Coffee heat rising

Real estate

Reel Estate….To Move or not to Move

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Sittin’ around enjoying the effects of covid — which, BTW, are milder than expected just now — and ogling real estate ads.

As I mentioned yesterday, I stumbled upon a real estate ad for my parents’ home out in Sun City. Nicely updated. Very pleasant. Cheap, too: real estate out there is hugely undervalued, when compared with other middle-class tracts in Phoenix. It last sold for $255,000, about a hundred grand less than I could get for the Funny Farm.

Would I want to live there?

Not in THAT house: too much old baggage. But in fact, Sun City has quite a few pleasant, highly livable houses that are perfect for a single person or an aging couple.

So this morning I found myself reconsidering. Maybe I wouldn’t mind living in a ghetto for old folks, not so very much. The houses are designed for couples or singles. When updated, they have everything you’d want and then some. As the West Side has expanded out in that direction, there’s no lack of amenities: Costco stores, grocery shopping, a huge old-fashioned shopping mall full of retail stores, a big hospital, doctors, whatnot upon whatnot.

If I stay put:

a) Here I have to put up with Tony’s depredations, now inflicted by his home for juvenile delinquents across the street.

But…do I care? Truly, why SHOULD I give a damn? The brats are quiet most of the time. Does that institution depress property values? Probably: but again: why do I care unless I’m hot to sell the house and move?

b) The crime flowing along Conduit of Blight Blvd is a problem.

And there’s no answer to that. As we saw just yesterday, the cops-and-robbers highjinks can be quite a problem. It’s an issue that’s certainly not going to go away…and that very likely will get worse.

c) This house is fairly close to my son. He can get here easily and I can get to his place easily. More to the point, we can go out to eat (whenever the plague ends) at the drop of a hat, and many appealing eateries are all around us.

d) This house is sorta kinda within driving distance of the Mayo, the best medical facility in the Valley. If I lived in Sun City, I’d have to charter a helicopter to get out there! And given the experience we had with my mother’s hideous final illness, well…I am NOT impressed with the medical folks in Sun City.

If I move out there:

a) It’s a pretty safe area to live. Crime rates are very low.

Again, though: do I care? Am I not armed to the teeth? Do I not have a dog that goes batsh!t anytime someone comes around?

b) The houses are designed for the convenience and comfort of singletons and couples.

A-n-n-d…why, again, do I care? My present house was built by the same developer who built those tracts, and the layout is very similar to the places out there.

c) Given the endlessly time-consuming and crazy-making drive between North Central Phoenix and Sun City, I’d never see my son. Neither one of us would welcome that traipse.

d) My parents’ experience with the medical offerings out there was beyond horrific. Incompetent, uncaring doctors; fuckup after fuckup; neglect…did I mention “uncaring”?

e) Getting to the Mayo would be impractical. It’s a bitch to drive out there now, and Sun City is twice as far from the Mayo as I am here.  Dealing with doctors is always difficult — more so when you’re elderly and the sight of your gray hair and your wrinkles elicits all sorts of presumptions and prejudices. But at least the Mayo’s doctors are by and large competent….quite the opposite of our experience during my mother’s final illness.

No. I’m pretty sure I don’t wanna live out in Sun City. Mighty sure, come to think of it…

Too bad. It does have some advantages, not least of which are the economically designed house plans. Yet my house works just fine for me — one bedroom too many, it’s true, but BFD. And I do like having a swimming pool. And not having to worry too much about coyotes coming after my pint-sized pup. And having a Sprouts AND an AJ’s AND a Walmart AND a Costco AND three large supermarkets within a couple minutes’ driving distance. And having young couples and their cute li’l kids as neighbors.

Hmmm… Speaking of the sociological conditions…. Yeah!

Here’s a cop helicopter circling right over the street just north of me. And circling. And circling. And circling. And cir….on and on. Now he’s right over the house…

DAYUM! I was just about to go out and fire up the barbecue, thereon to heat up one of the gorgeous lamb shanks I picked up yesterday. And to toss on some frozen taters.

