When driving back from lunch, I had to make a wide right turn across three-lane Stevens Creek Boulevard to get to the left-turn lane. As I crossed traffic, a car charging down the street made one of those prolonged honks at me as if my two-door was creating an impassable barrier on this broad road. I turned and saw the honker was, quite aptly, a mom driving a newly waxed Suburban with a support-our-troops sticker prominently positioned on its rear. I found it fit to flip her off as she passed my car. As if shocked, she stopped in the midde of the lane before reaching the traffic light to look at my face in her side-view mirror. I stared back at her and shook my head. At this time, I was hoping she was so mad she would hop out of her beastly vehicle and road rage me. But, after several seconds of staring me down, she drove off.
Can I just say this subtle gesture represents everything I believe is wrong about Cupertino and the South Bay suburbs? I don't even have to mention the innumerable quantity of pretentious cars (SUVs, gleaming german and british and italian vehicles you must own by default), rude drivers (i've never been cut-off so many times, honked at so much for such non-offenses), and unfriendly demeanors at the grocery store. Arrogance, waste, one-upmanship = the suburbs. Please prove me wrong.
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5 comments:
prove you wrong? a proof is impossible.
.. this is what happens when "hometowns" like mine get .... too big for their britches.
when your town/suburb begins to host huge-name-brand outlets, it begins to settle back into its couch of a valley, and then... it begins to raise families.
i see a different kind of ugliness about my hometown. it's a restrained ugliness. i can't prove you wrong, but i can say that each suburb is restrained by its own history. thank GOD.
Stevens Creek Boulevard. I know what you mean.
in certain stretches of southern californian freeway, this might elicit somebody to PULL OUT A REVOLVER and SHOOT. as a response? as a rebuke? def as road rage.
i have not toooo many road rage stories of my own... but just enough! just one road rage story is unnecessary.
the strange thing about the south bay (one of them, in my mind) is that it elicited an ex to hate the guts out of berkeley. i suppose that he fore-saw a bay area trend...
and bay area trends tend to migrate from north to south..
after it reaches the south, it washes over the entire nation. cities & coastlines first, i suppose.
uglinesses!!!
i'm glad you're ok. i'm not sure what i would have done in your situation.
if the traffic was heavy enough & if automobiles were entirely static, i would have gotten out of the car, and planted my feet in front of that hard-shelled woman.
this kind of shit passes in l.a. all the time. wish i had some pictures of this stuff up here with me.
and thus, this kind of shit makes for high-quality drama-tainment.
p.s. Hollywood!
i don't like it when people think the bay area is comprised of hippies and neo-libertarian computer programmers.
beyond oakland/sf metros, there is sprawl. with it is the self-preservation and money-hunger so characteristic of that mode of living. consider that the san jose metro has the highest median income per household in the US. i see more darwinistic shoving aside here than in my gentrifying san francisco neighborhood.
nothin' aint right in the world these days...
haha! sorry for the depressing entries, guys. as you can guess, i've been kind of grouchy lately. i think it's the january deep-winter blues hittin' me. sigh.
thank god for vacations!
indubitably!
i almost made it "East" (all the way out to sacramento this weekend) this weekend.. with a friend..
but i guess a vacation from SF/Berkeley will have to wait another while..
rest assured; january is nearly over.. blues begone!
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