Suburbia

The thoughts tug at Bruce Raffel's mind and tumble his guts. Yet another Sunday night passes with little comfortable sleep. And as he tries to shift his mind to work on Monday, he just can't let go of the previous day's happenings. What if he had been able to tell Brian Billick to run on third-and-short instead of calling another fruitless pass? Might the Ravens have held on instead of crashing to another dispiriting loss? If you're wondering, Raffel doesn't work for the Ravens or any other NFL team.

With Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse opening today as a tribute to the cheap thrills and tawdry surroundings that fueled their cinematic adolescence, the lament here is that that kind of film-going experience is largely a thing of the past. Back in the '70s, when those guys were growing up, the so-called grindhouse theaters - run-down buildings showing cheaply made films in surroundings that weren't exactly pristine - kept alive the illusion that movie-going was an egalitarian experience.

'Smart growth" is what many planners and politicians advocate as a cure for metropolitan problems. The phrase is but the latest sneer directed at suburbia. It implies that those who facilitated and participated in suburbanization were dumb. Unfair, even if true. And it's not true. The median IQ in the suburbs is 26 points higher than the median IQ in cities and rural areas.As you may have suspected, I made up that statistic. I doubt there ever been any such study. But does anyone doubt that suburbanites are smarter than urbanites as a group?

Pakistan tried every form of government. None works.The Nobel Prize for medicine went to a German at Rockefeller U.; chemistry to an Egyptian at Cal Tech; physics to a Dutchman at Michigan; and economics to a Canadian at Columbia, so don't knock foreign docs.Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani make a lovely couple.The most effective way to cull the deer herd in suburbia is to introduce wolves.

Rick Levin found the next frontier of retailing not in the wide open spaces of suburbia but amid boarded-up rowhouses and corner liquor stores in a stretch of East Baltimore.In a strip center on North Caroline Street with a supermarket and a Chinese carryout, Levin set out to create an oasis two years ago, putting one of his largest Downtown Locker Room stores in a former drugstore. He stocked it with hooded sweat shirts and Nike basketball shoes, hired local help, lighted the vast space with wall sconces, covered the floor in gleaming hardwood and pumped music through the speakers.

WAS THE American suburban dream a victim of the bloody shooting spree by two crazed teen-agers at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.?Yes, say several critics."

HAVE YOU hacked your way through the thicket of hype surrounding "American Beauty" I did. I actually saw it, and I was under-whelmed. Yes, it is a good film, with some great performances. But to read the reviews, you would think it's a revelation, this searing dissection of the sterility of suburban life.The territory has been mined before, in so many films from "Stepford Wives" to "Ordinary People." "American Beauty" takes it up several notches. Now we have "Extraordinarily Weird People," from the caricature portrait of frigid Mom to the beyond-frustrated, spiritually dead Dad. I like Kevin Spacey, but do I need to see him masturbate not once, but twice I get it!

AS THE GRAYING of suburbia continues, the need grows for more affordable housing choices for senior citizens. In Howard County, more than 9 percent of the population of 230,000 is older than 60. In the next 25 years that percentage is expected to grow to roughly a quarter of the population, or 73,500 residents. Their incomes will vary, and they will need a range of housing choices as a result.As government officials and developers address the need for more affordable housing overall, they should put emphasis on the needs of retirees and others on fixed income.

Blade for blade, the lawn that encircles Ed and Marcia Leiter's house near New Windsor competes with the best of suburbia -- a lush swath of grass, juniper shrubs, pansies and tulips.But the Leiters are not only keeping up with their neighbors on Hallowell Lane -- they're keeping their lawn green without polluting the Chesapeake Bay. And they're part of a larger effort to persuade suburbanites to cut down on pesticides and use less water.This effort will be on display as part of a demonstration project called HomeWork, when the Leiters and two other local couples will hold an "open lawn" from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow (rain date Sunday)

On the final night of the riots of 1968, the city editor of the News American dispatched me to a crowded residential street off Pennsylvania Avenue, in West Baltimore, where a small warehouse had been set afire.When I pulled up, neighborhood people were sitting placidly on their front steps, watching the blaze, exhausted by four days and nights of endless fire and rage. They took little notice of me, for which I gave heartfelt and silent thanks.A few moments behind me, a television news van happened to arrive.

