August 13, 2017

"Surban is the new suburban."

The National Association of Realtors would like to teach you a new word.
You'll sound like you've been spending a lot of time in pubs and microbreweries if — instead of "suburban" — you say "surban."

26 comments:

Michael K said...

The hip and upcoming generation fleeing Chicago.

The criminal element is also fleeing Chicago and finding good prospects in those communities.

The suburbs of Detroit and Baltimore are similar for similar reasons.

Mountain Maven said...

Trying to herd us into crowded cities

Jael (Gone Windwalking) said...

“ ... pubs, microbreweries, shushi restaurants, and Trader Joe's ... Celebrity chefs open restaurants there ...”

My children ...

... do not have money enough to escape microbreweries and Trader Joe neighborhoods for entry into high end gated communities, but they are not docile enough in identity deficit disorder to accept the idea of celebrity chefs moving into surbania just to cater to the sales jobs of old men and old women of the National Realtors, wanting to be their future gentrification planners.

Hearing, as my children heard, Ed Harris say, “cue the sun!” at midnight, and just in time for Truman to escape.

My kids and their parents argue still over the Truman Show.

They think it’s a great story of escape from controlling parents and from the controlled, master planned communities that their parents mindlessly inhabited (ouch!, okay, they win round one) ...

I think that escape from a television and media reality is both worthless and unnecessary, because it's a world not worth settling into - not in the first place – and even if one only passes through that media-world, then there’s always the question of what new show Truman goes into, next, as the newer, better flash, but then, alas,

There’s always a chance, as their mother warns them, of escaping the fanaticism of the master designed community of Egypt, only to die in the banality of evil by wandering for 40 years in a wilderness (now feebly named surban), calling the wandering by the name ‘community.’

LYNNDH said...

Traders Joe's? Way overpriced, like Whole Foods. If that is all the food shopping there is, then it is for the rich and ridiculous set.

Joe said...

It worked for them by changing "con men" to "realtor"

Wince said...

It seems the National Association of Realtors is forever telling us how to pronounce things.

That collection of parasites inundated us with those ads that emphasize the "OR" in REALTOR®.

As if people were pronouncing it Realter or Realeter and the NAR set about correcting that.

Wince said...

" I just don't see how having somebody piss on my face is going to help me sell Lou Ferrigno's house."

Wince said...

"Yea, you do. You pissed on my face friend."

tcrosse said...

According to Urbandictionary.com definition of 'Urban':

"The term is exploited by corporations such as MTV to refer to black music/culture, without mentioning race."

Wince said...

"Dude, why is Ferrigno eating with that urinal-cake-faced fuckhead?"

mesquito said...

Any place where you don't know everyone you see is urban. The census defines it, I believe, as a town with more than 2500 residents.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

A recent Reddit asked what was the most middle class thing you can do?

One of the top rated comments...

"Spending an entire day from your weekend cleaning your own house and doing your own yard work and going to Costco."

My sister has the Costco part down.

gadfly said...

Sun-Times Media Wire
Updated 2 hrs 55 mins ago
CHICAGO -- Two people were killed and at least 20 others have been wounded in separate shootings across Chicago since Friday night.

ALP said...

I could swear that surban used to be called urban villages. Maybe the 'village' term doesn't sit well with the younger demographic.

Mr Wibble said...

The funniest thing I ever saw was a young couple at Costco. He had gauged ears and was wearing a wife beater and black cargo pants with boots. She was wearing a sun-dress that looked like she'd bought it at a thrift store, and she'd added patches and other creative touches. They were pushing a baby stroller and she was giving him directions and he looked bored.

My guess is that a year before they would have sneered at the folks shopping at Costco. Now... well, nappies are expensive and they can pick up paper towels in bulk and a cheap roast for dinner on Saturday.

Michael K said...

Chicago is circling the drain and it is time to get out. My sister and niece still live there and I would like to get them out but family connections are strong.

The neighborhood where I grew up in Chicago was an idyllic place for kids then. It is now the murder capital of the city and almost the country.

What changed ? Guess.

David said...

I split my time between two towns, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin and Beaufort, South Carolina, population 9800 and 12,000 respectively. They are wonderful places to live but there is not a "high end" restaurant in either one that I will go to. Nor is there a Trader Joe's or a Whole Foods anywhere near either one of them. Not likely to be anytime soon either. They are not hot real estate markets either.

Because demographics. Neither one is a highly affluent community. The higher end commercial real estate types have wealth profiles of everywhere. If you are not in the proper profile you do not get their store.

