Only in Phoenix/Scottsdale do you have neighbors calling city hall to whine that someone didn't mow their lawn this week, and other assorted crap.
What ever happened to knowing and being friends with your neighbors, thereby avoiding this kind of nonsensical conflict?
Oh wait, I forgot, almost no one in Arizona has any desire to meet their neighbors. It's the only place I've lived where people pull into the garage and immediately close the door behind them, avoiding any chance of having to interact with another human being.
Talk about a severe epidemic of social anxiety disorder.
For the most part, Arizona is a transient state full of transient types.
If you get to know one person on your block that's worth two cents, consider yourself lucky.
Miraculously my neighbors on either side are hella fricken' cool. I play drums any time of day or night and they're kick back about it.
As for the other neighbors, they stay inside like lizards under a rock. Fine with me. It's a nice neighborhood, with pricey houses all around, in NW Phoenix.
A couple of blocks away, I wouldn't venture there at night. Ghetto city USA and going down fast.
That's what I don't understand about Arizona. You'll have a nice neighborhood set down smack down in the ghetto. Or you'll have nice neighborhood, ghetto, nice neighborhood, ghetto. You need deep-bench good neighborhoods.
Scottsdale encourages excessive interest in what your neighbor is doing, interloping and keeping up with the "Joneses." No wonder your neighbors are jealous or think that you're trying to "get over" if you skip mowing your lawn for a week. Jees!
If you're in a Scottsdale area full of nosey neighbors and Soviet style spies, haul ass out of there. Move to Arrowhead Ranch/Lakes in Glendale. At least you'll have a little more peace.
Posted by: joe jacari | July 19, 2008 at 07:02 PM
Unfortunately still stuck in North Scottsdale and besides all the assorted scum and phonies, I'm also surrounded by hermits.
Just a massive collective repository of America's third-rate stringers who can't make it in real cities and lying to themselves that they live in an "upscale" community. Hey Scottsdale mooks and skanks, I know upscale and this "ain't" it.
(Like somebody I know from Brookly would say).
Posted by: raven | July 19, 2008 at 07:48 PM
Joe, couldn't agree more.
What struck me most about living in Arizona is that you have two choices:
1) Live in a trashy neighborhood full of illegals, crime, and trailer trash
2) Live in a relatively safe neighborhood full of pretentious snobbish assholes
Given those two choices, I simply packed my bags and left the state altogether.
Posted by: Frank Rumbauskas | July 20, 2008 at 02:27 AM
The following is a reader comment(s) posted on the AZ Republic in reply to an article,("It seems like Scottsdale hates itself.Why?"),Frank referenced on a previous post. The person making the comment,in my opinion, has perfectly captured the true essence of Scottsdale.
"The majority of my childhood was in Europe, mostly Belgium with a little bit of England thrown in. I have lived in New York City, St. Louis, Montreal, Flagstaff and Phoenix (specifically, Mesa). In my nearly ten years here, I have worked for a long period of time in Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe on separate jobs.
Scottsdale is the lamest place I have ever been in my travels so far. Why?
First off, there are indeed TOO MANY people there who are unbelievably shallow and disconnected from reality. I can't tell you how many business lunches and dinners I've had to endure in all parts of Scottsdale wherein I had to endure the most hollow B.S. from the tables next to me. When I go to malls in Scottsdale, the people are more into their surface than anywhere else I've been. When I drive on the streets there, the local drivers are more rude and more dangerous than anywhere else I've driven. They drive like pretentious, greedy children. And yes, this is from someone who first learned how to drive in New York City.
I have also had the (dis)pleasure of doing business with an great deal of wealthy businessmen and women in Scottsdale, some of them quite prominent either regionally or nationally. I am sorry to report that the most degenerate business dealings I've been forced to experience were with Scottsdale business persons. Most significantly, they lied with incredible ease and expended almost embarrassing effort in trying not to pay their invoices. I routinely watched one of them, the CEO of a nationally recognized company, scream and berate their employees and myself in meetings, reducing some to tears on a regular basis. I also had another CEO of a company with a nationally-recognized brand go to such great lengths to avoid paying me that I had to threaten to call the police while at the company's offices on a collection call.
Scottsdale has a lot of fine human beings in it. It also has a truly disproportionate share of broken and meaningless existences, people who are so confused and unhappy with their lives that they see fit to express their self-hatred in shallow and malicious ways. I've spent many years explaining to fellow businessmen from out of town (after they ask me "what the he77 is up with that guy from Scottsdale?!") that Scottsdale is heavily populated with what I call "New Yorkers who couldn't make it in NYC or any other real center of business and got drummed out of town." They come here with what little they have left (which looks like a lot to AZ bumpkins) and park it in Scottsdale to continue their pathetic horse-trading ways of business.
Such a horrible reputation has been EARNED by the hard toil of these losers. Scottsdale has LONG way to go to transform itself into a decent community. I only thank to good Lord that my children are not going to school with theirs."
And a followup comment made in reply to Scottsdale boosters, by the same.
"To all... I'm hearing a lot of comments that those who are dissing Scottsdale are those who don't live there and are jealous because they can't afford it. In speaking for myself, this is NOT correct whatsoever. Many years ago, I was much more financially wealthy which afforded me to live among what one could describe as "old money" versus the "$30k mils," "nouveau riche," and horse-trader business people I speak of in Scottsdale.
I also wish to reiterate that it is NOT my opinion that everyone in Scottsdale is like I describe. I'm just saying that of all the places I've been, it has the highest proportion of such losers and con men. An excessively high proportion. It really brings the greater Phoenix business community down. I have half-baked guesses as to why, but will leave such conjecture to someone who has lived in Scottsdale for enough decades to attest more accurately to its transformation. Further, as for the club scene to which the article was really referring, that's just icing on the cake; a roiling morass of idiocy wherein club owners are the ones walking to the bank laughing every night.
Oh, and to ROCKSRULE... you say you can go out and not have to worry about being surrounded by illegal Mexicans and tweakers (in Scottsdale) much as you do in most parts of the valley. You are WRONG, my friend. You just can't "see" them because they illegals are in the backyards trimming trees and the tweakers are wearing elite-branded clothing and driving nice cars."
Posted by: raven | July 20, 2008 at 11:16 AM