At this time it would be convenient time to discuss basic home building. Up until this era, all homes had a dominating front to the street, with a front porch as the primary portal into the home (See Figure 1). They also had nice front lawns with actually used lawn furniture and always with a Norman Rockwell shady tree. The front porch was a focal point of social interaction that can still be seen on stoop fronts of Brooklyn. This is why many homeowners, and not just those in Brooklyn, still, to this day look for companies that are able to install Custom Decks that add to the design of the exterior, and keep to the idea a focused social area to a home.
Now when the suburbs started to spread across the land like some kind of biblical plague, they did something very interesting to the house. This also coincided with mass personal auto use. Instead of a brilliantly planned set of plans to build an automated train-based transport system, we decided to ride around alone with only the radio to talk to. And the houses needed a place for the autos, so the front porch was scrapped in favor a garage, but when the people complained about the lack of porches, they gave them a back patio. They couldn’t afford to not have a driveway either, homes without drives were often not worth as much, no matter how pretty the porch was. Any property valuation report cost evaluator could tell you that.
This was also an interesting time for mass communications. Without a front porch to act as the center of family activity, the epicenter was then placed on the television. Isolated in their backyards, the basic social fabric began to fray, and two major fabrics were broken and went under media control. No longer were their local farm teams, and neighborhood pick games went the way of watching the local big city team on television. Since women were no longer on the porch passing tales, the local grapevine was supplanted by Soap Operas. If you look at the rise in popularity of network daytime dramas and the rise of major sports franchises in correlation to the removal of front porches one can see a direct relation.
Once you take these to vital strings out of the blanket of a town, it is only obvious that America would evolve into the detached isolated world it has become. Once media took these two over and TV had become must see, other aspects of our culture feel like dominos. Forget love thy neighbor; we don’t even know thy neighbor any more. But wait, there’s more!
Recently, Phase 2 has started to follow in the prototype’s footsteps. Now the structure is complete. Due to land value and space maxination, the houses have been elongated from the garage to form a basic railroad style, with no porch at all (See Figure 3). In the last fifty years we have managed to rotate the basic American home 90 degrees, and destroy our culture in the process.
That would only level the dreaded Phase 3. Instead of simple fences, 20-foot security walls block the view of all your neighbors and a 30 foot electrified fence obscures the front to the street (See Figure 4). You are finally secured. TV has evolved into a virtual reality SIMS type environment where the only social reaction occurs on Internet 2. Since you telecommute and food is delivered by Wal-Mart online, there is no reason to ever leave. Your whole life is now bought out of a virtual catalog. So ends the land of the brave, or does it?
So check this out, and remember how simple we all are. I was searching online about solar planes for a home power source, and found a freaking kids toy to where you can build such a thing. It even has an add-on for an electric car? Are you trying to tell me kids can do it, but adults can’t? A child can build a self-efficient home, while we still pay the electric company to do it for us. Gotta hand it to media control and home rotation.
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My Top Five Favorite Things
1) A Case Study in Group Think
http://www.dailykos….
2) World’s Most Unique Sculptures
http://www.oddee.com…
3) Armageddon Flowchart
http://www.listaholi…
4) Sci-fi novelist William Gibson reveals his latest predictions
http://www.belfastte…
5) Pink Dolphin
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…who for many years managed Harrison Ford’s “LA Place”. First time I went up there (during my years in San Diego) was also the first time I went mountain biking. I took to it instantly, telling myself all through that first hellbent run down the Santa Monica Mountains, “May the force be with you”…
Anyhow, on one run, we went over to the next ridge and come down the goat trail. (Very technical descent.) But from the top you could look over at Merv Griffin’s place, and beyond over the Pacific as the sun got low over the water. The security lights flipped on, and you could see the big razor-wire topped perimeter fence. Looked a lot like a prison.
Though I assume the food’s better (amongst other things.) Not to mention the view – though the view from Alcatraz ain’t half bad.
At least in the part of the upper Midwest that I grew up in, the garage started out in the back of the house off the alleyway. It was detached from house.
But then the alleyways started to disappear and the garage migrated to the side of the house, still detached. (Maybe the alleys disappeared because the garage moved to the side of the house?) Anyway, driveways began to eat half of the front lawn. This didn’t seem to matter where you were in the Midwest, it could be in the city or in the suburbs – alleys disappeared and driveways appeared.
Back when there was actually cold, snowy winters, a detached garage was a real pain… especially when you had to lug groceries into the house. So gradually the detached garage became the attached garage.
Then the one-car garage, became the two-car garage in the early 1970s with two income families. Two incomes meant two cars. Sometime in the 1980s, two things began to happen. First, the garage started moving in front of the house because land was getting more expensive and people wanted bigger houses and smaller yards. Second, the three-car garage monstrosity start becoming commonplace. Nothing says I love fossil fuel to your neighbors than a big, three-car garage.
Now, new houses have just a front door, a driveway, and a 2- or 3-car garage in front. There isn’t much of a backyard either. There are decks where you can look out over the spite fence at your neighbor in his underwear kicking back, watching the game, and drinking a Bud. He probably still has a W sticker on his three SUVs too.
Welcome to American Dream in the 21st Century.
“fallwell and chick accuse four horsemen of homosexuality”……”four horsemen hold press conference to deny allegations”…too, too funny.
i love my porch AND my local sports teams. and my neighbor is a *gasp* buffalo bills/sabres fan. i’d totally punk his yard and his team flags, but he’s a cop, his wife a probation officer (she doesnt like the sabres). and they’d know it was me.
the original film (1978), by George Romero? This is exactly what he’s trying to get across.
On one end, the film is set in a mall (a place that “was important to them”), where the zombies congregate without knowing exactly why.
On the other end, the heroes’ method of not going after survivors, but of sitting in their well-furnished bunker waiting for news on the radio or television is probably the most insightful, most painful, and most disturbing critique of suburban isolation ever put on film. Instead of engaging the world around them, they’re so afraid that they never leave their bunker. Their only contact with the world outside, where people are dying and in need of help, is through media.
I had flashbacks to the film while reading your diary. These people put not only moved their porches to the back, they blocked them in with walls of concrete and defended them with submachine guns. Talk about a dire prediction, coming from 1978!
Innovative, good stuff.
Pattern Recognition is one of my favorite books.
I got a fire escape. That’s about it.