Suburbia, USA

Cities are built differently in every country.


Sometimes public transportation has to pass through the wealthy neighborhoods to allow for the "help" to come in in the morning. In some cases, public transportation is kept away from the rich neighborhoods lest it be too easy for the mob to invade the small castles built on their foundation.


People can't wait to live in the city and experience all the excitement. Up to a point. Then you get a house out in the country and mock the hicks mercilessly as you realize you also enjoy Friday nights filled with PBR and dip.


In Some Cases WE FAIL to understand WHY it iS thaT we crave living in a shoebox.


Or read in mild shock about Hoovervilles - the cardboard cities that are all pervasive in the third world. I know my government hides them by planting tall and meager trees to prevent drivers from appreciating the magical delight they represent. Engineers and architects could attempt to build such tittering structures safely and they wouldn't be able to match the ingenuity and creativity of master builders.


It's cardboard and mortar and tin and sheets of plastic. It's city planning where city is a substitute for destitute and planning is in place of living. 


The streets are dirt - packed hard by hundred of feet and pickup trucks (the kind that carry 20 people in the back for 5 pesos a head). The government has spewed patches of pavement here and there.


Those are my suburbs.


Suburbia existed inside the city and behind high, electrified fences. They'd have security guards and outposts so as to better simulate the sense that we lived in a safe first world country - if only for an isle.


Except here instead of a melodrama based around murder and desperate moms we have the very real force of green. And no. We don't recycle.


Swat style and armed to the teeth with 20 year old Kalishnikovs that jam in the middle of the night the army rushes into one of the house on any given day with the hopes of arresting the ultimate businessman. 9 out of 10 they won't get the right guy or the right house will be empty having been alerted.


The largest industry in Mexico has powerful businessmen with families and vested interest in protecting their little slices of heaven.


Now that we have LV and Cartier in Mexico - they don't even need the visa.