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June 30, 2005
Time to play "Remedy of the Month"!
(And it pays not to be an "eyesore" loser....) Here's a picture of Susette Kelo's house: That's the same house that five Supreme Court justices recently ruled can be condemned, taken from Ms. Kelo, and handed over to private parties, so that local property tax revenues in New London, Connecticut can be enhanced. It looks like a fairly simple house to me, and I'm inclined to feel sorry for it, and for Ms. Kelo. But right now I'm wondering what the house snobs like James Howard Kunstler would think of it. Here's what he said about a plain brown house with too many cars when he gave it his "Eyesore of the Month" award: When you live in a high entropy society, as we do, the entropy manifests in many ways: toxic waste, poor air quality, social alienation, epidemic obesity, odious popular culture, AND immersive ugliness.When I commented on this in April, here's what I said: I think it's incredibly mean and smallminded to pick out a stranger's home and publicly ridicule it like this on the Internet. Kunstler may justify this by imagining that he's making a statement against evil America, or working class people whose taste in decor strikes him as patriotic kitsch. But I don't think that's a defense to such spiteful arrogance. And ugliness.That was my reaction to just one "Eyesore of the Month" award. There are many more, and I'm not going to further invade the privacy of ordinary homeowners whose homes weren't made famous by Supreme Court decisions and upload pictures (which aren't mine anyway). However, they're right there for everyone to see, and I think the most cursory glance at them will reveal distinct similarities between the homes Kunstler loathes and the home condemned by the five justices in the "Kunstlerite" majority . . . Is there an architectural culture war afoot? I'll link to a few of them, and readers can judge for themselves. Here's Kunstler's indictment of another simple home which won his "award": The vernacular house in small town America as influenced by eighty years of Modernism. A total lack of skill meets a total rejection of history. The result: all the charm of a packing crate and none of the structural integrity. Here's a chilling thought: is the interior as well-organized and charming as the exterior? One imagines a dark warren of off-gassing carpets, empty pizza boxes, and a cat box that hasn't been changed in a month and a half.And another award winner he considered an eyesore because (as he notes saracastically) the window is too close to the roofline: I especially like the way those mingy windows on the second story, right side, creep right up to the soffit. The front door for humans (as distinct from the front doors for cars) is reached by that ladder-like jumble of lumber on the left. The supergigantic Palladian window with the pop-in muntins doubles as a neighborhood heat-exchanger. This case study also illustrates a fascinating paradox of culture: the better our power tools get, and the more clever our systemization of assembly becomes, the worse our houses look. The law of diminishing returns never rests.Gee, aren't the windows of that Kelo house also suspiciously close to the roof line? Plus, they appear to be modernistic, and made of aluminum or some other metal. On top of that, the house is painted non-designer pink. And it has an American flag! According to Kunstler, the flag on an "eyesore" house "helps us remember what country we're in!" Well, in defense of Ms. Kelo's poor house, at least there aren't any Snow White figurines in the yard -- or sea gull silhouettes on the wall -- for Mr. Kunstler to ridicule. Still, I don't think he'd like the Kelo house. Not one bit. In the old days before last week, people on planning commissions who thought like Kunstler had to content themselves with ridiculing homes they didn't like. Now they can do something about them. Clearly, people who live in "Eyesore of the Month" homes don't pay enough property taxes. Their eyesores are in need of gentrification. MORE: Via Donald Sensing I see that churches are next in line for condemnation. (Especially the "tackier" churches -- the ones that don't have money to hire lawyers.) posted by Eric on 06.30.05 at 06:08 PM
Comments
If you saw the crappy places I grew up in, you would understand why I think the Kelo house looks like heaven. Bill Dooley · July 1, 2005 02:30 AM Most people see "eyesore"; I see potential. (Not on the Kelo house; that one's fine.) As an example, on a recent walk through a decent neighborhoood I saw a true eyesore house. The house was unpainted, there was no semblance of an entry (the door waas just there at the end of a skimpy asphalt walk), the front lawn was dead and the back lawn, visible because of the decaying fence, was waist-deep in weeds. As many pretty houses as I saw on my walk, this was the one that stuck in my head as I imagined how to make it attractive and desireable without too great an expenditure. After painting and weed-whacking, I decided the simplest route would be to create a porch of decomposed granite (hardpacked rock-dirt) and build an arbor around the front door, which would have the dual value of creating shade and a little shelter for the front door. No demolition or major construction necessary. Those who cannot fix eyesores without resorting to removal just don't have the necessary imagination. (I will make an exception for the Ugliest House Ever in Spokane; "decaying box" is the *nicest* thing I can say about it.) B. Durbin · July 1, 2005 12:22 PM Kunstler needs to be shipped to the darkest recesses of the Amazon, where he can be free of the annoying side effects of industrial civilization. Once there, he can joyously celebrate the bacteria that infect every open sore, turning a minor scrape into a raging infection. He is a hater of the first order, a thousandth-rate thinker, and a carnie. He reminds me of Tom Lehrer's hypothetical Christian Scientist with appendicitis -- only he desperately needs to contract the disease. Rob McMillin · July 1, 2005 02:28 PM No, I have a better idea after reading his snarky commentary about the house that "helps us remember what country we're in": somebody needs to punch him in the nose. Rob McMillin · July 1, 2005 02:29 PM I'd like to do it, except that I'd have to look at him first. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · July 2, 2005 02:09 AM |
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