DLers: What is the most picturesque American suburb?

Cape May, New Jersey

And Cape May would be a suburb of which city, R1?

Lovely Pasadena, where I grew up. My dad commuted to DTLA and it took him 20 minutes back in the 1970s.

Naperville, Illinois. We are number 1 at everything and if we aren’t then you are a cunt!

Evanston, Illinois

R3, I visited Pasadena a few years ago and fell in love. We toured the Gamble House, walked around that neighborhood and met some really nice residents strolling around, went to the Flea Market at the Rose Bowl, and had lunch and shopped downtown. I would live there.

R6 It was great growing up there. We had a Shetland pony and a cart and we would go riding in the LA River tributary in the Arroyo Seco - there was an old stable in the A Seco (long closed). We went to church at a beautiful craftsmen house that was a Unitarian center. I went to a prom at the Huntington Hotel.

The house I grew up in was a smaller version of the Wrigley Mansion, built by the same architect and right off of Orange Grove Blvd. Oh, and we went to Trader Joes - the original in S Pasadena, long before they began opening other stores.

Candler Park and Inman Park Atlanta. I forget what it's called in St Paul, but where all of the old railroad and lumber barons lived

Kensington Maryland is pretty for DC. They didn’t tear down all the old houses like the other suburbs.

Newton, MA.

Boston suburb.

Winnetka, IL, suburb of Chicago. Many of John Hughes's movies were set/filmed there. That's where the Home Alone house is.

Chelsea

Redlands, CA. It is a college town, University of Redlands is a good school- but it's also a suburb. It's gorgeous. Don't put it down for being the IE unless you've visited.

Cool, R7. There was a house on Grand Avenue that I will buy one day, if I ever win the lottery!

Some of the early 20thC planned suburbs, some with the involvement of the Olmsted Bros.

Westover Hills, Wilmington, Delaware - a small and timely example as the former address of Biden. (Link)

Guilford & Roland Park, Baltimore

Shaker heights, Ohio

And a bit earlier, another planned auburb Tuxedo Park, NY

Yes, Inman Park. Atlanta's first suburb. Ansley Park as well

Montclair, NJ, home to Stephen Colbert, Bobbie Brown and a goodly percentage of the New York-based film industry

That whole area of NJ has very charming 1920s era houses on streets with tall trees, some mansion-sized, most a bit more modest. But Montclair has a much bigger downtown than any of the surrounding towns, which is also quite charming and even features its own art museum.

R15, Roland Park is within the city limits of Baltimore, so not really a suburb. If we’re going to name cute suburb-like urban neighborhoods, then Cleveland Park, DC is very nice.

As for actual suburbs, almost any of the Main Line towns west of Philadelphia are pretty nice and pretty cute. Paoli, Bryn Mawr, Ardmore, Wayne – all have nice little business districts surrounded by areas of attractive older housing. Perhaps these areas are too rich and too chichi for OP’s taste. Ambler, PA, also a Philly suburb, has an attractive downtown and nice older houses.

Summit New Jersey

[quote] Perhaps these areas are too rich and too chichi for OP’s taste.

Not at all R18 -- I know those towns and they are exactly the sorts of places I was thinking of. I was just thinking that DLers would start ticking off places that weren't particularly attractive but had lots of big houses of fairly recent vintage and little charm.

Overland Park, Kansas

Mission Hills, Kansas. Designed by developer J.C. Nichols.

Lake Forest, IL

Stepford, CT.

Lake Forest. Need you ask?

Because all of LA is relatively suburban, save DTLA, it's sort of an outlier. But Pasadena is indeed very charming and I am told by friends who are in that line of work that it is frequently used as a stand-in for East Coast suburbs because it's one of the few areas of LA where you consistently find East Coast architecture (Cape Cods and Colonials) and not more typical Arts and Crafts and Mediterranean.

Another vote for suburban Chicago's north shore. I wish I still lived in Lake Forest.

oh i don't know. maybe VILLANOVA??? RADNOR???

fuck every poster above!