Hmmm… Not about to strap a pistol to my waist. So…wot to do?

We could microwave the dinner.

Ugh. Great way to ruin a beautiful piece of expensive meat. Nor do I care for soggy microwaved potatoes.

Heat them in pans on the stove?

Right. That’ll make a fine mess to clean up.

Pour another glass of wine and watch what happens next?

Hmmmmm…. Okay. Time to decide:

  • Drink myself into a stupor waiting for the cops and the perps to go away?
  • Fire up the grill and risk my life, for the sake of a lamb shank and a fistful of fries?
  • Continue surfing the Web?
  • Toss the dog in the car and drive down to Encanto Park, there to kill an hour or so?
  • Toss the dog in the car and drive over to Petco, there to see if I can score a dog harness proclaiming that Ruby  is a “service dog,” which would let me take her into AJ’s with me?

No kidding. Some guy who’s a regular there has got a dwarf dog no bigger than Ruby, gussied up in a harness proclaiming that it’s a service dog. Nobody does a THING to stop him from taking his dog into the grocery store.

Hmmmm…More from the young folks on the neighborhood Facebook page:

Cheryl:

Citizens App says Circle K was robbed

Bobby:

(Inserts image from cell phone)

Lorraine:

Thanks, Bobby. I didn’t see anything on AZfamily or ABC15. Anyone know?

Liz, Top contributor:

At least 20 police cars at 19th Ave and Florence

***

Welp…either the cops caught him or the perp escaped. Helicopter just flew off into the wild blue yonder.
Makes Sun City look better and better!

Covid-Smacked and Delinquent-Zapped

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Wow! This covid bug is SOME germ!

Supposedly the version I’ve got is not very severe. But I’ll tellya…it’s got me knocked into the middle of next week!  Uhm…I think… It’s hard to tell what week we’re in.

It zaps your memory. Especially short-term memory. I can. not. remember. things that I did just a few hours ago, or things that I’m supposed to do now and in the near term.

Case in point: the pool motor busted. (Wouldncha know, eh?) So now I’ve gotta get some guy out to work on that.

Pool Dude gave me a guy’s name. I know I called the guy…but…

I can…not…remember…what…we…said!

Is he going to come by? If so, when? What day? What time?

Seriously: the conversation we had is a blank. A total blank: I cannot remember one thing we said.

So now I’ve got to call that guy up and fess up to that little lapse…what an embarrassment!!!

****

Yes. Yes I did talk to him. He said he would come by whenever he can — has a pretty full plate, apparently.

Weird!!

Also weird is the apparent variability of this virus’s effects. Some people, as we’re widely told, are brought to Death’s door.

I, on the other hand, have a cough. That’s it. Well, that and so-called “brain fog.”

  • No fever — to the contrary: my temp is in the negative numbers.
  • No headache.
  • No sore throat.
  • No stuffy nose.
  • No compulsive pounding on Death’s Door.

I suspect the “brain fog” is a real thing. Even though I’m getting damn senile, I’m not THAT senile! Normally I can remember who I talked with this morning and what we said.

So I’m left worrying whether it’s safe for me to drive the car…even though I feel fine, if some marbles are missing, am I a menace to navigation?

***

The day stumbles on. Now we learn I must not have been THAT sick last night. Because….quite a commotion took place a half-block from the Funny Farm, and I slept right through it.

NEIGHBORHOOD FACEBOOK PAGE, 12:38 A.M.

Neighbor 1:
What is happening on Butler right now? Cops and helicopters everywhere

Neighbor 2
Suspicious person hiding near a car on NNth Ave & Funny Farm Road

Neighbor 3
Author
Pass-Through Street is completely blocked with first responders

Neighbor 4
The Hood…never boring

Neighbor 3
unfortunately not these days

Neighbor 5
https://www.abc15.com/…/two-teens-injured-after-stolen…
Found this article!

