Skirting the Wasteland

Feeling out my new digs, I went walking today. Not much of a trek, maybe a mile, but enough of a journey to experience the blight at my doorstep. Inviting colors drew me towards it, the air thick with the sounds of urban traffic. Smells of coffee and fried delicacies swept the streets carried by the afternoon breeze. And before I realized it, I was face with a hell of Dantean proportions. I gawked as zombies crept along the sidewalks clutching paper sacks from Guess and Aeropostale. I shuddered as devils peddled happiness served in Starbucks cups. I gaped in horror as brooding suburban teens smoked cigarettes outside the Lucky Strike Bowling Alley. This, my friends, is the pit of trendiness known as Bel Mar.

Located in the heart of Lakewood, and two blocks from my place, the Bel Mar is a place where well to do people take their well to do families to drown their sorrows in an orgy of commercialism. The can buy their cell phones, jewelry, hip threads, and space age toys. And when they are overcome with the shopping frenzy, they can refresh and refuel at any of a number of pricey restaurants, washing down their fatty meats (or more likely asian chicken salads with pesto and raspberry vinagrette) with grande iced machiattos, reenergizing for yet another thrust into store-bought ecsatsy. Once their thirst for trinkets is slated, they will return once more to their luxurious tombs to open their Prada and leave cans filled with packaging on the curb.

It is a flashy concrete desert, and is still under construction. I suppose I shall tolerate it. It should raise the price of my condo nicly.