Yep, Pasadena has to be the winner.

But a specific part of Pasadena

R7 I also grew up there - although not as affluent as you, I'd wager. Where Highland Park and South Pasadena come together. But the whole Arroyo Seco from Suicide Bridge to Dead Man's Slide (fun, huh?) was where I played. Rode horses at that stable. Swam in Brookside Park. "Holiday" dinners at the Huntington, camped out for the Rose Parade on Orange Grove Blvd, remember when Trader Joe's was the first and only. Sycamores. River stones. Craftsmans. All Saints Episcopal.

Newton, KS. A suburb of Wichita.

[quote]DLCAS

Stop trying to make "DLCAS" happen, YMF.

Marblehead, MA Hunting Valley & Chagrin Falls, Ohio Mariemont, Ohio Chevy Chase, MD

So Marblehead (a lovely town and certainly "picturesque" in the old town) is a suburb of Boston as much as Montecito is a suburb of LA, I guess.

Lake Forest has that "all American" vibe thing going on

Wayne PA, Bryn Mawr, Haverford

Well, leftover from the "ultra-wealthy neighborhood" thread... Sausalito should be in the mix.

Belvedere California is the only answer. The literal definition of picturesque.

@r35 Belvedere is right across the water from Sausalito, both are two of the most stunning suburban towns in the world.

More Belvedere

Kirkland WA, Lakeville CT, Ardmore PA, Pleasantville NY

Shaker Heights, Ohio. Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

Why can’t we choose college towns if they happen to be in the suburbs?

You can choose college towns that are in the suburbs R41

Pasadena, Bryn Mawr, Villanova and Montclair, all mentioned above, have colleges.

The rule was no small town college towns like say, Williamstown, MA. (Many college towns are picturesque.)

Alexandria Virginia

Bronxville, NY, 25 minutes from Grand Central.

Hingham, Massachusetts. Not my opinion: Eleanor Roosevelt's in her book "This is America" with photographs by Frances Cooke Mcgregor.

Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. Macgregor worked together on the book at the suggestion of the publisher, G.P. Putnam Sons of New York. The text was written by Mrs. Roosevelt and the photographs were taken by Mrs. Macgregor. In January 1942 Eleanor came to Hingham to meet with Mrs MacGregor at her Stoddard Street home. Frances Cooke Macgregor was a published author and photographer. She had already taken many photographs for the book and she and Eleanor together decided upon those they both felt would be most effective. The United States had just entered the Second World War and their hope was to produce a book that showed life in small town America and to help Americans understand what it was they were fighting for.

While in Hingham, according to an account of her visit in the Hingham Journal of January 8th 1942, Mrs. Roosevelt dropped in on a League of Women Voters meeting, chatting informally with members and answering their many questions at this time of uncertainty in the country. [bold]The First Lady found Hingham’s architecture, a mix of old colonial mansions, gingerbread Victorians, and charming Cape Cod cottages, to be delightful and much copied in other parts of the country. She is reputed to have described Hingham Main Street as the most beautiful Main Street in America.

When Mrs. Roosevelt saw Hingham, she felt she had found “a picture in miniature of the whole nation.”[/bold]

Lah-Dee-Dah Ladue, MO

Burlingame, CA. About 20 miles south of San Francisco. Two walkable shopping districts, easy access to both the city and Silcon Valley. Great weather. Tons of beautiful eucalyptus trees infuse the air with a lovely fragrance after a rainfall.

R32 Not really. Marblehead is 20 miles from Boston and so is a suburb: you can commute to the city by highway or commuter rail from there.

Montecito is 100 miles from Los Angeles and it's all bad road. No one (except of course the eco-minded Harkles in their fleet of Range Rovers and Escalades) would call that a commute without a helicopter. It's usually a two-hour ride if not longer.

Pelham Heights, NY.

The perfect, tree-lined NY suburb of 1920s houses and pretty gardens.

[quote]Pasadena, Bryn Mawr, Villanova and Montclair, all mentioned above, have colleges.

