Same As It Ever Was
Mar. 2nd, 2005 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akirluSan Jose. It's at least ten times bigger than when I was growing up. This afternoon I went out joyriding in Mom's Mercedes. Mom's '80s vintage, diesel Mercedes station wagon, thank you very much.
A lot of the old neighborhoods seem much the same. Trackless wastes of suburbia, slightly more varied in color and shape than contemporary ones, but dominated by samey '50s ramblers and sere, shadeless single-storey strip malls with large, weird, ugly-looking rocks glued to the front sides, and weird, truncated awnings in lieu of rooflines. Sometimes the ugly-looking rocks have been painted over, white or beige. Up along Hillsdale, beyond Almaden Expressway, is now a ginormous auto mall that I don't remember being there. On the green hills behind, a necrotic growth of condominiums that I know was not there before. On Hamilton, I passed eBay Park. Okay, that wasn't there before, either. And I don't remember downtown Campbell being all yuppiefied and one-way-only. But the Tower Records where I bought my Vangelis and Split Enz albums is still there, as is the Jack-in-the-Box where I committed unspeakable acts in the back of a Mustang, once. The Shakey's where we used to go to play Asteroids is still serving pizzas. And the 7-11 where we used to go for Slurpees, just around the corner from Hacienda effing Gardens plaza. All the same as it ever was. Other than the fact that now the unprepossessing bungalows with their painted-over concrete lions guarding the end of their brief driveways sell for three quarters of a million dollars.
I can find in me no hint of longing to move back here.
A lot of the old neighborhoods seem much the same. Trackless wastes of suburbia, slightly more varied in color and shape than contemporary ones, but dominated by samey '50s ramblers and sere, shadeless single-storey strip malls with large, weird, ugly-looking rocks glued to the front sides, and weird, truncated awnings in lieu of rooflines. Sometimes the ugly-looking rocks have been painted over, white or beige. Up along Hillsdale, beyond Almaden Expressway, is now a ginormous auto mall that I don't remember being there. On the green hills behind, a necrotic growth of condominiums that I know was not there before. On Hamilton, I passed eBay Park. Okay, that wasn't there before, either. And I don't remember downtown Campbell being all yuppiefied and one-way-only. But the Tower Records where I bought my Vangelis and Split Enz albums is still there, as is the Jack-in-the-Box where I committed unspeakable acts in the back of a Mustang, once. The Shakey's where we used to go to play Asteroids is still serving pizzas. And the 7-11 where we used to go for Slurpees, just around the corner from Hacienda effing Gardens plaza. All the same as it ever was. Other than the fact that now the unprepossessing bungalows with their painted-over concrete lions guarding the end of their brief driveways sell for three quarters of a million dollars.
I can find in me no hint of longing to move back here.
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