Who's got a car?

Are their any folks out there who'd be willing to give us freeloaders a ride to Chris's house? Let's organize!

Horror in the Suburbs

This fall a 13 year old girl was raped by a man in his 20s. Apparently he had been hanging around the middle school for about a month. A week before the rape, the girl had stayed after school to watch her friends play basketball, and on her way to the bathroom the man approached her. She kicked him and ran away, but did not report the incident to her parents, friends, or school officials because she didn't want people to worry.
Both of the girl's parents work, so she usually walks home from school and spends the afternoon alone. The afternoon of the rape she did not lock the door behind her because she was in a hurry to go the bathroom, so it was easy for the attacker to follow her inside.
Two other girls knew about this and decided to keep it a secret. When the victim wrote her friend a note about how she was planning to kill herself, the girls told their parents, who then contacted the victim's parents. Over winter break the family moved to another apartment complex and all three girls had to give police reports and visit therapists.


This is so horrifying because people move to the suburbs specifically so that they will be able to protect their families from these kinds of incidents. Yet in order to afford to live in this community, parents must work full time, leaving their children home alone for several hours every afternoon. No one is really safe and even in the nicest communities, there are dangerous people. They can easily follow you home without you knowing it, it is easy to forget to lock the door, and you might assume that schools are a safe place with enough people around to notice something out of the ordinary.
Furthermore, this girl did not report this rape in part because she did not want to cause more problems for her parents. In the past few years they have had financial problems, job changes, and they have moved several times, so she thought that her rape to just add to the list of things they had to worry about. The fact that three 13-year-old girls tried to deal with this without the help of any adults also shows that the suburban attempt to protect innocence failed.

Film idea?

Hey guys! What do you think about this for an idea: I want to analyze the "politics" that exists in the suburbs. For instance, the measures that are taken in order to keep the homes in a uniform fashion, as not to disturb the flow and cause a stir up. Also, the actual politics that exists in the burbs, well at least these in places like the OC, that effects everything from the development of the city to funding of certain programs.

Is the suburb the place we think it is?

I believe that the stereotypical suburbia is represented through the idea of similar homes, families, and relaxation. These descriptions almost imply that suburbia is seen as a place of happiness, where all is equal, families are together and relaxes at all times. However, the reality of suburbia is actually far from these stereotypes. Through living in a suburb for all of my life, I have come to learn that not all is what it seems or is described on wikipedia. I have come to learn that suburbia is realistically described through the following phrases: 'spread-out entertainment', 'lacking nature', and through the idea of business parks. These realistic descriptions seem to pertain more negatively than that of the stereotypical image. The idea that there is spread out entertainment does not make entertainment extremely accessible as that of the relaxation of a stereotypical suburbia seems to exemplify. The idea that the suburbia is lacking of nature is interesting in that this place that is stereotypically seen as a nurturing place for a family. However, it is interesting that these communities are completely man made, and lacks nature. I believe that nature is important for individuals in order for them to appreciate, rather than simply seeing identical houses in rows over and over again. Where there is barely any means of reflection through the sights of the patterns of the suburb, nature provides a means for an individual to come to his/her roots and obtain a unique serenity.

Two ideas, one gossipy, one telling

have two stories, sorry for the lateness.

The first speaks to the interconnectedness of the suburbs in Davis. I guess the moral could be "Everyone knows each other, everyone's sleeping with each other and everyone's in therapy"

My best friend since second grade was having a really hard time in highschool and would later on in college, dealing with various problems that she wouldn't get to the bottom of until later. In highschool though, her mom sent her to a shrink that she would talk to once a week. I ended up learning who this shrink (her name I think was Eileen) was because she was connected to my mom. My mom is in AA, and her AA sponsor knew Eileen, because the sponsor's husband had divorced her to be with Eileen. I found this out because my mom and I were cruising through garage sales and we saw the Ex husband and Eileen running one of their own. We stopped and looked through some stuff, (my mom was maintaining safe, non-ex wife related conversation) and I found a black pea coat and a green scarf. About a year later, I was hanging out with my best friend while she still lived in Santa Barbara and she was boredly looking through my closet. She found the pea coat and asked if she could borrow it.
So for about another year, my best friend was walking around, wearing her own former therapist's pea coat, and the pea coat of the woman who broke up my mother's AA sponsor's marriage, without knowing. I didn't tell her until a few months ago because I didn't want her to know that I knew who her therapist was. Turns out she really didn't care, she thought the whole thing was a riot.
Also, epilogue. My mom's NA sponsor might be this therapist's therapist.

