Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for June 12, 2014

the Otterloops’ neighborhood must’ve been done by the same architect and construction company

Ernesto?

That’s the way “architecture” goes in developments like Cul de Sac. When I was about Petey’s age, we (my parents, that is) bought a yet-unfinished house in a similar development (but with freestanding houses) in a suburb of Chicago. Dad put in an S-curved front walk instead of the standard straight one, and a smallish flagstone patio to one side of the main entry, as our differentiating features….

Wasn’t there a song years ago that went “The houses are all made out of ticky-tacky/And they all look just alike”?

yes or all painted a different close shade, powder blue, robin egg, sky, sea etc.

There’s a condo complex for retirees in Pinellas Park, FL, in which all the houses are painted white. How some of the forgetful old timers figure out which house is theirs is beyond me. (I’m a forgetful old timer myself.)

Years ago I rented a house in a little subdivision like that, near the bay in Daly City, CA (immediately south of San Francisco). When the evening fog was thick, I’d have to count houses to find mine (it was 5th from the corner), as the minor color/decoration features that differentiated it from its neighbors weren’t visible through the mist.

i am glad Petey has a girlfriend. tomorrow he’ll avoid her entirely.

I used to live in Lakewood, California. One of the original tract housing developments. The builder only used a couple of floorplans, and you could tell which one was used on that street by looking at the driveways. Whether they were directly across from each other, or had a slight offset. It was handy, when you visited someone you knew where the bathroom was just by looking at the driveway. 60 years later, many of the houses have been changed quite a bit.

I used to spend about 6 months out of the year staying with a friend in Las Vegas, as we worked together on musical projects. There were two “types” of houses in that development. On more than one occasion I found myself desperately trying to get the key to work, only to realize I was at the wrong house! Thankfully, nobody ever came to open the door.

There’s a row of new riverfront homes that’s gone in close to me. Variety comes from having two mirror-image floorplans and alternating them.

I hate neighborhoods like that.