Of course I would love the Friendly Street neighborhood where I live. It’s the official name of the neighborhood in Eugene because Friendly Street runs through its heart.
It’s walkable. There’s a small grocery store that has everything you need. A food truck quad with sheltered dining. Four parks (two tiny, two large) within five blocks of our house. Two churches, in case a god needs a house. Pizza place, bus stops, big trees everywhere.
Here’s what it lacks: homeowner association rules. I’m not exactly against rules that suggest people create tidy landscapes and restrict the presence of beat-up cars and junk. I like a perfectly coiffed garden as much as anybody. I just wouldn’t want to live where such rules go overboard.
One of our neighbors has a dinosaur garden. It’s adorable, always changing, and has a little treat box for the dogs walking by with their owners.
There’s much human-powered moving around in the neighborhood, which is why some folks who live at the top of a steep hill have added an encouraging sign for people huffing and puffing upwards.
There are perfect gardens in the neighborhood. There are wildly out of control gardens. There are complete disaster yards with broken down vehicles that haven’t moved since I’ve been living here (eight years now). Somebody has chickens. Somebody throws peanuts into the street daily for the crows and the squirrels. Somebody has too much stuff and their front yard has now become a crazy-quilt kind of living room with comfy seating and little tables and art hung in the trees and strings of lights and slogans recalling the hippie years.
It might not be a neighborhood where everyone would feel relaxed. For me, it’s, well, home.
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