Friends and neighbors: Why must they overlap?
My friend Brian Micklethwait is on classic form, from Pimlico (London):
In failing neighbourhoods, nobody does anything about electronic noises except regret them, on their blogs if they have blogs, otherwise silently. In “successful” neighbourhoods, the damn neighbours are all over you at the slightest excuse, borrowing sugar, wanting you to have their keys when they are away on holiday and feed their pets, telling you what their names are and what they do.
Interesting! I want to agree with Brian, but recent experience does not allow me to do so.
I now live in what I refer to (approvingly) as a Stepford neighborhood in Silicon Valley. Every lawn is perfectly manicured, with gorgeous flowers and neatly trimmed bushes. There is never any noise, except for the weekend soundtrack of grass mowing and the sound of children splashing around in the Olympic-sized pool we all share. And yet I have only met one of my neighbors, when I checked out his garage sale and bought a brand new Skype headset (with $10 Skype credit) for a fiver. No one has ever come round to borrow a cup of sugar (or the more culturally relevant equivalent in this neighborhood: agave). I have never felt as safe anywhere as I do in my street and the ones that surround it.
In short, it’s the perfect neighborhood: safe, beautiful, and with minimal social interaction between those who dwell there. I know the last point outrages a certain kind of self-styled “progressive,” but they are more than welcome to have all the hootenannies they want with their neighbors. I am, as someone who works in marketing, slightly suspicious of those who wish to “befriend” everyone they encounter. As some annoying reality TV player might say, I’m not in my neighborhood to make friends.
As Brian says:
There are places and occasions for getting to know people, and whenever I feel the lack of people in my life, I go to such places and such occasions, just like anyone else. I’ve helped to organise such things myself in my time, and I have many friends as a result.
Filed under: Life, Politics, Technology
I have not found that American upper-middle class suburbs (”successful” ones) have much if any interaction, if only because most of the adult residents work and therefore are gone during the day. And there is no longer a societal expectation to borrow a cup of sugar - as someone who loves privacy and time alone, I think that is great. PLEASE do not knock on my door and expect me to be happy that you have dropped in. I will not be. My sister in law in sales and marketing, an extrovert who wants to know everyone and always have 15 best friends, thinks this is the Great American Tragedy. Well, we never agreed on anything before, why start here.
This pattern seems to be broken by the stay at home moms and retirees, who meet each other because they are home during the day, but of course that category includes neither of us (or Brian, on gender and age grounds at least).
I am more than fine with this - when I was growing up in a new ‘burb where the residents, each the first homeowner in a new house, spent more time socializing, they quickly began to spend more time in each other’s business. Hearing 15 years of parental griping about the busybody next door offering her political views and staking out her plot to make sure that no shrub or driveway impinged on “her” property was enough for me - I chat with the elderly lady next door a few times a year (the only times we are out in our yards together). It is what it is.
I’ll add that when house hunting years ago, I was very turned off by a bad (to me) lovely “Stepford” sub - our car was greeted by a pack of residents, all the same 30-ish age, all with multiple small children, and most of the women highly groomed and wearing pastel sweatsuit things, welcoming us and demanding to know how many kids we had (0) and when we’d start having them so they could play in the pack (uh, how is that their business?). Could not get out fast enough…….
Jackie
I live in London too in a neighbourhood where I have the neighbours’ keys and we borrow lemons (me), onions and eggs (mostly she, in the midst of cooking a soup or a pie). Just as often as their children bang on the door to show me their latest fancy-dress, she stops them knocking on the door knowing I am working or on a deadline (I work from home; she is a full-time mother).
I read Brian’s entire argument. Alas, I think somewhere he is using ‘city’ tautologically with ‘neighbourhood’ which is not quite accurate.
When I go to meet clients in the snooty end of town, I do not expect baristas to be polite. But when I go to have lunch in my village, I expect the staff in the handful of restaurants to be polite, recognise me and know my ‘usual’ while giving me a chance to order something else. We expect anonymity in the city, not in the neighbourhood.
Something however does tell me he has written this as a satire rather than a serious piece… :-)
Shefaly, if you knew Brian, you’d know this is nothing approaching satire! I don’t see why you think it is, either…It’s an almost sound argument. (Sorry, Brian.) It is pretty dead-on if applied to London, I think.
MJ: I think I’ve only ever SEEN five of my neighbors - there is no pack of wolves that comes out to vet new residents (thankfully). And I agree with you about drop-ins. I simply do not answer the door for unannounced visitors, and stopped doing so years ago (unless I was in the mood to receive unannounced visitors - very rarely). Those who are actual friends know well enough never to drop in on me, and respect that. (Feel free to call me and say you’re in the neighborhood or are thinking of swinging by in 10 minutes - I can always say no if I am truly not up for it or available - but to knock with no warning is very intrusive.)
The service in my neighborhood is pretty good.
I can see Jackie answering the door,
“I didn’t move here to impress none of you motherf@#%ers!”
LOL
My middling neighbourhood in Austin is extremely polite. Even the children are all apparently taught to say hello and wave. But that doesn’t mean anyone is obliged to be chummy, which we’re not, and I would hate.
Good manners without forced friendliness- seems like the best of all worlds to me.
(Apologies for banging on about Texas yet again. It’s not superior in all ways, just one or two that happen to rate highly on my personal list.)