If you're ruling out Montclair, how about its next door neighbor Glen Ridge? Or Maplewood?

??? R50

[quote] You can choose college towns that are in the suburbs [R41] . Pasadena, Bryn Mawr, Villanova and Montclair, all mentioned above, have colleges.

Meaning that they are NOT ruled out.

[quote]Alexandria Virginia

Illustrating the problem of definition.

Alexandria (early 1740s) was half a century old when Washington DC was initially laid out. Today some consider it a suburb of DC.

Maplewood NJ (1861) is a pre-suburban town that became a prominent commuter suburb with railroad lines connecting it to NYC.

Westover Hills was within the (extended) bounds of Wilmington, Delaware, and though it was connected to the municipal grid it was conceived of as a place apart, a wholly residential neighborhood developed from a farm as happened in many, many cities (Schenley Farms in Pittsburgh at about the same time and not the only example to tout its previous agrarian use in its name.)

The suburbs that developed by plan or organic growth sometimes have distinct differences, but even that's not a reliable indicator of the look of a place.

Most all of the suburbs in the Northeast were "pre-suburban" towns R52

Many of the pricier ones are what are known as "railroad suburbs" in that there was a small town already there that was mostly farmland and then at around the turn of last century (1900) commuter rail lines sprung up and built stations in each of these small towns.

The railroads then spurred development as more families moved out to the suburbs and more homes were built. As a result, the town around the railroad station grew too, with new stores catering to the new residents.

Most of the Westchester, Philadelphia and New Jersey suburbs listed thus far are "railroad suburbs" - "Main Line" actually refers to the commuter train line.

But for purposes of this thread, let's define a suburb as any area where most residents commuted into the city (pre-Covid, anyway) and that is outside city limits.

Palo Alto, CA

The Woodlands, TX

Scottsdale, AZ

Mountain Brook, AL

Biltmore Forest, NC

Merion Station, PA,

right over the county line from Philly

Mill Valley, CA. Maybe kind of snobby, though.

R56 But not in a snobby way. Relaxed, educated, affluent, enlightened, structurally racist but under the radar....

Speaking of racism - I posted above about the Arroyo Seco... swimming in "the plunge" at Brookside Park. White only except for the day before the pool was cleaned, then black folk could swim. In our lifetime (well, in my lifetime....) . Many of these "picturesque suburbs" were formed to live without having... those people.... around.

Highland Park, TX

Claremont, CA-another college town.

Cleveland Heights. .

Holmby Hills, CA

Brentwood, CA, where OJ Simpson used to live. Has the feel of a suburb. Very leafy and quiet.

The only people not saying somewhere in Marin have never been to Marin. Gorgeous stately homes, lush greenery, stunning foothills and views of the pacific. I challenge any of you to find a more gorgeous suburban enclave than marins Belvedere, Stinson, Sausalito, Muir beach, Kentfield, or Mill Valley. It doesn’t exist!

Nothing in America more picturesque than Marin

Just stunning Marin

Marins Stinson Beach

Marina Sausalito

Atherton, CA

Concord, MA.

r62 OJ never lived in "Brentwood, CA", which is a bedroom community in the Bay Area.

Brentwood is near Los Angeles dear

Plea in OP did not stop some DLers from ticking off lists of random well-known wealthy suburbs that are ugly AF or just nondescript.

There are two Brentwoods in California.

One is a town in the Bay Area, one is a neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Don't forget me!

That's Chance, r74. Does he also call himself Brent?

A long time ago, back in the '90s, I was driving around in the Bay Area and stopped for lunch in Walnut Creek. It had a pretty downtown that was walkable and lively but still felt pleasantly "California". (I live in the East. I don't need to fly 3000 miles to visit places that feel Eastern.) The housing in the area was also California-style attractive (lots of Mediterranean and MCM, IIRC) ... and very expensive, even back then.

Is it still a nice town? Does it qualify in this thread?

