The Trail Of Absurdity Left By The Housing Boom

I snapped this picture, much to the peril of my fellow freeway drivers, of this sign for Shea Homes’ “The Retreat” housing community.

Now, I am all for suggestive advertising and have been a slave to it since I bought my first bottle of Sun-In hair product in 7th grade (…your laughing reveals you must have had orange spotted hair the summer of ’83 as well), but please, give me some credit: a housing community that lines the 5 Freeway called “The Retreat?” This is just taking it too far, call it anything but “The Retreat.”

Maybe this would fly mid-housing boom, between watching someone regrouting their bathroom tile on HGTV Network and checking the DataQuick numbers in The Reg (price up 50% in my zip !!!!), but now it just seems a little…well…ridiculous.

I haven’t been through “The Retreat,” but my guess it’s filled with little landscape waterfalls, suggesting the trickling of water in your backyard will surely drown-out any semi speeding by or bass-heavy “Woofers.” It’s not the actual houses along the freeway that are gnawing at my last consumer nerve, it is just the assumption that we will simply buy into a notion of fine living just because of the suggestion of “luxury” living in the name: “The Retreat.”

Thinking more about it, it is the trail of absurity the housing boom has left behind that is really at the core of my rant–every cocktail conversation that was dominated by talk of appreciation, every minute wasted on Zillow.com and all the energy exerted while having to feign interest in someone else’s remodel–these are precious moments of my life I’ll never get back.

Alrighty, just a little**Grumble***Grumble***before I pull up Homeseekers to see if the house I want in Orange has dropped its price…which they probably haven’t….which will be the topic of another post I’ll write…which will be just as amusing because of its isn’t-that-the-truth nature…