I was with Stan, who was driving, and possibly someone else. Stan was trying to park our van in front of a tall house across the street that doesn't exist IRL. In fact, there were several tall houses that appeared to be over three stories tall. They were an old Victorian style, similar to some that I've seen in Chicago, with high ceilings and long, thin windows. Stan was edging the van very close to the house until he actually hit the house. He looked worried that he caused damage to it, but I don't think the impact was that hard. We went inside, and sat down in a "lobby" area. I noticed that the house had elevators, and that it went up either the 19th or 26th floor. That's not a house, that's a high-rise condominium.

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What sucks about this is that I fear this is a promonition of horrors to come, not next year, not even a few years from now, but maybe a decade? Two decades? Our street is split down the middle politically, between "blighted" and "unblighted." We live on the "safe" side, the "unblighted" side. Across the street is defined as blighted. I say the city of Madison has a very odd definition of blight. They wouldn't know urban blight if it bit them on their well-developped suburban ass. And that's really what it's all about. They see a certain area of town, which happens to include the area across our street, as ripe for big development, big condos, tall yuppie, pricey buildings that take over modest, yet nice areas. There is nothing wrong with the homes across the street--with the exception of the house immediately across from ours, I'm sure they're in better shape and more updated than our house. It's just that it would be easy pickings, politically, to signify it as blighted, signify it as a TIF district (which I honestly don't understand the complexities of). I swear that the only reason our side of the street isn't included is because we are on a hill and it would be very difficult to excavate and construct large condo buildings here.

Labels: Dreams, Politically Incorrect