ABC15.COM
Two teens injured after stolen vehicle crashes into wall, fencing

Neighbor 4
3 teenagers stole a car, there was a police chase , they lost control on PassThrough and FunnyFarm Ave, one was ejected, the other they caught in my neighbors yard then the other one apparently was a few blocks north

Neighbor 6
How did you figure this out? They took out my fence and damaged property.

Neighbor 4
oh my goodness ! I’m 2 or 3 houses down i believe, the neighbor across the street spoke with the police last night and he told my husband .

Neighbor 7
If anyone has video- please let us know asap! From what I understand he took off his jacket and had a white shirt on. It was between 12-1am Saturday night. Detectives are knocking on doors looking for video. https://ring.com/share/14201c5b-5acf-434e-846d-4cebeda5a21a

RING.COM
Ring #AlwaysHome

Neighbor 7
They were hiding under our neighbors car but got away before the cops arrived on foot… :/
UGH

****

So it goes: Life in the Big City. I personally am getting bloody tired of it, and if my son weren’t dead-set against my moving, I would be soooo gone by now.

SDXB moved to Sun City because of exactly this kind of sh!t. I’ve lived in Sun City and don’t want to do that again. But there are plenty of other venues that are significantly less active than ours.

Fountain Hills is one. It’s halfway to Payson…but on the other hand, it’s close to the Mayo Clinic’s doctors’ offices, which could be convenient on occasion. On the other side of town, there’s Cave Creek and it’s affluent sister suburb, Carefree. Very pretty area, though expensive. The Arcadia district, over on the easterly side of town, has houses very similar to the ones in the ‘Hood but is a significantly better area.

Most of the neighborhoods in town, though, have this kinda sh!t going on all the time, unless they’re gated communities like the Country Club district. The nearest comparable area is probably Moon Valley, but because it’s solidly middle-class and has no adjacent slums, the cost of real estate there is way outside my budget. By and large comparable houses there cost almost twice what I could get for the Funny Farm. Most have no gas service, so you’re stuck with an electric hot plate instead of a real stove. And — not so obvious in the real estate photos — the houses are VERY cheaply built. Many or most of them have essentially zero insulation in their exterior walls. Many have flat roofs, so you can’t insulate the attic (such as it is) either. So they’re hot all summer despite astronomical power bills.

It’s Life in the Big City…i guess…

***
**** AND no, I do NOT know why WordPress refuses to double-space between paragraphs here! Yes, I HAVE tried to fix it, every which way from Sunday. No, NOTHING that I do makes it work. And so…screw it. Imagine paragraph breaks where ye please.
****

No Escape from the Mayhem…

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This just in on the local news wires: a woman hiking in the desert around the residential tract near the Mayo Clinic was attacked and murdered.

Jayzus!

Every time I think about how much I love my house but hate the marginal area where I live…how much I dislike Tony’s Home for Delinquent Boys and Girls across the street…how much I hate the constant cop flyovers, the noise from Conduit of Blight Blvd and Gangbanger’s Way, the transient bums, the need to keep every door and window locked…I daydream about moving to Fountain Hills.

The Mayo, replete with the best medical doctors in the county, is located right at Fountain Hills, a suburb of (un)lovely Phoenix. The houses are blandly handsome enough in appearance but cheaply built and elbow-to-elbow — don’t even ask how much it costs to air-condition one of those fine cardboard huts. There is a shopping center out there, but it’s pretty basic: you’d have to drive a ways to go to a first-rate supermarket or Costco or a specialty store of any kind. When my car got a flat while I was at the Mayo, I couldn’t find a gas station with a repair shop out there, not for love nor money.

The truth of the matter, I’m afraid, is what my friends say it is: you can’t get away from the mayhem that characterizes this part of America. Or maybe characterizes all of America. You’ll put yourself at considerable expense to try to escape. But you ain’t a-gunna escape.

