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When DW and I left Bolton Hill, and moved to Canton I was upset. BH had been very intellectual, progressive, "organized" and mayberryish. I wanted to stay there or maybe go to Mt Washington (uptown/street car suburb but within the city limits) and she wanted the waterfront - "shallow yuppies, we won't get to know anyone" I complained) well it turned out that while there WERE people who fit the stereotype, we ended up making a bunch of friends there, whom we really missed when we moved.
No AC, lots of retirees and SAHMs so whenever the weather was halfway decent, there were people sitting on lawn chairs on the sidewalk in front of our building, shmoozing. And watching who went in and out, and when. On the one hand I could play out there without my parents having to supervise from an early age. OTOH once when my mom stayed home from work and one of the watchers asked her later what was up, she felt VERY, er, lacking in privacy.
I never cared for A/C, it seems responsible for keeping people inside in the time of year most conducive to being outside.
This post made me think of the Beatles song "Penny Lane". The singer reminisces about living in his friendly city neighborhood while underneath the blue suburban skies. Here's Penny Lane:
People seem to have taken the Mayberry idea and run with it, although my neighborhood is kind of weird by Mayberry standards. So while there are kindly old ladies at the neighborhood potluck, a lot of the couples bringing casseroles are same-sex couples. While there are the standard grocery, hardware and office-supply stores, the neighborhood tattoo studio and gay/lesbian bookstore might not fit as well into Mayberry, nor would the homeless guys I say "hi" to at the pizza-by-the-slice place where they hang out, right next to the friendly neighborhood methadone clinic. Or my inevitable run-ins with neighborhood characters like a chalk artist/death-metal singer/standup comedian with Tourette's syndrome, or the street guy who makes extra money on weekends doing his impromptu James Brown impersonations on streetcorners.
^^Well, big whoop! So we have some same sex couples come to our neighborhood parties too! We have a couple of marijuana dispensaries in town. This isn't the suburban "Mayberry RFD" that you seem to think it is. You don't think there are people with Tourette's here, too?
Nothin' says Mayberry like a potluck of casseroles.
You know, when I started reading your post, I thought you were going to say "like a marijuana dispensary", LOL! But yeah, casseroles are "Mayberryish", no doubt.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Caladium
Mayberry of the new millenium has a different cast of characters, but the neighborliness remains the same.
Some of the homeless/ street people (especially the street musicians) get quite a bit of friendly attention from the locals. A few seem to know each other well from familiarity. I always give people asking for a money a polite "no", feeling it's better to acknowledge a person. I had a friend from New York (well originally from a small town in Pennsylvania but lived in NYC for the last 2 years) come up to visit and was surprised I responded to panhandlers. In his experience if you tried that in NYC, particularly in bad neighborhoods, once you talked to a pandhandler you would get harassed, thinking you were more likely to give them money.
Once thing I didn't get about the western US was the pizza places. Why aren't all pizza places by the slice? I mean, who wants a whole pizza pie cooked for them for lunch?
Some of the homeless/ street people (especially the street musicians) get quite a bit of friendly attention from the locals. A few seem to know each other well from familiarity. I always give people asking for a money a polite "no", feeling it's better to acknowledge a person. I had a friend from New York (well originally from a small town in Pennsylvania but lived in NYC for the last 2 years) come up to visit and was surprised I responded to panhandlers. In his experience if you tried that in NYC, particularly in bad neighborhoods, once you talked to a pandhandler you would get harassed, thinking you were more likely to give them money.
Once thing I didn't get about the western US was the pizza places. Why aren't all pizza places by the slice? I mean, who wants a whole pizza pie cooked for them for lunch?
I never thought about it. On workdays, I eat lunch in the hosptial cafeteria where they do serve pizza by the slice. Some restaurants do offer "personal pizzas".
My experience is kind of a special case--I did social work for a long time, so I'm on a first name basis with a lot of street people because I knew them from work (and, happily, more than a few folks no longer on the street.) I try not to turn my back on people I know, so I end up just saying "sorry, no" to street folks when I get spanged. Maybe it's just the culture where I live, but people seem okay with it, and street folks, like most folks, appreciate being recognized as a fellow human being.
I think the West Coast pizza thing is because pizza is considered more of a dinner item or a communal meal than a one-off lunch item, although most places sell a "personal size" pizza as a lunch item too. There are a lot of pizza by the slice places, or places with an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet, but you tend to find them in business districts with a heavy lunch crowd or tourist areas.
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I didn't think they had made it to the UK.
