(ex)Urban

Dispatches from the heart of American sprawl

[ex-urban-blog]

Ex-Urban: Losing My (Urban) Religion

Walking home from breakfast one recent Saturday, I ran into a neighbor.  He was up on a ladder pruning some trees.  An ex-Mayor of San Antonio, he began much of the downtown revitalization years ago that the mayors have henceforth continued.

We exchanged our normal small talk before he asked about the sale of our home, listened to my horror stories about getting appraised in line with the market, and then asked me that horrific question that seems to cut me every time it's asked.

"So where are you moving?"

I feel my shoulders slump as I explain how we're going to be outside the outer loop, trading in our charming craftsman for a charmless box in a row of identical charmless boxes. He tries to avoid looking disappointed in our choice and I hedge with some vague mumbling about schools (he chairs the inner-city school board so I abandon that line of reasoning quickly), we agree to continue our days independently.

I walk away, feeling like a sellout - again.  Every conversation with the established folks in the neighborhood (the city Chief of Staff down the street, local business owners) leaves me feeling like I've decided to abandon something transcendent.

(In truth, with most of the decision being related to area schools, almost all of the folks who leave me feeling this way are either wealthy enough to afford private school or lack school-age kids altogether.)

It was in walking away from the ex-Mayor that I realized why it always felt so defeating to leave. 

Inner-city living (especially in the areas that are pre-gentrification) is a religion.  It requires faith and hope in something that has yet to arrive - namely a stable, safe community on an upward economic trajectory.  We have to suspend disbelief that the schools are a repellent, see graffiti-soaked buildings as redevlopment opportunities rather than eyesores, and allow that higher crime, street dogs, and random gunshots are part of the righteous persecution we face as adherents to this special faith.

We believe in a better future and we are trained to see suburban outsiders not as folks with greater economic sense or different cultural preferences, but as people with insufficient faith to enjoy the fullness of life near the center-city. They simply lack the will to endure the lack of services or retail options. They simply can't appreciate the intricacies of life in the midst of decay. In reality, they simply live in a different life circumstance, enjoy something less gritty, and are just as beholden to the real-estate realities of the modern sunbelt (hint: schools drive everything).

So maybe the suburbanites aren't missing the point after all. Maybe they're just a different denomination, a separate, more-mainstream sect of the same faith. And maybe urbanites aren't some set apart people, brimming with righteousness around every crumbling corner. Maybe they've just been granted the freedom to experiment for a bit longer than those who left long ago.

All that said, there are reasons that the religion that is inner-city living has trapped so many in it's spell. The reason it hurts to leave so much is partially tied to how much we enjoy the lifestyle. Walking to breakfast, taking mass transit to cultural events, and being part of the countercultural movement towards urban life are all strong narcotics. Not strong enough to keep us from leaving, I suppose.  And not strong enough to dull the sting of packing the house for the move.

Perhaps it'll be just strong enough to bring us back in a couple of decades. Maybe we can earn back our place at the altar...

[ex-urban-blog]

(ex)Urban: Suburban Culture Shock

"We are not from here..."

We spent much of Friday morning in the suburban house of our choosing.  We have an accepted offer and our inspector was out making sure that the house was not money pit and that it was, as it appeared, just as sturdy and wonderful as all of the other house on the street WHICH LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME.

Even in a few hours in this different environment, I felt a bit...unfamiliar?  Out of place?  Foreign?  Yes, that's it.  Foreign.

We have become inner city people.  Between Austin, Africa, and San Antonio, I have now spent the majority of the last TWELVE years living in generally urban, walkable environments.

The roads in our future suburb feel different.  The school-children run around freely (although they are tracked at a distance by helicopter-moms).  People look different, dress differently, and (likely) think differently than we do - for now. To paint the picture: I drive a Yaris, don't own cowboy boots, and may have been the first male to wear man-capris in this wonderfully friendly (and incredible conservative) hamlet outside the outer loop.

I am sure I'll have a Canyonero, boots, and one of those vented fishing shirts soon (soon = probably never), so let's hope I don't become the victim of the first man-capri related hate crime in history before then.

The way that culture shock works (both in my own experience and from research) is that, basically, after a few frustrating ups and downs, the human being eventually adapts and assimilates to whatever cultural situation they're dropped in. 

This bodes well for the family and the next 20 years of life that await us in the foreign lands of suburbia.  The hinterlands will not be quite so weird once we've been grafted into the culture better.

Of course, I am not exactly anxious to trade my love for the more urban setting.  Perhaps we can merely become accepting of the new environ and quietly look forward to that spot in the graph (after the dotted line on the right) where the line shows us again returning to our native (urban) culture.