And the prices in my favored part of town — a district called North Central — are just crazy! Even given that I could no doubt get a crazy price for my house, moving would cost enough to send me to the poorhouse.

Lookit this thing! That’s not a house: it’s a patio home. It’s smaller than my house. It’s a block from Seventh Street: noise, noise, and incredibly more noise, especially during rush hours. It has no yard. It has no pool. It’s not as nice as my house. It doesn’t have a real stove: just one of those glass-top hot plates.

Very nice, I’d say…if you don’t mind being smushed on top of the neighbors. Anything in the North Central area that’s truly in the same ball park as my house, in terms of size and quality, is waaayyyyy beyond my price range.

The houses in my present tract are cheaper because we’re bordered on the north by Gangbanger’s Way (the southern edge of Sunnyslope, a dangerous slum) and on the west by Conduit of Blight Blvd, also known as the Bum’s Highway. The homes and the neighborhood are quite desirable…but the areas around it ain’t!

SDXB moved to Sun City. He’s happy there. I’ve lived out there and don’t wanna do that again. It’s as far away from the central city (and my son) as Fountain Hills. Where Fountain Hills gets noise from jet passenger planes roaring in to Sky Harbor Airport, Sun City is blasted by racket from fighter jets flying out of Luke Air Force Base. And both venues are too, too far away from where my son lives.

And my son is very strongly opposed to my moving beyond shooting distance from his place.

For that matter, so am I. Of course I like living near where lives. And I like living in the North Central area.

But most of the centrally located neighborhoods are absurdly expensive. My area is within reason only because of the proximity to Conduit of
Blight Blvd (and now that damned train running up and down it!), to blight-ridden Sunnyslope, and to rackety Gangbanger’s Way. Despite those (considerable!) disadvantages, the houses are significantly newer than other structures in North Central (older houses are difficult and expensive to air condition, have weary wiring and leaky plumbing, and hordes of termites hiding inside the walls).

It’s crossed my mind to suggest that he and I trade houses. Then HE could deal with the Romanian Landlord and his disruptive delinquents. But he’d also have to deal with the pool (not bad if you hire a guy to ride herd on it, but my son is not the hired-help type) and the aging air conditioner and the aging landscaping… On the other hand, we could easily borrow enough against this house to pay off his mortgage (though it might be better to have me paying “rent” on his house, thereby making maintenance and repairs on that place at least somewhat tax-deductible….).

Heh! Here’s a thought: I rent his place from him, and he rents my place from me. This makes a WHOLE lot of costs tax-deductible for each of us! And I could still swim in the pool. Hmmmmm…..

The Birds Are Gone

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On a beautiful morning like this — cool and clear, the kids across the street playing, the dog roaming about, the coffee cooled down to drinkable temp — the side yard would normally be alive with doves, sparrows, and wrens. Not so today.

This is the first morning all winter that I’ve decamped to the westside deck to swill the remainder of a the breakfast pot of coffee. And y’know…there’s not a single bird out here. This, presumably because I haven’t hung a feeder full of seed out here in months — not since we were enjoined to quit feeding birds, because of a bird plague that was holding forth. Apparently, though, I was about the only one who knocked off feeding them. We can hear mad chirping and frolicking coming from somewhere across the road…no doubt someone else is luring them that way.

In fact…let us get up, stumble out front and see if we can spot where they’re congregating…

**

Nope. Wherever the attraction is, it isn’t visible from the front yard.

What is visible? The aging paloverde tree in front, the one I had planted when I installed all the desert landscaping. It’s sagging to the east, and come the next stiff windstorm, very probably will fall over, pulling up a fair amount of gravel and fake “hills” with it. And likely knocking down the tree next to it.

Hm. I could have it taken out. Or just wait until it falls over and see if the homeowner’s insurance will pay to clean up the disaster area.

