Essays on Suburbia

ABSTRACT LEFT OUT: ESSAYS ON SUBURBIA This collection of essays examines the aesthetic of uniformity and order prevalent in planned, suburban housing developments. It utilizes both personal experience and research to examine the effect this aesthetic has on the suburbanite. It relates stories from the author’s childhood that attempt to illustrate the homogenizing effects of the suburban aesthetic and relates the author’s current sensibilities, attempting to relate them to his upbringing. Shane Velez May 2013 LEFT OUT: ESSAYS ON SUBURBIA by Shane Velez A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in the College of Arts and Humanities California State University, Fresno May 2013 APPROVED For the Department of English: We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following student meets the required standards of scholarship, format, and style of the university and the student's graduate degree program for the awarding of the master's degree. Shane Velez Thesis Author Steven Church English John Hales English Samina Najmi English For the University Graduate Committee: Dean, Division of Graduate Studies AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION OF MASTER’S THESIS I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in part or in its entirety without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorbs the cost and provides proper acknowledgment of authorship. X Permission to reproduce this thesis in part or in its entirety must be obtained from me. Signature of thesis author: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the following: Steven Church John Hales Samina Najmi Jeffery Gleaves J.J. Anselmi The Cossack Review (For publishing “Neighborhood Watch”) TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1 I. BAD HANDS ....................................................................................... 8 A Birds Eye View ............................................................................. 8 Bad Hands .................................................................................... 11 Sticking to Script ........................................................................... 15 Dexter ........................................................................................... 20 He Used to Dance .......................................................................... 22 Backyard Bird Watching ................................................................ 25 II. LOOKING OUT ................................................................................ 31 Neighborhood Watch ..................................................................... 31 The Politics of Detachment ............................................................ 46 I Couldn’t Stand Them................................................................... 63 III. AFTER ............................................................................................ 79 My Post-Post Angst: On Hipsters, Picasso, and Occupy Wall Street ................................................................................... 79 That’s Not Funny ........................................................................... 94 INTRODUCTION Eighty percent of everything built in North America was built in the last fifty years. Strip malls, parking lots, freeways, and housing sub-divisions now dot the landscape. Off the 99 freeway, in Turlock, CA, a strip mall called the Countryside Plaza hosts amenities like Target, In-N-Out, Chipotle, and Kohls. Six hours south, off the 215 freeway, in Menifee, CA—in my hometown—another strip mall called the Countryside Marketplace hosts many of the same amenities and is laid out in a nearly identical manner. And 2,000 miles east, off the 45 freeway, in Countryside, IL, a strip mall called the Countryside Plaza hosts a Home Depot to Menifee’s Lowe’s and a Panda Express to our Chipotle. In 1955, The Seattle Times ran an ad for a housing subdivision called Eastgate Hills that spanned 1,200 acres—one of the largest of its kind. The ad called the subdivision a “self-contained city in a country atmosphere.” A 1957 cartoon printed in Electrical Merchandizing depicts a long line of cars, luggage strapped to the top, smiling families inside, fleeing the crowded skyline in the distance. A sign posted on the side of the road reads, “SUBURBIA STRAIGHT AHEAD.” In 1925, General Motors initiated a national campaign to rid the country of all its electric trolley routes. It bought up every streetcar line it could, scrapping the tracks and creating bus routes in their place. By 1950, GM 2 2 had succeeded in replacing more than 100 electric streetcar lines with gasoline powered buses. “General Motor’s ultimate goal” James Howard Kunstler explains in his book The Geography of Nowhere, “was to replace public transportation with private transportation.” The trolley tracks “represented a difficult competing technology” and the bus was only an excuse to rip them up. William Levitt, widely known as the father of modern suburbia, pioneered the methods for the mass construction of houses. On July 1, 1947, Levitt broke ground on 1,000 acres of potato farms on Long Island to start construction on what would become the template for suburban development for the next 60 years. He broke down the construction process into twenty-seven operations, assigning a specialized team to each operation. Construction teams used pre-cut, mass produced materials and, soon, they were building thirty to forty houses a day. When he was finished, Levitt had covered 1,000 acres with 17,000 nearly identical houses to form Levittown, NY. The homes were produced so cheaply that the average factory worker could afford a down payment on a Levittown house with a single month’s salary. Many lauded the development as a democratization of homeownership. Levitt went on to build similar residential areas in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, and Puerto Rico. A 1957 brochure advertising homes in Levittown, Pennsylvania promises “oversized plots of land—no neighbors breathing down your neck.” 3 3 Douglas Sirk, a Danish-German film director known for his 1950’s Hollywood melodramas centered around women and domestic concerns, said, “The homes that people live in exactly describe their lives.” The deeds signed by Levittown homeowners contained a clause that forbade them “to permit the premises to be used or occupied by any other person than members of the Caucasian race.” After several years of protests and lawsuits, Levitt & Sons removed the clause. On August 23, 1957, the newspaper Plaindealer published an article with a headline that read “Violence as a Negro Moves into His Home in Levittown, Penn.” Police held back a 200 person mob that gathered near the house of the first black resident in Levittown, Pennsylvania. The black man commented only to say, “I want to be a good neighbor and hope others will do the same.” Today, Levittown, New York is 97.9% white and Levittown, Pennsylvania is 87.6% white. The road to Levittown was, literally, unpaved. With the release of the affordable Ford Model-T in the early twentieth century, middle class New Yorkers sought weekend escapes from the drudgery of the city and found that escape in Long Island. At the time, a small elite group of landowning gentry controlled affairs on the island and, at their behest, public officials turned a blind eye to the already crumbling roads. The landowners erected large walls around their property to keep day- trippers out. They built maze-like, private, estate roads to deliberately confuse what they saw as a scourge of commoners invading their upscale playground. All but the most undesirable, rock covered beaches were 4 4 marked with private property signs and armed guards ensured the beaches stayed empty. It wasn’t until urban planner Robert Moses proposed, fought for, and completed the construction of a highway from Queens to the island that Long Island became a viable market for developments like Levittown. And so, you could say, the suburban dream is a dream to be somewhere else. Somewhere others are not supposed to be. Scott Mann, a twenty year Menifee resident and current Mayor, told me he moved from Escondido to “buy a piece of the American dream.” He was living in an apartment and wanted to invest in a house that he hoped would appreciate in value. He hoped to someday borrow against his home and buy a vacation house somewhere else. Another resident said she moved for the “affordable housing and great schools.” Another said he moved to Menifee for some “rural living.” *** Americans didn’t always prefer this kind of spread out living. Early Puritan settlers held town meetings to discuss the optimal size of their settlements, restricting outward expansion. Settlers built houses around a church which acted as public space for the entire town. In 1635, the Massachusetts colony passed a law that forbade settlers from establishing homes more than a half mile from a town’s central church. Even so, dissenting minorities that didn’t like the towns they lived in had the option to leave and establish a new settlement and this happened frequently. From the beginning, Americans have operated under a sort of 5 5 “love it or leave it” mentality. Because of all the open land, and because of our willingness to force the indigenous people off of it, we’ve never had to stay in one place and resolve our problems. But even these dissenting

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