Raised Ranch

There aren't too many of these kinds of houses built here in Elk Grove, but the principles of bad urban design aren't just limited to my little burg; they exist all throughout the U.S. Here's a beautiful example of just how wretched we've built things:


This is the raised ranch style. The sole purpose for any raised ranch, as I see it, is to provide for sheltered automobile parking underneath living structures so the builder can share the roof and save material.

If you stare at this house long enough, you'll notice the garage door and the two windows above it form a sorta pac-man like face. Several times a day the garage door "mouth" opens up to swallow or regurgitate dad's minivan and mom's sedan. There would be no need for the front door on this house, but alas, codes require one. Codes don't require shutters; yet, some colored vinyl slabs are stapled up and we call them shutters, because otherwise, this house might look like shit.

It still looks like shit!

I understand, I really do, the need for cheap, affordable housing. But this is cheap expensive housing. Even today this unit would command a hundred eighty five in most places. The new owners will throw up some mismatched vegetative units, perhaps an Italian pencil pine on each side, juniper in front of the lower windows, agapanthus near the downspouts where the water fails to drain...

It's expensive, looks terrible, and will have no, absolutely no, enduring value. Ever. This is all we are capable of building anymore. The building of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of units like this is what defines the bulk of our economy. We could choose to do better, but we don't.

Sit Down and Shut Up

My mom has these little pictures in her dining room of houses in France. She thought they were extraordinary enough while visiting France that she photographed them, had them developed, framed them, and put them up in her dining room.

I find it absolutely amazing that she couldn't, or wouldn't, find a house within a 5-mile radius of her own home here in SACTOWN that she'd photograph, develop, frame, and post up in her dining room. Perhaps because there aren't any worthy of photographing.

Here's a house that I snapped just this morning on Broadway on my bike ride into work:

Note the poorly proportioned shutters that are non-functional and purely decorative. Poorly proportioned because they couldn't enclose the entire window if they did work. These "shutters" simply make an architectural abortion even more shitty. What's more, these fake shutters are presumably in the open position, but note how the louvers are facing -- they are in the closed position. If they really did close, they'd be backward. Rainwater would blow right through, negating most of their effectiveness. The damn builder couldn't even build fake shutters correctly!

Shutters had/have an important function in other climes, but here in SACTOWN they are pointless. They are louvered, raised panel, board and batten, faux wood, poly, vinyl, plantation, traditional, colonial, painted, unpainted, stained, unfinished...but all of them, ALL! are non-functional and always out of proportion.

The house in the photo in my mom's dining room from France, the shutters are functional, enclose the windows, contain the view, are proportional to the window box and window...they look correct and serve a real purpose.

Here in my Merika, we spend inordinate time embellishing utter pieces of architectural shit with doodads. That's because we long for real places and real buildings, but are unwilling to pay Merikans to build them and instead pay Mexican immigrants feudal wages to tack on fakery on the outside to give the illusion that we have culture, that we use housal equipment appropriate to the climate, that we know what we're doing when we build a home.

Indeed, building fake shutters only makes the places we live in worse. We might as well be living in Wonderland with all this pointless, disproportionate junk we've been fabricating. They make all our depressing buildings even more depressing.

I know we could build better. But I also know that this is Merika, where building better plays second fiddle to growth. Living better, in better environments, in better houses; this apparently isn't what the American dream is about. The American Dream is a raised ranch with no money down, with no charm, with no character, with no sense of community, with three motor vehicles in the driveway to service it. We're pretty good at providing that.

Thirty Percent Tomorrow

I simply cannot believe that auto sales are down, in some cases by thirty percent. If you ply the Elk Grovian roadways you would certainly come to the same conclusion.

There are as many cars as ever. Driving home at 1:30 PM on Christmas Eve, one of the few days I've driven to work this year, was a total fiasco. A holiday afternoon in the midst of a "deep recession," and there were four hundred thousand other cars I had to fight with to get home.

I refuse to believe there is any marked reduction in oil demand, at least within the "personal transportation" sector. All my Elk Grovian neighbors haven't backed off one bit from their regular perpetual motoring lifestyles. Elk Grove prides itself on having no economy of its own, prides itself on being one of the most energy inefficient cities, and prides itself that it hasn't had to cut many jobs during this economic downturn...because it didn't have any to begin with. Driving to other communities where there are jobs is mandated by law, as is their consumption of oil.