[ex-urban-blog]

(ex)Urban: Luminaria and Culture Loss

Someone, quick...take a poll.

Of the total number of people that attended this year's Luminaria (only 315,000 this year), I want to know how many were residents that came from more than 10 miles from downtown. 

I want to know because I didn't want to go.  Life has been exhausting recently and I would be preaching Sunday, meaning a restful Saturday night carried more weight than normal. And a night of downtown crowd-fighting (while fun) did not sound like rest.

The argument that won me over sounded something like this:

"We live five minutes away.  If we love it - great.  If we need to bail, we hop in the car and are home in no time."

Hmm...  Hard to argue.

So what happens next year, when we live 25 minutes away?  How does distance affect the willingness to get out and get knee-deep in culture?

One of my great fears of suburbia, of becoming ex-urban, is that the attractive things that happen in the city will, slowly and with great subtlety, become less attractive in direct proportion to their declining convenience.

If I am not careful, it will be a quiet loss, as no amount of Dora the Explorer can replace a life-size illuminated Pac-Man scene or bizarre, glowing, outlandish street performers.  The city, for it's many flaws, stretches the imaginations of me and my kid.

[ex-urban-blog]

(ex)Urban: No Snakes in the City and The War to Come

I hate snakes.

I don't know if it's an irrational fear, some sort of repressed childhood trauma, or the result of a deep, holy desire to avenge man's defeat to the wily serpent in the oft-cited historical Battle at Eden.  (Wait, that isn't an historical battle?  It's a biblical thing? Oh, didn't know that...thanks.)

No matter, I hate snakes.

And I love the city.  Perhaps I love the city in some small way because of a simple undeniable reason: There are no snakes in the city.  (Admittedly, that cannot be true, but who cares what science and facts might say...you don't see snakes crawling down 5th Ave next to the Burberry Store, so they don't exist.)

In walking through the house we're aiming to buy, I had the great fortune of running across this ridiculous creature.

What's that? A Texas Rat Snake?  And it is 5 feet long? And it lives in my prospective garage?  

Swear Word.

Freaking fantastic.

As if it wasn't hard enough to move from the charming inner city hood we're in to the sanitized suburb out yonder, now I have to do a full on inspection of every nook and cranny for evil, crawling beasts?

I didn't think it would be an easy process to become and ex-urbanite.  I never thought that I'd be warring against snakes as part of the deal.

Welcome to the exurbs, I suppose. 

Time to go to war.

[ex-urban-blog]

(ex)Urban: Being About the Journey

When the reality hit me that I'd be selling my 1920's home in the inner city and relocating to a suburban box near convenient "power centers" and "good schools", I feared a bit for my sanity.

I am an unapologetic lover of the urban world.  And in San Antonio, where urban life is quite limited, my experience is as much aspirational as it is real.

After four years living in an inner city neighborhood (which, admittedly, was a far flung suburb in 1920), the reality set in that we would be moving out.  We would be moving 18 miles away physically, but much further culturally. I am about to be ex-urban and exurban, part of what I have long called "the problem" of sprawl.

Gone would be the days of walking to breakfast on a Saturday morning or to dinner on a pleasant Friday night.  Gone would be the access to downtown, the ability to use mass transit, and the feeling of permanence and history that gave our area it's rough around the edges charm.

There is a lot to look forward to, even if I don't want to admit it.  I am not disappointed that the home maintenance required of me will dissipate or that my summer electric bills will be cut in half even as my square footage doubles.  And I am sure I'll discover more as I go.

Perhaps the hardest things is completely created within my own head.  I am, quite simply, one more step removed from South Africa and the style of life there.  I don't long to be unsafe, but being a little less safe helps me remember.  I don't long to be surrounded by graffiti and gangs, but the presence of such things actually keeps my eyes on the reality in front of me.

I fear the whitewashed suburbs, where brokenness is rampant but kept nicely hidden by expensive, designer shutters.  I fear forgetting the people we live amongst now, even if our presence hasn't helped them.  They help me.  I fear slipping into the cultural chasm that we've worked so hard to avoid. I fear the ease of making an idol out of my sweet family, my personal comfort, or my precious, fleshly heart.

I fear the suburbs.  And we have contracts on selling and buying out right now.  So the fear inches closer.

This will be my outlet, my reminder that this next season is not about the destination, but rather it is to be about the journey.

[ex-urban-blog]

Moving to this...

[ex-urban-blog]

Moving from this...