R57 I am the other Pasadenian, the stables, Arroyo Seco, etc... I swam in public pools in Pasadena in the late 70s that were absolutely full of black people. In fact, my parents wanted me to go to a diverse camp, and I went to the Y camp in Altadena - about 90% black.

I assume you grew up in the 60s?

The area by the casting pond, near the bathrooms was a popular cruising area when I was a kid.

Preliminary results, based on the number of W&Ws:

Most Picturesque Suburb Of The 1960s: Pasadena, California

Most Picturesque Suburb of the 2020s: Montclair, New Jersey, with lots of love also being shown for Chicago's North Shore suburbs and Philadelphia's Main Line.

The many suburbs of Alexandria Virginia- such as Belle Haven.

Pottersville.

R4 Naperville is where good taste went to die a quiet death.

It's a place where mayonnaise is too spicy.

R81. It’s an upscale Schaumburg

Thanks to the DL thread...

I'm still obsessed with this time capsule in the picturesque suburb of Johnstown, PA

Mount Lebanon PA, suburb of Pittsburgh

Ross, California

Nothing on the east coast compares to what California has to offer in this respect. Marin eats phillys main line for breakfast

Muir Beach California

Marin

Marin County is nice, I agree - but it’s not really a classic suburb. Because it was developed without public transit and has extremely limited access route(s) to the city of which it is a suburb, I always thought of it as an an anomaly. Classic northeastern suburbs like the Main Line, Westchester NY and Boston suburbs are more clearly “suburban” in that they are very tightly connected to and dependent on their urban centers.

I also like that northeastern suburbs often have town centers and are walkable. California suburbs are more like northeastern exurbs - car dependent, strip malls and new construction.

What R89 said, plus towns in Marin may have stellar views of the Bay, but driving along the street, if you're not looking at the water, there's nothing special about them--the houses are nondescript and there's no real coherence.

No matter how many times someone posts aerial views.

R90 Right, Sausalito houseboats are so non-descript.

I think your point and your aesthetic to have all houses built in a certain time period and style. That's traditionally been a difference between the east and the west - in CA (and LA especially), you can have a MCM ranch house right next to a Spanish colonial, right next to a Victorian. But to say there are "nothing special" houses in the affluent sections of Marin - well, you've never been there one must assume.

Pasadena (the winner of this thread, not just for the 60s for for today) also has a mix of architecture, even as we've focused on the craftsman style that essentially was birthed there. It also has quite a downtown, not just a bedroom suburb. All the burbs on the Peninsula in the bay area also have picturesque downtowns - Burlingame, San Mateo, Redwood City, Palo Alto.

Willoughby

Fucking hell, so many rules about what's an allowed suburb and what isn't.

Willoughby, Ohio, R92? You've got to be kidding. Erie Street has finally come back after decades of dumpiness, but most of it is forgettable 50s tract houses.

A few houseboats don't make up for a lot of otherwise forgettable modern houses. And I have been to Marin countless times. If we were judging on settings, it would win hands down--the water and hill views are indeed spectacular.

Pasadena is charming because as noted it is one of the few places in the LA area where, but for a stray palm tree or two, you would think you were in the Northeast or Midwest.

R95 Yeah all those craftsmans and Spanish colonials in the midst of eucalyptus and sycamores are so East Coast.

And Marin does have a lot of modern architecture... a certain Big Sur/Dharma Bum style is common. I guess modern doesn't qualify as picturesque. I'd acknowledge that.

For you R96

Winter Park, FL, which has Rollins College, 7 lakes, and downtown overtaken by flowers

The negative: the city it is attached to is Whorelando.

Pasadena has a lot of sketchy areas, and a horrible school system.

R99 Less sketchy (by which you probably mean non-white) now than a decade ago. And public schools are ok, but great private schools. There is a high school right in CalTech. Pasadena Poly.

