Stuck in the Suburbs
I'm just a kid, and life is a nightmare!
Concrete is comfortable when there’s nowhere else to sit. An orange disc slipping behind towering eaves, a canopy of Crayola green leaves twinkling overhead, the hum of 8pm heat simmering in the golden air: sitting on the driveway in the eternal summer afternoons was not fully extraordinary. It was not altogether commonplace either, but there was something about sitting down where cars were meant to go, watching the world go by. Teenagers in Jeeps blasting B96, speeding for the short distance from one stop sign to the next. Parents shuttling children to soccer practice. Eventually, the churn of tires on the apron of the driveway. Some excitement, finally.
It was always Brandon and we always had nowhere to go in particular. It could’ve been any day of the week, but we were bored and so it was time to drive around. I would hoist myself into Brandon’s truck du jour and he would be playing country music much to my chagrin. We often ended up getting ice cream or going to the grocery store and paving a meandering route through neighboring suburbs for several hours on end. We’d pick up friends in one place and take them along for the ride, only to drop them off somewhere else. Someone always wanted to ride around in the truck bed. We’d drive by my crush’s house twelve million times. We’d drive by my house once because I wasn’t ready to go home yet. We’d go through the deserted drop-off line at our old elementary school, the ghosts of our past joy lurking in the windows.
In the moment, the choreography of our routine suburban boredom was anything but special. Only looking back do I think that it was all incredibly poetic, destination-less (strip mall) drives and all. The suburbs are generally seen through one of two lenses. First, that they are the ideal place to own a home, raise a family, and partake in a smaller community with close proximity to a big city. Second, that they are a manufactured form of existence devoid of art and culture and texture at the price of comfort. Growing up, I belonged to neither of these schools of thought. I was just a kid, living my life, trying to make sense of all of my feelings and get into college.
As a kid, I had easy access to Chicago and was exposed to it with much frequency; my family had an apartment downtown for several years of my childhood where we’d escape to from time to time to explore the city. My siblings and I crammed into the one bedroom on bunkbeds, my parents on the pullout couch. With the condo sold and my driver’s license on the horizon years later, I started to head downtown frequently with my friends for concerts at Aragon Ballroom and beach days on Lake Michigan, buoyed by the allure of the City. I navigated the L and Metra with ease, and I never once thought that my little hometown was somehow less than all of the things I was experiencing in Chicago.
Outside of my stints in the city, I was through and through a child of the suburbs. Summer days could be endless and sweaty, winter weeknights started with 3:30pm darkness and ended with studying late into the night. My days were mainly monotonous, peppered with hours of sport and study on endless repeat. And yet it never really felt boring to me.
At night, I’d stare at my ceiling fan circling overhead, my Christmas lights blinking in April, my mind racing with too many ideas folding over and over again in my brain like pain Suisse. I was either on Tumblr or YouTube or writing in a never-ending Pages document or watching a movie I rented on iTunes that I had learned about only through Tumblr stills. I was trying to figure out who I was amongst the very landscape portrayed in all of the coming of age films I was watching, wondering if I even liked how I was spending all of my structured time, not a unique adolescent experience by any means.
It was the banality of the suburbs that activated so much of my latent creativity. Maybe it was the blank slate of opportunity, the desire to just be different, or the idea that the only place I could go was up and out of there. I would miraculously sleep for 9 hours after staying up until 2am dancing around my room with lightning storming through the slats in my windows. At night amidst the darkness, I didn’t have to be a star student or an athlete. There were so many other me’s that I could be.
My sister was (and remains) my co-conspirator in essentially all of my creative endeavors I embarked upon while growing up. Eventually I must have tired of hitting my post limit on Tumblr and we decided to start making some things. Back then, I didn’t care as much if a project went anywhere or how it was received. We’d have a photoshoot at the grocery store or in my closet, zoom downtown for weeknight concerts in Pilsen, attend Lollapalooza like it was an annual family reunion, and host our friends for somewhat elaborate holiday gatherings. Most iconic of all, we shot a music video to one of my favorite songs that involved a great slew of props and bratty consumerism imagery. Shooting that together remains such a core memory for me, a relic of teenaged summer boredom manifesting through two sisters simply having fun and making something out of what was right in front of them.
When the pandemic struck in 2020 and we were all sequestered back at home in the suburbs, my sister was busy with textile projects for a Chicago-based golf apparel brand and her college fashion magazine. I was more than happy to oblige with modeling some of her pieces; my favorite were a pair of patchwork pants that she had used old items of clothing to make.
Julia really got after it during the pandemic and inspired me so much with all of her creations. It was a testament to the very truth I’m getting at here, which is that the suburbs are a perfect locus to do just about anything creatively, with minimal interference from competition or external pressures. What they may lack in robust and interconnected art scenes that a city has, suburbs make up for with their ability to foster a boundless suburban imagination, an adolescent experience endlessly reflected in the media, and bolstered by the routine yet beautiful rituals of daily life.
American Beauty (1999) is my favorite movie of all time, not only because the cinematography is absolutely stunning but because the story is so incredibly textured and eerie and dynamic despite being set against the most normcore looking suburb you could possibly imagine. It showed me that suburban living is far from typical or boring, and that the manufactured comfortable appeal can at times drive residents mad. Despite regular family dinners, the father, mother, and daughter in the film are increasingly alienated and siloed into their own psychotic narratives, which stem from a collective fear of being ordinary.
