The next step in my journey toward owning my first home was to select a neighborhood. My husband and I had a bit of a dilemma. He loves urban life with the intensity of someone who suffered through a slightly lonely rural childhood, so he was eyeing the West Loop. The West Loop is seriously lacking in parks, and I suspected that if I lived there I’d shrivel up and die, like a light-deprived plant that finds itself unable to photosynthesize.
High-rises leave me cold – they feel institutional to me. My husband likes old quaint buildings, and he agreed. Single-family homes and even large condos were not affordable in the city’s livelier neighborhoods, so we took a quick look around at detached homes in areas like West Ridge. We looked at a cute old three-bedroom Georgian home. We were told it was a steal, because the owners were divorcing and just wanted out. That made me sad. The place had lots of potential and a huge back yard. We walked back outside and the street was painfully quiet; parking spaces were so easy to find that they had lost their value. My husband told me he wasn’t ready to live somewhere that felt so isolated and I agreed with that sentiment, even though I badly wanted a large home.
I grew up in the suburbs, and could always relate to that line uttered by Virginia Wolf (well, in the movie of “The Hours” anyway), where she attributes her sense of alienation to “the anaesthetic of the suburbs.” But as we began looking at different neighborhoods, I knew that I didn’t want to live right downtown. Maybe I’m getting old; I wanted a little space and quiet, some trees and a sense of escape at the end of the day. That said, I also wanted to be in walking distance to a bar – the type where everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came. I also wanted to be close to a couple of restaurants for those nights when I can’t be bothered cooking. In short, I wanted an urban neighborhood, but one that wasn’t too urban.
My husband was happy with that, so we started to look around at which city neighborhoods represented the best value for our money – but that’s a story for tomorrow.