Trapped!

When you're dependent on walking and public transportation like I am, the excitment of an invitation to a party can deflate pretty quickly when you find out that the location is a place that was built by people who assume that everyone has a car and that's how everyone gets around. In other words, it's in the suburbs.

It's not that I totally hate the suburbs. A thought that's been floating around my head lately is that in all the press and talk about the upswing in crime or rowdy city nightlifers, no one seems to make the connection that that's why people wanted to live in the suburbs in the first place. They're safer, they're quieter, they're (kind of) cheaper, and you get more breathing room and personal freedom. Suburbs are not the random imaginings of a corporate mind; they're a logical creation by people who longed to leave the city and were finally able to do so when they got cars.

But I prefer city living and my years of apartment living and carlessness have created an itchy discomfort when I'm back in the suburbs and the parking lot space outnumbers buildings and people about 20-1. Add to that discomfort that it's hard to socially motivate when you're looking at a complex strategy of transportation, and it took a good bit of convincing to go to this party. But the people going were fun folks, and I had some companions in my trek out to Rockville so I went.

Getting out there wasn't too much trouble. Some walking, a long Metro ride, a long cab ride. But when we tried to leave at around midnight, I started to feel that any city snobbery I have is totally justified. It's not that we were expecting to walk to the massive strip mall across the street from the apartment park we were in and hail a cab, but we couldn't even get a cab company to send a car. It was "try back in 30 minutes" this and "won't have a car for at least an hour" that. As though we needed to underscore the car's dominance in this neighborhood, my friend Nina tried to find some good in the situation and at least get a Krispy Kreme while we were standing right next to the store, only to find that just the drive-through was open, but they wouldn't serve her because she didn't have a car. And then a double-underscore when we finally had to go back to the party to ask the hostess to drive us to the Metro station.

I know that it's boring for someone who lives in the center of the city to whine about the absence of soul in the suburbs, but I was really overwhelmed at the single dimension of the neighborhood. It's not that it was boring and I wanted to get back to my liberal-elite city life and look down on those different than me...it was that it felt so inefficient. We could walk to that one shopping center from that one apartment complex, but we couldn't do anything else without a car, and even in that one shopping center, we couldn't go to the one place that was still open because we didn't have a car.

It really hit me just how much we've painted ourselves into a corner with the automobile. In a lot of ways, cars are really efficient and fun and convenient. But we've come to rely so much on them that huge parts of this country are set up for cars and cars only. If there is any sort of absolute gas crisis, any sudden change that makes it impossible for people to have cars, a huge portion of this country is completely and totally screwed. And will have a harder time getting Krispy Kremes.