“There’s nothing worse in life than being ordinary.” Is the fear of being ordinary prominently a suburban qualm? Suburbs are places where comparison is visibly on display; communities aren’t too big or too small where no one else cares. They are just big enough to know everyone’s bullshit and be actively staring down class anxieties on a regular basis over the boxwood hedge.
Despite being located in between urban and rural, the suburbs are often seen as a location with some amount of finality for it’s residents. But as suburb residents marinate in place, they may be driven to obscurity as anxieties about what lies beyond their comfortable little lives starts to fester with the monotony of routine. Is there any escaping that? The lives of suburbanites are far from ordinary, but when you’re in it, it can seem so banal and leave you wondering what you sacrifice for comfort.
Does living in the suburbs preclude or enhance one’s ability to see it as a place of real conjuring? For me, the banal was exciting: it led me to dream and create and try things with what I had out of my everyday existence. With much less demanding my attention in the suburbs than in the city, there was nothing much to look at except for the mundane. I saw these little rituals as beautiful and symbolic, purposeful cultural manifestations that helped my family and friends and I make sense of our day to day. At times with nothing to do, boredom allowed me to dream of endless other lives I could one day try on. Now living in a fast-paced city, I at times yearn for the bored and banal because who knows what wonder could spring forth from it?
You cannot decide or change where you were born or where you grow up. It informs who you are no matter what you try. And I suppose that is the thing with place. I am forever entranced by the idea that love and dreams can take us to new places. Where we find ourselves situated fully informs how we can envision new realities for ourselves from one life stage to the next.
I’ll never hate that I grew up in the suburbs. My adolescence was highly cinematic, straight out of a John Hughes movie, and being here allowed me to envision so many possibilities for myself and the directions my life could one day take. It doesn’t seem very cool sometimes to say I am from the suburbs, that driving around and going to Target and the mall was a big and very fun ordeal. But I’m proud of what the suburbs have given me, which is an endless appreciation of place and what we make of it, an eye for noticing beauty in the most mundane, and a boundless imagination for what one can make no matter where they are, even if that place is just your very own driveway.
THE MEDIA CORNER
Watch: Mississippi Masala (1991) dir. Mira Nair
I had the utmost privilege to travel to Mississippi two weeks ago to watch my friends get married and I had quite a delightful time. Also this was the only movie I could possibly have watched on such a flight to this destination. Directed by Mira Nair (her son is the new mayor-elect of NYC, did ya hear?), Mississippi Masala follows the budding romance between Mina, the daughter of Ugandan Indians, and Demetrius, a local African-American self-employed as a carpet cleaner. Situated in Greenwood, MS, the film tackles themes relating to national origin, color, class, race, home, and love. Music = outstanding. Cinematography = top tier. Witty quips that made me lol and cry on two separate aircraft = appropriately interspersed. This film was highly relatable and just so beautiful. Watch on HBO Max or Criterion.
Listen to: West End Girl by Lily Allen
After a long (2 days) week in the Bronx for work, I needed to fully unplug from the world around me on my commute home and decided for once to not blast my On Repeat. Lily Allen was the voice of my elementary school years; don’t ask me why I was obsessed with all of her music in 2007 and can still tell you all about her music videos from that time. When I heard she released this new album all about her divorce from actor David Harbour, you could say I was sat. It’s rare that I love albums in entirety, but this one is an absolute masterpiece. From top to bottom, it tells the story of the unraveling of Allen’s relationship, taking the listener through different stages of realization, grief, anger, hopelessness, revenge, and resilience. It is really such a beautiful piece of work and includes bangers such as “Pussy Palace” and “Nonmonogamummy” alongside cheery tunes that tell a heartbreaking story (“West End Girl”), a Lily Allen songwriting essential. Welcome back, queen.
Watch: House of Guinness (2025-)
What I ordered: Louis Partridge in Irish Bridgerton. What I got: an Irish history lesson with a hint of Succession. We all know I stan Mr. Olivia Rodrigo in any content he stars in, and I love a historical show. House of Guinness follows the aftermath of the death of Sir Benjamin Guinness as his four adult children take on the brewery and their varying inheritances amidst a changing Ireland. Standout performances for me actually came from James Norton, who portrays the head of security for the Guinness Brewery, and Niamh McCormack, who portrays a local Fenian organizer committed to the Irish Republican cause. Watching this was a no-brainer for me, but it started off very slow and wasn’t very spicy until episode 7 of 8. S2 is pending. Watch on Netflix.
Eat: David protein bars
I feel like such a hypebeast recommending these. The first time I saw the gold wrapping on a truck advertisement, I was already over them. As you can probably imagine, they are beloved by your favorite biohacking, Equinox-attending, and sauna-obsessed men, and backed by none other than Dr. Peter Attia of Outlive fame. I hate to say that these bars are good. I am a regular protein bar consumer so I have a little bit of cred when it comes to this arena. The macros in these things are actually unmatched with 28g of protein per 150 calories. Half of a David bar kept me fueled for an entire 10K and for several hours after. The Red Velvet and Cake Batter flavors are also particularly fun and make this bro-y brand seem 5% for the girls. I’ll take it.
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As always, thank you for reading Sometimes Y. If you made it this far, press that little heart <3.
&& happy first birthday to Sometimes Y! No matter how you’ve found me, thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting my writing and encouraging me to keep going. More to come :-)
xx Alyson
Happy first birthday to Sometimes Y! I loved seeing all your creative projects while you were growing up, and I still love it now that you're grown up!
Another very good read, Alyson -- you captured our "burb" very well, too! Love your writing!