It doesn't really look like the ugliest street in America, does it? Well, it's not, no more so than dozens of others across the country.
Hooterville is a city that should not exist, at least in its current form. Along with Las Vegas and Phoenix, Hooterville is terribly ill-suited for the desert environment. The great Desert Southwest should be populated by widely-spaced towns and villages, not major metropolises.
The great American love affair with the car is what made Hooterville and Phoenix what they are today. The car and the interstate highway system brought people here and made the towns into sprawling eyesores on the landscape. I think most of our environmental woes can be traced back to the car.
Southern Arizona is a beautiful place, but Hooterville does not add to its beauty.
And speaking of cars, the other night when we went to the movies, there was a commercial for Chevy's latest incarnation of the Camaro. I checked out prices on the web and it looks like Chevy dealers are asking $2000 over MSRP for their new Camaro. Strange behavior for guys begging the government to save them.
Here are some answers to questions you have asked.
The street is called Speedway because it was considered to be a quick way to go all the way from one end of Hooterville to the other, back in the day.
This neighborhood, in all its glory, was here before our house. Our house was built on a vacant lot 14 years ago. We live a block off Speedway, back in a residential area. Speedway is another world to us.
The little dry cleaner doesn't have a drive through. That car was simply parked in the shade of the building.
In our store we have little CIA ear pieces. We can hear on another, but the customers can't hear us.
And Barbara, I don't know how I stand it either.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
Jun 2, 2009
It doesn't really look like the ugliest street in America, does it? Well, it's not, no more so than dozens of others across the country.
Hooterville is a city that should not exist, at least in its current form. Along with Las Vegas and Phoenix, Hooterville is terribly ill-suited for the desert environment. The great Desert Southwest should be populated by widely-spaced towns and villages, not major metropolises.
The great American love affair with the car is what made Hooterville and Phoenix what they are today. The car and the interstate highway system brought people here and made the towns into sprawling eyesores on the landscape. I think most of our environmental woes can be traced back to the car.
Southern Arizona is a beautiful place, but Hooterville does not add to its beauty.
And speaking of cars, the other night when we went to the movies, there was a commercial for Chevy's latest incarnation of the Camaro. I checked out prices on the web and it looks like Chevy dealers are asking $2000 over MSRP for their new Camaro. Strange behavior for guys begging the government to save them.
Here are some answers to questions you have asked.
The street is called Speedway because it was considered to be a quick way to go all the way from one end of Hooterville to the other, back in the day.
This neighborhood, in all its glory, was here before our house. Our house was built on a vacant lot 14 years ago. We live a block off Speedway, back in a residential area. Speedway is another world to us.
The little dry cleaner doesn't have a drive through. That car was simply parked in the shade of the building.
In our store we have little CIA ear pieces. We can hear on another, but the customers can't hear us.
And Barbara, I don't know how I stand it either.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
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9 comments:
it doesn't look all that ugly. or did you not mean that?
ps - "I think most of our environmental woes can be traced back to the car." well said!
I beg to differ, Bitchlet - suburban America is seriously ugly and, in the words of my friend Doug, not very user-friendly.
hey Merle: doing a final flyover some of my favorite blogs before calling closing the curtain on June 2nd over here. Looking at the price of gas in Hooterville, I realize we'd never have travelled as far and wide a few years ago with the Chevy 6-wheeler pulling a 32 ft Jayco - just the thought digs a hole in my imaginary wallet.
I must also differ, Bitchlet - the Speedway strip you see here? You can multiply it by the thousands, all over America. (But then, some folks here in France find that kind of americana thrilling and exotic... eh.)
boy time to close the curtain for sure. Sorry for the misprints, etcs
Thanks for the answers. Sometimes you make me think I should get a rather mindless part-time job to add zest (and a little $$) to my life, but then I read about the nutcases you have to deal with and I reconsider.
I've got to take some pictures of my little corner of Venice Blvd. Speedway is positively idyllic in comparision.
Ugly is not the word I would use. I don't see big piles of rotting trash or junkies staggering around asking for spare change. There are no menacing aspects. It feels relentlessly sunny and empty and it has a strange bland style, but not ugliness. It reminds me of the movie "Ghost World"
Not everyone likes Palm trees, but I find them quite beautiful and like them very much.
I've seen a lot of streets uglier than that one. Hmmm...
Many environmental woes do trace their way back to cars. Also turning farming into an industry, using industrial fertilizers - that was a Very Bad Idea. Factories that produce all the ugly junk we don't need, and runoff from industrial farming, have poisoned our ground water.
xxoo and love to you, dear Merle.
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