Suburban Oligarchies

I got home today and learned that my credit card was charged $600 for a hotel in El Salvador last week. Then I found this letter in my mailbox (names and phone numbers have been redacted for confidentiality) :

I went outside to look and my garage was no more dusty than the other ten garages in my cul-de-sac. Yes there was a little dirt caked on the white door I'll admit. But it was nothing over the top, not enough to warrant a citation.

I pay my homeowners' association $129 per month so that they can cut the neighborhood grass and scold me for having a dirty garage door. This is a prime example of how regulation gets out of hand. If they want me to clean my garage door then they can provide me with a 100 foot-long hose. Until then, choke on it suckers.

Comments

[Screwy Hoolie]

You got told.

And, hey, you know, I've been by there too. And the garage door is just the start of our issues with you. You've been seen through your open windows sitting in strange pajamas in front of a glowing box until all hours of the night. This kind of subversive activity will do nothing to help your standing in our community, nor will it improve your place in line at the ice-cream social events.

[Sonoma]

I grew up in Daly City, California, the armpit of the San Francico peninsula (and, incidentally, the epicenter of the 1906 earthquake).

Each tract house had a single, fucked-up small palm tree precisely in the center of its tiny lawn. Thousands upon thousands of them, row after row, block after block. The town also had an "association". Messy garages were ignored, but the palm trees were sacrosanct. The enforcers of the association were worse than insane about them. Mockingbirds were fair game, but it was a sin to kill a palm tree. And nobody dared.

Anyway, the association was empowered to levy monthly (or maybe yearly) dues on every property owner. My father didn't care one way or the other about the trees, but refused to to pay them a red-cent in the 32 years he lived in that house. They initially threatened (perhaps even cajoled) him about that. But, as he was always very cool and polite while telling them to go fly a kite, they soon enough left him alone. But they marked him down in their book.

Three decades later, that book was opened. In order to sell the house, my parents were forced to make good on those years of the unjust taxation. In telling me all this, my father chuckled in resignation, and said something to the effect, "The SOB's finally beat me".

[An Angry Old Broad]

I refuse to live anywhere with a homeowner's association for precisely this kind of ridiculous crap.IMO it's just a nice thing for the anal retentive among us to use as a sad way to be in charge of something.

My parents live in a place where you can't leave your garage door open,have a motorcycle,can't have a basketball net or play in the driveway,have to get permission to plant anything(they actually walk the neighborhood and check not only the front yard,but the back yard too),you can't have a vegetable garden,and any exterior paint color on any part of your house has to be approved(as well as interior rooms that can be seen from the street,I shit you not).Here in GA people have actually lost their homes for not paying their association dues on time.

If I'm paying my mortgage,I'll be damned if any fucktard is going to tell me what to do with my own home.Who thought this shit up?

[karena]

But how could you wipe down your dusty door when you were in a hotel in El Salvador. Sent them a copy of your bill and tell them you were there to save the children.

[Agitprop]

Karena,

"Save the children" reminds me of the following Bill Hicks rant:

“We gotta come to some new ideas about life folks ok? I'm not being blase about abortion, it might be a real issue, it might not, doesn't matter to me. What matters is that if you believe in the sanctity of life then you believe it for life of all ages. That's what I hate about this child-worship syndrome going on. "Save the children! They're killing children! How many children were at Waco? They're killing children!".

“What does that mean? They reach a certain age and they're off your fucking love-list? Fuck your children, if that's the way you think then fuck you too. You either love all people of all ages or you shut the fuck up.”