- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
It's Tough To Legislate Ugly
It occurred to me the other day, how tough it is to legislate ugly.
Now for the sake of this blog, when I refer to ugly, I'm not talking about people. One person's hottie is another person's nottie. For instance, I think Paris Hilton is one of the skankiest women alive today, and I wouldn't cross the street to meet her. But some guys think she is to die for.
No, for this discussion, I'm using the term to pertain specifically to property. And ugly properties are tough to legislate.
How many times have you driven by a house painted with atrocious colors and said to yourself, "There ought to be a law against something like that?" I'm sure I've done it dozens of times. Eye-sores are apparent to everyone except the people who are the eye-sorees. In the case of a godawful paint job, maybe the owners are color blind. Or perhaps they got some paint on sale.
There used to be a house in Hatyi on the main drag that was painted a very royal purple. It actually may still be there, but I haven't been that way in several years. To me, it was a Very Ugly House. But I would bet that the owners of that property both loved that color and loved coming home every night to that glorious, bright purple.
However, passer-bys like me would just cringe and think about legislating ugly, which is pretty darn tough.
And the reason it's tough is because it's a freedom of expression issue and the last time I checked I think that was protected by the U.S. Constitution.
While a purple house might be an eyesore to 99.99% of the population, the only offense it suffers from is bad taste. But unless you live in a modern subdivision with covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&Rs) typically nothing can be done.
CC&Rs are the bylaws that homeowners of given subdivisions must abide by and those rules can dictate everything you can do with your property up to and including good taste in the form of specific paint colors which you may or may not use to paint the exterior of your house.
I've never lived in a subdivision with CC&Rs. I've read about them. It sounds a little communistic, if you ask me, but I'd probably do the same thing if I had the opportunity to create my own subdivision from scratch. Communism isn't so bad if you're the one in charge.
First of all, my subdivision would have to have a catchy name that stood out. I've noticed that local subdivisions often include some kind of a tree in their name. Cedar and Oak are popular, but frankly I think they're a little over-used. It also helps to have a verb in the name.
I like Thundering Thorny Locust Estates.
Hah! You probably thought I would call it something like Bradivision or Bradfield or Bradland Hills. Well, I'm not that egotistical. I would just use my name for a street or two, such as Brad Boulevard, Brad Avenue, Brad Drive, Brad Promenade, Brad Thoroughfare, Bradway and the Hollerbach Turnpike.
While you think I might be a little ridiculous with this naming convention, I'm only exaggerating a smidge. Some friends of mine live in "Castle Pines," a west St. Louis county subdivision where every street has the word "Castle" in the name.
I'm pretty sure their subdivision also have CC&Rs. The last time I visited them, there wasn't a purple house anywhere in sight.
My Google stats leaped from 25,800 to 32,600 this week while my Yahoo searches rose only to 29,300. That's a first. Since I've been monitoring Yahoo and Google, the former has always had the higher count. Probably a glitch. I will probably lose several thousand from Google next week.
My cat's Twitter account jumped this week to 47 followers. Her Twitter account is patchthecat.
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