City vs Suburbs
I was on my way out the door this morning waiting for an elevator down when I cautiously eyed a doberman-esque dog exit the up elevator.
An unrelated aside:
I was mildly “attacked” walking to work the other day. A leashed dog came at me and started jumping up and trying to bite. I’ve thought out my responses to something like that–and I executed the plan–at least the first step. I had a pretty rugged jacket on so I pulled my hand into the sleeve, turned a sideways profile to the dog, and used my arm as a “chomp” sponge. If the dog would have actually sunk teeth in, I would execute step two. Dog lovers: beware. I am a dog lover, but I’m not going to stand by while a dog mauls me. So if the dog would have actually locked on to me I would have swung around my legs and scissored the dog’s neck and put the vice down. Doing this move means there’s no turning back. If you let the dog go–it’s in fight/flight mode–and since he was a bigger dog–I wouldn’t have risked letting him go. Thankfully, the under-powered woman that had him leashed was able to pull him in. Here’s the thing though–she didn’t say anything to me. She’s telling her dog no–as I walk away thinking her dog’s lucky, not me.
Okay–that wasn’t the point of this post. I was busy avoiding the dog coming out of the elevator this morning and almost didn’t recognize the woman with the dog. She’s a former co-worker and friend–who I hadn’t seen for a year. We both looked at each other puzzled.
“You live here? Where?”
We live less than 100 feet from each other on the same floor–for 6 months now–and didn’t know it. Weird.
Today I was talking about city vs suburb with a suburbanite (we still live in the city) and hearing many of the same points about why the burbs can be better. The odd thing is, I really think that people are right about the potential social nature of neighborhoods in the burbs versus the city. In the city you are around too many people to be sociable. As paradoxical as that seems, I think it’s true.
I really love the city and don’t want to miss out on it. And I hate manufactured neighborhoods and the sprawl of the burbs. But there are diamonds in the edges of Chicago. Quite a few of our friends are having kids and moving out of the city–and the best place they are going, in my mind, is the one of older burbs like Oak Park–where the community is old enough to have built it’s own personality, social system, soul. It’s strange. I think there is a magic proximity or housing density that facilitates community. I’m not sure my factory converted to lofts condo building is it… Or maybe it just doesn’t attract the right people. Not sure. I’ll keep ruminating on this as Gina and I start to think about houses rather than the loft…