@r89 @r90 Ok, let’s break down your asinine statement:

“Marin County is nice, I agree - but it’s not really a classic suburb. Because it was developed without public transit and has extremely limited access route(s) to the city of which it is a suburb, I always thought of it as an an anomaly. Classic northeastern suburbs like the Main Line, Westchester NY and Boston suburbs are more clearly “suburban” in that they are very tightly connected to and dependent on their urban centers.” - Marin is extremely dependent on San Francisco, it is literally a bedroom community for wealthy/middle class people who exclusively work in SF. That is the definition of a suburb. If you consider oyster bay/Nassau county a suburb of New York, there is no logic in saying Marin is unequivocally a San Francisco suburb.

“I also like that northeastern suburbs often have town centers and are walkable. California suburbs are more like northeastern exurbs - car dependent, strip malls and new construction.” - You are so off base. You have obviously never visited Marin. San Rafael, Sausalito, Mill Valley all have more walkable and substantial downtowns than any east coast suburb. Are you mixing up outer Burroughs with the term suburb? Newark is not a classic suburb.

@r90 ‘special’ is in the eye of the beholder, but I love how you put ‘special’ and ‘coherence’ in the same sentence. They are very antithetical approaches when it comes to architecture. Make up your mind. Take a side or sit this round out. You come across as if you’ve only ever seen Marin driving in 101, if that. Marin has architecture, WITH those views you concede, the east coast can’t touch. And an abundance of it.

@r89 @r90 and if you like less modern.

My hometown, New Canaan, CT has always been lovely. I moved out when I went off to college but I still have fond memories.

The Marin County Chamber of Commerce has clearly found this thread

[quote] A long time ago, back in the '90s, I was driving around in the Bay Area and stopped for lunch in Walnut Creek.

Walnut Creek used to be a nice little suburb but it's become choked with traffic. If you're commuting to Oakland or San Francisco, you can take BART, but intra-county commuting, or commuting to Dublin/Pleasanton is a nightmare. Neiman-Marcus opened a store there but it closed permanently after only a couple of years (ostensibly due to COVID, but if all those people were working from home, they sure weren't taking the afternoon off to shop at Neiman's.)

I guess I should add nearby Moraga, Lafayette, and Orinda to the list of picturesque San Francisco suburbs. After all, even DL fave Telly Leung has played the Orinda Theater.

Ok - someone really, really likes Marin. We get it.

Does anyone like Marin? I haven’t heard much about it.

r106 I grew up in Orinda. If I'd known Telly was going to show up eventually, I'd have stayed.

I see a lot of picturesque suburban neighborhoods in movies. When I look up where the movie was filmed most of the times it's in Georgia.

Mt. Lebanon is one of the cuntiest places on earth

Tell us more, r111.

[R111] Why? My sister lived there for ten years, and two of my good friends grew up there. I thought it was pretty.

R110, I don't know about picturesque, but suburban Atlanta sprawls far into the Georgia countryside and abounds in wooded neighborhoods with traditional-looking but generally quite new houses. The cost of buying a big, new-ish house in some far-flung, attractively green ATL suburb is way below the cost of comparable housing in the Northeast, let alone CA.

I wouldn't assume that, because you see colonial-style houses on pretty, wooded streets, you're in a cute suburb as defined by the OP. It's probably just another McMansion-ville ... not that there's anyone wrong with that. I like new suburbs, but they're not what the thread purports to be about.

The average house in Marin is pretty unremarkable. And while the cities comprising Marin County have charming downtown areas, you have to drive to them first before having a walk around.

Outside of the bungalow belts, Atlanta is full of upscale neighborhoods where the houses don't really look right with each other---Druid Hills, for example. The older parts of Buckhead, W of Peachtree are picturesque, but really Atlanta is filled with depressing tracts developments and really no more remarkable than anywhere else. The tv/movie stuff there is because of tax breaks and most of what's shot is B-grade at best. They took that kind of schlock away from North Carolina and its just a metter of time before someone else takes it from Atlanta.

Candler Park, Inman Park, & Ansley Park are indeed beautiful, but they are not Atlanta suburbs. They are neighborhoods in the city. IMO the most picturesque Atlanta suburbs are Roswell & Marietta.