That's ok with me but it pisses off a minority who would live to be surban.

Spell check rejects "surban."

Fernandinande said...

Speaking of new words, "robot" is the new MSM word for "doll".

A HYPER-realistic sex robot is now on sale for the first time in a UK shop, Daily Star Online can exclusively reveal.
"With eight different modes and 11 sensors – she is the first sex doll [doll? Oops!] to respond to touch with artificial intelligence."

The video demonstrates how the doll hyper-realistically sits in an awkward position without moving or reacting.

David said...

Michael K, that's a very nice brick four square that your family had. It could have been lifted from my home town Pittsburgh, where homes like that are (were) everywhere. The population of City of Pittsburgh is now less than half it was when I was growing up there, and many such houses are derelict or gone. There is a genuine recovery underway, mostly kindled by medical services and tech.

The black community in Pittsburgh suffered as well. The Hill District, though poor and ramshackle, nevertheless was a vital place. It attracted the top black musicians, athletes, politicians and writers from all over the country. Pittsburgh had two top level negro league baseball teams, the leading black newspaper in the county and a threadbare but thriving commercial district in the Hill. I went up to the Hill a few years ago when I was back. It's destroyed, many lots vacant, all the old pillars gone. There is a wonderful record which was made by a black photographer named Teenie Harris, who was principal photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier for decades. He took the trouble to preserve it, and now the Carnegie Museum has a great internet archive of his work.

Perhaps this all had to happen. Certainly once "urban redevelopment" took over it was inevitable. But it was a sad time.

n.n said...

The progressive urbanization of the clean, green suburbs. Everyone will be treated as sardines in a can or crabs in a bucket.

CWJ said...

Geneva!!!

LOL. In the course of my lifetime, the city of my birth has gone from exurban, to suburban, to surban? Even though I'm fifth generation Genevan, I couldn't afford to live there anymore. Who are these millenial's being steered there, and, and how do they square a small midwestern county seat downtown 40 miles west of the loop with "urban feel."

madAsHell said...

I have lived in same Seattle neighborhood for most my life. My 91 year old mother lives a few blocks away.

When I was a kid, there were still some open lots for houses. Today, there are no more open lots, and folks are tearing down the post-WWII housing, and re-building with some fairly grandiose homes.

Years ago, there were very few apartments in the neighborhood. Today, there are many apartment buildings, and condos. The most obvious effect is increased automobile traffic, and parking.

The Naval Air Station on Lake Washington closed in the 70's, and moved up to Whidbey Island. At the time, I failed to understand that the Navy was no longer comfortable flying fully weaponized aircraft over the increasingly populated area.

So, my understanding of suburb has changed, but I find it entirely too cute to invent a new word with a broken etymology.

Michael K said...

Perhaps this all had to happen. Certainly once "urban redevelopment" took over it was inevitable. But it was a sad time.

Blacks are now leaving Chicago in large numbers to move south. The Tribune had a story about it a few months ago and the violent south side was featured.

The poor guy who now owns the house I grew up in wanted me to send him photos when we lived there. I feel so sorry for him as he would like to live the life we lived but the times have taken that option away.

There was a lot of condemnation of "White Flight" back the 60s but my family was harassed and vandalism was done to drive us out.


Churchy LaFemme: said...

According to Urbandictionary.com definition of 'Urban':

"The term is exploited by corporations such as MTV to refer to black music/culture, without mentioning race."


Except in Urban Fantasy where it means fantasy creatures in a modern setting. Most usually this involves a sexy girl with some sort of magical power involved in a love triangle with two powerful paranormal males, but it doesn't *have* to: For instance Jim Butcher's "Harry Dresden" series is (possibly the best) Urban Fantasy.

What makes it really weird is that Urban Fantasy & Urban Fiction are *completely* different.

ALP said...

From reading social media related to Seattle, I get the feeling that for young people to buy property in these hip areas, it requires a lifestyle of frugality that negates being able to spend much time in the trendy business that they were so desperate to live near. Whatever flavor of *urban lifestyle is being promoted, it always seems to revolve around spending money on recreational pursuits.

Bad Lieutenant said...

You can't get everything at Trader Joe's and you can't get everything at Trader Joe's cheap, but they do have a number of Bargains and they have a lot of good stuff, much of it things that you can't really find elsewhere. I regard Whole Foods and Trader Joe's as two entirely separate propositions. Trader Joe's is the bearded Spock version of Aldi's, a German discount grocery chain which is also in the US. Whole Foods is an Austin-based, charge-what-the-market-will-bear grocery chain.