Meanwhile, in the Department of Home Improvements, the new refrigerator has about stopped making its obnoxious, loud noise.

Check out the saga, if you haven’t been following along:

Chapter 1: Kickoff
Chapter 2: Run-Run-Run-Run-Runaround Run-Run-Run-Run
Chapter 3: Fiasco Central
Chapter 4: Fridge Fantasia
Chapter 5: American Products in the Can

The criminal refrigerator is now working reasonably well, if you can imagine. At least, it works for the time being. Its motor still makes more noise than I would like, but it’s not intolerable. The problem, evidently, is that the vendor sold me a damaged item, but forcing them to take it back appears be outside the realm of possibility.

BECAUSE I had, at the behest of an older and wiser neighbor, charged the damn thing on my American Express card (rather than paying for it out of pocket, as I’d planned to do), AMEX went in for the kill when I called and reported the antics described in these parts. They not only refunded my money, but they seem to have so intimidated the vendor that the crooks have never come and retrieved their clunk of a refrigerator.

In the meantime, I called a repairman who, with what we might call minimal effort (all that was needed was one, count it: 1 screwdriver!) managed to get rid of the contraption’s most annoying noises. Upshot: even though I surely would prefer a better unit, what I have now does work and does not require me to close the bedroom door to sleep at night.

Hence there’s no hurry to run out and buy another refrigerator. Eventually, I will. But…not now.

The message being, I reckon: ALWAYS charge major purchases on a major credit card! No matter whether you pay for the purchase on time, or in one fell swoop.

***

Hmmmmm…. Lookee here: I need to put up new Cat Barriers.

Tony the Romanian Landlord’s “Other Daughter” (as opposed to the one he calls his “Pretty Daughter”), who lives two houses to the west of the Funny Farm, is a cat lady. She collects the damn things — it seems to be one of her psychoses. When I had a vegetable garden, the beasts hopped over the fence and converted it to their personal outdoor sandbox…rendering all the veggies I was growing inedible. Tried putting mouse traps along the top of the wall, but the cats had no problem negotiating their way past those things. So now I strap strips of carpet tacks to the decorative row of block that tops the wall. This DOES work effectively to keep the little darlin’s out.

Looks weird. Annoys the Hell out of me. But annoys me one helluva lot less than cat shit in the veggies.

Surprisingly, they’ve lasted quite a long time — several years. But after all this time, the weather has pretty well done them in. So…before it gets hot outside, I’d better take them down and replace them with fresh strips.

Another little household task I could bestir myself to take on — before it gets hot! — is fertilizing the roses, which haven’t been fed in several seasons.

***

Aaaaahhh shee-ut! Cop Copter just barged over, flyin’ low.

He seems to have moved right on, though: probably headed to the scene of a crime in some other precinct.

I am soooooooo tired of the endless round after round after round of Events here! If I could move away, I would be outta here so fast it would make your proverbial head spin.

Where would I go?

Ideally…Oro Valley, a suburb of Tucson nestled against the foothills of the Santa Rita mountains. Less than ideally but probably OK: Prescott, once the state capital but now your basic tourist trap. Both venues are very pretty…relatively low in crime…large enough to possess most of the amenities one would like in an urban environment (adequate medical care, decent shopping, reliable utilities that don’t require you to truck in propane, something resembling a cultural life, proximity to airports, pleasant enough housing). They offer many qualities that this place doesn’t have and don’t harass you with many of the negative things that you have to put up with here. Like crime, crime, and more crime…

HowEVER… My son is dead set against my moving away from here. I believe he may want this house, which is several decades newer than his place, or that he wants me and his dad to stay within easy driving distance as we stumble deeper into senescence. Neither of us is more than about 10 minutes from his place, and our location puts each of us within easy shooting distance of not one but two major hospitals.

Oro Valley and Prescott; either one is a good two- to three-hour drive from here. Even Fountain Hills, which is conveniently close to the Mayo and many a mile from the local blight, is about 45 minutes away. One-way. I expect he realizes that if I were to move, it would be to someplace a good long way from these precincts.

