The suburbs aren’t so bad after all
The suburbs have been muchmaligned as people move towards inner city living, but Stephen Lacey reckons there’s plenty to celebrate.
It’s been almost seven years since I moved from the suburbs to the inner city. And initially I couldn’t wait to escape suburbia’s insular claws. I swore blue murder I would never return, and in all honesty, I probably won’t. As a freelance writer who relies on contacts and networking, the city is the right place for me. But that’s no excuse for the way I dismissed suburbia and all who lived there.
Week after week, I’d sit there in one of my smug, inner-city cafes, drinking cold-pressed coffee and bagging out the place where I spent the majority of my life.
The suburbs were some limbo-land between country and city, without the charm of either. The inhabitants wallowed in mediocrity, named their children Breeyana and Aydyn, and celebrated the V8 Supercars, jet skis, mainstream FM radio, and concrete stencilled driveways.
Yeah, I know, what a shallow, elitist, dickhead. But I’m not the only one. The suburbs have been much maligned in popular culture for years. That’s why we have Kath & Kim and Dame Edna Everage.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the suburbs weren’t such a bad place to live after all. Maybe that’s why I’m getting the seven-year itch and starting to have dreams about cul-de-sacs and council verges of bottle-brush trees.
Here’s the seven things I miss about the suburbs:
Wheelie bin cricket
There’s nothing like using your own street as a cricket pitch, with a wheelie bin as the wicket. Hit the tennis ball into the rear of the neighbour’s Holden ute on the full, and it’s six and out. There’s nothing like using your own street as a cricket pitch.
Washing my own car
In the city, due to lack of room and apartment living, you tend to use a car wash and pay upwards of $40 to get your ride sparkling. In the burbs, everyone washes their own car, in the driveway, with a bucket and a hose. It’s quite a Zen thing to do, especially if the Test cricket is playing on the car radio while you work. And an old bloke will always wander past and say: ‘‘You can wash mine when you’re finished.’’ And you always politely laugh as though it’s the first time you’ve ever heard it.
Affordable hamburgers
Living in the city for seven years, I came to believe that it’s normal for a hamburger to cost $19 and be served on a slab of iron bark with chat potatoes and aioli on the side. It’s only when you get back to the burbs that you realise that a burger should cost around $6 and always have tinned beetroot on it. If you must order sides, they should be a can of Coke, and hot chips with gravy.
Doing stuff yourself
In the inner-city, you tend to outsource your
life. You pay people to drive you places, walk your dog, deliver your meals, put together your flat-packed furniture.
But everyone in the suburbs is adept at doing their own plumbing, gyprocking and electrical work. That’s why there are old XD Falcons up on bricks in front yards; because women called Brenda are handy with a shifting spanner.
Backyard chooks
Some inner-city folks make a futile attempt at animal husbandry. It never ends well. The last thing you need is for the body corporate to complain about the goat on the balcony. Generally, the day-to-day care, selective breeding, and raising of livestock is best left to the suburbs. Same goes for productive gardens.
Serenity
The biggest change I’ve had to get used to after moving to the inner city is aircraft noise. Planes fly so low over my house that I can wave to the passengers and have them wave back.
In the suburb where I lived there were no aircraft (there were no buses either, but that’s beside the point).
Fact is, the suburbs are pretty damn quiet, making it possible to actually ponder the meaning of life without the answer being a 747.
The only exceptions to suburban solitude are the sounds of Saturday morning lawnmowers, whipper snippers, leaf blowers, and Khe Sanh playing at every 50th birthday party.
Real dogs
The inner-city is a giant kennel of designer dogs. My own family bought something called a pugalier, a stupid concoction that manages to combine the worst attributes of a pug and a cavalier. Everyone else owns a French bulldog or a cavoodle, just to be different.
In the suburbs, dogs are dogs; brown mongrels of things that bark at you furiously from behind the fence.