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Mar. 16th, 2013 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breezeshadow"She hoped they called it heaven as a cruel joke."
Need to think on this prompt a little more to figure out who is speaking, and where, and why -- but I had to get that sentence down before it vanished.
Also, I find it amazing how living in one area your whole life can change your perception so much. In Connecticut the farmer's markets were quite small, and lasted only a short while, mainly because New England's growing season is approximately like, two weeks long. Here in California? I just bought strawberries for $4, fresh from the farm, in the middle ofd March. This has me THROWN. Like, I am in awe. And they are already only $3 in Target.
And it confuses me when people talk about "working class" places or not wanting to live in such a place. I've lived in a working class area my entire life, though of strikingly different income levels. My mother would often talk about how our area of town growing up was for factory workers, and not as RICH as the rest. She seems obsessed with status and money, in a way I can't relate to at all.
My current city gets a bad rep for reasons I have yet to figure out. There's great food places, there's the farmer's market, there's the cafe I go to to write, there are parks within driving distance... But I think, because it is working class and ethnically diverse, that people automatically label it as sketchy. Someone called the walk to the chocolate factory sketchy. It's in a small residential block with cookie cutter houses. How is that sketchy? At all?
When I go to Target I usually hear at least three different languages being spoken. I heard someone say "Donde es?" and didn't realize until I was mostly away from them that my brain had automatically translated the comment. When I hear a language I don't know, I listen mainly out of curiosity, wondering what it is.
I really feel like people call this area sketchy because it's not an upper-class, all-English, all-white neighborhood. And that bothers me. Because there's delicious Salvadorian food and a small doughnut shop and the farmer's market and the cute hippie cafe and ALL THESE THINGS that people won't try to experience because heaven forbid, it's not their America.
But it's my America. And I will miss it when I move closer to work.
Need to think on this prompt a little more to figure out who is speaking, and where, and why -- but I had to get that sentence down before it vanished.
Also, I find it amazing how living in one area your whole life can change your perception so much. In Connecticut the farmer's markets were quite small, and lasted only a short while, mainly because New England's growing season is approximately like, two weeks long. Here in California? I just bought strawberries for $4, fresh from the farm, in the middle ofd March. This has me THROWN. Like, I am in awe. And they are already only $3 in Target.
And it confuses me when people talk about "working class" places or not wanting to live in such a place. I've lived in a working class area my entire life, though of strikingly different income levels. My mother would often talk about how our area of town growing up was for factory workers, and not as RICH as the rest. She seems obsessed with status and money, in a way I can't relate to at all.
My current city gets a bad rep for reasons I have yet to figure out. There's great food places, there's the farmer's market, there's the cafe I go to to write, there are parks within driving distance... But I think, because it is working class and ethnically diverse, that people automatically label it as sketchy. Someone called the walk to the chocolate factory sketchy. It's in a small residential block with cookie cutter houses. How is that sketchy? At all?
When I go to Target I usually hear at least three different languages being spoken. I heard someone say "Donde es?" and didn't realize until I was mostly away from them that my brain had automatically translated the comment. When I hear a language I don't know, I listen mainly out of curiosity, wondering what it is.
I really feel like people call this area sketchy because it's not an upper-class, all-English, all-white neighborhood. And that bothers me. Because there's delicious Salvadorian food and a small doughnut shop and the farmer's market and the cute hippie cafe and ALL THESE THINGS that people won't try to experience because heaven forbid, it's not their America.
But it's my America. And I will miss it when I move closer to work.