Ohhh well. Speaking of moving on: up, up, and awayyyy!

Time to Move Along?

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Mogollon Rim from near Payson

HOLY mackerel! This place gets more and more crime-ridden and more and more violent with every day that passes!

Y’know…I can handle the mailbox thefts. And the burglars. And the cop helicopter flyovers every damn night. The abductions (for the purpose of rape) from the bus & train stops at Conduit of Blight and Feeder Street E.W. can be dealt with simply by never riding a bus or a lightrail train. The transient drug addicts: locks on the doors and windows, plus a large, loud dog. The panhandler harassment at the corner shopping centers: drive to some other district for grocery shopping and drugstore visits. The car break-ins and thefts: close the damn garage door…oh, but first, do park your car on the inside of said garage. The mail thefts: for a mere 400 bucks, install a Fort Knox of a mailbox. The burglars: keep a fine, fully loaded .45 on hand.

But I sweartogawd, every which way you turn, here’s more gratuitous, demented, and criminal violence. And it is too…damn…close to home.

I go by this corner every time I visit the Costco north of the university.

Ruby and I could walk to this dump, if it were safe to do so. As it is, I drive by there several times a week on the way to the freeway or to points west. That’s rather closer than I’d like to get.

This fancy charter school is in the Arcadia district, not far from where my late step-sister lived.

This episode took place in an informal B&B (why are those legal???) that popped up, also in the Arcadia district — an area where the ritzy and the titzy congregate to live in what they imagine will be peace.

A moment of nuttiness took place at a park just south of the university’s west campus…another garden spot that I pass in my car with some frequency.

Central High School is the best public high school in the city (which may be telling you something). My son went to a Jesuit high school directly next door to it — they occupy, in effect, practically the same campus. Sunnyslope belies this figure, though; it also has a reputation as one of the best-performing high schools in the country.

Yet… the violence and the vagrancy and the craziness go on and on and on and on, every damn day! And it seems to get more frantic as the weeks pass.

And y’know what?

I’m tired of living in the middle of a war zone. Once again I’m brought back to the feeling that as much as I love my home and my neighbors and my neighborhood, as much as I like being 8 minutes from the church and 10 minutes from my son’s house (he also lives in a war zone…), it’s past time to move along.

The violence, the crime, and the Loony Toons spread pretty homogeneously across the Valley. Of course, there’s more low-end craziness in garden spots like the apartments that flank the ‘Hood on the west side of Conduit of Blight Blvd and the dank slum directly to the north. But as that cop said after the Adventure of the Home Invasion: “It’s everywhere.”

[Yeah? Well…whaddaya bet some parts of Everywhere have less of it than our part does?]

So…if one were gonna move, where would one go?

Well, if I stayed in the Valley, the two choices would be Fountain Hills or the Cave Creek/Carefree area. I don’t consider the Sun Cities a choice: just not innarested in living in a ghetto for old tolks.

Both these venues are expensive. Fountain Hills has the added attribute of late-model cheesy construction: structures that were built to fall apart. The Funny Farm is probably in the last generation of solidly built affordable residential structures, and even it has a failing in the insulation department. Those houses out east are simply junk: Southern California-style built-to-fall-apart junk. Expensive junk.

Anything that is newer construction shares that fine attribute, and most of the stuff in Cave Creek and Carefree falls under the rubric of “newer.” Ticky-tacky is the name of the Development Game here in Arizona, price range notwithstanding.

That leaves as options some of the outlying towns, or Tucson.

