Flipside: What is the worst city you ever visited and why?

[hunter]

296. Affluent Republican Prosperity Christians... Suffocating

Prosperity theology

Not the kind of place you and your friends can work on your trashy old muscle cars in the driveway, garage doors open, drinking beer and playing music into the night.

Not the kind of place you can grow food in your front yard. No, corn, squash, sunflowers!

Not the kind of place you can paint your house any color you want.

Not the kind of place with taco trucks, guys pushing ice cream carts, and retired grandpas sitting out front, talking, laughing and hailing passing neighbors.

Not the kind of place with basketball games in the street and informal soccer matches in the parks.

Yes, I could do without the litter and graffiti in my own neighborhood, or the sound of gunshots and sirens in the middle of the night, but the place is alive. Every one of my neighbors has some irritating quirk and so do I, but we all live and let live as best we can.

My own garage is full of stuff, no room for a vehicle, so I park my truck in the driveway. It's nearing 180,000 miles on the odometer, and I haven't washed it for many years. It's got lichen growing on it, and spiderwebs. I simply clean the windshields before I drive. But it usually sits there for periods longer than 48 hours collecting leaves and dust.

I'm pretty sure there are rules against that in Westlake Village. They'd consider me a public nuisance.

Yep, I just looked at their municipal code and my truck qualifies as junk. Or maybe it could be "vegetation which is out of conformity with neighboring community standards to such an extent as to result in a diminution of property values."

I've been to Westlake Village. My brother and his wife lived there a few years but then God told them to go someplace where people kept chickens and goats in their front yards and prosperity wasn't measured in dollars.