All these cretins will need new vehicles someday. Once they dig themselves out of their current vehicular financing holes they will just dig themselves into newer deeper ones because they can't afford to pay for them outright. Perpetual vehicular motoring comes with perpetual motor vehicular financing.

That they are buying 30% fewer today only means that they will be buying 30% more tomorrow. This is an undeniable truth. Suburban Elk Grovian housewives will never never! be denigrated to have to drive a three year old vehicle, god forbid. They will demand of their working spouses that they receive a new family vehicle every few years because:

• We need a new vehicle to keep our children safe. Newer vehicles are safer than those deathtraps built back in 2006. Wouldn't want us to die in a fiery crash, would you?
• New cars don't break down. Wouldn't want me and our kids stranded on Highway 99, would you?
• New cars come with standard navigation systems. Wouldn't want me and our kids lost off Highway 99, would you?
• New cars have backseat DVDs. Wouldn't want our kids to have to look out the windows at our shitty neighborhoods, would you?
• A new car will make me feel superior to Marta next door. Wouldn't want me to feel inferior to a Mexican immigrant, would you?

95821

I spent an hour yesterday evening (Christmas day) walking around my mom's Sacramento neighborhood in a failed attempt to work off all those excessive holiday calories eaten.

Twenty six years ago I used to walk the same route I did last night, from my old house to my high school, Mira Loma. It took me about 23 minutes each way, something kids cannot do in Elk Grove these days. No, today they must be chauffeured by SUV, because of the six hundred and fifty thousand child molesters that now live among us, because of the incredible distances between home and school, and because of the horrible social stigmas put upon children who pedestrianate. Only poor kids walk to school. But I digress.

I wondered why the 95821 zip code hadn't turned into the suburban slum that I know 95758 will become. My premise is that all suburban areas eventually turn to liquid shit, but this one hasn't. Why?

One thing that was immediately evident, during the full hour of walking (about three miles) around 95821 is that I didn't pass one single speed bump. Not one. And this in a neighborhood that uniformly lacks sidewalks and whose streets are as seemingly wide as any Elk Grovian "neighborhood." I'm forced to walk in the street, yet I felt safe. I felt safe because the few cars that did pass me did so at a reasonable speed and with a sufficient margin that I did not feel threatened. I might have actually been threatened, but if pedestrians don't feel it, they are willing to walk.

Why was it safe? Why weren't there any speed bumps, traffic circles, neckdowns, raised crosswalks, textured pavements, chicanes, realigned intersections, reversing curves, jigglebumps, hammerheads, lateral shifts, split medians or angle points?

There were also six other groups or individuals who were doing the same thing! Walking! I overtook an old man walking at Greenwood and North, and passed him up again on my way back at Greenwood and Robertson. We exchanged greetings twice, and chuckled at the second passing. This neighborhood has a fair degree of vibrancy because it has pedestrians. They are eyes and ears on the neighborhood. They make casing difficult. They make it just a little bit harder for chowderheads to conduct crimes. In Elk Grove, pedestrians are criminals. No one should be out walking, and if they are they are most definitely up to no good.

But I ask again...why does 95821 not have traffic calming devices? There is some intrinsic quality that I haven't yet been able to define that makes it better than anything we've ever built in the past twenty five years.

Something for me to discover and to blog about in the future...

A Tale of Two Cities

I rode the bike today to work, the day after Christmas, under a 34 degree cold front (cold for Northern CA). Not too many folks will ride a bike with gas at a buck fifty, let alone ride when you can see your breath. "What is that dolt doing?" they ask, as they motor around him in their heated vehicles. "Thank God I'm not as poor as that schlub."

As I ride up Franklin towards East Sacramento, where I work at SMUD, I've noticed how much better the roads are as I get closer. This is the pedestrian crossing at 59th and Broadway, about .6 miles from SMUD:



Last spring, road construction crews ripped out two inches of existing asphalt and installed a whole new, quiet, rubberized open grade asphalt along the entire length of 59th. They also bricked this crosswalk across Broadway. Where I'm standing while taking this picture is the north entrance to Curtis Park. Smaller, older homes in Curtis Park command many tens of thousands of dollars more than newer, bigger homes in Elk Grove precisely because of the park (embedded in the neighborhood and accessible by foot, not only by car), of their arrangements (walkable & engaging), of their architectural character (where 2/3rds of the facades aren't swallowed up by blank garage doors). Not just because they are located in East Sacramento.