  • Tucson, also plagued by gimme-a-buck developments, has two big draws: the best hospital/medical center in the state (something that looks Bigger the Older you get), and the vibrant cultural center that is the University of Arizona. A lot is going on in Tucson, the weather is far more pleasant than Phoenix’s, and with a fine mountain range behind the city, just about anyplace you can live is fairly scenic.
  • Prescott, a large small town/small city up the I-17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff, is a pleasant little burg. HOWEVER…it’s been discovered. From what I’m told, mobs of Baby Boomers and younger people are moving up there, turning it into yet another Southern California East. The weather’s a little cooler (though what you save in air-conditioning you’ll probably spend on heating); it has a supposedly excellent medical center (people who work there beg to differ, interestingly enough); and it’s a straight shot down the freeway to the urban marvels of Phoenix. I’m not at all sure it has enough more to offer, when compared to Fountain Hills, to make it worth a major move and a long drive into town.
  • Payson: Mr. and Mrs. Fireman moved up there, on the edge of the Mogollon Rim. They bought an extremely cool house in the forest, and, given Mr. Fireman’s outstanding handyman skills, have turned it into a to-die-for little palace. Problem with Payson? Rudimentary services and facilities. They had to drive their dog into Phoenix to be tended to by a veterinarian after the poor pooch was attacked by a neighbor’s dog. No Costco: only one Safeway, a store that I would call…well, pretty blah. No first-rate doctors or dentists — they drive into town for those services, too. Doctors? Doctors? We don’t need no steeeenking doctors!
  • Uh huh. Well…if you have to schlep all the way down the mountain — about a two-hour drive — for basic shopping and services, you’d be far better off to live in Fountain Hills.  Not only do they have a couple of supermarkets within the development, there’s a Costco down the road and all the upscale shopping of lovely Scottsdale just a few miles to the west. Plus you could walk to the Mayo Clinic from Fountain Hills!
  • Chandler: Nope. Ticky-tacky suburb Hell.
  • Florence: Nope. No better than Payson, but not as pretty.
  • Ahwatukee: Blech. If I’m gonna live in ticky-tacky mass construction, I’ll take Fountain Hills any day.
  • Tempe: Gawd help us!
  • Sun City/Youngtown: Horrible ghettos for old folks, garnished by cheaply built ticky-tacky.

Really, in a lot of ways, the ‘Hood IS the best of all possible worlds, at least for someone who’s not swimming in money. It’s an established neighborhood. Because the upscale section has irrigation, we have mature and very beautiful green landscaping. Even over here in the po’ folks quarters, the trees and shrubbery are mature, shady, and lovely. It’s close-in — shopping, schools, entertainment, doctors & hospitals, all right around the corner. We have a park in the middle of the neighborhood. We’re served by a decent public grade school and one of the nation’s top public high schools, plus an array of private and religious K-12 schools. Young upwardly mobile types have discovered it and are madly gentrifying, so there’s nowhere for property values to go but up. Plus: what could be better than young families with young kids playing around the neighborhood?

So…i dunno. It’s a toss-up. So it seems to me…

California Dreamin’…or is that a nightmare?

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Amazed to learn from my son that, like me, he also is bothered by driving over the increasingly Southern California-esque roads here in lovely L.A. East. He is a confident, assertive driver who isn’t bothered by lunatics, morons, flashing red lights, gunshots, and assorted other features of driving on the homicidal streets of Phoenix. Nor is he inclined to fly into fits of high rage, as his muther is…

Wouldn’t it be grand if I could leverage that to persuade him to move SOMEPLACE less massively tacky?

To my mind, the Valley of the We-Do-Mean Sun gets more and more like the crowded, smoggy, grody L.A. Basin with every day that passes. I detested living in Long Beach, with its air that would make me sick and its blandly ticky-tacky aging suburban style and the streets mobbed all the time and the grodily casual style of its fine inhabitants. And the longer I live here, the more I think I’d like to be living somewhere else.

I don’t think he’ll choose to make an escape, because his dad is firmly stapled to the Valley floor. Current Wife has a daughter who works as a librarian here, and so she’s unlikely to agree to move to Prescott or some such. As long as DXH stays put, my son will stay put.

