It is certainly true that home entertainment--tivo cable connected plasma system--has meant more reasons to stay in, and negotiating contemporary crowded highways brings connotations of stress rather than fun--why choose to drive on Sunday after weekdays filled with sometimes hourlong freeway fights?
But the decline of pleasure driving must also be placed in historical context.
The automobile's rise to dominance in the U.S. contains a central irony. In the early twentieth century the car was celebrated as bringing health to city dwellers by providing access to the country, but ultimately the auto's popularity destroyed the country through urban sprawl.
People who wish to escape the city for a scenic drive must drive farther and farther before finding scenic landscape for a peaceful roll. From San Clemente to Ventura, Redlands to Santa Clarita extends one large conurbation of strip malls, tract homes and office "parks" linked by very unpeaceful rubber screeching, metal flashing, smog packed asphalt.
The Sunday drive is dead, unless it's a drive to the mall, where, strangely enough, people like to walk--because a walk down Valencia's McBean Parkway or Thousand Oaks' Moorpark Road just lacks the same charm.
Park Oaks Shopping Center on Moorpark Road--Loopnet
1 comment:
Hey Fotsch.
People will get interested in your first book once you've written your fifth. A sad fact, but keep writing.
Maybe toggle back and forth between the academic and the kind of street poetry with pictures you write here.
You'll find your audience if you keep driving. Oh, was the wrong metaphor?
Post a Comment