So...as I rode the bike home today down Franklin Blvd., I passed the new signaled intersection of Franklin and Turnbridge, where road construction crews recently performed a state/federal tax funded road beautification project. Look at this mess:

If you click on the photo, you'll notice that this ain't brick. It's a simulated brick paint job on top of a chip-sealed surface that was deteriorated to begin with. In a few years this chip seal is going to slough off, the cracked bottom road bed will become re-exposed and this whole intersection will fall apart. They stopped the chip seal just south of this intersection, too. Just couldn't seal it all the way to Florin. Nope. That old section of road will always be even worse than this 'new' road.

Tell me...on this road, across this intersection...who is going to push that walk button, huh? Who? You? Who is going to walk that one and a quarter miles from this intersection to Florin Rd, or to anything of interest? You? Yeah, right. I've not seen a single person hoofing it across this intersection in the past nine months.

The city, however, also knows this. They assume any pedestrian here in South Sacramento is a fucking moron who wouldn't know the difference between a brick walkway and a faux brick asphalt strip. It's the only possible explanation why city-core neighborhoods get "real" roadways, new quiet asphalt surfaces, and brick walks while the fringe neighborhoods get painted bricks and thinly sprayed hydrocarbon sealers. It's just one more little example of how and why I believe that suburban neighborhoods are always destined to become slums.

This is not an intersection worth caring about, and it shows. Pedestrians don't care about it (why there aren't any), the city doesn't care about it (why it gets thermo-plastic paint bricks), and drivers don't care about it (why they travel 75 mph past it).

Everything Down

My Bangladeshi co-worker recently bought a house in Natomas with 20% down. 20% is now the norm, as it was fifteen years ago and in earlier times when we weren't drunk on easy credit.

It's interesting to hear him describe how, in Dhaka, 20% down wouldn't buy you any house, home, condo, townhouse, brownstone, dormitory, studio, shanty, mudhut, or even a brick shithouse...what you need is 100% down. Credit doesn't appreciably exist in Asia.

Suppose credit didn't exist here, or even suppose 50% down was the norm. This nation would fall apart. You mean, I have to save up cash beforehand to buy that Durango? Layaway? What, you think this is 1977? You mean I can't take 10% off my purchases today when I get that new department store credit card?

I deserve to have what I want now, and to defer payments. I should also be allowed to defer payments indefinitely (i.e., bankruptcy). Consumers have rights, you know. What do you think the latest "major overhaul" to the credit card industry is gonna do? Make it easier or harder for Merikans to have access to credit? Credit issuers were screaming when this passed, as they now have to stop the practice of universal default.

Many people today in America find ways to work with everything down, and more of us should be doing it. Interest payments are probably the #2 expense behind taxes. In 2005, $800 billion in home equity was pulled out to refinance existing debt and to keep spending. This year that figure has dropped $36 billion. This is borrowed money, folks, it ain't yours...technically you gotta pay it back.

Business Decisions

I've noticed a massive increase in the number of cars with expired registration.

I've always had an eye for the colored yearly tag on California license plates, and within seconds I can spot an expired car. I've seen a lot more than ever before these days, what with our "tough economic times."

These are your neighbors, perhaps even yourselves, who only pretend to have a registered car. No matter, you'll just fall in with the several hundred thousand other Californians who elect to get away with it because enforcement is minimal. When was the last time a CHP cruiser was right behind you? Seventeen months ago? And even then, don't you think you could have found a way to avoid detection (if you had expired tags?) You would find a way if you did.

I've seen many cars, many, driving with 2007 tags, and a few with 2006. It's almost 2009. No matter; they've been dodging it for so long now that the cost of registration is far in excess of the penalty. It's a business decision.

As there are several hundred thousand vehicles who's owners only pretend to have current registration, there are also over a thousand thousand vehicles who's owners only pretend to have insurance. No matter; they've been dodging it for so long now that the cost of insurance is far in excess of the penalty. It's a business decision.

I gotta think that the DMV is well aware of the falling quantity of registrations, but no matter; they've been understaffed for so long now that the cost of enforcement is far in excess of the potential recovered revenue. It's a business decision.