DC RnR section on Craigslist: The DC metro's favorite cyberslum...

So I had a funny exchange with this person (a woman possibly) on DC Craigslist's RnR section:

I am the McFly persona.

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/mld/rnr/1006010409.html

McFly here... (...zipping up my McFly.)
Reply to: [...] Date: 2009-01-24, 2:36PM EST

Prove it, buddy.

Have you ever been to a huge soulless state university with an active “Greek Life” culture? Or a bum-scratch isolated liberal arts school with lots of people with nothing to do but drink, partner-swap[,] and explore funky sexual fetishes?

I have. I took a state scholarship slot that an Ivy League-bound kid opted out of. And let me tell you, it wasn't pretty. But then even the Ivy Leaguers have their "F--- Trucks" and whatnot.

The numbers might be exaggerated but orgies can and do happen.

The rest of American life is resembling the crumbling Roman Empire but there aren't ORGIES? Where's your sense of history?

--Marty McFly

OP said, rolling eyes sarcastically:
Uh, Hello! McFly!! The 24 y.o. sex survey poster is a dude! (MD)
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Reply to: [...]
Date: 2009-01-24, 2:01PM EST

Wakey-wake time! It's just some dude having fun. Not really sure why that's fun for him but rest assured, it is NOT a 24year old woman giving an accurate accounting of her experiences. Sheesh!

Welcome to Slumburbia. Now get lost.

I live in slumburbia.

I started using this term about 4-5 years ago, right around the crescendo of the housing bubble. At the time, the term didn't have much currency. Mainly the only other person using it on the web was some visual artist from Canada.

If you're in your 20s or 30s and grew up liberal and neurotic; the suburbs are a Tragically Unhip* place to live. The suburbs are considered a destination for losers and clueless middle Americans. I know this because I used to be one of those self-hating liberals. Now I'm an independent and over 30 so I don't have so much patience for this culture anymore.

*another Canadian allusion there

California Über Alles:

Early last spring, San Francisco real estate journalist Carol Lloyd used the term to apply to some rather spacious tract house communities around the Bay area. To be quite honest, far-leftist anti-sprawl activists would like nothing more than to see suburbia rot. It's powerful symbolism, like vandalizing Eisenhower’s tomb or something.

But I have to say that this is such an absurd application of the term slumburbia. Anybody applying this neologism to millenial large-lot McMansion boom developments in central Cali has never experienced authentic American slumburban living in a fifties-era small-lot roach magnet. And even I know that the corner of slumburbia I live in has nothing on the strains of slumburbia found in L.A. County.

Luckily, around the same time as the San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate article, The Atlantic published a more well-researched piece that extended the term beyond outer-ring exurbs.

Here is an excerpt:
“On the other hand, many inner suburbs that are on the wrong side of town, and poorly served by public transport, are already suffering what looks like inexorable decline. Low-income people, displaced from gentrifying inner cities, have moved in, and longtime residents, seeking more space and nicer neighborhoods, have moved out.”
“The Next Slum?,” The Atlantic, March 2008

Now, that’s the slumburbia I’m talking about. The old housing stock slumburbia. The middle-class flight slumburbia. The slumlord rental units slumburbia. The lawn-paved-over-into-a-mini-parking-lot slumburbia.

Now that's my corner of America.

Welcome to slumburbia, friends. You must be lost.

So here's a tip: Lock your car doors, do a U-turn in the clogged cul-de-sac up there, and keep driving until you get to the mall.