A Roswell street scene.

The town square in downtown Marietta is stereotypical Americana at its best.

I guess there really is a cover for every pot.

I have always thought Alpharetta and other newer suburbs of Atlanta and Charlotte resembled one of the rings of hell.

Tacky vinyl-sided McMansion approximations of older styles with open floor plans and bonus rooms in developments with faux-elegant names like "The Estates At Pheasant Run" on streets with even more ridiculously faux-elegant names "2 The Close" "5 Via Capri" and not a tree in sight save some topiary, populated by graduates of lesser state schools in middle management jobs who are thrilled they can buy a McMansion for only $350K, all the better to place their "Trump24" signs and raise Jayden, Cayden and Brayden.

R119 Brayden's dad, state school mid-management ofay Gen-X may want Trump 2024 - but his mom ain't going to have it. She's one of the reasons we have Warnock and Ossoff, and are able to pass progressive legislation in DC. Hail Brayden's mom, don't put up with his shit.

Let's hope she stays strong R120. I suspect her own middle management job, the one that lets them afford The Estates at Pheasant Run (as opposed to just The Villas) has given her a taste of freedom.

So yes, Hail Brayden's mom for sure!

Nonsense Atlanta has trees galore. What it needs are sewers, streetlights, intelligent road design and traffic planning, perhaps a higher proportion of roads to land.... The houses are pretty, until you realize the walls are more like drywall than actual walls. Also the great room with the 18foot ceiling. Who needs it?

Atlanta may have "trees galore" R122, but they are not to be found in the farmland that gets turned into exurban McMansionville.

This is not just an Atlanta thing, It's pretty much the rule nationwide.

Farmers don't have much use for 100 year old trees laid out in either grid or cul-de-sac patterns.

Wow, really no one has mentioned Greenwich, CT yet? It is really it’s own little paradise, a beautiful historic walkable downtown, one of the few that still has policemen crossing guards, with all types of shops and restaurants including if you need to get something from Sax or Tiffanys. A waterfront with marina and lots of parks, many with contemporary sculptures, a science and art museum, world class library and beautiful architecture. Farmers markets, festivals, great schools, public and private. And it exemplifies The whole notion of a quaint New England town, something that is so obviously transformative you instantly feel a change from another wonderful perfectly picturesque suburban town of Rye, NY, almost next door, but a world a way in difference.

Atlanta is not farming country. It has sticky clay soil underlain by granite hills.

R124 Greenwich = Palm Beach = Southampton. That was always “the Triangle.” That’s probably why it hasn’t been mentioned here as it’s not thought of as a suburb so much as where rich blue bloods “have family.”

Maybe back in the 50's, but Pasadena is not a picturesque all American suburb. It has some nice sections like all of LA, but it's hot, on the east side, has a huge hispanic population, and it's 909 adjacent.

R127 non-American here, so I just wanted to clarify - “has a huge Hispanic population” - did you say that to describe what’s not nice about Pasadena?

[quote] Greenwich = Palm Beach = Southampton. That was always “the Triangle.” That’s probably why it hasn’t been mentioned here as it’s not thought of as a suburb so much as where rich blue bloods “have family.”

Your logic is correct R126, but only because DL is stuck in 1982.

In 2021, all three towns, Greenwich and Palm Beach in particular, have sizeable Jewish populations, and Greenwich also has a large population of foreign executives in the US for a few years, and overseas investors in the back country (where all the really big houses are) and a large blue collar/guido and Hispanic population in the downtown area which oddly has not gentrified nearly as quickly as the blue collar downtown areas of other upscale NYC suburbs.

The "blue bloods" if they exist at all in 2021, have gone elsewhere. (WASPs and Catholics who want to be WASPs tend to live in Darien and New Canaan if they're in Fairfield County)

Old Greenwich, the part of town near the water with (relatively) smaller houses is indeed charming and picturesque AF and should be noted in this thread.

