2002-05-16 - 3:21 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Mother", Pink Floyd

Poindexter had been having intense cravings for greasy food, so we tried out a 24-hour diner near our building last night. I'm glad we did. It was good, stick-to-your-ribs diner food. Fish and chips! Burgers! Onion soup! And since it's open 24 hours, when I get hungry at 10pm, now I can go get eggs and pancakes. Hooray! I used to do that a lot in San Jose, when we were two blocks from an IHOP.

Poindexter's been having some heartburn -- a side effect of an antibiotic he's been taking. (Honest, he had it before we went to the diner.) So after lunch yesterday I walked him back to work, and made him stop on the way to get Pepto Bismol caplets (NOT liquid, and NOT chewables; yick). He says they're working, so I'm glad.

Unfortunately, he left them at the office, so we had to stop by there on our way back from the diner. We had to sign a form to go upstairs, with our names and time in/out. There was also a space that said, "Description of items removed."

Poindexter, alas, wasn't about to put "Pepto Bismol caplets" in that space. Too bad. I probably would've. :)

On our way to the pharmacy at lunch, there was a girl sitting on the corner, keeping her head down and not looking at anything. She looked almost as though she were blind, especially since her little cardboard sign was upside down and partly covered.

But the weird thing is, she was young, she was very clean, and she looked normal otherwise. And she had two very clean dogs sitting with her, with little Gladware containers in front of them, presumably for food or water.

It's not just her, either. There was a guy on the other corner, and occasionally I've seen a guy with a dog on the corner in front of my building. They don't actively panhandle, they just sit there. I think at least one of the guys was clean-shaven, too.

I suppose they could be newly homeless, or they might be spending nights at a shelter where they can bathe regularly, but something about them looks odd to me. They look almost like college students pretending to be homeless. As though it's some kind of psych experiment on how people react to the homeless. I don't know. I'll have to watch them more carefully.

Not all homeless folks are hairy, bedraggled drunks/addicts, I know. Some of 'em are.

On my way out to skate the other night, I saw a white guy about my age with the whole wild hair/beard thing going on. Oddly enough, he looked almost cute under the filthiness, kinda like the guys at Woodstock. But he was shuffling along, verrrrry slowly, staring at the ground. He seemed to be either mentally ill or severely burnt on drugs.

Another time, there was some woman asking for, specifically, twenty cents. I thought I had heard her wrong, so I was looking at her perplexedly as I tried to work my way through a crowd at the corner, and she said, irritably, "Do you have twenty cents?!" I was still befuddled by the whole thing, and she saw it in my face, because she rolled her eyes, gave me a brush-off gesture, and turned the other way. Cracked me up.

The other night, a pair of folks asked Poindexter for some money. He said "Sorry" and -- we were past them by this point -- they yelled after him, "Ask your wife!"

I always wonder about those people on the street. I'd like to talk to them -- particularly the boisterous ones, whom Poindexter is always bantering with -- but I can't do that when I'm alone, and usually I can't understand them anyway. I wonder, how many of them are mentally ill? How many are drunks? How many are what we used to just call "bums"? How many are people who honestly just were in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up with noplace to go? Do people who are just a victim of circumstance try to get by through panhandling on the street? If I give somebody some cash, am I helping them in any way, or am I being an enabler?

Poindexter is of the opinion that the ones you see on the street asking for money are actually just bums. He thinks the homeless people who are really trying to get out of their situation are busy utilizing other avenues of support. The ones who don't want to do that are panhandling, which, from what I've heard, is surprisingly profitable. I wonder.

After dinner and after the Pepto Bismol mission, we went out for a drive. I've been hankering to do some zigzagging in the neighborhoods I like.

Well, I'll tell ya, I do feel slightly better now about not being able to live in the city. Gonzolawyer is right when he says there are very few nice neighborhoods in Philadelphia. And the ones that are nice are a stone's throw from utter crap. Mihaly told me awhile back that even the nicest neighborhoods can be mere blocks from slums, and I knew he was right, but I was so hoping maybe something had changed.

My supervisor, Jay, makes fun of me a lot about "the triumph of hope over experience." I'm particularly susceptible to it.

WHY does it have to be like this?! WHY!?!

ARGH.

There has GOT to be SOMEWHERE I can live that meets my criteria and is affordable and NICE!! Goddammit!!

I suppose the problem is that what I find desirable is also highly desirable to other people, and yet, as Tino keeps pointing out, IT IS NOW ILLEGAL TO BUILD THAT WAY. So you've got a scarce commodity with the expected high prices. Why are Princeton, NJ and Old Town Alexandria, VA so freakin' expensive?! Because everybody LIKES it and there are so few towns like that!!

I really need to start focusing on the positive, here. So let me start with a list of my criteria, all of which are attainable outside city limits.

We're just going to ignore the reasons why the city is better than the suburbs. I love high-density, but we'll just ignore that. The next biggest one is ETHNIC RESTAURANTS, but apparently even immigrants are getting the message and moving out to the 'burbs (this is certainly the case in the DC area), so perhaps I just need to wait a few years. Barring that, Poindexter can pick up a lot of takeout on his way home from work, or I could work in a city library once a week. There's a thought.

Anyway. The lists.

MY CRITERIA FOR A HOUSE

Must-haves

- Within a quarter-mile of a decent number of useful shops (corner store, pharmacy, hair salon, video store, restaurants, etc.) Half-mile MAX for a really perfect house/lot.
- Trees
- Cannot be a post-war colonial, split-level, or ranch. Gotta have at least two stories.
- Garage, preferably detached or side-load, or room to build a detached one. I hate garagescapes
- High-density. Small lots. A half-acre is far too much.
- Should not be one of dozens of nearly-identical houses.
- House must be aesthetically pleasing on the outside. No brick boxes. Should be well-proportioned.

Preferable, but I'm willing to compromise:

- Please, no vinyl siding. Please. I suppose I can replace it with something more attractive eventually.
- Stairs in the house should be out of the way on the side or the back, allowing for an open floor plan (we will knock out walls if need be).
- Grid streets. I really, really love grid streets. At a miminum I want connected streets, not a pod with only one entrance.
- Narrow street, so that cars freak out and slow down if they have to pass each other on it.
- A less-expensive non-updated house would be nice, so that we can remodel it exactly as we like. I was spoiled by being able to pick out all the features in our new construction in Virginia.

Happily, there are a lot of homes in the inner suburbs we've looked at that actually meet these criteria. And lots of the ones in the really older neighborhood also meet the public-front-yard private-rear-yard described in the "well-proportioned" link above. Many of them have utterly gorgeous yards, full of mature trees and bushes.

The hardest part, really, is finding such houses on a nice, well-kept street that is a quarter-mile from shops. Usually if a house is that close to shops, the street isn't as nice, even if it's not on the main thoroughfare. Argh.

And, finally, aside from getting more for your money, there is a distinct advantage to living in the suburbs: GREEN. After staring at a brown brick and glass wall all week, when I go to my parents' house on the weekend I am STUNNED at how lush and green everything is. It's really amazing. Sensory overload. My brother, who lives in Manhattan, says it's the same way for him.

My hope is that we'll go look at a few open houses before we go to Lee's birthday party on Sunday, so I'll take a few photos of streets I like and don't like and write up a photo entry.

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