shore.
Commuter rail to North Station, beaches, great walkable towns like Marblehead (my biased fave), Ipswich, and Newburyport.
Get out of town!
adamg says:
June 26th, 2005 at 9:05 pm
You could move to Roslindale or West Roxbury. We’ve got yards down here and lots of kids - and you can drive to the Dedham Googleplex
.
Universal Hub says:
June 27th, 2005 at 11:38 am
Green Acres is the place to be?
Like Eric in the South End, Back Bay’s Carpundit finds himself longing for a home with a yard:
geoff says:
June 27th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
I have to agree with eeka — I live in JP and we have a nice little yard, and then a HUGE yard called the Arboretum. And a huge lake called Jamaica Pond. We’re already planningon having our kids learn to ride their bikes in the Arboretum, but even our street (with over 30 kids) is about as kid-friendly as it gets. We’re walking distance to everything, and can take the T anywhere, though with twins, we’re driving more than we ever did before.
oh yeah, and we have a deck.
Chris says:
June 28th, 2005 at 9:30 am
Don’t count on there necessarily being kids out and about to play with, either. With two working parents and a busy schedule of “extras,” my sisters’ family-friendly suburbs are pretty desolate during the day.
Dan in MN says:
June 28th, 2005 at 11:27 am
The SUBURBS?
The band sucked. Living in a suburb was worse.
I suppose Boston might be more racially integrated than Minneapolis, but here in MN, the suburbs are still so very, very lilly white. For that reason alone, I plan to limit my son’s exposure to the burbs, lest he get a distorted reality of the world (like his old man did in the ’80’s). Kids that are sheltered from other cultures are less likely to appreciate them. When I grew up in the burbs (pre-UPN), the only faces of color I saw on most days were from news reports detailling the latest crime in the ‘inner city’.
Fortunately, housing in MN is still fairly cheap, so we can afford to live in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Minneapolis, complete with an 80 x 120 lot, more space and bedrooms than we need, and a great public primary school within walking distance.
I confess I don’t know what Boston is like, as I have never been there (I did spend a night in the Framingham jail though..), but I wouldn’t dream of moving back to the burbs.
Dan in MN
Phil says:
July 11th, 2005 at 12:36 pm
I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, and it was not a pleasant experience. So I escaped to smalltown Idaho as soon as I could. Now my kids are growing up in a real town, where they’re surrounded by forests and lakes rather than manicured lawns and shopping malls.
Speaking of bands, anyone remember The Suburban Lawns from the early 80’s?