Salmon House

Primed to receive the biggest tax refund in years. This "found money" will be put to use on the exterior of my housal unit -- I intend on having my windows replaced (not by me), but I will also repair rotting wood, install gutter guards, caulk the siding, weatherseal and paint the exterior myself. A set of big projects for 2011.

We will return the color of the housal unit to its original color scheme. No, it won't be salmon, or blue, or baby-shit yellow or any of those cartoonish colors many neighbors of mine prefer. Fortunately for me, these neighbors don't live right next door.

I'm glad I don't live next to a salmon house. Same with a blue house with a red door, or some other awful, garish coloring. I am happy my close-in neighbors have kept to schemes that "fit in" with the others. To me, this is important. While some people have the option to live alone, or rather, isolated, the great majority must live cooperatively. We ought to not speed through our own neighborhoods, or allow our dogs to bark incessantly, or hold a yard sale every weekend. There are limits and I'm not just referring to those that can be enforced by law, but those that are enforced by respect for the common good.

Recall my argument against Beth Shalom in San Francisco:

...how it fails to respect existing architecture. The same thing applies to a "custom" 3,400 sq ft housal unit built amongst existing 1,450 sq ft units but in the most desirable neighborhood. What's lost in all this is that the neighborhood is desirable for a reason. When reason is not respected, desirability wanes.

As Elk Grove continues to follow the same blueprint for low density sprawl as every other city in the U.S., the blueprint calls for minimum setback requirements, how high the fence can be, how wide the curb cuts into the shopping plaza must be -- it tells us what we can't do more than what we can, but more importantly, it doesn't tell us what ought to be done. The results are sterile, lifeless, auto-brutalized "communities" with no meaningful destinations. There is more to urban planning than just following rules, but clearly this applies not to Elk Grove.

My housal unit will fit in with the others following my exterior upgrades. I intend to preserve what little sense of "charm" this neighborhood possesses by not attempting to turn Laguna Springs into a cartoon caricature of a meaningful place to live.