Hm. Wonder if I could talk him into investing in a second home, off in some remote locale. Then I could stay there most of the time. He could come up and hang out when he wants some peace and quiet. But he’d still have a foothold down here, from which he could keep an eye on his Dad and New Wife.

Wonder if he could be talked into moving to Fountain Hills? That at least is pretty far from Crime Central. But truth to tell, it’s a long way from his Dad’s place, too. If either of those two old folks has a stroke or a heart attack, it would take him 40 or 50 minutes (at best) to get to the hospital. Here, all three major metropolitan hospitals are within five or ten minutes of his house.

DXH, who was happy to escape life in small-town Western Colorado (actually, it was the largest burg on the Western Slope…but still: a backwater), absolutely positively will NOT be persuaded to move out of central Phoenix.

Hm. Maybe. Unless..he thought that Fountain Hills, being adjunct to Scottsdale, would put him closer to the Cultural Venues he favors. But…no: the Chamber Music Society is performing at Central Methodist — they used to haunt the Scottsdale Center for Performing Arts. AZ Theater Co performs downtown, too…so that scheme wouldn’t work.

BUT….really, the kid and I are both very spoiled to a) living in central locations and b) construction that is not ticky-tacky. Most of Fountain Hills IS ticky-tacky. All very nice and new(ish), but strictly from stick-and-Styrofoam. In Wickenburg–formerly a railroad town on the way to Las Vegas and southern California, now effectively a suburb of Phoenix–you can find some very pretty properties, but the same issue holds: newer structures are certifiable junk. I happen to favor houses with WALLS. Remember those?

The more I look at the real estate listing in those suburbs today, the better I like my house. And neighborhood.

Construction is better. Houses here are not QUITE right on top of each other. The place is centrally located. No jet aircraft graze the top of your chimney. A-a-a-a-n-d…as gas skyrockets up, the fact that we’re right on the lightrail line starts to look better and better. Conduit of Blight and Gangbanger’s way, along which the lightrail is slated to run, begin to look like assets.

Contemporary house construction is cheapied down to the point that if they built the places any flimsier, people would be living in tents.

Interior walls hardly exist anymore. Those that do often don’t go up to the ceiling — they’re more like room dividers. Most late-model houses have no gas service, and builders proudly present you with a glass-top hotplate instead of a real stove. For most people, that’s prob’ly OK, given that Americans don’t cook anymore. But…I still want an actual stove!.

Even expensive tracts are now fields of houses built eave-to-eave — in one Wickenburg development, even with the tricky marketing photography you can see that the neighbors behind you can gaze right straight in your back windows. So ALL of your drapes and blinds would have to be closed ALL of the time! Why have windows at all?

Meanwhile, in quieter venues like Wickenburg and Fountain Hills, those nice desert-y backyards are gonna be full of coyotes and rattlesnakes. Dandy! You wouldn’t dare let your dog out to snuffle around in peace. And in fact, you probably ought not to let a small child play in those yards unsupervised. Every…minute…the…kid…is…outside, Mom or Dad or Babysitter will have to be peering over her shoulder.

Here in the ‘Hood, our houses are made of block. Interior walls are insulated. Gas service allows you to have a real stove in the kitchen. And you don’t have to take out a bank loan to drive to the grocery store, what with gasoline now almost $5 a gallon.

It does make our centrally located districts look highly desirable — notwithstanding Biker Central and the constant cop copter fly-overs and the late-night drag-races and the nuisancey lightrail and the panhandlers in every parking lot.

Ugh. I guess next week…or maybe this afternoon, depending on mood…I’m going to have to think through a set of Instacart lists. With the price of gasoline now, unless Instacart has jacked up its rates accordingly, it will cost no more (maybe less) to order up delivery of grocery and Costco items than to traipse around the city after them. This would relieve me of two hassles in one trip: Californicated roads and astronomical gas prices.

Wow! Life in These New-nited States!