Posts Tagged ‘beige’
so many reasons to hate the suburbs »
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
I get it. We were afraid of brown people, looking for cheap housing and lived in our cars. Why not sprawl, right?
Things are different now and we need to call off this failed social experiment. Its detriment far outweighs its benefit.
The same faux-patriots that hate other cultures, crave war and ignore the poor saturate these once-desirable puddles of white that encircle metropolitan areas. They must be stopped.
I read somewhere that if we all lived with the population density of Brooklyn, the entire nation would fit into New Hampshire. The driving between these vastly separate locations has us dependent on nations we label enemies.
Does that make sense?
Whatever, maybe I’m just fuming over the absurd of yesterday…
HOOOOOOOOOONK!!
At first I think the giant beige (fact: color of evil) SUV is upset because I left the trail for the road after it ended. I’d just come through another intersection, though, so SUV had to hold a grudge.
Stopped at the next light, an interchange with a heavy-traffic local highway, SUV rolled down the window.
She’s about sixty but doesn’t look a day under seventy-two. A thick cake of something meant to conceal them accents her abundant wrinkles. Her eyes —
“Get off the road!” (She doesn’t even let me take in her whole horrifying face before screaming at me.)
It’s a road bike. I’m stunned, so it sounds like a question. Which is stupid because it’s obviously a road bike.
“I don’t care if it’s a road bike! Get off the road!!”
Umm.
I couldn’t do anything but laugh as she sped off to her probably-very-important somethingorother. I sighed, clicked in and went on my way.
… But yeah, that’s maybe why I’m so anti-suburb today. I don’t necessarily feel safe on my bike in Uptown, but I know the people there have seen a bike. Some have maybe even taken a drivers’ test in the last decade and had to answer bicycle-safety questions.
Maybe.
Photo courtesy Streetsblog (also: what the — !?)