This resident of Old Greenwich votes for Pasadena.

Is DL an aberration or are there many gay Americans still obsessing over neighborhoods where only old money WASPS live? The comments here about Jews, Hispanics and foreigners make me wonder if some DL gays are still clinging to some old ideas about "good and restricted" neighborhoods.

DL an aberration where gay Americans still obsess over old money WASPS based on definitions of the same from black and white movies of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and a 1980 satire called "The Preppy Handbook"

It's 2021.

[quote]WASPs and [bold]Catholics who want to be WASPs tend to live in Darien [/bold] and New Canaan if they're in Fairfield County.

My aunt moved from a delightful old Victorian house in Montclair, where her children had attended whatever country day schools existed nearby, to a Cape Cod-ish ranch house in Darien for no other reason I could see than that she had always wanted to be a WASP. (Her husband was WASP, as it happened.)

Have we forgotten Chadd's Ford?

Some people would say that horsey exurb in Virginia, Middleburg or something like that?

Palos Verdes Estates has one of the most Mediterranean feels of any US community and picturesque beyond belief.

Never forget Chadd's Ford, r134.

Cohasset, Mass., next to Hingham. It's a seacoast town, suburb of Boston,

Filmed in Cohasset:

The Witches of Eastwick, Housesitter, The Finest Hours

Marin has extremely walkable downtowns in its suburbs, and people don’t drive any further to get to them than any other American suburb. Idk why another poster implied otherwise. Here’s Mill Valley’s:

More mill valley:

Sausalito Marin:

More Sausalito:

San Rafael Marin:

More San Rafael, are these not beautiful walkable suburban downtowns?

Suburbia! Suburbia!

Parks for the kids, neighborly butchers,

Less than an hour by train!

That mornin' sun says a good mornin'.

Have a good day. Have a good morning',

Have a good day in the city today.

Joy to your labors until you return

To the little white house in Highland Park...

In Shaker Heights...

In Michigan Falls...

In Beverly Hills.

Suburbia! Suburbia...

Six days of work, fun every Sunday!

Golf with the neighbors next door!

Suburbia! Suburbia...

Vitamin B, Chlorophyll toothpaste:

Who could ask heaven for anything more?

Lovely life, oodles of culture over T.V.,

Book-of-the-Month Club: musical tea:

It’s a wonderful life!

Happily married, sweet little son,

Family picture second to none,

In the little white house in Bloomfield Hills,

In Berkeley Heights,

In Delaware Pines,

In Beverly Hills...

Garden City, NY

Chevy Chase, MD

River Oaks (Houston), TX

Chatham NJ in Morris county is lovely but I may be biased. Madison and Morristown are nice too.

R129 right I realize all that - but I was saying that’s why ON HERE it hasn’t been mentioned. Maybe you were saying the same thing though.

I still think on the East Coast at least Princeton wins. And can the Marin trolls please stop with this shit? We get it.

La Jolla

While I loathe suburbia, I will say that the north shore of Long Island is quite beautiful. Except for any of the McMansions that were built in the past 50 years. The older homes are mostly beautiful.

[quote] While I loathe suburbia

My partner and I live in New York but we have friends in the suburbs so we take the train out from time to time for dinners and parties. I always have the same reaction. As soon as we step off the train, I look at the quaint shops and restaurants, sigh, and say 'Maybe we should consider moving out of the city.' My partner just holds his tongue, because he knows that, four hours later, as we rush past the same stores and restaurants now long-closed for the evening, headed for the last train back to the city, I'll be saying "Good god, how do people live out here and not die of boredom?'

Pleasant Valley

Being gay and single limits where you can live. There are many gorgeous suburbs throughout the US that are a fraction of the cost of city living. As a single gay man, I will only live in a place where being gay is just simply accepted and every day. I could never live in a place where people proudly tell me "they have no problem with gays". Unfortunately much of the country thinks this way. However, there are some areas that I think if I was a completely different person, straight with a wife, I could fall in love with.