This one is more about the hierarchy of the suburban community.
Our neighbor BK had divorced from her husband and was left to take care of three rowdy boys. The oldest was August, who despite being occasionally rough around the edges, (think a young Eminem), was a good kid who loved the outdoors and skateboarding. This was a little after the Columbine shootings occured and August was in highschool. It was after school and August was stopped by a school officer who saw that he had a knife hanging from his belt. Technically they weren't on school property at the time, but August cooperated with the officer and gave him the knife. It was a fishing knife, and his dad had given it to him. The officer later said that August was cooperative and respectful, but it was at the height of the whole zero tolerance fiasco, where kids who brought GI Joe guns to school were being suspended, so August had a lot coming to him, (even though it wasn't during school hours or on school property). They had a hearing where they called in his mom and reiterated every incident August was involved in, in addition to the current offense. His mom didn't have much money or power in the community. He was expelled from the district and had to go live with his dad out of state so he could go to school.

Then in my senior year of highschool, this kid Adam Liston got busted when authorities found a loaded rifle in the back of his truck while it was parked in the student parking lot, during second period. Unlike August, Adam's mom was the head of the PTA. When the school tried to expel him, she got the whole PTA against them. Adam was good at sports and popular amongst a lot of the football players, so they started their own campaign to keep Adam in school. Some of my friends started a campaign to keep him out and make the rules apply to everyone, but in the end, Adam was let back into school. He went to a good college but I don't remember which. The moral of the story:
If your parents are wealthy/still married/prominent in the community, it's okay to bring a loaded weapon to school. Have a blast!

Sex, Drugs, Rock n Roll: The Underbelly of Suburbia

Although I've moved around a lot, I consider my time in Ohio as most typically suburban. I lived on a cul-de-sac in a community with its own homeowner's association and its own park. I had a "gang" of kids on my street that I played house with, romped in the woods with, and played kickball with in the front yard. In high school in New York there were gangs of a different kind. Equally suburban but influenced more by its proximity to New York City, my Long Island community was less idyllic. We were not allowed to wear bandanas or gang colors to school for fear of fights. That didn't stop the three stabbings to occur, two of which I witnessed first hand. One involved two of my close friends, and the blood is still on the street in front of our neighborhood bookstore. Drugs are another facet of the suburbs that isn't much mentioned. Every boy I dated smoked pot, and many did harder drugs. One of my friends, a drug dealer, was the richest kid in school and clearly didn't need the money. Those cookie cutter houses were filled with just as much sex, drugs, and rock and roll as any urban apartment. You just don't hear about it in the media because suburbia is supposed to be a safe haven from all of these things.

Two Suburbias, One in the Same

I have always lived in suburbs. My family thought that they would be a nice place to raise a family, and they were right. I have fond memories of my childhood: barbecues, Boy Scouts, pool parties, Little League Baseball. Most importantly, my family living in a place where there were other kids my age. Having these immediate comrades enabled the neighborhood to grow up together. Most of the houses were the first to be owned by their inhabitants. Within a few years, a nice little community had been developed. Soccer moms and dads would all pile into their minivans and go to the fields on Saturday mornings and top it all off with an evening of drinking with the neighbors. Things were good...on the surface. After a while the darker side of humanity crept into our sphere of utopia. Divorce, adultery, alcoholism, rage...I knew not of these things until the family across the street began to crumble. Pretty soon, those kids had two families; neither one of them complete. I began to realize that things aren't always nice and clean. I became aware that man is evil and insatiable. The real side of people came out when comfort levels were reached. Lust and envy manifested as a result of the inequality of the separate islands of my little housing tract.

I guess what I kept with me from the suburbs is an appreciation for the finer things and order. I have now developed an awareness of the valuable and retarding effects of living in cookie cutter houses. I didn't find myself in the suburbs but I know that they are a big part of who I am as an individual.