A lot of people think nothing interesting happens in suburbia, but I can offer proof to the contrary. For example, just last week someone left a Pyrex baking dish at my home and I had to do some extensive sleuthing to discover its owner. Of course I jest. Suburbia is more than the stereotypical land of barbecue grill, yard, job title and student SAT-score one-upmanship! It's a place where new parents can meet at library story hour, enjoy a feeling of community around a ball field or hang out on summer nights in the driveway after work, chatting with people who just might turn out to be lifelong friends.

A lot of people think nothing interesting happens in suburbia, but I can offer proof to the contrary. For example, just last week someone left a Pyrex baking dish at my home and I had to do some extensive sleuthing to discover its owner. Of course I jest. Suburbia is more than the stereotypical land of barbecue grill, yard, job title and student SAT-score one-upmanship! It's a place where new parents can meet at library story hour, enjoy a feeling of community around a ball field or hang out on summer nights in the driveway after work, chatting with people who just might turn out to be lifelong friends.

Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb By David Kushner Walker & Co. / 256 pages / $26 More than a half-century before our current disaster in the housing market, the United States confronted a very different sort of housing crisis. During the Great Depression of the 1930s and the economic boom of World War II, few private homes had been constructed. With demobilization after World War II, vast numbers of military veterans and their families, flush with cash and G.I. Bill-backed mortgages, were desperate for housing.

A documentary about a mad 1960s household, Must Read After My Death, constructed out of tape, Dictaphone recordings and home movies, premieres theatrically today in New York and digitally everywhere via its distributor's Web site, giganticdigital.com. The company charges $2.99 for a three-day "ticket," good for any number of viewings, and promises to stream the film in any quality up to high definition. Viewers will be able to adjust the image according to what looks right for their home screen.

The thoughts tug at Bruce Raffel's mind and tumble his guts. Yet another Sunday night passes with little comfortable sleep. And as he tries to shift his mind to work on Monday, he just can't let go of the previous day's happenings. What if he had been able to tell Brian Billick to run on third-and-short instead of calling another fruitless pass? Might the Ravens have held on instead of crashing to another dispiriting loss? If you're wondering, Raffel doesn't work for the Ravens or any other NFL team.

Tracy Gosson, who spent most of the past decade promoting city living, has a new cause: suburbia. The former executive director of the Live Baltimore Home Center has launched her own marketing and economic development consulting firm. One of her clients is Howard County, so she's had to do a U-turn. And another. And another. Gosson is lost in a land of cul-de-sacs and camouflaged commerce. "I've been driving around. I'm just looking for a flippin' gas station," she said. "The constant cul-de-sacs, I don't know where I am. ... With the zoning on signage and everything so low-key, I'm dong U-turns all over the place.

With Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse opening today as a tribute to the cheap thrills and tawdry surroundings that fueled their cinematic adolescence, the lament here is that that kind of film-going experience is largely a thing of the past. Back in the '70s, when those guys were growing up, the so-called grindhouse theaters - run-down buildings showing cheaply made films in surroundings that weren't exactly pristine - kept alive the illusion that movie-going was an egalitarian experience.

No, you probably can't get college credit for watching the scandalous adventures of Desperate Housewives, but if you look hard enough on American campuses you'll find an occasional course on literature of the suburbs, a seminar discussing Crabgrass Frontier and other discourses on the growth of suburbia. Increasingly, if still a bit disdainfully, academia is beginning to pay attention to the 'burbs, home for years now to at least half of all Americans. "Emerging" is the assessment Robert E. Lang gives to suburban studies on most college campuses.

Ruth Cronheim and her husband won't be doing much driving after they move this fall into their new condominium at Clipper Mill in Baltimore. That's because the retired couple plan whenever they can to hop on the light rail trains that stop in front of their development. "It goes right to Camden Yards, and it goes right to BWI," Cronheim, 65, said of the rail line. "And if we get sick, there's the Metro we can transfer to that goes to Johns Hopkins [Hospital]." Avoiding the rising cost of driving was a big factor in the couple's decision to buy a home in the city near mass transit, but that isn't true for many others - at least not yet. The latest increase in gas prices this summer doesn't seem to have driven many Americans to put "For Sale" signs in the front yards of their roomy suburban homes.

HERE'S A word you probably don't want to hear if you live in suburbia and have a deer problem and county officials are kicking around ways to control that deer problem: sharpshooters. Is it me? Am I being too squeamish here? Sharpshooters? To control the deer in Baltimore County? Look, I live in Baltimore County. And I live in a neighborhood where the deer problem ranges from Mild Nuisance to Deer Summer Jam 2005, depending on the time of year. You talk about brazen - our deer will practically come up and shake your hand and introduce themselves.